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California Pizza Hut Lays Off Delivery Drivers Amid New Wage Law
- pokstad 3y agoI wondered what kind of impact a minimum labor law on a specific industry would cause, and this is one example. Instead of first party delivery, Pizza Huts in CA will rely on 3rd party delivery (Uber Eats, Door Dash) to deliver their pizzas.
- s0rce 3y agoSeems like a huge gap in worker protections if its as simple as running all your delivers through third party contractors at below minimum wage.
- belltaco 3y agoDoes the law not affect drivers for third party services?
- tlogan 3y agoNo. DoorDash and Uber drivers are not classified as “fast food” workers.
- Rebelgecko 3y agoDoordash, grubhub, and friends deliver bread so presumably they get the same exemption as Boudin
- junofan 3y agoUber pays below minimum wage in California? How? Maybe their economics are better since they deliver for different types of restaurants or something?
- lmm 3y ago> Uber pays below minimum wage in California? How? By falsely classifying its drivers as independent contractors (and bamboozling the courts).
- doubleg72 3y agoFalsely?? How about a source for that bs?
- lmm 3y agoHere's an example of a sane court ruling, with a detailed explanation for why: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56123668 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56123668 . Unfortunately US courts seem to pay too much attention to the form of of their business arrangements and not enough to the substance.
- doubleg72 3y agoThat is in the UK.. in the US, no one considers driving for Uber or Door Dash a job. It is side income, or better known as contract work. I don’t see how going onto an app and choosing gigs for people can be confused as doing work for a company.
- lmm 3y ago> in the US, no one considers driving for Uber or Door Dash a job. I've seen plenty of posts to the contrary. > I don’t see how going onto an app and choosing gigs for people can be confused as doing work for a company. Well, there is a detailed explanation for why what Uber does constitutes employment in the article I linked.
- TheNewsIsHere 3y agoI used to use Uber a lot more than I do now, and so many drivers I met were contract drivers for various transport and delivery app as their entire source of income. More recently the ride share drivers I’ve gotten have been older folks who report that they’re just supplementing income. A lot of the delivery drivers (Uber, DoorDash, Postmates, Amazon Flex, Instacart, etc) I see are younger and seem to be doing it full time.
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y agoThis seems like another case of the law working as intended - when everyone thinks instead this is the opposite of what "they" wanted to happen.
- geocrasher 3y agoI'd have agreed with you if you hadn't used "they" in quotes as if "they" are the same ones that keep UFO's under wraps.
- Nextgrid 3y agoTechnically this is a benefit as it would bring economies of scale - many restaurants can now enjoy delivery since they all share the same delivery network, resulting in more efficient delivery across the board.
- bitshiftfaced 3y agoThere's an additional benefit. If the delivery side of the business results in a disproportionate number of 1 star reviews, then they can offload those reviews onto Door Dash. An apartment complex I'm familiar with has 4.5+ star reviews on Google. They use a separate business to handle all of their tenets' package deliveries. If you look at that company's ratings it's filled with negative reviews.
- blahyawnblah 3y agoI won't use door dash for pizza. I really like that most pizza places have their own drivers. Door dash is too unreliable and loaded with fees.
- s0rce 3y agoI guess you may have to forgo delivery pizza if more chains go this way and realize the entire business is not profitable with higher labor costs and simply stop offering the service entirely.
- toasted-subs 3y agoMaybe we can start to lower the number one killer of Americans.
- toasted-subs 3y ago[flagged]
- toomuchtodo 3y agoWorst things could happen than food delivery evaporating due to living wages making it economically unviable.
- alvah 3y agoWorse/worst things could happen than most things, however no wage is surely worse/worst than some wage?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- lukeschlather 3y agoThat doesn't follow. Wages are just a sale of a service. If the service costs more to deliver than the wage, then it's better not to sell the service at all.
- wincy 3y agoJust another reminder that the actual minimum wage is, in fact, always $0.
- geocrasher 3y agoTouché
- almost_usual 3y agoRight, that’s why the service industry is flooded with job applications right now..
- Cerium 3y agoMinimum wage can surely be negative? Consider unpaid internships.
- ipcress_file 3y agoAnd the actual amount of work done for that wage is proportionate. Don't you just love economics?
- dragonwriter 3y agoYou are confusing wage with income.
- geocrasher 3y agoIn other news, nearly 1200 new Door Dash and/or Uber Eats drivers join the ranks.
- trinsic2 3y agoIm not getting this. Is fast food companies not making enough money?
- HDThoreaun 3y agoNot enough to pay the new $20 wage to drivers and come out ahead on them.
- sundaeofshock 3y agoThey are making enough to pay their drivers $20/hour, but they are unwilling to do so as it will cut into their profits.
- crazygringo 3y agoIt's entirely possible that they would lose money on deliveries. Not just make less profit, but actually lose money. And it makes zero sense for the profit from eat-in diners to subsidize delivery. If delivery loses money, you end it.
- mc32 3y agoThey should abolish tipping. Once they abolish tipping, then they can set minimum wages. Sadly, I wouldn't be surprised to see tipping integrated into self-check out stations soon.
- spacedcowboy 3y agoThere are self-checkout machines that now ask for a tip [1]... I don't see tipping going away any time soon, more's the pity... [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tipping-self-checkout-machine-customer-rule/# https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tipping-self-checkout-machine-c...
- mc32 3y agoWow. I mean, I've seen tipping hyperinflation with options for 20, 25 and 30% (I've been told some have even higher defaults) rather than the previous 10, 15, 20% and I've seen it integrated at places where a clerk merely rings you up (lots of airport shops) but not when there was no interaction with any person as in the article. That's outrageous. I think I'm going to actively decline tipping as a protest. This is "tipping usury".
- Nextgrid 3y agoI've also seen anecdotal evidence where the percentage options weren't actually right - they were way more than what the percentage would actually be. My theory, assuming this wasn't an outright fake, is that the options were actually free-form text (with a percentage set separately and not obviously displayed) and the scumbag running the place set the title to let's say "15%", with the actual underlying percentage much higher.
- almost_usual 3y agoTitle seems misleading, it’s not all of California, mostly SoCal.
- perryizgr8 3y agoIsn't this exactly what you'd think would happen? If a job is worth $x in the free market and the state puts an artifical restriction on wages that they should be at least $x+y, one of two things must happen. Either the cost to customers goes up by y or the job disappears. Guess pizza is not worth x+y right now.
- viraptor 3y agoSome missed parameters for the payment: The cost goes up and/or the margin goes down and/or the product gets cheaper.
- dragonwriter 3y ago> Pizza Hut fires all delivery drivers due to CA fast food minimum wage law This is not the original headline and misrepresents the article, which is that two large Pizza Hut franchisees in CA are doing that.
- meithecatte 3y agoProbably trimmed due to HN's length limit
- ShadowBanThis01 3y agototally and inaccurately rephrased ≠ trimmed
- rrherr 3y ago“Two Pizza Hut operators in California are eliminating their in-house delivery services at hundreds of stores, resulting in more than 1,200 driver layoffs”
- almost_usual 3y agoNo mention of any layoffs in the Bay Area. Seems mostly concentrated to SoCal + Sacramento.
- ShadowBanThis01 3y ago[flagged]
- ShadowBanThis01 3y agoIf you complain about headlines on HN you'll get attacked. Or even you mention this fact. Flag away, infants.
- dragonwriter 3y agoAs the OP of the headline complaint, I do that a fair amount, and I've almost never gotten attacked for it. I suspect if you are getting attacked when you complain about headlines, its about something more specific than just the fact you are complaining about a headline.
- nikolay 3y agoWhy is this regulating just fastfood workers?!
- gnicholas 3y agoIt's specifically regulating fast food workers employed by large companies, presumably because it would have been harder to pass a law that also affected mom-and-pop restaurants. Of course, now those mom-and-pop businesses have to compete for labor with $20 fast food wages as the backdrop, so they are affected either way. But I suppose they also benefit from these mass layoffs, which increase the supply of available labor.
- nikolay 3y agoMy point is that it discriminates one type of business against another. Labor is labor - if one type of labor should be paid at least $20/hour, so should all others.
- gnicholas 3y agoI'm sure the proponents of the bill would have preferred an across-the-board bump, but this is all they could get passed. I wouldn't be surprised if this were rolled back via referendum after its effects are felt.
- nikolay 3y agoEverywhere else in the world there's a minimum wage. And it works well. There are other basics with decades of data behind. I don't get why America wants to reinvent the square wheel so badly!
- thedaly 3y agoI don't understand why this law wouldn't apply to doordash and uber eats as well.
- 4b11b4 3y agoThese are employees being laid off, not contractors.
- ShadowBanThis01 3y agoThe big problem with CA's minimum-wage laws is that they're piecemeal bullshit. A minimum wage should not depend on what sub-niche of a particular industry you work in. A living wage is a living wage. Are they going to pass 10,000 separate minimum-wage laws for every possible vocation? California is a bloated hog of bureaucracy, gobbling up billions or trillions of dollars for no benefit. Disgusting.
- nitwit005 3y agoIt makes conceptual sense, if the third party delivery firms aren't subject to the same regulation, but I can't see them being happy with their reliability. Some people specifically order from pizza places due to bad experiences with DoorDash and friends.
- shusaku 3y agoIt seems like a mistake to me. Uber managed to normalize the luxury of having your food delivered at a high markup. With Silicon Valley companies tightening their belts, their competitive advantage (running ads, tons of deals, etc) will dry up, so you’d think Pizza Hut franchises could just bump the delivery fee.
- midtake 3y agoThat particularly sucks because as a bike rider who sometimes likes to roleplay as a delivery rider, the one thing I cannot pick up is pizza. I would need a purpose built pizza backpack in order to reasonably deliver myself pizza, as I live in a hilly area and the panniers aren't enough.
- freitasm 3y agoI am not sure how it is there but here in NZ most places charge more for Uber Eats and Dash deliveries because margins are lower as these services charge both the customers and businesses. I rather pay more knowing it goes to an employee salary than pay more and have the money go to these large corporations that try everything to pay drivers less.
- ChrisArchitect 3y ago[Dupe] More discussion earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38775754 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38775754
- DueDilligence 3y ago[dead]