Uber, Grubhub and DoorDash must pay NYC delivery workers an $18 minimum wage
A first-of-its kind law requiring a minimum wage for app-based delivery workers will take effect after a judge rejected the companies' bid to block it.
Uber, DoorDash and Grubhub won’t be able to get out of paying minimum wage to their New York City delivery workers after all, following a judge’s decision to reject their bid to skirt the city’s new law. The upcoming law, which is still pending due to the companies’ ongoing lawsuit, aims to secure better wage protections for app-based workers. Once the suit settles, third-party delivery providers will have to pay delivery workers a minimum wage of roughly $18 per hour before tips, and keep up with the yearly increases, Reuters reports.
The amount, which will increase April 1 of every year, is slightly higher than the city’s standard minimum wage, taking into account the additional expenses gig workers face. At the moment, food delivery workers make an estimated $7-$11 per hour on average.
Remember when minimum wage driver work went up for a vote in California under prop 22 and we still voted against it? Im always so mad every election cycle i feel like everyone is a complete moron working against themselves
Copying my own comment from another thread:
Unfortunately corporate advertising works when it comes to elections
Is it fair to call people stupid when they're facing a literal corporate propaganda campaign? I'd sooner reach for "corporations are evil" than "people are stupid" in that case. Remember how people used to treat you if you were against the Iraq war? And today, we know that thing was unnecessary and awful. Sometimes powerful people just manage to convince us of things that aren't true.
You dont have to always be the victim, dont strip away your obligation for due diligence just because some corporation made a nice commercial.
It's not one or the other. The corporate propaganda works because people are stupid.
I agree in so far as the human brain is pretty fucking stupid and easily "hacked." Especially when companies literally pay psychologists to get better at brain hacking.
Guess who's about to keep all employee tips... A minimum wage is a great first step, but stricter regulation will be needed to curtail the absurd levels of greed from these megacorps.
Guess who's going to stop playing 20% for tips now that I don't have to subsidize a subhuman wage?
Layoffs incoming.
Nope.
To those who live there: How does $18/hour in NYC compare to $20/hour in California (for the fast food thing recently passed here)? Is that a living wage there?
Household income for me and my wife was around $150k and we got priced out of the city. A lot of Dashers take late night trains deep deep outside of the city, or they live with half a dozen other Dashers on alternating schedules, sharing beds.
Not a resident of either but it's worth mentioning that this is NYC not NY state and California probably has suburban and rural areas that are much, much cheaper cost of living than NYC.
I don't see how this doesn't kill business for these companies.
Edit: I'm not defending the decision not to pay people more in general. It's more about the service going away altogether because the wage cost will be passed into the customers. But if that's what you fuckers want ok. I don't live in NY so it doesn't affect me. Enjoy losing access to all your delivery services.
If you can't afford to pay your employees a fair, living wage, then you don't deserve to stay in business. Capitalism in a nutshell.
I would say regulated capitalism in a nutshell. Raw capitalism wants to pay workers as little as possible for as much production as possible.
Capitalism requires regulation. If you don't have regulation you can only have capitalism for an incredibly short amount of time. This was all detailed in Adam Smith's book when he invented capitalism.
Lemmy seems to dream up this strawman of Capitalism while having a very rose tinted outlook on Communism. Everyone seems to miss that these are all problems with humans, not your favorite economic system.
Especially if it's a service. Maybe if your service business can't generate enough revenue to pay your employees then it's a service that doesn't need to exist?
Or maybe the people profiting off of that service are making too much profit at everyone else's expense.
I don't see why that's a problem.
Normally I wouldn't give a shit. But for these P2P businesses the unit economics for the business to be profitable requires passing on that expense to the end customer.
I'm not going to pay an extra $10+ dollars or whatever for my meal when I'm already tipping, paying tax, and service charge.
So I'm saying while it sounds awesome to pay people more, in this case it will just cause these services to go away.
Everyone down voted me like I'm defending the companies, but that's not my intention. It's more that these services as they are won't exist, so everyone loses. The employees lose the job and their customers lose the service. The company goes out of business too but that's not the issue I care about. We will effectively all lose delivery services except those willing to pay a lot for it, which stifles demand and makes the problem worse.
Anyway... I'm totally willing to hear counterarguments and certainly on the side of the workers, but the knee-jerk downvote and talk about how everyone needs a living wage isn't helping dive into the nuance of how these businesses operate and make money and what impact this decision will have on the business model.
Life was just fine before those services you’re worried about losing. They aren’t necessary.
I can say that too, and I agree with it. It's easy to say that.
Meanwhile the folks who relied on it as some part time extra cash just lost that option.
I thought the invisible hand of the market was a good thing...
If your business plan cannot make a profit under the laws of where you want to operate, why should anyone care?
Good. If you can't afford to pay your employees minimum wage, you should die as a business.
They can make less profit in order to cover paying employees a fair wage.
They will still be make a profit, which means all of their business expenses are covered. Those who pocket that profit will also be richer than you can ever hope to be.
That's because you don't know what you're talking about.