20 ms·

I can’t tell how to interpret this. Doing gig work doesn’t pay well, but respondents are doing an average of 28 hours of work per week. Something is missing fr

by KMnO4 3y ago

I can’t tell how to interpret this. Doing gig work doesn’t pay well, but respondents are doing an average of 28 hours of work per week. Something is missing from the picture. If the takeaway is that gig workers are struggling to pay living expenses, I would expect that to be reflected by working 50-60+ hours per week.

robertlagrant 3y ago
It's a citeable headline.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
refulgentis 3y ago
For interpreting it, basically: - revenue = true hourly pay * hours. - statutory hourly pay = some constant set by gov't. Therefore: - given revenue less than some X, we'll name it `living expenses` - it's possible that true hourly pay < statutory hourly pay Reading your comment, you may have also meant that you're trying to pick between that interpretation, and another one, that looks like: Given: - revenue = true hourly pay * hours. - statutory hourly pay = some constant set by gov't. - true hourly pay < statutory hourly pay Proposition: - Given hours worked < Y, where Y is some range, and revenue = Z, and workers continue being alive, then perhaps the statutory hourly pay is too high? From there, to help me choose an interpretation, I'd look for more evidence of that. I'd want something damning, enough to overrule the statute / legal social contract of the population.
wongarsu 3y ago
Might be a sign that most people have another job and just do the gig work on the side
Bjartr 3y ago
Plus they say minimum wage rose just this month. I'd expect to see at least a little lag between wages that are legislated directly and those only influenced by that legislation through market pressures.
- jasmer 3y ago
  ? Minimum wage is the law, not a 'market pressure'. Gig employers are not immune to that. Either they pay minimum or are fined and change their ops.
  - Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
    Gig employees are not paid an hourly wage. They're paid per-delivery/ride. You know that, right? Because of this, it's possible to either not have enough deliveries/rides or to have the deliveries/rides pay too little to achieve enough money in an hour to make minimum wage.
    - jasmer 3y ago
      Yes, it's how the scam is perpetuated. My friends - the level of naivete on this board is beyond pale: the 'gig' economy companies are absolutely founded on the principle of having extra leverage over workers so they can be de facto considerably lower than standard net packages. This is the business plan. Large companies have power over individuals, which is why we have regulations, min. wage and sometimes unions (and laws for unions). Even thinks like 'weekends' are effectively legislated. So, by adjusting the terms of contracts, putting in fine print, especially leveraging things like lack of understanding of 'hidden costs' (aka wear and tear on vehicles), etc. they can eke out a profit where there might be none otherwise. In a magical world where we could talk exclusively about 'excess labour' aka 'everyone had a full time job and wanted to make a few bucks on the side' - this might work out in some ways, but generally speaking, it doesn't. 'Gig economy' is toxic for the working class and mostly is just a giant wealth transfer. The people creating and investing in these companies absolutely know this, this is their 'secret sauce' or 'IP' or 'special insight' etc. that makes it work. I think much of it would survive if min. wage were required, but not all of it. I suggest it's not actually efficient for middle class people to have 'gig servants' in most cases, the efficiency just is not there - again 'slack labour' notwithstanding. Finally, we may be a couple of steps away from it working - notably, there are a lot of 'hiccups' that happen with delivery, such as people not present, addressing problems, bad food selection, etc. and working through a lot of that may bring efficiency across the threshold to where the 'grocery bill' is just a 'little bit more' because the delivery guy is able to do it very efficiently, and so the economics add up. I think we might be there with Uber but I don't think we're there with Instacart.
celeritascelery 3y ago
Most of the people I know who do gig work do it because it is so flexible. They often have other things like childcare or schooling that take a large part of their time.
CraigJPerry 3y ago
>> an average of 28 hours I wonder if this hours figure is calculated the same way the gig companies calculate minimum wage. I.e. that 28 hours represents only time spent in performing the delivery task. Any waiting around beforehand when not assigned a task is not counted as working hours for the purposes of min wage calculation. If this is true (and that needs verifying) then this 28 might be a 40 hours where the person was unable to get on with their other life duties even if they weren’t technically working.
- dmix 3y ago
  They’d obviously do it by total hours worked vs the amount Uber/etc pays out each paycheque, not going through thousands of Uber receipts, calculating the percentages paid out + time spent doing the delivery, and totalling them up. That’d be pretty hard/impossible at scale.
  - hammock 3y ago
    Not hard. Many software services built to do that sort of thing
- jasmer 3y ago
  Deep insight! Retailers should only pay sales clerks when they are directly talking to customers! Bus drivers should only be paid when the bus is moving! I'm only going to pay my developers when they are writing lines of code! All of the 'in between' time 'doesn't count as work'.
  - c-linkage 3y ago
    Welcome to being an airline flight attendant. <https://www.news.com.au/travel/flight-attendant-reveals-pay-secret-only-paid-when-plane-doors-close/news-story/ae8178b7c5a80ccf44df08cdc7f1b9d7 https://www.news.com.au/travel/flight-attendant-reveals-pay-...>
  - usr1106 3y ago
    Don't forget to ask the pay back if it turns out later that the developer introduced a bug during fhe paid period.
themagician 3y ago
If you are only making around £7 an hour it's not going to matter if you work 28 hours or 84 hours. The takeaway is that people doing jobs that wouldn't otherwise exist.
NikolaNovak 3y ago
The missing number is how many of them are working another job. I haven't taken Uber in last couple of years, but prior to Covid I took it ~weekly in Ottawa & Toronto. Not a single driver in years of travel for work, had it as their sole employment. They're usually in a hurry, but delivery drivers I had a chance to chat with last few years also primarily use it to supplement their income. So people may be doing 60 hours a week, just not solely via gig work. Edit: I've Re-read the article, the 28 hours a week you quote is immediately followed by a clarifying "comprising 60% of their total earnings" -- so it looks like indeed they are working many more hours a week total.
- sokoloff 3y ago
  I found that a high fraction of my mid-day trips (commuting to/from our downtown office or taking it to/from the airport morning, afternoon, or very early evening) were from essentially full-time drivers. Friday/Saturday night trips to/from restaurants were mostly from part-time drivers, which is probably not that surprising a result.
- pessimizer 3y ago
  Minimum wage is a rate, not an amount. It doesn't matter what other jobs people have, it won't change the rate they're paid for gigwork.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - dmix 3y ago
    The previous solution to this for taxis was crippling the supply of taxi jobs (via medallions) so each taxi job paid more as well as setting a minimum fee for entering a car. Uber drivers would likewise make more money if there was less of them, so they would always have new calls waiting. But that also still means there’s less people making money, as well as far longer wait times for consumers and higher costs. The medallion system was designed around the ideas taxis = your career, not some side gig you can start/stop whenever you like. You could also do it by setting price floors but gov messing with prices at that fine grained level is dangerous (as Venezuela learned with food).
scoopdewoop 3y ago
Wanting more work isn't going to make a lunch rush happen again. These folks make no money at all waiting around, and can only make a nearly worthwhile sum when there is demand.
SimonPStevens 3y ago
I think for many gig type work out would be hard to hit 50 hours. There are only so many peak hours for these jobs in a week. If tried to work more you'd find yourself just waiting for jobs a lot of the time and your average hourly rate would drop even lower.
jasmer 3y ago
My god man, use your logic: 'pay workers illegally under wage, then can just work 60 hours a week to make up for it!' at least before we make it an issue. If there was no minimum wage, wages in some sectors wages would drop to where they are in the undeveloped world aka $2/hour. Little communities with favela-like structures with limited heating/electricity would pop up, and if you think the 'dollar store' is cheap, then wait for the '25 cent store' where they sell stuff as they do parts of India and Brazil. It's funny how people don't think this could happen in the 'modern world', I suggest they don't know what makes the modern world modern. For a hint, go to where the illegal workers in Cali or Texas live and exist. Those communities resemble pretty much the standard of living of Central American countries, aka 'down the economic ladder'. Because they are. Moreover, having secondary low-wage markets will put downward wage pressure on other jobs. Extra surpluses will mostly be yielded by financial asset holders. The solution here is simple, require people pay minimum wage. If you look at corporate profits in the US for example, there are plenty of surpluses available to pay people. Some jobs will go away, that's fine. I can't believe what I'm reading on this thread, the only other time I've been suspicious of 'ideological paid bots' is when I see a ton of people defending the CCP.
- savant_penguin 3y ago
  "Some jobs will go away, that's fine." To whom is that fine? To the people going from $2/hour to zero it certainly isn't. I honestly cannot grasp how some people can _forcibly_ remove other people's _options_ then pat themselves on the back as some sort of armchair savior. Yes, for some people a bad option could still be their best option. What sort of moral superpower is that that enables you to forbid a contract between two consenting adults A and B such that A wants to work for X and B that's willing to pay X, but you as a C that just won't let it happen and is willing to use force to stop it from happening
  - lifeonlars 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - nathan_compton 3y ago
    Ideally minimum wage should be coupled with higher taxes on the wealthy, a generous social safety net, a job guarantee fronted by the state, and a sovereign wealth fund which pays out a minimum basic income. This would eliminate shitty jobs no one wants to do and get rid of business models which depend on them, which is a net win for everyone.
ClumsyPilot 3y ago
We spesifically deaigned legislation to make sure workers get paid for all their time, a chef waiting for orders and not cooking is still working. A fire marshall on duty still gwts paid if there is no fire, etc. its amazing how all the progress was undone by pretending workhours don't count when an app says so. I am very disillusioned by our industry, it seems half the revenue was generating by techno-cheating laws.
- ghaff 3y ago
  Except we really didn't. People are not in general paid for their time going to and from being on the clock which, in many cases, is significant.
  - pessimizer 3y ago
    People in general don't have to clock out every time they put down the pencil or stop typing.
  - SCHiM 3y ago
    Except they are. They are standing next to their company branded bike, in uniform waiting for an order. They are not on their way to work from home or vise-versa. For all intents and purposes they are on the clock, except the computer says no.
  - datavirtue 3y ago
    Service industry jobs often make you clock out and have rules against leaving the premises when off the clock. This is seen as normal and workers always comply.
    - lifeonlars 3y ago
      I'm not sure this is 'seen as normal' (by whom?) but I very much doubt it is legal under minimum wage legislation. Besides which, this is not the equivalent of making a bartender clock out during his break. It's the equivalent of making him clock out while he stands at the bar waiting for the next customer.
malcolmgreaves 3y ago
Other folks have already commented that most folks in this line of work will have 2nd and 3rd jobs. But, I want to explain a different perspective. One that explains how gig work affects one's living (and ultimately leads to people needing to take on multiple jobs to survive). Gig workers cannot control how many hours of work they receive a week. It's similar to shift work. When your manager is making the schedule and ensures that no one works 40 hours or more a week so they don't have to pay you benefits. A major problem of low-wage, non-salaried work and gig work is that is an unreliable source of income. This breeds anxiety and stress, not to mention a host of other problems.
- beerpls 3y ago
  Not only that, but the 28 hours they work are probably some of the worst. Ex you’re driving uber. You’re going to be “incentivized” (read: forced due to logistics) to work rush hour and bar hours. So you’re maybe working 5-7 and 10-12 on weekends and a couple weekdays. The reason being is that everyone wants to cruise around in the afternoon so the ratio of drivers to passengers gets so bad you’ll never get a ride. And ofc if you’re sitting in your car with the app on waiting… you’re not being paid. That doesn’t count as work. So if you don’t get a ride for 2 hours bc not enough passengers - tough shit you’ve just made $4 for your 2 hours minus the cost of running your car and losing hours of your life. But America is corrupted. Politicians let’s corps simply say “no we’re not breaking the law” and they believe them. Anyone who’s debating that this is harmful and should be illegal is uneducated or a simp for those corps.
lumost 3y ago
How lmuch big does an Uber driver “work” for Uber? How long does a “dasher” work? If folks aren’t paid for the 15 minute gap between orders, or the 10 minute commute to pickup location - then a 60 hour work week can easily turn into 30 hours of paid time.
chongli 3y ago
I would expect that to be reflected by working 50-60+ hours per week. That does not follow. Suppose the gig workers are doing food deliveries. Each day, the market places X food orders at a total of $Y including fees and tips. If the market clears (no one who places a food order has it left unfulfilled), a reasonable assumption, then the food delivery gig is a zero-sum game. If all the drivers work more hours that just means they’ll be waiting longer, on average, for orders to come in. No amount of extra hours worked will create additional food orders.
- londons_explore 3y ago
  One common thing speaking to most low paid workers is that they would like to do more work to earn more money, but there is no more work on offer. Even amongst software engineers, if you asked your boss "can I work a few extra saturdays and get paid a few extra $k", the typical answer is no. The labour market is far less dynamic than say the market for carrots, where you can of course give a few $ extra and get extra carrots from walmart.
  - mk67 3y ago
    Funnily, at least in Europe, it's very dynamic the other way. Rarely heard of an employer refusing someone to go to 50-80%.
mattnewton 3y ago
Why would you spend 60 hours a week in something that gives so little returns? It’s not like you can meaningfully get ahead doing this if these are the numbers. Better to spend the other hours looking for other options or just enjoying yourself.
- kevviiinn 3y ago
  Enjoying yourself doesn't pay the bills
  - mattnewton 3y ago
    Neither does gig work apparently. If the returns are so poor, you can try to feed yourself other ways.
    - kevviiinn 3y ago
      $4 is better than 0 dollars and perhaps some people have looked but couldn't find other work. Maybe they have a criminal record, businesses definitely discriminate even though it's illegal
- maxbaines 3y ago
  Because they have to, to make ends meet. When you are struggling to feed yourself and maybe a family it leaves little room for learning or enjoying yourself.
  - mattnewton 3y ago
    Sure, under pain of starvation people will do this if gig work is the only possible work, but we try not to let people die in the west this way and as a result people have a little breathing room to try to choose better options. Even just being your own childcare is an activity with much higher returns in your example than 60 hours of gig work. I would not expect 50-60 hours to be the norm when it pays so little per hour.
harvey9 3y ago
The UK has an hourly legal minimum wage rate. The number of hours worked does not affect the fact that, according to the study, most gig workers are earning less than that per hour. Respondents doing an average of 28 hours gig work per week will in some cases be using that to top up insufficient hours in a low wage conventional job.
dfxm12 3y ago
Wages, i.e. payment per hour worked, is independent of the number of hours worked. One of the takeaways is that they aren't being paid the legal minimum wage. The overarching takeaway is that gig work doesn't offer the protections that is extended to other workers. More to your point, understand that one of the issues that Starbucks unions are fighting for is more control over scheduling.
anamexis 3y ago
It seems like the hours per week is irrelevant -- the point being made is that the hourly wage is below the minimum hourly wage.
ThorsBane 3y ago
I suspect most gig workers do it as a side hobby or side project before having the necessary experience to start scaling a business of their own. Or to supplement other income.
namuol 3y ago
> Doing gig work doesn’t pay well, but respondents are doing an average of 28 hours of work per week. Curious use of “but”. Has it occurred to you that perhaps below-minimum-wage pay isn’t the best use of one’s time? Besides, an hour is an hour. If I’m not paid for that hour, it doesn’t matter if I worked 1 hour or 100 hours, but you can bet that gig companies do everything they can to avoid “full time” employment of workers in markets that require benefits for such employees, so that may also factor in to the number of hours worked.
lm28469 3y ago
Isn't it in the article ? > on average 28 hours a week undertaking gig work, comprising 60% of their total earnings. And since it's bellow the minimum hourly wage does it matter that it's 1 hour or 60 hours ?

by KMnO4 3y ago

robertlagrant 3y ago

It's a citeable headline.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

refulgentis 3y ago

For interpreting it, basically: - revenue = true hourly pay * hours. - statutory hourly pay = some constant set by gov't. Therefore: - given revenue less than some X, we'll name it `living expenses` - it's possible that true hourly pay < statutory hourly pay Reading your comment, you may have also meant that you're trying to pick between that interpretation, and another one, that looks like: Given: - revenue = true hourly pay * hours. - statutory hourly pay = some constant set by gov't. - true hourly pay < statutory hourly pay Proposition: - Given hours worked < Y, where Y is some range, and revenue = Z, and workers continue being alive, then perhaps the statutory hourly pay is too high? From there, to help me choose an interpretation, I'd look for more evidence of that. I'd want something damning, enough to overrule the statute / legal social contract of the population.

wongarsu 3y ago

Might be a sign that most people have another job and just do the gig work on the side

Bjartr 3y ago

Plus they say minimum wage rose just this month. I'd expect to see at least a little lag between wages that are legislated directly and those only influenced by that legislation through market pressures.

jasmer 3y ago
? Minimum wage is the law, not a 'market pressure'. Gig employers are not immune to that. Either they pay minimum or are fined and change their ops.
- Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
  Gig employees are not paid an hourly wage. They're paid per-delivery/ride. You know that, right? Because of this, it's possible to either not have enough deliveries/rides or to have the deliveries/rides pay too little to achieve enough money in an hour to make minimum wage.
  - jasmer 3y ago
    Yes, it's how the scam is perpetuated. My friends - the level of naivete on this board is beyond pale: the 'gig' economy companies are absolutely founded on the principle of having extra leverage over workers so they can be de facto considerably lower than standard net packages. This is the business plan. Large companies have power over individuals, which is why we have regulations, min. wage and sometimes unions (and laws for unions). Even thinks like 'weekends' are effectively legislated. So, by adjusting the terms of contracts, putting in fine print, especially leveraging things like lack of understanding of 'hidden costs' (aka wear and tear on vehicles), etc. they can eke out a profit where there might be none otherwise. In a magical world where we could talk exclusively about 'excess labour' aka 'everyone had a full time job and wanted to make a few bucks on the side' - this might work out in some ways, but generally speaking, it doesn't. 'Gig economy' is toxic for the working class and mostly is just a giant wealth transfer. The people creating and investing in these companies absolutely know this, this is their 'secret sauce' or 'IP' or 'special insight' etc. that makes it work. I think much of it would survive if min. wage were required, but not all of it. I suggest it's not actually efficient for middle class people to have 'gig servants' in most cases, the efficiency just is not there - again 'slack labour' notwithstanding. Finally, we may be a couple of steps away from it working - notably, there are a lot of 'hiccups' that happen with delivery, such as people not present, addressing problems, bad food selection, etc. and working through a lot of that may bring efficiency across the threshold to where the 'grocery bill' is just a 'little bit more' because the delivery guy is able to do it very efficiently, and so the economics add up. I think we might be there with Uber but I don't think we're there with Instacart.

celeritascelery 3y ago

Most of the people I know who do gig work do it because it is so flexible. They often have other things like childcare or schooling that take a large part of their time.

CraigJPerry 3y ago

>> an average of 28 hours I wonder if this hours figure is calculated the same way the gig companies calculate minimum wage. I.e. that 28 hours represents only time spent in performing the delivery task. Any waiting around beforehand when not assigned a task is not counted as working hours for the purposes of min wage calculation. If this is true (and that needs verifying) then this 28 might be a 40 hours where the person was unable to get on with their other life duties even if they weren’t technically working.

dmix 3y ago
They’d obviously do it by total hours worked vs the amount Uber/etc pays out each paycheque, not going through thousands of Uber receipts, calculating the percentages paid out + time spent doing the delivery, and totalling them up. That’d be pretty hard/impossible at scale.
- hammock 3y ago
  Not hard. Many software services built to do that sort of thing
jasmer 3y ago
Deep insight! Retailers should only pay sales clerks when they are directly talking to customers! Bus drivers should only be paid when the bus is moving! I'm only going to pay my developers when they are writing lines of code! All of the 'in between' time 'doesn't count as work'.
- c-linkage 3y ago
  Welcome to being an airline flight attendant. <https://www.news.com.au/travel/flight-attendant-reveals-pay-secret-only-paid-when-plane-doors-close/news-story/ae8178b7c5a80ccf44df08cdc7f1b9d7 https://www.news.com.au/travel/flight-attendant-reveals-pay-...>
- usr1106 3y ago
  Don't forget to ask the pay back if it turns out later that the developer introduced a bug during fhe paid period.

themagician 3y ago

If you are only making around £7 an hour it's not going to matter if you work 28 hours or 84 hours. The takeaway is that people doing jobs that wouldn't otherwise exist.

NikolaNovak 3y ago

The missing number is how many of them are working another job. I haven't taken Uber in last couple of years, but prior to Covid I took it ~weekly in Ottawa & Toronto. Not a single driver in years of travel for work, had it as their sole employment. They're usually in a hurry, but delivery drivers I had a chance to chat with last few years also primarily use it to supplement their income. So people may be doing 60 hours a week, just not solely via gig work. Edit: I've Re-read the article, the 28 hours a week you quote is immediately followed by a clarifying "comprising 60% of their total earnings" -- so it looks like indeed they are working many more hours a week total.

sokoloff 3y ago
I found that a high fraction of my mid-day trips (commuting to/from our downtown office or taking it to/from the airport morning, afternoon, or very early evening) were from essentially full-time drivers. Friday/Saturday night trips to/from restaurants were mostly from part-time drivers, which is probably not that surprising a result.
pessimizer 3y ago
Minimum wage is a rate, not an amount. It doesn't matter what other jobs people have, it won't change the rate they're paid for gigwork.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- dmix 3y ago
  The previous solution to this for taxis was crippling the supply of taxi jobs (via medallions) so each taxi job paid more as well as setting a minimum fee for entering a car. Uber drivers would likewise make more money if there was less of them, so they would always have new calls waiting. But that also still means there’s less people making money, as well as far longer wait times for consumers and higher costs. The medallion system was designed around the ideas taxis = your career, not some side gig you can start/stop whenever you like. You could also do it by setting price floors but gov messing with prices at that fine grained level is dangerous (as Venezuela learned with food).

scoopdewoop 3y ago

Wanting more work isn't going to make a lunch rush happen again. These folks make no money at all waiting around, and can only make a nearly worthwhile sum when there is demand.

SimonPStevens 3y ago

I think for many gig type work out would be hard to hit 50 hours. There are only so many peak hours for these jobs in a week. If tried to work more you'd find yourself just waiting for jobs a lot of the time and your average hourly rate would drop even lower.

jasmer 3y ago

My god man, use your logic: 'pay workers illegally under wage, then can just work 60 hours a week to make up for it!' at least before we make it an issue. If there was no minimum wage, wages in some sectors wages would drop to where they are in the undeveloped world aka $2/hour. Little communities with favela-like structures with limited heating/electricity would pop up, and if you think the 'dollar store' is cheap, then wait for the '25 cent store' where they sell stuff as they do parts of India and Brazil. It's funny how people don't think this could happen in the 'modern world', I suggest they don't know what makes the modern world modern. For a hint, go to where the illegal workers in Cali or Texas live and exist. Those communities resemble pretty much the standard of living of Central American countries, aka 'down the economic ladder'. Because they are. Moreover, having secondary low-wage markets will put downward wage pressure on other jobs. Extra surpluses will mostly be yielded by financial asset holders. The solution here is simple, require people pay minimum wage. If you look at corporate profits in the US for example, there are plenty of surpluses available to pay people. Some jobs will go away, that's fine. I can't believe what I'm reading on this thread, the only other time I've been suspicious of 'ideological paid bots' is when I see a ton of people defending the CCP.

savant_penguin 3y ago
"Some jobs will go away, that's fine." To whom is that fine? To the people going from $2/hour to zero it certainly isn't. I honestly cannot grasp how some people can _forcibly_ remove other people's _options_ then pat themselves on the back as some sort of armchair savior. Yes, for some people a bad option could still be their best option. What sort of moral superpower is that that enables you to forbid a contract between two consenting adults A and B such that A wants to work for X and B that's willing to pay X, but you as a C that just won't let it happen and is willing to use force to stop it from happening
- lifeonlars 3y ago
  [flagged]
- nathan_compton 3y ago
  Ideally minimum wage should be coupled with higher taxes on the wealthy, a generous social safety net, a job guarantee fronted by the state, and a sovereign wealth fund which pays out a minimum basic income. This would eliminate shitty jobs no one wants to do and get rid of business models which depend on them, which is a net win for everyone.

ClumsyPilot 3y ago

We spesifically deaigned legislation to make sure workers get paid for all their time, a chef waiting for orders and not cooking is still working. A fire marshall on duty still gwts paid if there is no fire, etc. its amazing how all the progress was undone by pretending workhours don't count when an app says so. I am very disillusioned by our industry, it seems half the revenue was generating by techno-cheating laws.

ghaff 3y ago
Except we really didn't. People are not in general paid for their time going to and from being on the clock which, in many cases, is significant.
- pessimizer 3y ago
  People in general don't have to clock out every time they put down the pencil or stop typing.
- SCHiM 3y ago
  Except they are. They are standing next to their company branded bike, in uniform waiting for an order. They are not on their way to work from home or vise-versa. For all intents and purposes they are on the clock, except the computer says no.
- datavirtue 3y ago
  Service industry jobs often make you clock out and have rules against leaving the premises when off the clock. This is seen as normal and workers always comply.
  - lifeonlars 3y ago
    I'm not sure this is 'seen as normal' (by whom?) but I very much doubt it is legal under minimum wage legislation. Besides which, this is not the equivalent of making a bartender clock out during his break. It's the equivalent of making him clock out while he stands at the bar waiting for the next customer.

malcolmgreaves 3y ago

Other folks have already commented that most folks in this line of work will have 2nd and 3rd jobs. But, I want to explain a different perspective. One that explains how gig work affects one's living (and ultimately leads to people needing to take on multiple jobs to survive). Gig workers cannot control how many hours of work they receive a week. It's similar to shift work. When your manager is making the schedule and ensures that no one works 40 hours or more a week so they don't have to pay you benefits. A major problem of low-wage, non-salaried work and gig work is that is an unreliable source of income. This breeds anxiety and stress, not to mention a host of other problems.

beerpls 3y ago
Not only that, but the 28 hours they work are probably some of the worst. Ex you’re driving uber. You’re going to be “incentivized” (read: forced due to logistics) to work rush hour and bar hours. So you’re maybe working 5-7 and 10-12 on weekends and a couple weekdays. The reason being is that everyone wants to cruise around in the afternoon so the ratio of drivers to passengers gets so bad you’ll never get a ride. And ofc if you’re sitting in your car with the app on waiting… you’re not being paid. That doesn’t count as work. So if you don’t get a ride for 2 hours bc not enough passengers - tough shit you’ve just made $4 for your 2 hours minus the cost of running your car and losing hours of your life. But America is corrupted. Politicians let’s corps simply say “no we’re not breaking the law” and they believe them. Anyone who’s debating that this is harmful and should be illegal is uneducated or a simp for those corps.

lumost 3y ago

How lmuch big does an Uber driver “work” for Uber? How long does a “dasher” work? If folks aren’t paid for the 15 minute gap between orders, or the 10 minute commute to pickup location - then a 60 hour work week can easily turn into 30 hours of paid time.

chongli 3y ago

I would expect that to be reflected by working 50-60+ hours per week. That does not follow. Suppose the gig workers are doing food deliveries. Each day, the market places X food orders at a total of $Y including fees and tips. If the market clears (no one who places a food order has it left unfulfilled), a reasonable assumption, then the food delivery gig is a zero-sum game. If all the drivers work more hours that just means they’ll be waiting longer, on average, for orders to come in. No amount of extra hours worked will create additional food orders.

londons_explore 3y ago
One common thing speaking to most low paid workers is that they would like to do more work to earn more money, but there is no more work on offer. Even amongst software engineers, if you asked your boss "can I work a few extra saturdays and get paid a few extra $k", the typical answer is no. The labour market is far less dynamic than say the market for carrots, where you can of course give a few $ extra and get extra carrots from walmart.
- mk67 3y ago
  Funnily, at least in Europe, it's very dynamic the other way. Rarely heard of an employer refusing someone to go to 50-80%.

mattnewton 3y ago

Why would you spend 60 hours a week in something that gives so little returns? It’s not like you can meaningfully get ahead doing this if these are the numbers. Better to spend the other hours looking for other options or just enjoying yourself.

kevviiinn 3y ago
Enjoying yourself doesn't pay the bills
- mattnewton 3y ago
  Neither does gig work apparently. If the returns are so poor, you can try to feed yourself other ways.
  - kevviiinn 3y ago
    $4 is better than 0 dollars and perhaps some people have looked but couldn't find other work. Maybe they have a criminal record, businesses definitely discriminate even though it's illegal
maxbaines 3y ago
Because they have to, to make ends meet. When you are struggling to feed yourself and maybe a family it leaves little room for learning or enjoying yourself.
- mattnewton 3y ago
  Sure, under pain of starvation people will do this if gig work is the only possible work, but we try not to let people die in the west this way and as a result people have a little breathing room to try to choose better options. Even just being your own childcare is an activity with much higher returns in your example than 60 hours of gig work. I would not expect 50-60 hours to be the norm when it pays so little per hour.

harvey9 3y ago

The UK has an hourly legal minimum wage rate. The number of hours worked does not affect the fact that, according to the study, most gig workers are earning less than that per hour. Respondents doing an average of 28 hours gig work per week will in some cases be using that to top up insufficient hours in a low wage conventional job.

dfxm12 3y ago

Wages, i.e. payment per hour worked, is independent of the number of hours worked. One of the takeaways is that they aren't being paid the legal minimum wage. The overarching takeaway is that gig work doesn't offer the protections that is extended to other workers. More to your point, understand that one of the issues that Starbucks unions are fighting for is more control over scheduling.

anamexis 3y ago

It seems like the hours per week is irrelevant -- the point being made is that the hourly wage is below the minimum hourly wage.

ThorsBane 3y ago

I suspect most gig workers do it as a side hobby or side project before having the necessary experience to start scaling a business of their own. Or to supplement other income.

namuol 3y ago

> Doing gig work doesn’t pay well, but respondents are doing an average of 28 hours of work per week. Curious use of “but”. Has it occurred to you that perhaps below-minimum-wage pay isn’t the best use of one’s time? Besides, an hour is an hour. If I’m not paid for that hour, it doesn’t matter if I worked 1 hour or 100 hours, but you can bet that gig companies do everything they can to avoid “full time” employment of workers in markets that require benefits for such employees, so that may also factor in to the number of hours worked.

lm28469 3y ago

Isn't it in the article ? > on average 28 hours a week undertaking gig work, comprising 60% of their total earnings. And since it's bellow the minimum hourly wage does it matter that it's 1 hour or 60 hours ?