10 ms·

Seattle ordinance intended to help app delivery workers is 'hurting' them

41 points by tomohawk 3y ago

nullindividual 3y ago
Unsustainable business is unsustainable. News at 5. Or 11. Or maybe noon. Whenever news that isn't really news is aired. Even without the additional city-based fee, these food delivery services companies are far too expensive.
- CamperBob2 3y ago
  It was 'sustaining' just fine until City Hall got involved.
- monero-xmr 3y ago
  “These services hurt workers! Let’s force them to charge more and pay a living wage!” <Law implemented and jobs disappear> “Well those jobs were bad anyway, we are all better off without them”
  - phmqk76 3y ago
    Funny, that’s the same exact (bad) argument against the minimum wage…
    - monero-xmr 3y ago
      Hopefully the way I phrased it puts a point on why job losses are bad. There are no “bad” jobs - just labor that needs to be done, with a commiserate price. If the labor is too difficult to find at a price, the price goes up. You can’t artificially increase the price without losing jobs.
      - hotpotamus 3y ago
        > There are no “bad” jobs What about fentanyl dealer? Hitman? Psychologist for a social media or tobacco company? Telemarketer?
        monero-xmr 3y ago
        I’m not suggesting we don’t outlaw illegal activities. I’m saying for legal enterprises, stuff needs to get done. Bad jobs are in the eye of the beholder. A lot of people love delivering for door dash vs. working retail.
        hotpotamus 3y ago
        How many delivery drivers are you friends with? Ever bought them a tank of gas or a tire because they can't afford it? I have; they might prefer it to the soul-suck of retail, but that doesn't make it anything like a good job.
        monero-xmr 3y ago
        Everyone has complaints. I’d rather be working retail than in the fields 500 years ago, the mill 200 years ago, or as a manual human calculator 100 years ago. Or maybe some would disagree! Labor needs to be done. There is no utopia - in a socialist economy there are very few who get to hold the clipboards, everyone else works the fields or the factories.
        hotpotamus 3y ago
        Which jobs have you worked?
        elevatedastalt 3y ago
        he is talking of economically bad jobs not morally bad jobs
        hotpotamus 3y ago
- phmqk76 3y ago
  Not sure why people are disliking your comment. You are absolutely right - a business that cannot turn a profit while paying even the most basic wages (I wouldn’t call $15 per hour “living”) has no business existing. How did people in the 1930s understand this and pass the Fair Labor Standards Act, and yet highly-educated techies fail to grasp this simple concept?
  - mschuster91 3y ago
    > How did people in the 1930s understand this and pass the Fair Labor Standards Act, and yet highly-educated techies fail to grasp this simple concept? People in the 1930s came right out of the Great Depression with 25% unemployment rate. Stuff had to change, and radically at that, which is why FDR got elected. Today's techies, meanwhile, are largely decoupled from the actual realities of the people. We live in decent homes with fat paychecks, and despite us working for the same company as the barely-surviving delivery driver, our lives rarely intersect other than at the next food delivery.
  - pierat 3y ago
    > How did people in the 1930s understand this and pass the Fair Labor Standards Act, and yet highly-educated techies fail to grasp this simple concept? Because the "highly-educated techies" think of themselves as the next potential big founder over a tech company taking lumps of money from each transaction and making it big. Closing that form of exploitation closes down all of those techies' wet dream of exploiting millions to be the next (pee-bottle) Bezos.
- elevatedastalt 3y ago
  And yet people were using them more until the city decided to add the extra fee. Just because a cost is added by the government doesn't make it immune to the demand-supply curve.
__derek__ 3y ago
Anecdotally, some factors I've heard that make YoY comparisons questionable: 1. With RTO, folks are more likely to eat out during the week (especially for places in SLU), so weekend demand is probably lower 2. With commutes, folks are more likely to pick up on their way home, so demand for delivery is probably lower 3. With the poor level of service, folks are more likely to pick up in order to ensure that their food is actually edible King5's post itself notes another potential confounding variable: more drivers.
andy_xor_andrew 3y ago
Living in Seattle, every election the ballet was filled with items like these, which sound great and have good-faith intentions that are totally in line with my own personal convictions. But I guess policy needs to be studied--really studied--examined from all fronts, tested with the full weight of reality. If you ban X, what replaces it? Y? Is Y really better? If you add a charge of Z to support certain industries, how does that shift the economics? You can't just assume that a $5 charge means $5 more in the pocket of everyone in that industry.
- mhb 3y ago
  You can pretty assuredly assume that, when you increase the price, demand goes down.
- HPsquared 3y ago
  Bastiat's "seen and unseen".
- drewcoo 3y ago
  "In good faith" or "with good intentions" mean the same. Isn't every referendum system plagued with that problem. Want a second opinion? Ask any Oregonian! The alternative is to have elected officials write and pass laws. But they're elected because of popularity, not legal prowess. "I could drink a beer with them" is almost never "they are clearly best qualified to write the rules by which we all live." As Churchill never said (but not originally), "the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried."
sethrin 3y ago
Note that the various platforms have changed their UI to discourage tips, and my impression is that they are doing their best to communicate the reason for the price increase, and it's not possible to determine whether the increased fees are actually in proportion to the increased cost (if any). I can't speak to how any of these companies think about this ordinance, but I do think they have an incentive to ensure that this ordinance fails, and a great deal of influence on its success.
- NovemberWhiskey 3y ago
  In NYC, the UI for GrubHub used to default to (I think?) something like a 20% tip; now it defaults to 0% and there's some kind of explanatory text about this. I think you missed the reasoning though - they don't want customers to feel obliged to tip 20% on top of the increased prices, which they'll do less often or stop doing entirely. It's more like "you don't need to tip because a living wage is baked into the price now".
  - marssaxman 3y ago
    > you don't need to tip because a living wage is baked into the price now That sounds like a really good change! Tipping is such an archaic mess.
    - reaperducer 3y ago
      That sounds like a really good change! Tipping is such an archaic mess. It took a hundred years, but all those people in America who griped about tipping when it spread here from Europe turned out to be right.
    - NovemberWhiskey 3y ago
      >That sounds like a really good change! Tipping is such an archaic mess. The elephant in the room is that the reason we still have tipping for servers in restaurants and bar staff is that it's actually overwhelmingly their preference. There's a lot of complaining about bad pay and the tipped-wage discount on the minimum wage etc. but not actually a lot of support for doing away with tipping. Part of that is the opportunities that tips give for tax evasion. The IRS reckons that something like 10% of all individual income tax underreporting is due to incorrect reporting of tips: employees are supposed to tell their employers how much they got tipped, and there's really no effective enforcement.
Cupertino95014 3y ago
When people claim that minimum wage laws don't hurt workers, there's an implicit assumption that the jobs would always exist anyway, and costs will just be passed on. Sometimes that may be true. Other times, you're just getting rid of a certain class of jobs.
- rootusrootus 3y ago
  When I visit Hyderabad I'm reminded how nice it is to have an underclass, provided you are not a member of that class. Many services are practically free compared to the US. Not sure I think we should create that here, though. Edit: Wow, judging from downvotes it seems there are some folks here on HN that would like that underclass! Interesting!
  - AJ007 3y ago
    Minimum wages serve a political purpose, but they also force automation on an economy. One can study various countries which had very cheap labor pre-1900, and see how far behind they got (e.g. China.) What would the global economy look like without cheap labor? One can only guess.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - Cupertino95014 3y ago
    Maybe you should ask one of these gig workers if they feel better off now than before? Instead of making spurious comparisons to Hyderabad.
- kevingadd 3y ago
  I've seen enough stories about how gig workers struggle to actually turn a profit thanks to all the costs that get offloaded onto them, so I don't know that 'getting rid of a certain class of jobs' is automatically a bad thing.
  - floatrock 3y ago
kevingadd 3y ago
I stopped using DoorDash once I saw the big 'every delivery costs an extra $5 now thanks to Seattle' modal on their front page because it's so dishonest. If they really have to jack their fees up that much and it's not a variable cost I can tell they're just trying to manipulate me. I don't mind fees going up some, and in contrast GrubHub isn't playing games - the fees are just higher now. That's fine if it means the drivers are getting paid more. I noticed that they adjusted the default tip percentages to be lower, so it seems like the actual cost of an order by default probably isn't higher. If the driver earns the same amount in the end (or more) that just means I'm spending less money on the "tip". EDIT: Thinking about it more, the "their wages have been slashed" phrasing in this article is also deeply dishonest. They weren't wage workers before, and still aren't! They're freelancers who rely on a steady flow of gigs and tips to earn enough every hour. If the flow has slowed then of course they're going to earn less. We can argue that the ordinance caused the flow to slow down but other factors could be at work too, like the apps adjusting recommended tip percentages.
- TMWNN 3y ago
  >I stopped using DoorDash once I saw the big 'every delivery costs an extra $5 now thanks to Seattle' modal on their front page because it's so dishonest. How is that dishonest? DoorDash's costs have risen because of the new law. The first three seconds of the news this discussion is about explicitly mentions the "$5 fee". >I don't mind fees going up some, and in contrast GrubHub isn't playing games - the fees are just higher now You no doubt supported the law, just like all other good bien-pensants. You just don't like seeing the consequences clearly spelled out.
  - kevingadd 3y ago
    DD is dishonestly saying "the cost of this new law is $5/order". That's obviously not the case. GH just actually adjusted prices so that they are not (presumably) losing money. I'm fine with that, and they show me the new fees.
    - TMWNN 3y ago
bfeynman 3y ago
Not really about the framing of these policies. What it really should be is 'new rules to limit exploitation of workers reduces exploitation'. What the US has too much of, is providing people just enough support that you have legions of people lining up for jobs that are effectively subsidized by tax payers. These services should not really exist at the current price point and scale.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > it really should be is 'new rules to limit exploitation of workers reduces exploitation' The transition is predictably painful. A foreseeable effect of raising labour costs in one part of the market, and an elastic one at that, is lower employment there. Passing a law like this without any support for the workers whose income you're destroying is hard to position as reducing exploitation. If anything, it's exploiting them as symbols, a modern White Man's Burden by Seattle's electeds.
advisedwang 3y ago
There seems to be a choice between a lot of poverty-level jobs (with low consumer prices) and fewer living-wage jobs (with high consumer prices) and it's legitimate for a government to opt for the latter with something like this ordinance. The problem comes that switching requires those jobs to go away. Even in the best case that's going to be very painful for the workers that lose their poverty-level job and have nothing. But what this article is highlighting is even worse - because of the way gig job works there isn't even a switch to fewer jobs livable-wage jobs, just less work spread between the same people. Hopefully that's temporary but it's not clear cut. I think this is an example of a very painful policy choice. It might be the right decision long term but still can be a damaging transition.
- balderdash 3y ago
  Why is this the better in choice in the long run? Don’t get me wrong - nothing would make me happier than abundant living wage jobs, but if the demand isn’t there to support them, isn’t poverty level more poverty level jobs in the aggregate a better outcome than a binary outcome?
  - phmqk76 3y ago
    Obviously no. This is the reason we have the minimum wage and labor laws. I can’t believe this is even a serious question
    - balderdash 3y ago
      Minimum wage = poverty level
unethical_ban 3y ago
The flipside of those who may go "aha, price controls on labor don't work" are * Changes in demand unrelated to the fee * (as noted in the article) A flood of labor supply since people may have thought Doordashing was a good job due tothe bill * A change in price making people realize they don't need to waste money on delivery * People dumping Doordash because they're assholes for passing costs onto the customer As we've seen from megacorps in the past, they will 100% sabotage local markets in order to make workers' rights or attempts at taxation fail. (edit to reorder)
balderdash 3y ago
Why is that people are surprised when basic economic principals hold true? I’m not saying it’s completely explanatory, but why would anyone be surprised that increasing costs 10-25% would decrease marginal demand or encourage substitution?
- HPsquared 3y ago
  Good politics is bad economics; good economics is bad politics.
  - cupcakecommons 3y ago
    It becomes good politics when people realize everything is much worse like in Argentina. It's remarkable Seattle, Portland, and SF haven't decisively reached this state yet.
    - taxyz 3y ago
      Having lived in all 3 of those cities, I, too, am amazed it hasn't reached that state yet either. What's worse is that at some point a lot of the restaurants that have made the current iteration of those cities what they are will not be able to weather the economic storm their own cities are putting upon them. Their voters will vote to increase wages arbitrarily, add on fees, regulations, taxes, etc. And then when their pad thai or poke bowl costs $27 for pickup or $38 delivered, they'll just stop patronizing that restaurant - whether out of financial necessity or some misplaced feeling that they are now getting ripped off from the price hike - until it goes out of business. I can't count the times I've heard "<insert restaurant/brewery/coffee shop> is just not worth it anymore." The bigger chains will be able to take the losses until they can absorb the entire market. There will always be 3 Starbucks and a McDonalds in Times Square.
    - JieJie 3y ago
      We are living high on tech money. If/when a crash comes, it'll all come tumbling down and we'll look like New York City in the '70s. It's any-party-in-power's job to make sure that doesn't happen, by any means necessary.
paxys 3y ago
There is no world in which you get food delivered to your door whenever you want for ~$0 extra while the person delivering it makes $20/hr + benefits, healthcare, vacation. It simply doesn't make mathematical sense. The possibilities are (1) you pay a lot, (2) drivers get paid nothing, (3) the whole thing is subsidized by VCs, or (4) the service doesn't exist at all. With option 3 taken away and the public at large against 1 or 2, it seems like 4 is what we will be left with.
- babypuncher 3y ago
  1 and 4 are the only viable options, full stop. If a business cannot sustain itself without piling on debt or abusing its employees, then it simply should not exist.
  - potatolicious 3y ago
    What we've suddenly discovered is that having servants on-call costs a substantial amount of money. Which is what all of the gig economy services are - you have always been able to get driven around - they were called limos and chauffeurs. Likewise the wealthy have been having servants fetch their dinner for decades, if not centuries. With a container ship full of VC money our industry was able to sustain an illusion for some years that servants can be had for cheap. Turns out the basic economics of having servant(s) hasn't been disrupted by technology.
    - NovemberWhiskey 3y ago
      >you have always been able to get driven around - they were called limos and chauffeurs ... or taxis, but that's not quite so consistent with the class-war narrative.
      - cupcakecommons 3y ago
        The class-war narrative is all this has ever been. Seattle, Portland and San Francisco, among others are all falling apart because of this incredibly stupid narrative. I'm not sure how it could get more obvious.
wyre 3y ago
My heart goes out to everyone relying on these delivery jobs to make ends meet, but it is and always has been an unsustainable market and it’s great that this ordinance is revealing this. The delivery companies do the barest minimum to support their drivers and allow anyone with a vehicle and desperate for income to compete for delivery orders. The article alludes to the problem of too many drivers, which is the bigger issue than customers ordering less because of an additional $5 fee. I wouldn’t be surprised if TFA is only politicizing the ordinance to when people have fewer reasons to order delivery while the numbers of people needing to supplement income goes up (cost of living increasing faster than wages).
- fritzo 3y ago
  "ends meet" what a delightful veganization, as if the two ends --your expenses and income-- just barely meet. I used to literally buy the packaged ends of meat and cheese, which grocers sell for less because they're closer to expiry date.
  - komadori 3y ago
    I was so surprised by your comment that I had to check that I hadn't been using the wrong word all this time! However, I don't think it's a veganisation, as you put it. Usage of "ends meet" dates back to at least the 17th century with uncertain origin, but possibly to do with ropes or accounting. "ends meat" seems to be a more modern derivation, sometimes given as a folk etymology for the former. https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/66831/origin-of-make-ends-meet https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/66831/origin-of-... https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/make_ends_meet https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/make_ends_meet https://www.oed.com/search/advanced/Quotations?textTermText0=ends+meet&textTermOpt0=QuotText https://www.oed.com/search/advanced/Quotations?textTermText0...
    - fritzo 3y ago
      Thanks, I'm just as surprised!
  - triceratops 3y ago
spaceguillotine 3y ago
Seems more like delivery apps can't coexist with a living wage because the cost is too high. If the system only works on exploitation then it wasn't a good system before. Everyone got drunk off VC backed loss taking to corner and monopolize the market but once they gotta turn a profit AND pay a living wage we quickly realize its never been a sustainable system.
librish 3y ago
Before the new fees I was only using these services when I had a 50% off coupon. After the new fees it just doesn't make sense outside of being sick or a last minute group event. It's looking like a gig economy that provides guaranteed solid minimum wages is a lot smaller than what we've had so far. It might be a good thing, though it does feel weird to forcibly be telling people "no, you're not allowed to work like that" when the work is so low commitment.
FlacoJones 3y ago
https://archive.is/Q6pYI https://archive.is/Q6pYI
hakdbha 3y ago
[dead]
tuan 3y ago
Hmm I don't know if the ordinance is the main factor that leads to the decline in demand or just everything is getting too expensive nowadays. In my own experience living in the area, we've stopped ordering food since a few years ago. We also stopped going to restaurants because everything has become so expensive for us. We cook meals at home and our kids bring lunch from home.
Simulacra 3y ago
I don't think there's anything the government can do to improve the marketplace for gig workers. This is one time I think the government needs to stay out of it. Let the market decide.
1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
To me this just illustrates the uselessness of the "business model". No "gig" worker can make enough money from "gig work" to justify the time and effort, and if a local government forces the venture-backed "founders" behind this lets-create-a-middleman-for-everything "business model" to pay a living wage, then these cretins will just pass on that cost to customers. They will not pay for labor and take on the risk of a real business. The truth is this "business" is nothing without real workers. The "app" is worthless without real people doing real work. And so people just delete the app. It is not worth anything. The workers are the value. If the "app developers" cannot/will not pay them a competitive wage, then the "business" dies. The ordinance did not backfire on the workers, it backfired on the middleman-based startups. Ultimately their "business" will fail. What did it cost to write an app and to take money from investors. What was risked. Maybe not much. That would explain the proliferation of these bogus middleman "businesses".
sershe 3y ago
Can confirm from first hand (customer) experience, I was already on the fence about delivery with all the fees (not sure how many were Seattle-specific before this - I know Ubers in Bellevue, just outside of Seattle, were considerably cheaper than in Seattle proper for a while)... after seeing another goddamn $5 fee I canceled DashPass, my orders went from ~once a week to one in 2024 so far, and I won't tip a lot anymore. The real minimum wage is always 0.

41 points by tomohawk 3y ago

Unsustainable business is unsustainable. News at 5. Or 11. Or maybe noon. Whenever news that isn't really news is aired. Even without the additional city-based fee, these food delivery services companies are far too expensive.

CamperBob2 3y ago
It was 'sustaining' just fine until City Hall got involved.
monero-xmr 3y ago
“These services hurt workers! Let’s force them to charge more and pay a living wage!” <Law implemented and jobs disappear> “Well those jobs were bad anyway, we are all better off without them”
- phmqk76 3y ago
  Funny, that’s the same exact (bad) argument against the minimum wage…
  - monero-xmr 3y ago
    Hopefully the way I phrased it puts a point on why job losses are bad. There are no “bad” jobs - just labor that needs to be done, with a commiserate price. If the labor is too difficult to find at a price, the price goes up. You can’t artificially increase the price without losing jobs.
    - hotpotamus 3y ago
      > There are no “bad” jobs What about fentanyl dealer? Hitman? Psychologist for a social media or tobacco company? Telemarketer?
      - monero-xmr 3y ago
        I’m not suggesting we don’t outlaw illegal activities. I’m saying for legal enterprises, stuff needs to get done. Bad jobs are in the eye of the beholder. A lot of people love delivering for door dash vs. working retail.
        hotpotamus 3y ago
        How many delivery drivers are you friends with? Ever bought them a tank of gas or a tire because they can't afford it? I have; they might prefer it to the soul-suck of retail, but that doesn't make it anything like a good job.
        monero-xmr 3y ago
        Everyone has complaints. I’d rather be working retail than in the fields 500 years ago, the mill 200 years ago, or as a manual human calculator 100 years ago. Or maybe some would disagree! Labor needs to be done. There is no utopia - in a socialist economy there are very few who get to hold the clipboards, everyone else works the fields or the factories.
        hotpotamus 3y ago
        Which jobs have you worked?
      - elevatedastalt 3y ago
        he is talking of economically bad jobs not morally bad jobs
        hotpotamus 3y ago
phmqk76 3y ago
Not sure why people are disliking your comment. You are absolutely right - a business that cannot turn a profit while paying even the most basic wages (I wouldn’t call $15 per hour “living”) has no business existing. How did people in the 1930s understand this and pass the Fair Labor Standards Act, and yet highly-educated techies fail to grasp this simple concept?
- mschuster91 3y ago
  > How did people in the 1930s understand this and pass the Fair Labor Standards Act, and yet highly-educated techies fail to grasp this simple concept? People in the 1930s came right out of the Great Depression with 25% unemployment rate. Stuff had to change, and radically at that, which is why FDR got elected. Today's techies, meanwhile, are largely decoupled from the actual realities of the people. We live in decent homes with fat paychecks, and despite us working for the same company as the barely-surviving delivery driver, our lives rarely intersect other than at the next food delivery.
- pierat 3y ago
  > How did people in the 1930s understand this and pass the Fair Labor Standards Act, and yet highly-educated techies fail to grasp this simple concept? Because the "highly-educated techies" think of themselves as the next potential big founder over a tech company taking lumps of money from each transaction and making it big. Closing that form of exploitation closes down all of those techies' wet dream of exploiting millions to be the next (pee-bottle) Bezos.
elevatedastalt 3y ago
And yet people were using them more until the city decided to add the extra fee. Just because a cost is added by the government doesn't make it immune to the demand-supply curve.

__derek__ 3y ago

Anecdotally, some factors I've heard that make YoY comparisons questionable: 1. With RTO, folks are more likely to eat out during the week (especially for places in SLU), so weekend demand is probably lower 2. With commutes, folks are more likely to pick up on their way home, so demand for delivery is probably lower 3. With the poor level of service, folks are more likely to pick up in order to ensure that their food is actually edible King5's post itself notes another potential confounding variable: more drivers.

andy_xor_andrew 3y ago

Living in Seattle, every election the ballet was filled with items like these, which sound great and have good-faith intentions that are totally in line with my own personal convictions. But I guess policy needs to be studied--really studied--examined from all fronts, tested with the full weight of reality. If you ban X, what replaces it? Y? Is Y really better? If you add a charge of Z to support certain industries, how does that shift the economics? You can't just assume that a $5 charge means $5 more in the pocket of everyone in that industry.

mhb 3y ago
You can pretty assuredly assume that, when you increase the price, demand goes down.
HPsquared 3y ago
Bastiat's "seen and unseen".
drewcoo 3y ago
"In good faith" or "with good intentions" mean the same. Isn't every referendum system plagued with that problem. Want a second opinion? Ask any Oregonian! The alternative is to have elected officials write and pass laws. But they're elected because of popularity, not legal prowess. "I could drink a beer with them" is almost never "they are clearly best qualified to write the rules by which we all live." As Churchill never said (but not originally), "the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried."

sethrin 3y ago

Note that the various platforms have changed their UI to discourage tips, and my impression is that they are doing their best to communicate the reason for the price increase, and it's not possible to determine whether the increased fees are actually in proportion to the increased cost (if any). I can't speak to how any of these companies think about this ordinance, but I do think they have an incentive to ensure that this ordinance fails, and a great deal of influence on its success.

NovemberWhiskey 3y ago
In NYC, the UI for GrubHub used to default to (I think?) something like a 20% tip; now it defaults to 0% and there's some kind of explanatory text about this. I think you missed the reasoning though - they don't want customers to feel obliged to tip 20% on top of the increased prices, which they'll do less often or stop doing entirely. It's more like "you don't need to tip because a living wage is baked into the price now".
- marssaxman 3y ago
  > you don't need to tip because a living wage is baked into the price now That sounds like a really good change! Tipping is such an archaic mess.
  - reaperducer 3y ago
    That sounds like a really good change! Tipping is such an archaic mess. It took a hundred years, but all those people in America who griped about tipping when it spread here from Europe turned out to be right.
  - NovemberWhiskey 3y ago
    >That sounds like a really good change! Tipping is such an archaic mess. The elephant in the room is that the reason we still have tipping for servers in restaurants and bar staff is that it's actually overwhelmingly their preference. There's a lot of complaining about bad pay and the tipped-wage discount on the minimum wage etc. but not actually a lot of support for doing away with tipping. Part of that is the opportunities that tips give for tax evasion. The IRS reckons that something like 10% of all individual income tax underreporting is due to incorrect reporting of tips: employees are supposed to tell their employers how much they got tipped, and there's really no effective enforcement.

Cupertino95014 3y ago

When people claim that minimum wage laws don't hurt workers, there's an implicit assumption that the jobs would always exist anyway, and costs will just be passed on. Sometimes that may be true. Other times, you're just getting rid of a certain class of jobs.

rootusrootus 3y ago
When I visit Hyderabad I'm reminded how nice it is to have an underclass, provided you are not a member of that class. Many services are practically free compared to the US. Not sure I think we should create that here, though. Edit: Wow, judging from downvotes it seems there are some folks here on HN that would like that underclass! Interesting!
- AJ007 3y ago
  Minimum wages serve a political purpose, but they also force automation on an economy. One can study various countries which had very cheap labor pre-1900, and see how far behind they got (e.g. China.) What would the global economy look like without cheap labor? One can only guess.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Cupertino95014 3y ago
  Maybe you should ask one of these gig workers if they feel better off now than before? Instead of making spurious comparisons to Hyderabad.
kevingadd 3y ago
I've seen enough stories about how gig workers struggle to actually turn a profit thanks to all the costs that get offloaded onto them, so I don't know that 'getting rid of a certain class of jobs' is automatically a bad thing.
- floatrock 3y ago

kevingadd 3y ago

I stopped using DoorDash once I saw the big 'every delivery costs an extra $5 now thanks to Seattle' modal on their front page because it's so dishonest. If they really have to jack their fees up that much and it's not a variable cost I can tell they're just trying to manipulate me. I don't mind fees going up some, and in contrast GrubHub isn't playing games - the fees are just higher now. That's fine if it means the drivers are getting paid more. I noticed that they adjusted the default tip percentages to be lower, so it seems like the actual cost of an order by default probably isn't higher. If the driver earns the same amount in the end (or more) that just means I'm spending less money on the "tip". EDIT: Thinking about it more, the "their wages have been slashed" phrasing in this article is also deeply dishonest. They weren't wage workers before, and still aren't! They're freelancers who rely on a steady flow of gigs and tips to earn enough every hour. If the flow has slowed then of course they're going to earn less. We can argue that the ordinance caused the flow to slow down but other factors could be at work too, like the apps adjusting recommended tip percentages.

TMWNN 3y ago
>I stopped using DoorDash once I saw the big 'every delivery costs an extra $5 now thanks to Seattle' modal on their front page because it's so dishonest. How is that dishonest? DoorDash's costs have risen because of the new law. The first three seconds of the news this discussion is about explicitly mentions the "$5 fee". >I don't mind fees going up some, and in contrast GrubHub isn't playing games - the fees are just higher now You no doubt supported the law, just like all other good bien-pensants. You just don't like seeing the consequences clearly spelled out.
- kevingadd 3y ago
  DD is dishonestly saying "the cost of this new law is $5/order". That's obviously not the case. GH just actually adjusted prices so that they are not (presumably) losing money. I'm fine with that, and they show me the new fees.
  - TMWNN 3y ago

bfeynman 3y ago

Not really about the framing of these policies. What it really should be is 'new rules to limit exploitation of workers reduces exploitation'. What the US has too much of, is providing people just enough support that you have legions of people lining up for jobs that are effectively subsidized by tax payers. These services should not really exist at the current price point and scale.

deleted 3y ago
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JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> it really should be is 'new rules to limit exploitation of workers reduces exploitation' The transition is predictably painful. A foreseeable effect of raising labour costs in one part of the market, and an elastic one at that, is lower employment there. Passing a law like this without any support for the workers whose income you're destroying is hard to position as reducing exploitation. If anything, it's exploiting them as symbols, a modern White Man's Burden by Seattle's electeds.

advisedwang 3y ago

There seems to be a choice between a lot of poverty-level jobs (with low consumer prices) and fewer living-wage jobs (with high consumer prices) and it's legitimate for a government to opt for the latter with something like this ordinance. The problem comes that switching requires those jobs to go away. Even in the best case that's going to be very painful for the workers that lose their poverty-level job and have nothing. But what this article is highlighting is even worse - because of the way gig job works there isn't even a switch to fewer jobs livable-wage jobs, just less work spread between the same people. Hopefully that's temporary but it's not clear cut. I think this is an example of a very painful policy choice. It might be the right decision long term but still can be a damaging transition.

balderdash 3y ago
Why is this the better in choice in the long run? Don’t get me wrong - nothing would make me happier than abundant living wage jobs, but if the demand isn’t there to support them, isn’t poverty level more poverty level jobs in the aggregate a better outcome than a binary outcome?
- phmqk76 3y ago
  Obviously no. This is the reason we have the minimum wage and labor laws. I can’t believe this is even a serious question
  - balderdash 3y ago
    Minimum wage = poverty level

unethical_ban 3y ago

The flipside of those who may go "aha, price controls on labor don't work" are * Changes in demand unrelated to the fee * (as noted in the article) A flood of labor supply since people may have thought Doordashing was a good job due tothe bill * A change in price making people realize they don't need to waste money on delivery * People dumping Doordash because they're assholes for passing costs onto the customer As we've seen from megacorps in the past, they will 100% sabotage local markets in order to make workers' rights or attempts at taxation fail. (edit to reorder)

balderdash 3y ago

Why is that people are surprised when basic economic principals hold true? I’m not saying it’s completely explanatory, but why would anyone be surprised that increasing costs 10-25% would decrease marginal demand or encourage substitution?

HPsquared 3y ago
Good politics is bad economics; good economics is bad politics.
- cupcakecommons 3y ago
  It becomes good politics when people realize everything is much worse like in Argentina. It's remarkable Seattle, Portland, and SF haven't decisively reached this state yet.
  - taxyz 3y ago
    Having lived in all 3 of those cities, I, too, am amazed it hasn't reached that state yet either. What's worse is that at some point a lot of the restaurants that have made the current iteration of those cities what they are will not be able to weather the economic storm their own cities are putting upon them. Their voters will vote to increase wages arbitrarily, add on fees, regulations, taxes, etc. And then when their pad thai or poke bowl costs $27 for pickup or $38 delivered, they'll just stop patronizing that restaurant - whether out of financial necessity or some misplaced feeling that they are now getting ripped off from the price hike - until it goes out of business. I can't count the times I've heard "<insert restaurant/brewery/coffee shop> is just not worth it anymore." The bigger chains will be able to take the losses until they can absorb the entire market. There will always be 3 Starbucks and a McDonalds in Times Square.
  - JieJie 3y ago
    We are living high on tech money. If/when a crash comes, it'll all come tumbling down and we'll look like New York City in the '70s. It's any-party-in-power's job to make sure that doesn't happen, by any means necessary.

paxys 3y ago

There is no world in which you get food delivered to your door whenever you want for ~$0 extra while the person delivering it makes $20/hr + benefits, healthcare, vacation. It simply doesn't make mathematical sense. The possibilities are (1) you pay a lot, (2) drivers get paid nothing, (3) the whole thing is subsidized by VCs, or (4) the service doesn't exist at all. With option 3 taken away and the public at large against 1 or 2, it seems like 4 is what we will be left with.

babypuncher 3y ago
1 and 4 are the only viable options, full stop. If a business cannot sustain itself without piling on debt or abusing its employees, then it simply should not exist.
- potatolicious 3y ago
  What we've suddenly discovered is that having servants on-call costs a substantial amount of money. Which is what all of the gig economy services are - you have always been able to get driven around - they were called limos and chauffeurs. Likewise the wealthy have been having servants fetch their dinner for decades, if not centuries. With a container ship full of VC money our industry was able to sustain an illusion for some years that servants can be had for cheap. Turns out the basic economics of having servant(s) hasn't been disrupted by technology.
  - NovemberWhiskey 3y ago
    >you have always been able to get driven around - they were called limos and chauffeurs ... or taxis, but that's not quite so consistent with the class-war narrative.
    - cupcakecommons 3y ago
      The class-war narrative is all this has ever been. Seattle, Portland and San Francisco, among others are all falling apart because of this incredibly stupid narrative. I'm not sure how it could get more obvious.

wyre 3y ago

My heart goes out to everyone relying on these delivery jobs to make ends meet, but it is and always has been an unsustainable market and it’s great that this ordinance is revealing this. The delivery companies do the barest minimum to support their drivers and allow anyone with a vehicle and desperate for income to compete for delivery orders. The article alludes to the problem of too many drivers, which is the bigger issue than customers ordering less because of an additional $5 fee. I wouldn’t be surprised if TFA is only politicizing the ordinance to when people have fewer reasons to order delivery while the numbers of people needing to supplement income goes up (cost of living increasing faster than wages).

fritzo 3y ago
"ends meet" what a delightful veganization, as if the two ends --your expenses and income-- just barely meet. I used to literally buy the packaged ends of meat and cheese, which grocers sell for less because they're closer to expiry date.
- komadori 3y ago
  I was so surprised by your comment that I had to check that I hadn't been using the wrong word all this time! However, I don't think it's a veganisation, as you put it. Usage of "ends meet" dates back to at least the 17th century with uncertain origin, but possibly to do with ropes or accounting. "ends meat" seems to be a more modern derivation, sometimes given as a folk etymology for the former. https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/66831/origin-of-make-ends-meet https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/66831/origin-of-... https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/make_ends_meet https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/make_ends_meet https://www.oed.com/search/advanced/Quotations?textTermText0=ends+meet&textTermOpt0=QuotText https://www.oed.com/search/advanced/Quotations?textTermText0...
  - fritzo 3y ago
    Thanks, I'm just as surprised!
- triceratops 3y ago

spaceguillotine 3y ago

Seems more like delivery apps can't coexist with a living wage because the cost is too high. If the system only works on exploitation then it wasn't a good system before. Everyone got drunk off VC backed loss taking to corner and monopolize the market but once they gotta turn a profit AND pay a living wage we quickly realize its never been a sustainable system.

librish 3y ago

Before the new fees I was only using these services when I had a 50% off coupon. After the new fees it just doesn't make sense outside of being sick or a last minute group event. It's looking like a gig economy that provides guaranteed solid minimum wages is a lot smaller than what we've had so far. It might be a good thing, though it does feel weird to forcibly be telling people "no, you're not allowed to work like that" when the work is so low commitment.

FlacoJones 3y ago

https://archive.is/Q6pYI https://archive.is/Q6pYI

hakdbha 3y ago

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tuan 3y ago

Hmm I don't know if the ordinance is the main factor that leads to the decline in demand or just everything is getting too expensive nowadays. In my own experience living in the area, we've stopped ordering food since a few years ago. We also stopped going to restaurants because everything has become so expensive for us. We cook meals at home and our kids bring lunch from home.

Simulacra 3y ago

I don't think there's anything the government can do to improve the marketplace for gig workers. This is one time I think the government needs to stay out of it. Let the market decide.

1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago

To me this just illustrates the uselessness of the "business model". No "gig" worker can make enough money from "gig work" to justify the time and effort, and if a local government forces the venture-backed "founders" behind this lets-create-a-middleman-for-everything "business model" to pay a living wage, then these cretins will just pass on that cost to customers. They will not pay for labor and take on the risk of a real business. The truth is this "business" is nothing without real workers. The "app" is worthless without real people doing real work. And so people just delete the app. It is not worth anything. The workers are the value. If the "app developers" cannot/will not pay them a competitive wage, then the "business" dies. The ordinance did not backfire on the workers, it backfired on the middleman-based startups. Ultimately their "business" will fail. What did it cost to write an app and to take money from investors. What was risked. Maybe not much. That would explain the proliferation of these bogus middleman "businesses".

sershe 3y ago

Can confirm from first hand (customer) experience, I was already on the fence about delivery with all the fees (not sure how many were Seattle-specific before this - I know Ubers in Bellevue, just outside of Seattle, were considerably cheaper than in Seattle proper for a while)... after seeing another goddamn $5 fee I canceled DashPass, my orders went from ~once a week to one in 2024 so far, and I won't tip a lot anymore. The real minimum wage is always 0.