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Uber, DoorDash Sue NYC to Stop Delivery Drivers from Getting a Minimum Wage
- Tepix 3y agoDo they have a point? I don't think so.
- JumpCrisscross 3y agoDoorDash finds legitimate gripe with the arbitrariness of the scope: “why would the agency choose to purposefully exclude companies that only facilitate grocery deliveries from its study and rulemaking, when those that facilitate both restaurant and grocery deliveries from local businesses would have these rules apply to them” [1]. Otherwise, it seems like usual griping. Ultimately, these lawsuits tend to turn on whether the rulemaking process was followed. [1] https://doordash.news/get-the-facts/why-were-filing-a-lawsuit-on-the-nyc-earnings-standard/ https://doordash.news/get-the-facts/why-were-filing-a-lawsui...
- may_i_ai_plz 3y agoit would force companies to pay workers for any time logged into the app, regardless of whether they were delivering or not Heh. Do these companies interview their gig workers? Could I collect some passive cash like this? What a soul sucking job interview that would actually be: What makes you a great delivery bicycle person and where do you see yourself in 5 years? So in other words, these companies would mandate that you make a minimum of 17 bucks worth of deliveries or get fired, no? The city is just being stupid on this one.
- Incipient 3y agoIf you were working in a warehouse and they had no packages for you to send out, they just don't pay you for that time?
- true_religion 3y agoYeah but you can’t leave the warehouse without being fired. Gig workers can choose to only work when it’s peak hours then stay home. That said, no one is forcing DoorDash to allow people to log in. I think they should have to pay for any part of an hour in which they allow a worker to login. And additionally if they refuse a login, they must continue refusing it for a minimum of 1 hour. This way they will be incentivized to create a core of real employees for the off hours work, and only use gig workers for peak times.
- Gigachad 3y agoI mostly see them take the train in to the city with their ebike to deliver. Between deliveries they aren’t able to just sit at home for 10 minutes.
- CryptoBanker 3y agoI see them sitting in groups at cafes and in parks all the time.
- LatteLazy 3y agoIf you were sat at home playing video games but could conceivably go to the warehouse if they called but they didn't call, you would not be paid for your time playing video games.
- rightbyte 3y ago> The city is just being stupid on this one. Why? Don't hire delivery drivers of you don't need them.
- may_i_ai_plz 3y agoThese companies don’t provide a service. They provide a marketplace and collect fees. It’s no different than a brokerage.
- rightbyte 3y agoNot really. Uber etc decide the price, not the driver, or the restaurant or food buyer for that matter. It is not a marketplace from the drivers perspective.
- arctek 3y agoPresume this is the sticking point for the companies as well since now they will have to actually manage their drivers to actually ensure they are working and not just gaming it. So it will end up being the additional cost from the minimum wage plus everyone else required to police it.
- ryndbfsrw 3y agoWhat a crap business model these companies have if they rely on haggling over legal loopholes to operate. The business case, at best, is the status quo remains with material threats to their operations if these laws change. This is a lose-lose for everyone. Ignore the morality arguments, why risk your money on something with almost zero upside and all this downside? Suing the government is not a sign of strength
- zulban 3y ago>Suing the government is not a sign of strength How about when SpaceX sued the US government because they were awarding launch contracts to Boeing without competing? SpaceX largely won that and they had a good point.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> why risk your money on something with almost zero upside and all this downside? Suing the government is not a sign of strength Can’t say I agree with this logic. (Conclusion fine.) Apple didn’t sue the FBI from a position of weakness [1]. DoorDash et al, understandably, don’t want to be disadvantaged in their grocery business [2]. Reading between the leaves, I think that’s what they’re pushing for. They also don’t want to change the status quo, which is less reasonable, but not a sign of strength or weakness per se. In any case, most small businesses in America operate on single-digit margins. Almost every restaurant would be wiped out by what, from a tech perspective, is a meaningless change in margins. There is nothing meaningful to conclude simply from the fact DoorDash is challenging the rule. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple–FBI_encryption_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple–FBI_encryption_dispute [2] https://doordash.news/get-the-facts/why-were-filing-a-lawsuit-on-the-nyc-earnings-standard/ https://doordash.news/get-the-facts/why-were-filing-a-lawsui...
- hsjqllzlfkf 3y agoSorry, what does apple have to do with this conversation?
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- user3939382 3y agoAmazing this is a problem since they’ll happily charge $36 total to deliver a hamburger.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- csomar 3y agoThis will essentially kill these platforms. I don't have the data but I can see how a delivery can take, on average, one hour. Between waiting for an order to arrive, accepting it, going to the food place, taking it to the destination, delivering it, etc... $17 + fees + tips? => $20+ delivery fee. Unless you are delivering for a well-off family of 5, it makes no sense.
- criddell 3y agoHow does that compare with spending your time going out and picking up your food or taking your family to a restaurant? That has to be a minimum of 30-45 minutes of time spent traveling plus car or transit expenses. It might be more, but is it a lot more?
- csomar 3y agoSure. If you make $150/hour, it might make sense. But that's hardly the case for the average person.
- Gigachad 3y agoThe average person can do more things for themselves rather than rely on an army of underpaid immigrants to deliver their food.
- criddell 3y agoEven for the average person, a $20 fee might not seem that crazy. Imagine it's night time, you live in a not great neighborhood, and you're a young woman. How much would you pay to avoid having to get on a bus, ride twelve stops, pick up your food, then wait for another bus to get you home? I think the higher fee will push out the boundary of where average, healthy people are willing to travel, but it doesn't push it out great distances.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> I can see how a delivery can take, on average, one hour In New York? > will essentially kill these platforms It will curtail them. They will need to trim their driver network, which will reduce the number of drivers and increase delivery times. Restaurants and consumers outside high-density areas no longer make sense to cater to. Dropping restaurants who don’t meet minimums will also, likely, be necessary. In summary, this is entirely solved with densification—food delivery in New York predates these platforms.
- _xivi 3y agoRelated discussions during the last month: - NYC food delivery gig workers score a big minimum wage victory (96 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36327770 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36327770 - DoorDash, Grubhub and Uber sue New York City over minimum wage law (59 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36626525 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36626525 - New York City Sets New Minimum Wage for Food Delivery Workers (7 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36302121 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36302121
- nubinetwork 3y agoI thought this looked familiar, thanks.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- LatteLazy 3y agoPresumably they would also have the right to CAP earnings at minimum wage. If you manage 10 deliveries/rides in 1h, and previously that was worth 100USD, you now get 7.25 (or 1425 for NY State, or 15 for NYC?)? And obviously Uber can require you to accept jobs.
- oneTbrain23 3y agoMinimum wage wont help them out of poverty. It will just increase prices and they will still be price out. But now, you will have a group of ex-worker who not getting jobs because being price out also. Sounds great but implementaton is bad. It is better to subsidize these workers with skillset to find alternative and better jobs (yes something like learn to code mentality but more like German type of apprenticeship learn skill other than coding....e.g. plumbing). Singapore and Malaysia is a good example where min wage not practice in SG but in Malaysia. And yet SG wage keep on raising simply due to capitalism fighting for a limited labor resources and not artificially jack up the price of labor to make politician look like genius solving economic problem beyond their expertise.
- habosa 3y agoTo be clear before I say anything: I think the entire food delivery app business model is bad for all parties involved and that these companies are bad actors. But … I don’t think the cities are properly accounting for the ease of using multiple apps? If a driver is logged into Uber and Doordash and GrubHub on 3 phones waiting for a delivery they probably should not be accruing $17.96*3 per hour at that time. But it sounds like they might be able to under this new law.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> it sounds like they might be able to under this new law If the apps are idiots, perhaps. In practice, this law basically all but these companies to employ a fleet of drivers.
- Gigachad 3y agoThey can just gps log while the workers are clocked on and if they spend a significant amount of time taking random trips not part of a delivery, you kick the driver out.
- sneak 3y agoIf it were bad for all parties involved, customers would not willingly and freely choose to use it.
- AlexandrB 3y agoThat would be true if Uber didn't spend so much money subsidizing rides throughout its history. A customer would be dumb to refuse $2 of service for $1 of payment even if the system being created is going to lock them into an extractive duopoly later. You can already see this at work as Uber tries to become profitable - ride availability, cost, and quality are getting worse but people continue to use them out of habit or because regional alternatives have been weakened by years of subsidies.
- sneak 3y agoHow does Uber doing price dumping (if in fact they were) lock anyone into anything later? Before Uber the options were "walk" or "call a taxi and pray".
- Eumenes 3y agoThey must have good lawyers/lobbyists, because somehow they got this sweetheart deal - https://www.salon.com/2023/07/05/doordash-begins-offering-snapebt-online-payment-options/ https://www.salon.com/2023/07/05/doordash-begins-offering-sn...
- whiddershins 3y agoDelivery people are currently out earning chefs, wait staff, and many restaurant owners. Source: I am friends with several restaurant owners in NYC.
- izzydata 3y agoWhy do so many able bodied individuals pay at minimum twice as much for food to brought to them? I could understand a market need for the elderly or disabled, but why would a perfectly healthy 20 year old find this to be a reasonable cost to eat a typical meal?
- hospitalJail 3y agoI am too cheap to do this, but other people are too lazy to save money. Plenty of people can afford this food and some luxuries, but then contribute 0 to their retirements. Heck, as much as I like one of my best buds, he is a 6 fig earner and saves nothing. He buys niche cars, goes on soo many trips, orders so much delivery food, then complains how expensive his student loans are. Back in 2018 before he bought that car, I showed him he could pay off his student loans entirely before the end of the year.
- CryptoBanker 3y agoYou say lazy, I say time is money. Entry level jobs expect more and more hours out of young workers these days. Some people would rather pay for a meal and eat it in 30 minutes than spend 3x that time cooking and cleaning.
- lotsoweiners 3y agoIt’s more expensive but not THAT expensive. I don’t use adopt Dash/Uber Eats often but I live in the suburbs and my wife doesn’t drive so these are examples of when we use it: I’m still sleeping and my wife wants to get donuts or breakfast burritos for the kids on a Saturday. I am out at a basketball game and the wife wants food for the family that isn’t pizza. We’ve been hanging out in the pool drinking all afternoon and we want an easy dinner that isn’t pizza.
- Wowfunhappy 3y ago> DoorDash argues in its lawsuit, however, that the law is improperly implemented, because it would force companies to pay workers for any time logged into the app, regardless of whether they were delivering or not, and that the DCWP ignored “mountains of hard data and analysis, and over emphatic objections from a range of constituents” in order to implement it. I really wish companies weren't able to sue over this kind of thing. The law is the law. The government should be able to create and update laws without getting mired in endless bureaucracy. If a majority of people don't like the law, they can elect different leaders, who should then be empowered to change the law at a reasonable speed. Some number of restrictions on government power are of course healthy—I value the right to free speech, for example—but for goodness sakes, the government of New York City should be able to set minimum wages within New York City! This just isn't complicated.
- elromulous 3y agoSo I happen to agree with NYC in this case. But, being able to legally challenge a law is pretty fundamental to the US. For instance, in the case where this law is unconstitutional, or conflicts with a federal law, this is exactly how one ought to challenge it.
- Wowfunhappy 3y agoRight, so I agree those are examples of grounds on which you should be able to challenge a law (unconstitutionality, conflicts with a law of higher jurisdiction). It's important for those to exist, but they should be limited. What I take issue with is quotes like the one in GP. "The law is improperly implemented, because it would force companies to pay workers for any time logged into the app." So what? If the city decides workers should be paid for time spent getting their phones repaired, the companies should have to do that to. I don't know what the legal process here is but there's clearly too much of it. Another choice quote: > For instance, why would the agency choose to purposefully exclude companies that only facilitate grocery deliveries from its study and rulemaking, when those that facilitate both restaurant and grocery deliveries from local businesses would have these rules apply to them? I don't know. Why does it matter? People often complain that government regulations aren't able to keep pace with private industry, but it's because of this BS slowing everything down that they can't keep pace! Let's empower the government to actually make rules and give them responsibility for the consequences. Some of Ezra Klein's recent podcast episodes are weighing on my mind here, particularly https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/06/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-jennifer-pahlka.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/06/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas...
- DueDilligence 3y ago[dead]
- omgomgomgomg 3y agoThe fat fucks ordering food from underpaid slaves should either cook themselves or pay as per the law. C'est tres simple