14 ms·

Why are they "double apping", though? Is it perhaps because they are trying to scrape a liveable wage from a flawed gig economy....

c22 2y ago
The insane thing is people trying to make a livable wage off of "gigs". We should stop pretending this is or ever can be reasonable full-time employment. Driving for apps is something you do on the weekend to supplement your day job, or during school hours as a stay at home spouse or whatever.
- forgetfreeman 2y ago
  Yeaaaaaah, remember when the bulk of US manufacturing and industry was offshored a few decades ago and pundits were falling all over themselves to explain how we were transitioning to a "service economy"? Well this is what a service economy looks like.
  - DarkNova6 2y ago
    This is such a perfect way to put it.
  - addicted 2y ago
    A service economy with proper living wages is absolutely possible. I’m not a fan of such an economy because any country, especially one as large as the U.S., has no reason to be a single sector economy and plus as we saw during the pandemic and are seeing in the Ukraine war, a lack of domestic manufacturing capabilities is a significant strategic threat. However, the gig economy model is a choice. A choice that can be fixed by simply reclassifying these workers as employees. The gig economy is little more than a way to get around employee protections, and the sooner we face that obvious reality the better.
    - forgetfreeman 2y ago
      No argument there. Startup culture's ongoing war on low wage workers is a fucking travesty.
    - OkayPhysicist 2y ago
      California voters showed up in droves to prevent that exact classification change from happening, because your average voter is few IQ points away from needing help tying their shoes, and will absolutely eat up whatever lies Uber et al. will pump out.
      - casercaramel144 2y ago
        Good, this is exactly what we wanted. Service worker classification is straight up wealth transfer from delivery users to drivers since competition is so tight and everyone ie being squeezed. The needs of the many outweigh the entitlement of the few. It's unfair for delivery app users to have to subsidize employment for drivers when its clear there's many willing to accept the current terms.
        forgetfreeman 2y ago
        Gross take. Entitled, self-centered, and a ham-handed attempt to co-opt the term "wealth transfer". If you really have this little regard for folks who actually work for a living you should get in your car and go get your own shit.
        casercaramel144 2y ago
        Except everyone else also works for a living? Wealth transfer is a great descriptor of what that type of policy making leads to since it is in fact exactly taking money from delivery app users and giving to delivery app drivers. Do you disagree with this dynamic? If so where do you think the money for paying these drivers extra comes from? The amount of people using food delivery apps is some 2.31 billion worldwide. Are you suggesting that some 1/3 of the human population who would prefer to pay less for their food delivery all don't work for a living?
  - mlrtime 2y ago
    No, this is what a very small section of a service industry looks like. There are millions of people who can have a livable wage in a service industry. The actual problem that I never see addressed is that should EVERY job be a "living wage" job. To me that answer is and always has been no. There will always be a need for temp workers.
    - willcipriano 2y ago
      > There are millions of people who can have a livable wage in a service industry. There are millions of illegal immigrants, living 5 to a bedroom proping up the resturant industry. The back of house doesn't do very well at all, its only the wait staff that makes a fair wage for the effort.
      - Vvector 2y ago
        The solution is not to provide assistance to underpaid illegals. Better to penalize the company for hiring and underpaying them.
        forgetfreeman 2y ago
        Ok so having roughly doubled the cost of restaurant meals what's our next move?
        willcipriano 2y ago
        Not eat out often. Only on special occasions.
        forgetfreeman 2y ago
        K so having bankrupted the restaurant industry, what's next?
        willcipriano 2y ago
  - GardenLetter27 2y ago
    And yet the average American is richer than ever, and far, far richer than the rest of the world.
    - forgetfreeman 2y ago
      Not sure where you're basing that on. Household debt is up and wages have been stagnant for decades.
- soco 2y ago
  The insane thing is people trying to make a livable wage, maybe? Those drivers don't have the possibility (for whatever reason) to do something else, so gig it is - otherwise they'd be collecting food stamps or robbing at gunpoint. And if there were no such drivers, we'd get no warm pizza at all, how about that?
  - ta1243 2y ago
    I used to deliver pizza for an independent company as a student back in 2000 in the UK (North West). I didn't get paid a lot, but it was easy work sitting in a car listening to the radio all evening. Inflation adjusted I was paid £4.57 an hour and 27p per mile. Used to get another £3 an hour in tips from people who didn't want change (this was of course back when everyone paid cash and ordered over the phone), did that for about 30 hours a week, racking up about 400 miles. I was earning money to spend on new computer bits etc, not to pay rent for a family of 4. I valued the flexibility and the easy life. The problem comes when people think this type of work is suitable for a full time career, not just a way to "top up" an income - either by working one or two nights a week, or doing it as a student, or doing it after retiring to keep the social aspect.
    - mschuster91 2y ago
      > The problem comes when people think this type of work is suitable for a full time career, not just a way to "top up" an income People don't think this work is a full time career, but they often enough don't have another choice. When you have barely (or none at all) language skills, or you're an immigrant whose certifications from their home country aren't recognized, or you're without legal immigration status, there aren't many ways left to make a living - it's either "tech gig work" (deliveries, taxis), construction/trades/restaurant helper or agriculture. The latter options are physically demanding, dangerous options or they don't exist around urban areas, and you often run into issues getting paid or dealing with dangerous/abusive employment - "gig work" options at least pay out reliably and carry less workplace abuse. Want to fix gig work issues? Offer a decent social safety net so that no one is forced to accept this kind of work just to survive, and the market will (have to) improve on its own.
- sneak 2y ago
  The only people pretending that this is reasonable employment are the people willing to treat it as such - ie the delivery drivers. “We” aren’t.
  - c22 2y ago
    But in this very thread people are saying things like "It should not be considered okay for there to be jobs that cannot earn a decent wage ... since we ... see people working these jobs full time." "...for most people, these "gigs" are actually jobs. Qualifying them as "gigs" and saying that people shouldn't depend on them just allows you to feel better about not paying the true cost for the goods/services you are consuming." and "...the gig economy model ... can be fixed by simply reclassifying these workers as employees." We can redefine the set of "we" all we want, but that doesn't change the fact that this is a not-uncommon viewpoint amongst more than just delivery drivers. Unfortunately the truth of the matter is that the service provided by these jobs is simply not worth enough to support a living wage and the pool of competing candidates willing to do the job is high. The only way to have "our" cake and eat it too requires perpetually subsidizing this line of work with either public funds or funds from increasingly disgruntled investors. I haven't ordered food from an app in years since the sub-par experience of waiting over an hour for some cold and congealing phad thai is simply not worth the premium when I can order directly from the restaurant, pick it up myself and achieve a better overall experience.
- John23832 2y ago
  The reality is that gigs only work for children or the elderly. The quintessential teenage babysitter can only afford to do so because they have parents paying for everything else. The quintessential "retiree" worker can only afford to uber/doordash if they have saved enough up to offset the rest of their spending. The reality is that for most people, these "gigs" are actually jobs. Qualifying them as "gigs" and saying that people shouldn't depend on them just allows you to feel better about not paying the true cost for the goods/services you are consuming. If the only dashers/uberers were people who were truly only doing it for "gig work", the platforms would go under. Either that or enjoy your 50 dollar sandwich or 100 dollar uber.
  - supertrope 2y ago
    The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed that the population of casual workers is not infinite. The senior who accepts a split shift school bus driver job that no non-semi retired person would accept because it would crowd out their ability to earn full time. The kids who realize a summer of hard work nets them less than a scholarship obtained through a single test or essay. A working parent might barely earn enough to pay for taxes and daycare so they just work on the domestic front.
- UncleMeat 2y ago
  It should not be considered okay for there to be jobs that cannot earn a decent wage because they are categorized as "supplement jobs." Especially since we observably see people working these jobs full time. I order doordash on weeknights on occasion. Who is delivering to me if the drivers are just people supplementing on the weekend or during the school day while their kids are away? If you are working, then you should be treated with dignity.
  - abduhl 2y ago
    There’s a lot of posts here besides yours talking about the “dignity” workers deserve. What does treating a delivery driver with dignity mean/require?
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
    It might actually be a good policy to de-fractionate jobs. A fast food store will take what could be ten full-time positions, and break those up into thirty part-time positions. It could be mandated that if the total hours of the business's part-time positions are some level above one or more full-time positions, that they must hire the full-timers. While some would no doubt still complain, this should be an improvement for most and business's can't make honest claims that they're suffering economic penalty.
    - supertrope 2y ago
      Employer mandates and employee protection laws ironically worsen this problem. When employees gain access to a health plan at 30 hours a week, employers respond by cutting them off at 29 hours or even commit time tracking wage theft. Maybe we could just set pro rata taxes to pay for social insurance programs instead of having a binary distinction between full time employee or not. Imagine if instead of Social Security we had an employer mandate for pensions and nothing for part time workers.
  - splitstud 2y ago
    [dead]
- michaelt 2y ago
  > The insane thing is people trying to make a livable wage off of "gigs". > We should stop pretending this is or ever can be reasonable full-time employment. Hypothetically, imagine a society that required welfare claimants to accept any job they were offered. If any would not work, neither should he eat. Should such a society allow shitty/exploitative/dangerous jobs to exist, and force welfare claimants to work them? Or should there only be an obligation to take a job if it provides a certain minimum level of safety, dignity and salary?
  - LocalH 2y ago
    Stop giving the conservatives ideas! /s
  - pcrh 2y ago
    > If any would not work, neither should he eat. Ironically, that is one of the original "10 planks of communism" by Marx and Engels (i.e. "The liability of all to labour").
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
    I don't think a gig economy app's open signup process is considered an offer for unemployment purposes. (If it were how would anyone get unemployment payments?)
anamax 2y ago
They're double-apping because they want more business than they can get from either app alone. It's unclear why that's a "flaw". If Uber has to pay idle drivers, it has to charge more for rides. Do you want there to be only one such company? Do you object when a grocery story carries more than one brand of bread? How about when a given brand of bread has more than one type of bread?

c22 2y ago

The insane thing is people trying to make a livable wage off of "gigs". We should stop pretending this is or ever can be reasonable full-time employment. Driving for apps is something you do on the weekend to supplement your day job, or during school hours as a stay at home spouse or whatever.

forgetfreeman 2y ago
Yeaaaaaah, remember when the bulk of US manufacturing and industry was offshored a few decades ago and pundits were falling all over themselves to explain how we were transitioning to a "service economy"? Well this is what a service economy looks like.
- DarkNova6 2y ago
  This is such a perfect way to put it.
- addicted 2y ago
  A service economy with proper living wages is absolutely possible. I’m not a fan of such an economy because any country, especially one as large as the U.S., has no reason to be a single sector economy and plus as we saw during the pandemic and are seeing in the Ukraine war, a lack of domestic manufacturing capabilities is a significant strategic threat. However, the gig economy model is a choice. A choice that can be fixed by simply reclassifying these workers as employees. The gig economy is little more than a way to get around employee protections, and the sooner we face that obvious reality the better.
  - forgetfreeman 2y ago
    No argument there. Startup culture's ongoing war on low wage workers is a fucking travesty.
  - OkayPhysicist 2y ago
    California voters showed up in droves to prevent that exact classification change from happening, because your average voter is few IQ points away from needing help tying their shoes, and will absolutely eat up whatever lies Uber et al. will pump out.
    - casercaramel144 2y ago
      Good, this is exactly what we wanted. Service worker classification is straight up wealth transfer from delivery users to drivers since competition is so tight and everyone ie being squeezed. The needs of the many outweigh the entitlement of the few. It's unfair for delivery app users to have to subsidize employment for drivers when its clear there's many willing to accept the current terms.
      - forgetfreeman 2y ago
        Gross take. Entitled, self-centered, and a ham-handed attempt to co-opt the term "wealth transfer". If you really have this little regard for folks who actually work for a living you should get in your car and go get your own shit.
        casercaramel144 2y ago
        Except everyone else also works for a living? Wealth transfer is a great descriptor of what that type of policy making leads to since it is in fact exactly taking money from delivery app users and giving to delivery app drivers. Do you disagree with this dynamic? If so where do you think the money for paying these drivers extra comes from? The amount of people using food delivery apps is some 2.31 billion worldwide. Are you suggesting that some 1/3 of the human population who would prefer to pay less for their food delivery all don't work for a living?
- mlrtime 2y ago
  No, this is what a very small section of a service industry looks like. There are millions of people who can have a livable wage in a service industry. The actual problem that I never see addressed is that should EVERY job be a "living wage" job. To me that answer is and always has been no. There will always be a need for temp workers.
  - willcipriano 2y ago
    > There are millions of people who can have a livable wage in a service industry. There are millions of illegal immigrants, living 5 to a bedroom proping up the resturant industry. The back of house doesn't do very well at all, its only the wait staff that makes a fair wage for the effort.
    - Vvector 2y ago
      The solution is not to provide assistance to underpaid illegals. Better to penalize the company for hiring and underpaying them.
      - forgetfreeman 2y ago
        Ok so having roughly doubled the cost of restaurant meals what's our next move?
        willcipriano 2y ago
        Not eat out often. Only on special occasions.
        forgetfreeman 2y ago
        K so having bankrupted the restaurant industry, what's next?
        willcipriano 2y ago
- GardenLetter27 2y ago
  And yet the average American is richer than ever, and far, far richer than the rest of the world.
  - forgetfreeman 2y ago
    Not sure where you're basing that on. Household debt is up and wages have been stagnant for decades.
soco 2y ago
The insane thing is people trying to make a livable wage, maybe? Those drivers don't have the possibility (for whatever reason) to do something else, so gig it is - otherwise they'd be collecting food stamps or robbing at gunpoint. And if there were no such drivers, we'd get no warm pizza at all, how about that?
- ta1243 2y ago
  I used to deliver pizza for an independent company as a student back in 2000 in the UK (North West). I didn't get paid a lot, but it was easy work sitting in a car listening to the radio all evening. Inflation adjusted I was paid £4.57 an hour and 27p per mile. Used to get another £3 an hour in tips from people who didn't want change (this was of course back when everyone paid cash and ordered over the phone), did that for about 30 hours a week, racking up about 400 miles. I was earning money to spend on new computer bits etc, not to pay rent for a family of 4. I valued the flexibility and the easy life. The problem comes when people think this type of work is suitable for a full time career, not just a way to "top up" an income - either by working one or two nights a week, or doing it as a student, or doing it after retiring to keep the social aspect.
  - mschuster91 2y ago
    > The problem comes when people think this type of work is suitable for a full time career, not just a way to "top up" an income People don't think this work is a full time career, but they often enough don't have another choice. When you have barely (or none at all) language skills, or you're an immigrant whose certifications from their home country aren't recognized, or you're without legal immigration status, there aren't many ways left to make a living - it's either "tech gig work" (deliveries, taxis), construction/trades/restaurant helper or agriculture. The latter options are physically demanding, dangerous options or they don't exist around urban areas, and you often run into issues getting paid or dealing with dangerous/abusive employment - "gig work" options at least pay out reliably and carry less workplace abuse. Want to fix gig work issues? Offer a decent social safety net so that no one is forced to accept this kind of work just to survive, and the market will (have to) improve on its own.
sneak 2y ago
The only people pretending that this is reasonable employment are the people willing to treat it as such - ie the delivery drivers. “We” aren’t.
- c22 2y ago
  But in this very thread people are saying things like "It should not be considered okay for there to be jobs that cannot earn a decent wage ... since we ... see people working these jobs full time." "...for most people, these "gigs" are actually jobs. Qualifying them as "gigs" and saying that people shouldn't depend on them just allows you to feel better about not paying the true cost for the goods/services you are consuming." and "...the gig economy model ... can be fixed by simply reclassifying these workers as employees." We can redefine the set of "we" all we want, but that doesn't change the fact that this is a not-uncommon viewpoint amongst more than just delivery drivers. Unfortunately the truth of the matter is that the service provided by these jobs is simply not worth enough to support a living wage and the pool of competing candidates willing to do the job is high. The only way to have "our" cake and eat it too requires perpetually subsidizing this line of work with either public funds or funds from increasingly disgruntled investors. I haven't ordered food from an app in years since the sub-par experience of waiting over an hour for some cold and congealing phad thai is simply not worth the premium when I can order directly from the restaurant, pick it up myself and achieve a better overall experience.
John23832 2y ago
The reality is that gigs only work for children or the elderly. The quintessential teenage babysitter can only afford to do so because they have parents paying for everything else. The quintessential "retiree" worker can only afford to uber/doordash if they have saved enough up to offset the rest of their spending. The reality is that for most people, these "gigs" are actually jobs. Qualifying them as "gigs" and saying that people shouldn't depend on them just allows you to feel better about not paying the true cost for the goods/services you are consuming. If the only dashers/uberers were people who were truly only doing it for "gig work", the platforms would go under. Either that or enjoy your 50 dollar sandwich or 100 dollar uber.
- supertrope 2y ago
  The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed that the population of casual workers is not infinite. The senior who accepts a split shift school bus driver job that no non-semi retired person would accept because it would crowd out their ability to earn full time. The kids who realize a summer of hard work nets them less than a scholarship obtained through a single test or essay. A working parent might barely earn enough to pay for taxes and daycare so they just work on the domestic front.
UncleMeat 2y ago
It should not be considered okay for there to be jobs that cannot earn a decent wage because they are categorized as "supplement jobs." Especially since we observably see people working these jobs full time. I order doordash on weeknights on occasion. Who is delivering to me if the drivers are just people supplementing on the weekend or during the school day while their kids are away? If you are working, then you should be treated with dignity.
- abduhl 2y ago
  There’s a lot of posts here besides yours talking about the “dignity” workers deserve. What does treating a delivery driver with dignity mean/require?
- NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
  It might actually be a good policy to de-fractionate jobs. A fast food store will take what could be ten full-time positions, and break those up into thirty part-time positions. It could be mandated that if the total hours of the business's part-time positions are some level above one or more full-time positions, that they must hire the full-timers. While some would no doubt still complain, this should be an improvement for most and business's can't make honest claims that they're suffering economic penalty.
  - supertrope 2y ago
    Employer mandates and employee protection laws ironically worsen this problem. When employees gain access to a health plan at 30 hours a week, employers respond by cutting them off at 29 hours or even commit time tracking wage theft. Maybe we could just set pro rata taxes to pay for social insurance programs instead of having a binary distinction between full time employee or not. Imagine if instead of Social Security we had an employer mandate for pensions and nothing for part time workers.
- splitstud 2y ago
  [dead]
michaelt 2y ago
> The insane thing is people trying to make a livable wage off of "gigs". > We should stop pretending this is or ever can be reasonable full-time employment. Hypothetically, imagine a society that required welfare claimants to accept any job they were offered. If any would not work, neither should he eat. Should such a society allow shitty/exploitative/dangerous jobs to exist, and force welfare claimants to work them? Or should there only be an obligation to take a job if it provides a certain minimum level of safety, dignity and salary?
- LocalH 2y ago
  Stop giving the conservatives ideas! /s
- pcrh 2y ago
  > If any would not work, neither should he eat. Ironically, that is one of the original "10 planks of communism" by Marx and Engels (i.e. "The liability of all to labour").
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
  I don't think a gig economy app's open signup process is considered an offer for unemployment purposes. (If it were how would anyone get unemployment payments?)

anamax 2y ago

They're double-apping because they want more business than they can get from either app alone. It's unclear why that's a "flaw". If Uber has to pay idle drivers, it has to charge more for rides. Do you want there to be only one such company? Do you object when a grocery story carries more than one brand of bread? How about when a given brand of bread has more than one type of bread?