18 ms·

Target’s gig workers will strike to protest switch to algorithmic pay model

64 points by elsewhen 6y ago

syntheticcorp 6y ago
I’ve always found it strange that some delivery apps use the value of the order as part of the drivers compensation or delivery fee. It looks like this is one of the changes Shipt are making, which probably would lower driver pay for more expensive items.
thoraway1010 6y ago
Wow - this is big news IF TRUE. Shipt has something like 100k shoppers, the fact that they are going on strike is HUGE - it's so hard to organize a group of 100,000. One thing that I think is better about shipt vs uber etc. YOU get to pick which orders to take I think. Rush hour traffic across down for a $10 order? Forget it. Here's an account from a shipt shopper: "After 4 orders (remember, this is about 4 to five hours of work), I have made a total of $110.55. If you do the math, that’s averaging out to be $27.63 per order. Now, you also have to take into consideration gas and wear and tear on your car, but I think I may have driven a total of 50 miles between these four orders. And if you don’t want to deliver to a place far away, you don’t have to. You get to pick which orders you want to accept." Has Shipt announced any fallback planes when their 100K shoppers walk? Will be interesting to see how they handle this - it may be the largest strike by any workgroup in a long time! My only worry is sometimes the headlines turn out to be basically total lies. Hopefully that is not the case here. ie, they write a headline saying shipt shoppers are striking, but it turns out to be actually 0.5% of shipt shoppers.
- HaloZero 6y ago
  I highly highly doubt that all 100,000 workers are striking. The article mentions that workers will strike and that it's being organized by Gig Workers Collective but I haven't ever found anyone indicating how many people actually participated in these strikes (Instacart workers recently did one)
  - willcipriano 6y ago
    This appears to be the third time they have gone on strike: "The walkout marks the third time Shipt gig workers have gone on strike."
  - thoraway1010 6y ago
    It's says target gig workers will strike - no qualification or limitation whatsoever. When fords union employees went on strike, they virtually all were on strike as well. Is the headline really 99.5% of target gig workers do not go on strike? 0.5% go on strike? That's a BIG difference then everyone walking. They should at least do a follow-up with how many people quit or struck (50,000 or whatever).
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
  - zajd 6y ago
    > The math is not hard but is really important with these jobs. Don't worry, the company offering the jobs has already done the math and is ensuring you're going to get screwed.
- Shivetya 6y ago
  Their example employee was just odd, lost 30% of their wages and that was between $500 and $700 each week? A call center has better wages? Assuming 30% then we are talking about $1500+ a week which on a forty hour week is $37.50 and hour and now only down to $25 an hour. Pretty good pay a no skill job. Now now this is my claiming this app isn't playing games here but some of that can come down to over paying to get people on board and then pulling back once they realized they started out far to rich to sustain. We really need a better source of income that was being earned to give the article any credence.
  - barbecue_sauce 6y ago
    A call center is a much worse job.
ebg13 6y ago
Can someone with perspective on this explain to me how a percent commission model makes any kind of sense vs evaluating actual labor effort for a courier service with fewer guarantees? Delivering 100 pounds of potatoes is _way_ more difficult than delivering a tiny diamond ring.
- jklehm 6y ago
  This is the reason/intention. Potatoes...even worse are jugs of water (low price high weight and bulk). It is a little less clear cut and for sure we're trying to make it easy as possible to reason about the change when picking up a shop. Full Disclosure: I work for Target/Shipt and my opinions are my own.
- swimfar 6y ago
  Probably just because it's much much simpler. How do you objectively compare the delivery difficulty of 100 lbs of potatoes vs a diamond ring? Should the delivery cost of 100 lbs of diamond rings be the same as 100 lbs of potatoes? What about 100, 1-lb boxes vs 1, 100 lb box? Size also makes a difference. You could charge per item, based on weight, like postal shipments. But then you also need to have accurate weights and dimensions. And transporting two boxes to the same address isn't twice as difficult as shipping one box. These aren't insurmountable problems, but as long as most people aren't complaining, there's little pressure to change. edit: changed shipping to delivery, to avoid confusion.
  - ebg13 6y ago
    > You could charge per item, based on weight, like postal shipments. I would say not exactly based on weight, but similar to that: total dimensions&weight converted to dollars + miles converted to dollars + hours converted to dollars. > What about 100, 1-lb boxes vs 1, 100 lb box? Nit: Very few services will allow you to send a 100 lb box. Anything over like 40 lbs is a hazard per OSHA and requires special treatment. Anyway, besides that, delivering lots of small boxes isn't harder than delivering one giant box if the fulfillment side is doing its job. > But then you also need to have accurate weights and dimensions. Everything you buy from Target already has these.
macspoofing 6y ago
Are there any 'gig'-type jobs that don't rely on the worker having a car? That's the math that most people don't seem to factor, that once you include wear-and-tear, gas, and sometimes insurance, you're probably, at best, at minimum wage. Those clever tech companies providing these 'gig' jobs, seem to be relying on workers not making these calculations.
- ebg13 6y ago
  Elsewhere thoraway1010 indicates that (n=1) a quoted wage by deliverer is $22-28/hour for driving ~13 miles/hour. Even if you allocate a whole dollar per mile as driving cost, that's still waaaaay above the federal minimum wage. IME, people who don't work minimum wage don't realize how low minimum wage is.
  - gnopgnip 6y ago
    But is that hour an actual clock hour, or only counting the time you are working and being paid according to the app
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- dclusin 6y ago
  I think that there should be regulation requiring a minimum level of compensation that includes the drivers time and vehicle depreciation as a result of mileage. Drivers generally lack the sophistication to do financial modelling for depreciation of their vehicles. Large corporations like target know this and shamelessly take advantage of it to the benefit of their own shareholders. Just because someone is willing to let themselves be exploited doesn't make it okay. It's pretty despicable IMO.
  - macspoofing 6y ago
    >I think that there should be regulation requiring a minimum level of compensation that includes the drivers time and vehicle depreciation as a result of mileage. That's not going to fix it. If you artificially raise the compensation rates, you're going to increase supply (i.e. incentivize more people to be Uber drivers), leading to more downtime for Uber drivers because the supply of drivers outstrips demand for them. So the per-hour salary isn't going to go up for the drivers. Uber would have to limit supply or create some sort of tiered system - but those aren't perfect solutions either.
Tinyyy 6y ago
I guess the algorithm will just increase the pay for workers not on strike then, due to the decreased supply.
- smabie 6y ago
  Which is why strikes like this rarely work: it's a prisoners dilemma. The reason why they work for say, factory workers is that those unions are much stronger, and there's a lot of social (and sometimes physical) pressure not to cross the picket line. Hell, I'm sure there are a lot of workers who are trying to convince people to strike, but won't themselves. And after all, doing otherwise would be irrational.
  - Ericson2314 6y ago
    Yes it is definitely harder to organize a distributed workforce, but your mathematical modelling is extremely simplistic. > And after all, doing otherwise would be irrational. ...Please... - Psycological harm results from trying to recruit strikers when you are a secret scab. Unless you're a psycopath - You could organize a protest on the day you are striking to confirm each others loyalty - You might already know other people who work for the app even if you don't work with them (e.g. if you learned of the gig work through word-of-month). Those people you already have social connections with. Saying it's hard is valid. Saying it's impossible without real evidence reeks of the stereotype of the freshman straight out of econ 101 who thinks they now understand all human behavior.
    - smabie 6y ago
      I don't remember anyone saying it was impossible. All I said was that it was irrational. But people do irrational things pretty consistently, so irrationality isn't going to stop (some) people.
hartator 6y ago
So much experimentation. After a couple of weeks trying the loot checkout system now this.
coding123 6y ago
Someone should make an app that lets you put in you select which gig job you are doing, enter fields that are specific to that job, and then have it spit out your hourly wage minus costs (gas, car repair, etc..) and also a minimum order/distance of the types of job you're willing to take to reach a certain level of price/hour.
irl_zebra 6y ago
“ For years, Shipt has used a clear commissioned-based pay model that ($5 plus a 7.5 percent commission on all orders),...” Outside the context of algorithmic pay models, I’ve always had a lingering doubt in the context of the restaurant industry. I typically tip 20% across the board, more for great service. If I order a $120 bottle of wine versus a $20 bottle of wine, the wait staff is getting an extra $20, but what did they do to get this extra $20? Everything else is the same. (Putting aside the situations where you order a very nice multi-thousand dollar bottle and a special person with wine knowledge comes out and handles everything, etc.) Analogizing now to Shipts situation, should one person get paid more because I got the fancy cheese rather than the store brand? They’re next to one another and everything else remains the same. I’m not surprised pay drops substantially when algorithmic pay only considers effort.
- lallysingh 6y ago
  For the wine situation, I think your standards for service would be higher at places you pay $120 for a bottle than $20.
  - akiselev 6y ago
    Maybe for a $1200 bottle, but not a $120 bottle. Even my local BBQ spot has a $200 bottle and there it's self service except for drink and food orders. I'd say most of my frequent spots ($20-30 for most expensive entree) have at least one bottle in the three figure price range. However, tipping 20% on a $120 bottle would be more than half of what I tipped the last time I went to a fancy place where the staff folded the napkins every time someone got up to go to the bathroom. That was a 40% tip on a $100 meal for two (with corkage fee) where I felt the service was excellent and included far more than just pouring a few glasses.
    - lallysingh 6y ago
      Those sound like exceptions more than general trends. The tip algorithm makes more sense for the general trend, and less so for the exceptions. That's a reasonable situation.
batmaniam 6y ago
How does this scale with increased inflation or demand? I'm betting it doesn't; it just feels like another way to keep wages down if the company refuses to update their pay 'algorithm' against the current labor market.
supernova87a 6y ago
I think this is the real problem with "AI" and implemented algorithms. It's not that they're biased or whatever, or that they'll target certain people, etc. That's a small % problem. We have the ability to fight that and fix it. And I'm sure we will, because it doesn't really cost us dearly to make things more equitable. No, it's that these algorithms will squeeze every living cent of inefficiency out of a system and pit person against person on who's more willing to work just a little harder for a little less. To take the momentary breaks out of your day, make sure you're working every second. Because those things mean real cash to some person watching the dollars flow in. Turning up the person-utilization % factor or job bid price -- who's going to police against that? Go and celebrate the equality of working to the bone for an unspecified wage. It's interesting how society goes in waves of dog-eat-dog, every-man-for-himself, until you reach some period of relative prosperity, rest, relaxation, and then something happens to turn the clock back (or forward) some more. In the meantime, let those profits flow in!
stevespang 6y ago
Clicked on the link that Whole Foods workers will do a nationwide strike on Tuesday . . . One of their demands ? hazard pay of double the current hourly wage for employees who show up to work during the pandemic . . . oh yeah, right. Managements answer ? Why don't we just shut 'em all down till the pandemic is over and rehire who we choose ? That's a lot cheaper than paying double time . . .

64 points by elsewhen 6y ago

I’ve always found it strange that some delivery apps use the value of the order as part of the drivers compensation or delivery fee. It looks like this is one of the changes Shipt are making, which probably would lower driver pay for more expensive items.

thoraway1010 6y ago

Wow - this is big news IF TRUE. Shipt has something like 100k shoppers, the fact that they are going on strike is HUGE - it's so hard to organize a group of 100,000. One thing that I think is better about shipt vs uber etc. YOU get to pick which orders to take I think. Rush hour traffic across down for a $10 order? Forget it. Here's an account from a shipt shopper: "After 4 orders (remember, this is about 4 to five hours of work), I have made a total of $110.55. If you do the math, that’s averaging out to be $27.63 per order. Now, you also have to take into consideration gas and wear and tear on your car, but I think I may have driven a total of 50 miles between these four orders. And if you don’t want to deliver to a place far away, you don’t have to. You get to pick which orders you want to accept." Has Shipt announced any fallback planes when their 100K shoppers walk? Will be interesting to see how they handle this - it may be the largest strike by any workgroup in a long time! My only worry is sometimes the headlines turn out to be basically total lies. Hopefully that is not the case here. ie, they write a headline saying shipt shoppers are striking, but it turns out to be actually 0.5% of shipt shoppers.

HaloZero 6y ago
I highly highly doubt that all 100,000 workers are striking. The article mentions that workers will strike and that it's being organized by Gig Workers Collective but I haven't ever found anyone indicating how many people actually participated in these strikes (Instacart workers recently did one)
- willcipriano 6y ago
  This appears to be the third time they have gone on strike: "The walkout marks the third time Shipt gig workers have gone on strike."
- thoraway1010 6y ago
  It's says target gig workers will strike - no qualification or limitation whatsoever. When fords union employees went on strike, they virtually all were on strike as well. Is the headline really 99.5% of target gig workers do not go on strike? 0.5% go on strike? That's a BIG difference then everyone walking. They should at least do a follow-up with how many people quit or struck (50,000 or whatever).
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
- zajd 6y ago
  > The math is not hard but is really important with these jobs. Don't worry, the company offering the jobs has already done the math and is ensuring you're going to get screwed.
Shivetya 6y ago
Their example employee was just odd, lost 30% of their wages and that was between $500 and $700 each week? A call center has better wages? Assuming 30% then we are talking about $1500+ a week which on a forty hour week is $37.50 and hour and now only down to $25 an hour. Pretty good pay a no skill job. Now now this is my claiming this app isn't playing games here but some of that can come down to over paying to get people on board and then pulling back once they realized they started out far to rich to sustain. We really need a better source of income that was being earned to give the article any credence.
- barbecue_sauce 6y ago
  A call center is a much worse job.

ebg13 6y ago

Can someone with perspective on this explain to me how a percent commission model makes any kind of sense vs evaluating actual labor effort for a courier service with fewer guarantees? Delivering 100 pounds of potatoes is _way_ more difficult than delivering a tiny diamond ring.

jklehm 6y ago
This is the reason/intention. Potatoes...even worse are jugs of water (low price high weight and bulk). It is a little less clear cut and for sure we're trying to make it easy as possible to reason about the change when picking up a shop. Full Disclosure: I work for Target/Shipt and my opinions are my own.
swimfar 6y ago
Probably just because it's much much simpler. How do you objectively compare the delivery difficulty of 100 lbs of potatoes vs a diamond ring? Should the delivery cost of 100 lbs of diamond rings be the same as 100 lbs of potatoes? What about 100, 1-lb boxes vs 1, 100 lb box? Size also makes a difference. You could charge per item, based on weight, like postal shipments. But then you also need to have accurate weights and dimensions. And transporting two boxes to the same address isn't twice as difficult as shipping one box. These aren't insurmountable problems, but as long as most people aren't complaining, there's little pressure to change. edit: changed shipping to delivery, to avoid confusion.
- ebg13 6y ago
  > You could charge per item, based on weight, like postal shipments. I would say not exactly based on weight, but similar to that: total dimensions&weight converted to dollars + miles converted to dollars + hours converted to dollars. > What about 100, 1-lb boxes vs 1, 100 lb box? Nit: Very few services will allow you to send a 100 lb box. Anything over like 40 lbs is a hazard per OSHA and requires special treatment. Anyway, besides that, delivering lots of small boxes isn't harder than delivering one giant box if the fulfillment side is doing its job. > But then you also need to have accurate weights and dimensions. Everything you buy from Target already has these.

macspoofing 6y ago

Are there any 'gig'-type jobs that don't rely on the worker having a car? That's the math that most people don't seem to factor, that once you include wear-and-tear, gas, and sometimes insurance, you're probably, at best, at minimum wage. Those clever tech companies providing these 'gig' jobs, seem to be relying on workers not making these calculations.

ebg13 6y ago
Elsewhere thoraway1010 indicates that (n=1) a quoted wage by deliverer is $22-28/hour for driving ~13 miles/hour. Even if you allocate a whole dollar per mile as driving cost, that's still waaaaay above the federal minimum wage. IME, people who don't work minimum wage don't realize how low minimum wage is.
- gnopgnip 6y ago
  But is that hour an actual clock hour, or only counting the time you are working and being paid according to the app
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
dclusin 6y ago
I think that there should be regulation requiring a minimum level of compensation that includes the drivers time and vehicle depreciation as a result of mileage. Drivers generally lack the sophistication to do financial modelling for depreciation of their vehicles. Large corporations like target know this and shamelessly take advantage of it to the benefit of their own shareholders. Just because someone is willing to let themselves be exploited doesn't make it okay. It's pretty despicable IMO.
- macspoofing 6y ago
  >I think that there should be regulation requiring a minimum level of compensation that includes the drivers time and vehicle depreciation as a result of mileage. That's not going to fix it. If you artificially raise the compensation rates, you're going to increase supply (i.e. incentivize more people to be Uber drivers), leading to more downtime for Uber drivers because the supply of drivers outstrips demand for them. So the per-hour salary isn't going to go up for the drivers. Uber would have to limit supply or create some sort of tiered system - but those aren't perfect solutions either.

Tinyyy 6y ago

I guess the algorithm will just increase the pay for workers not on strike then, due to the decreased supply.

smabie 6y ago
Which is why strikes like this rarely work: it's a prisoners dilemma. The reason why they work for say, factory workers is that those unions are much stronger, and there's a lot of social (and sometimes physical) pressure not to cross the picket line. Hell, I'm sure there are a lot of workers who are trying to convince people to strike, but won't themselves. And after all, doing otherwise would be irrational.
- Ericson2314 6y ago
  Yes it is definitely harder to organize a distributed workforce, but your mathematical modelling is extremely simplistic. > And after all, doing otherwise would be irrational. ...Please... - Psycological harm results from trying to recruit strikers when you are a secret scab. Unless you're a psycopath - You could organize a protest on the day you are striking to confirm each others loyalty - You might already know other people who work for the app even if you don't work with them (e.g. if you learned of the gig work through word-of-month). Those people you already have social connections with. Saying it's hard is valid. Saying it's impossible without real evidence reeks of the stereotype of the freshman straight out of econ 101 who thinks they now understand all human behavior.
  - smabie 6y ago
    I don't remember anyone saying it was impossible. All I said was that it was irrational. But people do irrational things pretty consistently, so irrationality isn't going to stop (some) people.

hartator 6y ago

So much experimentation. After a couple of weeks trying the loot checkout system now this.

coding123 6y ago

Someone should make an app that lets you put in you select which gig job you are doing, enter fields that are specific to that job, and then have it spit out your hourly wage minus costs (gas, car repair, etc..) and also a minimum order/distance of the types of job you're willing to take to reach a certain level of price/hour.

irl_zebra 6y ago

“ For years, Shipt has used a clear commissioned-based pay model that ($5 plus a 7.5 percent commission on all orders),...” Outside the context of algorithmic pay models, I’ve always had a lingering doubt in the context of the restaurant industry. I typically tip 20% across the board, more for great service. If I order a $120 bottle of wine versus a $20 bottle of wine, the wait staff is getting an extra $20, but what did they do to get this extra $20? Everything else is the same. (Putting aside the situations where you order a very nice multi-thousand dollar bottle and a special person with wine knowledge comes out and handles everything, etc.) Analogizing now to Shipts situation, should one person get paid more because I got the fancy cheese rather than the store brand? They’re next to one another and everything else remains the same. I’m not surprised pay drops substantially when algorithmic pay only considers effort.

lallysingh 6y ago
For the wine situation, I think your standards for service would be higher at places you pay $120 for a bottle than $20.
- akiselev 6y ago
  Maybe for a $1200 bottle, but not a $120 bottle. Even my local BBQ spot has a $200 bottle and there it's self service except for drink and food orders. I'd say most of my frequent spots ($20-30 for most expensive entree) have at least one bottle in the three figure price range. However, tipping 20% on a $120 bottle would be more than half of what I tipped the last time I went to a fancy place where the staff folded the napkins every time someone got up to go to the bathroom. That was a 40% tip on a $100 meal for two (with corkage fee) where I felt the service was excellent and included far more than just pouring a few glasses.
  - lallysingh 6y ago
    Those sound like exceptions more than general trends. The tip algorithm makes more sense for the general trend, and less so for the exceptions. That's a reasonable situation.

batmaniam 6y ago

How does this scale with increased inflation or demand? I'm betting it doesn't; it just feels like another way to keep wages down if the company refuses to update their pay 'algorithm' against the current labor market.

supernova87a 6y ago

I think this is the real problem with "AI" and implemented algorithms. It's not that they're biased or whatever, or that they'll target certain people, etc. That's a small % problem. We have the ability to fight that and fix it. And I'm sure we will, because it doesn't really cost us dearly to make things more equitable. No, it's that these algorithms will squeeze every living cent of inefficiency out of a system and pit person against person on who's more willing to work just a little harder for a little less. To take the momentary breaks out of your day, make sure you're working every second. Because those things mean real cash to some person watching the dollars flow in. Turning up the person-utilization % factor or job bid price -- who's going to police against that? Go and celebrate the equality of working to the bone for an unspecified wage. It's interesting how society goes in waves of dog-eat-dog, every-man-for-himself, until you reach some period of relative prosperity, rest, relaxation, and then something happens to turn the clock back (or forward) some more. In the meantime, let those profits flow in!

stevespang 6y ago

Clicked on the link that Whole Foods workers will do a nationwide strike on Tuesday . . . One of their demands ? hazard pay of double the current hourly wage for employees who show up to work during the pandemic . . . oh yeah, right. Managements answer ? Why don't we just shut 'em all down till the pandemic is over and rehire who we choose ? That's a lot cheaper than paying double time . . .