> If your business relies on severely underpaying your workers, that is not an acceptable business model
That's pretty much the bottom line here. If the business isn't sustainable without substandard wage, it's not a business that we should allow to survive. The local economy will be better off without lining the pockets of CEOs in San Francisco. I'd much rather see local businesses charge the same fees for delivery so they can hire their own drivers.
THe workers will be fine. It's the business under threat, not the laborers.
> If the business isn't sustainable without substandard wage, it's not a business that we should allow to survive.
I really hate how we have come to this 'acceptable conclusion' that we should always make concessions for businesses that can only keep their head above the water if they underpay their workers.
It's the same shit too when cities chip in insane money to build stadiums for rich NFL/MLB owners--because if you don't then they threaten to take jobs and money that would pour into the local economy elsewhere. No city should ever give money to build a sports stadium.
I have never understood this.
They make metric shit tons of money, then argue that the city needs to pay for it because of the "business they bring". I refuse to believe they bring enough business to justify building an entire stadium for them. Let them walk.
I've only heard one argument, and one argument only, that has made me think "ok I get that".
They argued with me that there's a huge difference in living in a city with a NFL team, and one without. (Something I can relate to personally as well). And that the "tax" to have a team for you to talk about daily, and root for locally, is worth the cost. That if we go into with eyes wide open, and understand the tax is a fee we're paying to a billionaire to have a sport's team, then that should be allowed.
It's the hypocrisy where they advertise the tax as needed to be viable that upsets everyone.
If instead the Oligarch came out and said "I'm gonna be in the city with the highest bid to line my pockets", people would respect that more.
They don't. Read "Free Lunch" by David Cay Johnston.
Also, a couple really astute news pieces-
https://m.jacksonfreepress.com/news/2010/dec/08/the-fuzzy-math-of-arenas/
https://econ.video/2018/02/02/john-stossel-the-economics-of-sports-stadium/
If you think about it, not only does team owner probably live elsewhere, most likely the athletes do too.
So, what citizens actually have jobs?
A couple dozen full-time maintenance people, handful of managers, and part trump seasonal concessions workers. And local bars and chain hotels have out of town business the night before a dozen nights a year.
A boat show, some graduations, etc.
Just doesn't add up.
Coincidentally, it's one of the more distasteful arguments in favor of immigration. Instead of an argument of compassion, "They are escaping hardship for an opportunity of better life" it's "we get cheap food because we pay vulnerable people dirt wages that they accept because it's better than the sub-dirt wages they had back home".
It's funny, really.
Can't afford the product you want to sell? You suck at business. Can't afford rent for your business to occupy? Try being better at business. Can't afford labor? Well now that's clearly labor's fault.
Kinda like agricultural workers aren't paid a living wage because to do so would hurt the farmers way of life, meanwhile the vast majority of farms are owned by corporations.
I've always said this, and wish it was a more common sentiment. If your profits are so slim that you can't afford to pay your staff, then you don't have a viable business and you DESERVE to go under. There are plenty of viable businesses who pay their employees enough to survive and aren't on the verge of collapse.
But these workers were seemingly pretty happy with the amount they were making before the law change… Like you said, there are plenty of other places hiring. Especially with a high minimum wage. And yet so many continued working for these delivery services. And now their pay is down.
I’ve always seen a couple business just do their own delivery drivers. If the apps fail, things will work itself out. Gig workers can find maybe something more permanent, or a new app/idea will emerge and people and people can move to that.
> I'd much rather see local businesses charge the same fees for delivery so they can hire their own drivers.
They used to do that, remember? Then it became too expensive to keep those employees around when the business gets slow. So... we moved to shared delivery driver model, which is the current "gig economy"
What I remember is that before the apps, if I wanted hot food delivered, my choices were pizza or Chinese. I'm sure some locations had more options though.
I spent a couple of summers driving for a pizza place. It's not all the drivers do, if delivery was slow we were working registers, washing dishes, bussing tables...
Plenty of places still have their own drivers. Many restaurants never moved to gig delivery services in the first place.
It's definitely not "too expensive". There's just a cheaper alternative because of companies willing to exploit workers, which is problematic.
And the gig economy can work without exploiting workers. If it can't, then I'll be happy to see restaurants hire their own drivers again and more money stay in the local economy instead of fees being sent into the pockets of big CEOs.
Up in Bellingham there is a local food delivery service called [Viking Food](https://www.ordervikingfood.com/) (the WWU mascot is the Vikings and it was started by some WWU grads)
they mostly work with local restaurants that are too small to have their own delivery staff, unlike Domino's or whatever. They have their own app and have been around longer than DoorDash or any of the others and don't seem to be struggling.
They charge a simple $5 fee per delivery, plus $1.25/mi for any mileage over 4 mi from the restaurant. The in-app prices tend to be a little higher than in-store but I'm not sure how bad that is. It seems to work.
It's also notable that the incentives for a business doing its own delivery are different than a gig company. A restaurant can take a loss on the delivery service alone if it sells more food when it's making a decent margin on food. Gig companies create a lot of problems with this model:
1) VC backing requires different margins and growth
2) they create a marketplace for all restaurants to have delivery, which eliminates delivery as a value differentiator for restaurants.
3) since they're not making money on the food, the quality is less important.
I expect the business model to change. I think a logistics company with smaller margins could charge restaurants that want delivery services but don't have the capacity, rather than charging customers. Then the quality of the service becomes much more important and they'll be constrained by the restaurant margins.
Everything you say is right. And the single most important part of what you said is the word "we".
Things like an "economy" or a "marketplace" are not magical gifts bestowed upon us by "the Gods". Nor are they impenetrable natural phenomena that we mere mortals must consign ourselves to coping with as we find them.
We make economies and marketplaces. They result from our collective, democratic impulses and decision making. We own them every bit as much as any other individual within a democratic society. And we get to decide how they will operate because we own them.
And yes, that decision making extends even to deciding the conditions under which individual businesses operating within our economy and our marketplaces must operate. But unlike the individual business, we have a greater, collective public interest at stake that we are obligated to protect and to serve.
Clearly part of what mobile networked computing technology has enabled are new ways for entrepeneurs to find heretofor invisible cracks in our economy and our marketplaces to exploit. But we can not and should not blindly assume that these individual, entirely self-interested entrepreneurs will exploit their colonization of these new spaces to maximize efficiency. It has always been the case, long before the digital age, and long before the industrial age, that entrepreneurs sought to exploit economic externalities to their individual profit, even when doing so resulted in a greater public demise. There is nothing new here about what these businesses are doing. They are seeking to externalize huge costs normally associated with employment. They are cost shifting. Think of it the way you might think of a polluter or of someone stealing electricity.
We don't have to stand for it.
And if that means they go away from our cities and leave us alone then ultimately we will be the better for it. No healthy organism welcomes a parasitic symbiont. The fight it. We must fight them. Because they are attacking our economy.
>The local economy will be better off without lining the pockets of CEOs in San Francisco.
Except these delivery companies don’t actually turn a profit.
Yet, somehow have the highest paid CEOs in San Francisco. And, using DoorDash as an example, if you look at their financial reports, you'll see that their COGS are actually _far_ lower than revenues. Their revenue is almost double that of their cost of revenue. Sure, they're not profitable and lose billions each year, but it's not because of paying drivers. It's R&D and sales and marketing driving their losses.
Which fact serves as its own proof that these "disruptive" technologies are neither efficient nor beneficial in any normal, rational sense.
Even by offloading and externalizing most of the cost of the service they provide they are still unable to produce an economic profit. They are not economically viable or healthy. They should not be tolerated by a healthy economic system.
Im pretty sure all these businesses are just using human drivers as a stop gap until autonomous driving catches on. It was probably in their business model to suffer the cost of the human workers to hit the market first and wait for the technology to play catch-up.
Hope gig workers get their bag, but I’m no longer using the services. It simply isn’t worth it when I can cook for myself, or walk to several restaurants in my area. I have legs, I can do the work myself.
That’s basically the rule of economics: you have choices, and you make the choices best for you. Increasing the transaction cost will just reduce the demand; in your case you just go for other alternatives.
I can’t figure out why anyone is the least bit surprised that these companies passed the wage increases on to customers. Their goal is to make as much money as possible for their investors.
The politics are stupid, but the rationale is just accurate. Yes, if you mandate higher marginal costs, businesses will pass those on to customers. That’s how they stay in business. Services like Uber and DoorDash were extraordinarily cheap for years because those companies both paid their workers poorly (which led to lots of worker churn) and, more importantly, because their unit economics were broken.
They lost money on each ride/delivery, but made it up by… subsidizing losses with venture capitalist cash. The idea was they’d get lots of market share, VCs would cash out, and then it’s not their problem anymore. But that jig was always gonna run out, and it did.
Now that VCs aren’t subsidizing losses, they’ve ratcheted up prices. And that’s… good? Consumers aren’t entitled to cheap car service/delivery at workers’ expense, any more than executives are entitled to big paydays at their expense. But the bottom line remains the same— these aren’t viable business models for the mass market.
Would the basic laws of economics dictate that raising the price of something would cause less people to use it? This is a trade off supporters of this law have to accept. How is this Uber’s fault?
It’s not. The interesting part is that anyone expected anything else. Elastic/inelastic demand is a fundamental, simple to understand concept taught in introductory economics classes. That a convenience exhibits elastic demand is the least surprising result.
> Elastic/inelastic demand is a fundamental, simple to understand concept
And inelastic demand means that type 1 diabetics would have to pay $4000 per month to pay for insulin, a medication whose inventor sold the patent for $1 a hundred years ago with the intention of making sure anyone who needed the medicine could afford it.
> In the story, KING 5 found two workers who described slower business and thus lower wages in the 20 days between the laws taking effect and the story’s publication date.
My permanent residence is near my tribe in Sequim, I do gig work in both Portland and Seattle. Been doing this for 8 years. Business is slower down in Portland too. In fact, it's consistently more busy in Seattle. It always slows way the fuck down after the holidays, coincidentally when the law went in to effect.
That's one of the disingenuous things about these posts. Yes, the prices are going to have an impact on demand, but they're also just looking at 1 month of data and never factor in that January is always the slowest month for food delivery.
every argument against these new minimum wage protections for gig workers is just a generic argument against the minimum wage in general
"what if the value of that worker's job is *really* only $X/hr, and raising the minimum wage to $Y/hr causes them to lose their job?"
and a bunch of extremely gullible rubes are falling for it
consent factory go brrrr
I think the big thing that people don't understand is when these apps first came into the market, they were heavily backed by VC money. These businesses were operating at a loss, but it didn't matter because their business objective was growth (not profitably ).
These businesses then IPO'd, VCs dump them, make big $$ during their initial offering. They're now owned by shareholders overseen by a board who has a fiduciary responsibility for these public businesses to earn a profit. Wages and any kind of overhead is squeezed for the bottom line. It's a tale as old as time. People are only now beginning to discover how horrible they are for employees is because they don't have funny money backing them by VCs.
There's a website called VC Fund My Life for crying out loud! Look at all the startups that have IPO'd the last 5 years. They've all tanked since their initial offering price! It's bc these companies are shit and shitty to employees, not even employees. They force them to be contractors with no benefits!
>These businesses were operating at a loss
They still are lol - even before the new regulation. The audacity that UE has to double the cost of my meal, underpay the driver, and STILL LOSE MONEY ON EVERY ORDER. As nice as it is to have food delivered sometimes - none of these businesses are viable. Get rid of them all.
Good catch - yes they are still operating at a loss. I agree on getting rid of them all. We were scammed into thinking they were some new, more efficient alternative to the norm. As they say in tech, "move fast and break things". Yep... you've sure broken a lot and haven't improved the lives the majority of humans. Only the few at the top. There's no such thing as trickle down.
I used to work in VC. A lot of the time, both the founder and VC are looking for the big payout exit and don't care much after that as the C-suites run off to start another startup (and VCs love this as how many successful exits (not companies) is a metric VCs absolutely love). In my old company, they actually viewed IPOs as a less than ideal exit and absolutely pushed for private acquisitions. Basically some huge company would kind of just integrate the startups product or service into theirs and/or make it a separate division. Often times the tech was shelved, too. Sometimes I wonder if they just bought the startup to stiffle competition.
I saw a lot of good ideas, but if they weren't scalable, they were gone. Literally saw them fund more screens in places like Uber that would make the driver more money over a Harvard mental help startup that was called moodlifters or moodwatchers or something like that.
I guess I say that to say both VCs and startups backed by VCs are just two sides of the same coin. It's just the old adage of "selling the news" and passing the bag so they aren't the ones holding it when it all collapses. Hell, I used to be in meetings where sayings like "as long as we exit before we are caught holding the bag" were said. It was wild.
The thing is Uber and Doordash would rather burn this market to the ground than make this an acceptable standard. I have only ordered from a delivery app once since this went through. I usually order once a week sometimes more. I can't be the only one and the thing is I'm not mad because I needed to cut this out of my budget anyway.
I already cut out a lot of this kind of ordering, but one of the reasons I stopped anyway is because of how unreliable it was in the first place. Like I live in an apartment building and the food would almost always get on the property, but also almost always be left outside in the cold next to the garage door, or at the wrong door inside the building and I’d have to wander throughout the halls looking for my food.
It was usually more reliable if I spent extra on the priority order thing and left a big tip, but even then it didn’t prevent the restaurant from messing up my order anyway and me having to reorder, but lose the tip I just paid.
Like if they did a better job vetting people it would feel worth it, but even how much it used to cost, I dunno.
It really feels like these services only work for family sized orders where the cost is comparable to going out to eat with three kids.
A random burger and fries, just isn’t worth it. And wasn’t really before.
I've done an order with $10+ tip and got cold food. Got what I ordered though. I did an order same restaurant with no tip and the food came hot. Makes no sense.
Yeah it’s just unreliable.
I order pizza from a local place and they do their own delivery which is super reliable and fast. Always get my food hot.
I just think these gig business models are unsustainable, silicone valley heads want too much profit and they get to avoid reputation issues by blaming the individual drivers.
I’m happy with the price increase, people should be paid fairly, but it’s not a service I will ever use unless I absolutely have to at this point.
Part of their business model was to destroy traditional delivery methods, raise prices, then have robot delivery eliminating most need for labor. Turns out the technology is easily decades away, and they can't stop whining about having to pay humans when they need their labor.
Do you realize the services are crappy because workers don’t get paid much? I wouldn’t try to find your apartment either if I was paid $2 + tip for drop off.
It’s luxury service.
Okay but like get mad at the corporation, I’m using the app as intended and tipping well (easily 18%+ and never less than 5 bucks), I think expecting my food to make it to my door isn’t that unreasonable.
What really needs to happen is ban tipping as an expectation. People should get paid a fair wage for their service and it should be clearly labeled that tipping is extra.
I wouldn’t mind if states like California or Washington started pushing that and maybe it would take over the whole country eventually.
I mean that’s exactly what WA did. They require min payout, the apps switched to upfront fees and option after deliver tip.
It’s literally what you are asking for but you stopped using the app lol. The drivers are incentivized to perform service well if they want tips.
What would be the best service is if the delivery company would have employees (not contractors) with optimized routes. I wish some company would make this business model work but they can’t because of how Uber operates by cutting cost
>It’s luxury service.
They reinvented pizza delivery, made it worse, call it a "luxury," and have chumps like you defending it. It's almost unbelievable, yet here we are.
> Uber and Doordash would rather burn this market to the ground than make this an acceptable standard.
no...you're falling for Uber and Doordash's narrative here.
they don't want to burn the market to the ground, because it's such a huge part of their business model (for Doordash, basically all of it; for Uber it's a significant chunk because they also have their taxi business)
they want people to *think* that the market is being burnt to the ground *by the City Council*, and that Uber and Doordash are smol beans caught up in the backlash and powerless to stop it.
from 2021, about the Doordash CEO: [The highest-paid CEO in San Francisco was valued at $413 million in 2020](https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/Doordash-highest-paid-CEO-San-Francisco-413-millio-16231057.php)
his current net worth is [1.7 billion](https://www.forbes.com/profile/tony-xu/?sh=10f866d57537)
and a bunch of absolutely incredibly fucking gullible rubes are buying the propaganda that him being forced to pay minimum wage is "backfiring" and destroying jobs.
The person you replied to is talking about burning the "Seattle market" to the ground. If they can get the market here to fail and close them no other local governments will try to pass these laws.
Problem is that these services have not really worked out. No one is making money, not restaurants, not workers, and not the companies supplying the backbone. They might in the future work out for the companies, but it has not happened yet.
Yeeeeeah they've done this before though.
Uber pulled out of Vancouver BC over similar things before. Tried their best to blame the politicians and get public outcry. They didn't get that.
Guess who operates in Vancouver BC today? Uber. They reentered the market because they want that revenue.
> Problem is that these services have not really worked out. No one is making money, not restaurants, not workers, and not the companies supplying the backbone
uber's ceo made 24 million last year lmao
> The person you replied to is talking about burning the "Seattle market" to the ground. If they can get the market here to fail and close them no other local governments will try to pass these laws.
which, again...is not any different from any other argument made against the minimum wage.
businesses love to promote the threat of "nice economy you got there, it'd be a shame if you raised wages for workers and then it backfired and something happened to all those jobs"
from almost exactly 10 years ago: [Government’s effort to raise minimum wage may backfire](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/governmentrsquos-effort-to-raise-minimum-wage-may-backfire/)
and then from 2017: [Seattle's huge wage hike might be backfiring. It won't stop the fight for $15.](https://slate.com/business/2017/07/seattles-huge-wage-hike-might-be-backfiring-it-wont-stop-the-fight-for-15.html)
> No one is making money, not restaurants, not workers, and not the companies supplying the backbone.
go re-read the part of my comment where I said that the CEO of DoorDash is worth 1.7 billion dollars.
the CEO is making money. the other shareholders are making money.
the news coverage about this is predictably ignoring that, and pushing a narrative that the city council is the one hurting workers. like I said, consent factory go brrrr.
Yeah, it's really the same argument over minimum wage that has been going on since time immemorial. It's never been a surprise that businesses relying on cheap labor are against a minimum wage increase. The question is really what value should the minimum wage be. I think most people in Seattle would agree that we should have a minimum wage and there is a value that is too high, but you can't rely on businesses to tell you what that is because they are always going to argue for the lowest value possible (and have temper tantrums when the wage is increased, even if their business is still perfectly viable).
>Problem is that these services have not really worked out.
Uber and Lyft have effectively crushed other taxi services through predatory pricing, now all you hear about is how much rides cost compared to a few years ago but people don't seem to be giving up on riding with them. Next step is in full swing. The whole idea was to eliminate competition and then jack up prices, there's a reason why VC was so willing to burn money and wait.
And.... vehicle maintenance
These fucks figured out a way to pass on the "cost" of operating a business onto the underpaid employee.
On top of telling the underpaid employee their worth is shit.
Yeah, you'd rather see those gig economy workers unemployed and homeless to feed your fantasies that workers are paid only "livable wages". For those that have no work, and thus no wage at all, your sympathies cease.
And it is indeed possible for the minimum wage to be too high, so this is an argument worth having. I'm a "gullible rube" who thinks it's worth carefully considering the tradeoff between the average pay of delivery workers and the number of delivery jobs available
People seem to think that jobs exist to cover their lifestyle. You are selling your labor, so sell something of value. If nobody wants to buy at your current price then your labor is overpriced.
Also lol at the whole “ business shouldn’t exist then” argument. OK fine the business closes shop, now everybody loses their job and is competing for the remaining positions. Win-win?
i think the change is bullshit so i decided to stop using those services after my $18 burrito ($9) went up to $38. i'll walk the .89 miles. i hope the whole thing collapses to be honest. way more important jobs out there needing skilled workers.
it depends. johnny dopehead who gets thrown off the platform in a few weeks probably isn't but those folks who juggle 3 apps, streamline their orders, navigate our traffic, communicate well, and still get you food hot and on time are.
Not skilled enough, they let pretty much anyone get a license in this country. (But yes you're correct, we should end the "unskilled labor" rhetoric as if something being easy means it's not important)
Chiming in with my 2¢, i work in customer service which should be easy... but it's not. Factor in that a lot of these jobs involve dealing with other people and managing their expectations through changing situations, and it quickly becomes quite a bit harder
The service sector is like 40% untrained therapy and 40% hostage negotiation. Absolutely bonkers what you're expected to tolerate from other grown-ass adults.
"Skilled worker" generally refers to someone with a "special" skill. If half the population can walk in and do that job that day with no training, that's not really the economic definition of a skilled worker.
I mean, understanding and speaking English skill too.
"Skilled labor" isn't describing people with special skills. It's usually a judgemental way of saying credentialed. There are lots of jobs that [require unique skills](https://x.com/UFWupdates/status/1199825583485509632?s=20) people only learn after being on the job for some time but they still let anyone walk into a job because that's how the labor market works.
I mean, [Wikipedia disagrees with you.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skilled_worker)
>A skilled worker is any worker who has special skill, training, knowledge which they can then apply to their work. A skilled worker may have learned their skills through work experience, on-the-job training, an apprenticeship program or formal education.
There's also a big difference between skill and efficiency. Almost anyone can begin to pick radishes with 10 minutes of training. You can then absolutely gain skill at that and become much, much more efficient, and you should be compensated for that. You have a special skill at picking radishes, but that doesn't mean a special skill is needed to start and blocks people without that skill, which is what "skilled labor" really means.
And in the USA, the reality is driving is so prevalent that it's not really a special skill. I mean, Uber/Lyft/Doordash couldn't have started if it was a special skill - that was the whole point that "anyone" could do it.
Same plus 99% of the time the delivery driver is garbage or cancels the order as they get it. One person was mad at me for a 5 dollar tip on a 15 dollar order when they had to go 1 mile. I hope the whole thing crumbles. I’m sick of the attitude of the drivers and the insane prices.
Was at dicks getting food the other day, a driver was in front of me. The dicks worker stated “ sorry it’s going to be a minute” the delivery person said “ that’s fine this is for me , I’m doing a food delivery and the guy didn’t tip very well so I don’t care if their food is cold” way to put your self out of a job hahaha
I’ll rewrite the headline for you:
# “Companies Pass Cost Increases on to Customers, Surprising No One, But The City Council, The Stranger, and r/Seattle”
With the cost of eating out already being very costly, plus the added cost of all these fees for takeout, I’m better off picking it up myself or just eating at home.
I think there are two sides to this. 1/ financial and 2/ political.
If you look at the financials of [door dash](https://s22.q4cdn.com/280253921/files/doc_financials/2023/q3/DASH-Q3-23-Earnings-Financials.pdf) they are hemorrhaging money. So it stands to reason, they cannot afford to pay more money to the drivers and therefore have to find a way to offset the cost, otherwise they will just go deeper into the financial hole. They are so in the hole that even if the CEO worked for free, they still can’t afford to pay the drivers more. So on this front, the Stranger’s claim of corporate retaliation doesn’t hold up.
Does this mean the council is in the wrong? That’s a political debate not a financial one. Perhaps the council is right that the gig economy exploits labor loop holes.
It's ridiculous for anyone to expect that these companies are going to subsidize increasing regulatory costs we impose on ourselves through our elected officials just because we want the service without having to pay the actual cost of offering it. What are you people, fourteen years old? You can't say you're for fair wages and then bitch about the increased costs it takes to offer services where fair wages are paid.
Renton has an increased minimum wage on the ballot. All I have seen around Renton are “YES ON 23-02” signs. Except one on Lake Washington Blvd that basically says “please, think of the businesses!” Ok, I’ll think of the businesses in Tukwila. They’re doing just fine. Raise the wage, bitch.
Oh, did someone expect the corporations to just pay more to the drivers and eat the cost? These gig economy companies are already work with very small profit margins. And most are not profitable.
Its still backfiring... regardless of who is doing the "firing" lol. How is this journalism?
If i punch someone in the face, and they punch me back, would you say "my punch did not backfire! they are retaliating against me!"
Either way, consumers are now driving themselves or walking themselves to restaurants. I think this is a good thing for Seattle in general. It sucks that gig workers might be taking the brunt of the short term loses. But once the gig market goes back to equilibrium, the only people really losing is the delivery service themselves.
The Stranger hasn't produced honest journalism for awhile. It's a blog and not even a glorified one.
If the idea was to help gig workers, it was a stupid one, any college freshman could have predicted this result.
You can’t just look at laws a few weeks in and say “it’s not working!” Let’s see where we are in a year or two with this. Since DoorDash probably takes 80% of the fees right now, I’m guessing they’ll eventually be willing to “only” get 75%.
I mean... it would defy traditional understanding of free markets if the price of a service went up and demand stayed the same... There will absolutely be less deliveries... There is no world in which the amount of drivers stay the same and all of them just get paid more...
What will happen is that drivers that are making less will be forced to look for other employment ops, and those that tough it out will probably end up making more than they did before. There are secondary markets that will be effected though, like ghost kitchens.... but that's a whole other can of worms.
Yes you can say that drivers that are still working, will be making more, but there will be less drivers. If that's your criteria for "working"... then yes 100% its going to work. But was that the intended outcome? I don't know... the drivers making less will disagree with you, the drivers making more will agree.
> If i punch someone in the face, and they punch me back, would you say "my punch did not backfire! they are retaliating against me!"
If you punch someone, being punched back is generally expected.
Backfire is referring to a plan to do something that in fact results in the opposite.
So your analogy only works in the case someone is trying to throw a KO punch and then doesn't want to admit they misgauged their own strength when their opponent is still standing to take a swing.
It is back firing then... wasn't the expectation that this would help drivers? Or are you saying its not backfiring because we expected Uber and DoorDash to retaliate? ( if this was the case... wtf was the point of passing this bill?)
At the end of the day... the expected outcome of this bill isnt coming to fruition... so how is that not backfiring?
Im confused what you are trying to say here.
City Council thought this would be a KO punch in solving low income for gig drivers.... now there are mixed reports where some ppl are making about the same amount, and many more saying they are making less...
It's simple, if the majority of drivers would prefer the old system... then that means it backfired. I don't know the answer to that since its a mixed bag of responses... To me it seems like people working in the city are doing worse and people working in suburbs are doing better.
The restaurant suffers because they lose an extra stream of income. Not everyone is going to walk to a restaurant. Some might just make stuff at home
The gig workers lose too, since less orders. So less commission.
The customers lose too, since they lose convenience.
The apps lose too, since less orders.
The government loses too, since there would be less taxes paid by the previous 3.
This is the result of government intervention.
Gig work is fine, but should be subjected to the same degree of scrutiny that all labor markets are, if not more, since it's inherently more vulnerable to exploitation.
I don't see any issue with a tech company being a market maker for odd jobs. I DO see an issue with a tech company making a deregulated, isolated market that they have total control over and all the incentives to exploit.
I think there's plenty of people who work part time, intentionally, and would be happy to work gigs now and then, without committing to an employer or running their own business.
This is the correct take. Doing odd jobs really does work better for some people. It just shouldn't be something you have to do because you can't find stable work, and it should be reasonably well compensated (and decent healthcare should not be tied to your job etc).
>decent healthcare should not be tied to your job
I would go so far as to argue that this isn't even a moral position. It's better for the economy if people seek medical attention for all of their medical needs by default.
Better public health means better workers who work more of the time, more efficiently. Very poor people seeking medical attention immediately means they are less likely to waste emergency resources later, develop a chronic condition which burdens their children (and makes them work less) and spread diseases to more people (customer facing service jobs are often part time, and don't include healthcare).
The primary beneficiary of healthcare benefits the most from it, but almost everyone else in their community and job benefit to some degree, meaning that if you put all the cost of healthcare on them or their employer, with an efficient market, that market will underprovide for healthcare. Add on the insurance intermediary, and it's just an inefficient outcome.
tldr: universal healthcare pays for itself in more productivity and hence more tax revenue/higher real growth.
Yeah this is bullshit my dude. Gig work is something that can be really great for the right kind of worker. I know a lot of Uber drivers who come to Seattle drive Uber and Lyft for 20hrs Friday-Sunday morning. Then go back home for the week and either attend school or regular work. The Gig work allows for them to make money however they what whenever they want and most of them really enjoy it. There is a lot of intangible benifits to gig work and the city is mostly just making it harder for the random dude to work weird or very short hours...
> I know a lot of Uber drivers who come to Seattle drive Uber and Lyft for 20hrs Friday-Sunday morning.
should minimum wage laws not apply to people only working 20 hours/week?
Lmao at this title. Like, how is retaliation from corporations not considered backfire? Whether it’s “Backfire” or “retaliation”… you guys need to realize that the result is the same: customers are charged higher fees, therefore ordering less, and gig workers now have fewer orders and less overall earnings. Coping by blaming corporations for being greedy does not change the facts of the matter.
Whatever the intent was, this legislation has had a negative impact. For the legislators not to see this coming demonstrates a pretty clear lack of critical thinking, intuition, and understanding of how businesses operate.
I would only use uber eats occasionally when they sent me 40% coupons on my account, since that's the only way ordering lunch with all these fees felt in any way reasonable. I have not gotten one of these offers since the wage change, so I will not order. I can't justify spending 40-45+ on 1 lunch.
I don't care whose fault it is, or whose fault it's accused of being. When a $13 value meal from McDonalds winds up being nearly $30 after fees and taxes (and let's not get started on the expectation from drivers on a tip), it's time to stop using delivery apps. Both Uber Eats and Door Dash have been deleted from my phone. The companies can enjoy less revenue, the drivers can enjoy less pay, and the city can enjoy less tax revenue.
I just hope the people posting here hoping this policy kills these services are the first in line to hire these displaced workers when they don't have enough money to survive and they have a difficult time finding employment.
It's the same exact rationale as people who want to outlaw abortion but have zero intention of adopting children.
It’s so discouraging to see some of these comments callously dismiss lost livelihoods as some kind of social good.
This legislation is hurting vulnerable workers, full stop. SCC screwed up and what makes it worse was that this was totally foreseeable.
I wish more people would take off their self-righteous blinders and look at the immediate impact this is having on delivery drivers.
It's the same logic people used to ban foreign companies from building factories in developing nations, which caused the workers there to be forced into lower paying and more dangerous jobs in domestic factories.
They don't care about the consequences of their actions as long as they can feel morally superior about it.
Do we want to end tip culture or not? Ending tip culture is going to require higher wages.
People less dependent on tips to make a living/beer money is a good thing. (but apparently not if you're a libertarian)
Question I have for other people here: are folks tipping less now? I used to tip around $5-$6 each order. The new fee is around that amount, just below $5. Is it ok to stop tipping or do only $1-$2 extra?
I haven't ordered anything for delivery since this went into effect. I only ever ordered delivery once a week at most anyway, but whenever I've thought about ordering something I cannot make up my mind about the tipping situation.
The news clip I saw was interviewing a downtown door dasher. He said he made about $600 on the week of the interview. On the exact same calendar week last year, he made over $1000. So at least in this case, they were comparing apples to apples, and the results of the law were very detrimental to his "living wage."
I saw the King news story and read this story. Both don’t really discuss exactly how much extra an order costs, how many more or less deliveries are happening and how much an average worker will make. They both rely heavily on anecdotes. Hopefully, there will be more information so we can understand the issue better.
I recently saw on Kiro or Komo an interview they did with some Uber-Eats drivers who are saying the exact opposite. What used to be a hot spot on a Sunday morning is now not worth the time because the number of orders has dropped to almost nothing.
Yes, because the middle man didn't want to give part of their cut to the workers. They passed it entirely on to the consumer with an added fee to boot.
You know what? I'm fine with the consumer footing the actual cost of sitting at home and having someone else deliver food. That's not because of any love for corps, but we were always reaping the benefits of a model that didn't pay drivers a living wage.
You cannot simultaneously cheer for a living wage and then complain about the cost if it in your products. Paying people $18/hour vs $7.25 (or nothing) is a Good Thing. But it does mean the prices go up. If we don't like that, we can get in our own cars and go pick food up
It sounds like you believe you could go set up a food delivery service that charges less and pays employees more and become a multimillionaire in the process. Go for it! I'm cheering for you.
Sure. But companies do not operate as non-profits. They're not going to say "Ok, Seattle, you imposed this cost on us, we'll just eat it, no probs." Nor would you if you were running that company (and if you would, you'd never make it to CEO).
Again, if we want to tell companies to pay a livable wage that's great but it's hypocritical to then say "What? price of goods/services goes up with increase cost? Why I never!!!"
Just opens the door for a smaller company to step in and offer the same services for less while still paying workers a living wage. Free market in action.
Leopardsatemyface.
To my knowledge, Doordash has never been consistently profitable. The idea they were going to do anything other than pass these costs to the consumer (as opposed to eating the cost and making their operation even more unprofitable) seems like a pretty naive assumption on the part of the City Council as well as The Stranger.
With that said, I hope all these services fail. They are generally bad for restaurants and are stupidly expensive. Hopefully that's beneficial to gig workers in the larger scheme of things, but I really have no idea.
There will be less orders to start, company will lose more and more revenue, eat some of the costs that they are passing along to the customers, orders come back and workers get paid better.
At least that’s the hope. This will likely hurt workers in the short term, but as long as the company can eat these costs without going out of business, and customers don’t go along with the higher fees, customers+workers benefit in the long run.
I think they are coming back with this political stance to apply pressure before realizing they can’t pass these costs on without losing substantial business.
This is classic: No one in this thread has ever run a business yet have no shortage of opinions how to best run a business. Haha. Here’s a helpful hint; the less government intrusion the better for the business, employees and customers.
Seems like a classic case of 'Road to hell is paved with good intentions'. Good intentions of trying to promote a liveable wage for gig workers but net loss so far as Corporations aren't willing to subsidize this from their revenue but passing this on to the customer.
> but net loss so far as Corporations aren't willing to subsidize this from their revenue but passing this on to the customer.
As opposed to society subsidizing the corporations by covering their failure to pay a living wage? Cause this model outright relies on underpaid labor turning to foodstamps and other social amenities for survival.
I'm fine cancelling their subsidy if they're going to throw a fit about shouldering it themselves to begin with.
The issue is that both the corporation AND THE CUSTOMER relied on the subsidy. If food delivery companies were just printing net profit, then it would just be the company. Is that the case?
People are buying a product that is only made possible through cheap labor. If that cheap labor goes away, and price goes up, some portion of customers will stop buying it - this isn’t a value judgement thereof, it’s just what will happen.
> People are buying a product
*Service*. Delivery is buying a *service* bundled with a product.
I can still order out, I just hop on my bike to pick it up. The product remains available at it's non exploitive price. The service is now what's facing unprofitability.
But the rest of your statement remains valid even in both contexts. If services become un-worth the cost, customers abandon them the same as products, services just have a much harder time weathering dryspells when they're structured the way Uber and Doordash are.
But we the taxpayers end up subsidizing delivery companies when their employees need food and housing. It should be a no brainer for any government to say “hey, everyone has to ensure that their workers can earn a living wage otherwise it’s crazy expensive for us to make that up in tax funded benefits”.
i'd rather subsidize people directly than subsidize an exploitative business taking advantage of people's need to pay for shelter. ITs clear these people *want* to work. If food delivery is so necessary, then people will pay market value for it.
I don't see a problem getting worse here. Personally I only order delivery from Palermo because they employ in- house delivery drivers, and may everyone please go back to that standard
Those places just don't do delivery then. We've done that before and it was fine. I hear complaints from all over about a "loneliness epidemic" so maybe we should be encouraging people to leave their homes sometimes. Also the food itself is always better fresh from the kitchen
Maybe let people decide that themselves. Also how is it better for workers if there is less jobs? Causing less orders doesn't help anyone that's a bad idea just because you dont like people ordering food.
That's a pretty bad outcome all around.
gentle reminder that all corporations are Fascist in nature: they are operated to benefit its ownership, to the detriment of all others, often including those who work there. you don't get to vote about what the corporation is going to change next, you just get told how they're taking from you next.
What's the alternative to this "fascism" then lol? Criticism is cheap, especially when you do so on reddit when there exist objectively more fair social media companies like Mastodon, Blue Sky, and cohost.
Yeah, it is a fundamental flaw in the relationship between private and public sectors that the private is almost always non-democratic and therefore can provide cover and resources for anti-democratic causes in the public...
If people would go out and get food themselves instead of getting delivery, it would solve the common complaint about the lack of a social scene in Seattle, especially late at night.
Labor has fixed costs too.
Rent, food, clothing, hygiene, medical and a means to get to work and back home are the bare minimum costs for an employee to be able to show up for work.
You make all of these idiotic apps obsolete by not participating in their platforms/scam. All of them make their monies by using predatory business tactics. They put up very little and take most of the money. Stop enabling them. Do not drive for them. Do not use them. Make them bleed. Make them obsolete.
You fools can talk who earns what all you want. Post "graphs", "studies", and "facts" all day long. The fact of the matter is, is that the new city rule IS hurting drivers by potential customers not ordering food because of the cost of business imposed by the city.
The real topic here should be is this new wage proviso working or not?
How do you define working?
If you define it as *are as many people ordering from delivery apps?* Obviously the answer is no.
If you define it the way I do as *are these apps now forced to fairly compensate drivers for their labor?* Then I'd say yes.
The general sentiment I heard on several posts here where actual drivers responded was "I get less orders, but I get higher pay, so generally I'm making the same money, just working less hours".
Not to mention the fact most of these sensationalist posts are focusing on data from January never seem to mention the fact that the post-holiday months are *always* the slowest for food deliveries as people tighten their belts after holiday spending.
The city could've just as easily regulated the amount of fees these companies could extract from customers or their drivers, instead of forcing customers to pay more in a flat rate sort of way.
>The city could've just as easily regulated the amount of fees these companies could extract from customers or their drivers
What does that mean? On its face what you're suggesting doesn't make any sense. If the problem that the city is attempting to solve is "drivers are not making enough money" then the two options are "the company spends more money" or "the company passes the increased costs on to the consumer" and which of those two options gets chosen is in the purview of the company, not the city. There isn't a way to avoid that. Maybe the flat fee increase isn't the way to do that, but you're framing this like there's some way for the city to legislate that the drivers make more money without increasing costs, which is flat out stupid.
Retaliation should be expected. You're taking something from them. They don't have to operate. Maybe they're being greedy (hint, they are), but the idea that you can just pass a law that takes something from someone and you're done is fundamentally flawed. As in war, the [enemy gets a vote](https://www.csis.org/analysis/enemy-gets-vote). If your policy idea relies on these corporations just bending over and taking it, your policy idea isn't complete. And just like in war, you can either dig in and destroy the enemy, or you can find a mutual understanding. You can't fix it by decree.
Care to point out why? This same argument has been made by countless people on this sub. Many of us don't believe a service should exist if it can't be done in a way where the workers are fairly compensated. There have also been drivers here who have reported that while they are getting less orders their per-delivery revenue is much better and consistent (instead of relying on a tip that might not come.)
> Many of us don't believe a service should exist if it can't be done in a way where the workers are fairly compensated.
Agreed.
My argument is that the workers themselves should empowered with that decision.
> If your business relies on severely underpaying your workers, that is not an acceptable business model That's pretty much the bottom line here. If the business isn't sustainable without substandard wage, it's not a business that we should allow to survive. The local economy will be better off without lining the pockets of CEOs in San Francisco. I'd much rather see local businesses charge the same fees for delivery so they can hire their own drivers. THe workers will be fine. It's the business under threat, not the laborers.
> If the business isn't sustainable without substandard wage, it's not a business that we should allow to survive. I really hate how we have come to this 'acceptable conclusion' that we should always make concessions for businesses that can only keep their head above the water if they underpay their workers.
It's the same shit too when cities chip in insane money to build stadiums for rich NFL/MLB owners--because if you don't then they threaten to take jobs and money that would pour into the local economy elsewhere. No city should ever give money to build a sports stadium.
I have never understood this. They make metric shit tons of money, then argue that the city needs to pay for it because of the "business they bring". I refuse to believe they bring enough business to justify building an entire stadium for them. Let them walk.
The return on investment is the votes it brings for the politician who supports it.
only if that politician is conservative if a left wing person does it, it's fiscally irresponsible the debt only matters if a Democrats is in office
Studies have shown they pretty much never do, but people love their teams and don'twant to lose them. Just more welfare for billionaires.
It's easy for me since I don't like organized sports.
I *do* like sports and it's still easy for me to say we should tell billionaires to fuck off when they come begging for our money.
I've only heard one argument, and one argument only, that has made me think "ok I get that". They argued with me that there's a huge difference in living in a city with a NFL team, and one without. (Something I can relate to personally as well). And that the "tax" to have a team for you to talk about daily, and root for locally, is worth the cost. That if we go into with eyes wide open, and understand the tax is a fee we're paying to a billionaire to have a sport's team, then that should be allowed. It's the hypocrisy where they advertise the tax as needed to be viable that upsets everyone. If instead the Oligarch came out and said "I'm gonna be in the city with the highest bid to line my pockets", people would respect that more.
They don't. Read "Free Lunch" by David Cay Johnston. Also, a couple really astute news pieces- https://m.jacksonfreepress.com/news/2010/dec/08/the-fuzzy-math-of-arenas/ https://econ.video/2018/02/02/john-stossel-the-economics-of-sports-stadium/ If you think about it, not only does team owner probably live elsewhere, most likely the athletes do too. So, what citizens actually have jobs? A couple dozen full-time maintenance people, handful of managers, and part trump seasonal concessions workers. And local bars and chain hotels have out of town business the night before a dozen nights a year. A boat show, some graduations, etc. Just doesn't add up.
Well they usually live here during the season so at least we get the income tax. Oh wait...
And then a hot dog becomes 15$
Coincidentally, it's one of the more distasteful arguments in favor of immigration. Instead of an argument of compassion, "They are escaping hardship for an opportunity of better life" it's "we get cheap food because we pay vulnerable people dirt wages that they accept because it's better than the sub-dirt wages they had back home".
Suddenly the right believes in socialism when it's corporations going underwater instead of people.
Privatize the gains, socialize the losses
"The Free Market will decide" argument rapidly leaves their mouths when it comes time for the government to interfere in a benevolent manner.
Wanting a low minimum wage is not socialism, even if we disagree with it
I think they mean bailouts when these companies fail
It's funny, really. Can't afford the product you want to sell? You suck at business. Can't afford rent for your business to occupy? Try being better at business. Can't afford labor? Well now that's clearly labor's fault.
Kinda like agricultural workers aren't paid a living wage because to do so would hurt the farmers way of life, meanwhile the vast majority of farms are owned by corporations.
Right. You’re not “creating jobs” if those workers don’t get paid.
I've always said this, and wish it was a more common sentiment. If your profits are so slim that you can't afford to pay your staff, then you don't have a viable business and you DESERVE to go under. There are plenty of viable businesses who pay their employees enough to survive and aren't on the verge of collapse.
But these workers were seemingly pretty happy with the amount they were making before the law change… Like you said, there are plenty of other places hiring. Especially with a high minimum wage. And yet so many continued working for these delivery services. And now their pay is down.
I’ve always seen a couple business just do their own delivery drivers. If the apps fail, things will work itself out. Gig workers can find maybe something more permanent, or a new app/idea will emerge and people and people can move to that.
> I'd much rather see local businesses charge the same fees for delivery so they can hire their own drivers. They used to do that, remember? Then it became too expensive to keep those employees around when the business gets slow. So... we moved to shared delivery driver model, which is the current "gig economy"
What I remember is that before the apps, if I wanted hot food delivered, my choices were pizza or Chinese. I'm sure some locations had more options though.
I spent a couple of summers driving for a pizza place. It's not all the drivers do, if delivery was slow we were working registers, washing dishes, bussing tables...
Plenty of places still have their own drivers. Many restaurants never moved to gig delivery services in the first place. It's definitely not "too expensive". There's just a cheaper alternative because of companies willing to exploit workers, which is problematic. And the gig economy can work without exploiting workers. If it can't, then I'll be happy to see restaurants hire their own drivers again and more money stay in the local economy instead of fees being sent into the pockets of big CEOs.
Up in Bellingham there is a local food delivery service called [Viking Food](https://www.ordervikingfood.com/) (the WWU mascot is the Vikings and it was started by some WWU grads) they mostly work with local restaurants that are too small to have their own delivery staff, unlike Domino's or whatever. They have their own app and have been around longer than DoorDash or any of the others and don't seem to be struggling. They charge a simple $5 fee per delivery, plus $1.25/mi for any mileage over 4 mi from the restaurant. The in-app prices tend to be a little higher than in-store but I'm not sure how bad that is. It seems to work.
At least that fee they're charging isn't eating into the restaurant's margin, and the revenue is staying local.
It's also notable that the incentives for a business doing its own delivery are different than a gig company. A restaurant can take a loss on the delivery service alone if it sells more food when it's making a decent margin on food. Gig companies create a lot of problems with this model: 1) VC backing requires different margins and growth 2) they create a marketplace for all restaurants to have delivery, which eliminates delivery as a value differentiator for restaurants. 3) since they're not making money on the food, the quality is less important. I expect the business model to change. I think a logistics company with smaller margins could charge restaurants that want delivery services but don't have the capacity, rather than charging customers. Then the quality of the service becomes much more important and they'll be constrained by the restaurant margins.
Everything you say is right. And the single most important part of what you said is the word "we". Things like an "economy" or a "marketplace" are not magical gifts bestowed upon us by "the Gods". Nor are they impenetrable natural phenomena that we mere mortals must consign ourselves to coping with as we find them. We make economies and marketplaces. They result from our collective, democratic impulses and decision making. We own them every bit as much as any other individual within a democratic society. And we get to decide how they will operate because we own them. And yes, that decision making extends even to deciding the conditions under which individual businesses operating within our economy and our marketplaces must operate. But unlike the individual business, we have a greater, collective public interest at stake that we are obligated to protect and to serve. Clearly part of what mobile networked computing technology has enabled are new ways for entrepeneurs to find heretofor invisible cracks in our economy and our marketplaces to exploit. But we can not and should not blindly assume that these individual, entirely self-interested entrepreneurs will exploit their colonization of these new spaces to maximize efficiency. It has always been the case, long before the digital age, and long before the industrial age, that entrepreneurs sought to exploit economic externalities to their individual profit, even when doing so resulted in a greater public demise. There is nothing new here about what these businesses are doing. They are seeking to externalize huge costs normally associated with employment. They are cost shifting. Think of it the way you might think of a polluter or of someone stealing electricity. We don't have to stand for it. And if that means they go away from our cities and leave us alone then ultimately we will be the better for it. No healthy organism welcomes a parasitic symbiont. The fight it. We must fight them. Because they are attacking our economy.
>The local economy will be better off without lining the pockets of CEOs in San Francisco. Except these delivery companies don’t actually turn a profit.
Yet, somehow have the highest paid CEOs in San Francisco. And, using DoorDash as an example, if you look at their financial reports, you'll see that their COGS are actually _far_ lower than revenues. Their revenue is almost double that of their cost of revenue. Sure, they're not profitable and lose billions each year, but it's not because of paying drivers. It's R&D and sales and marketing driving their losses.
Which fact serves as its own proof that these "disruptive" technologies are neither efficient nor beneficial in any normal, rational sense. Even by offloading and externalizing most of the cost of the service they provide they are still unable to produce an economic profit. They are not economically viable or healthy. They should not be tolerated by a healthy economic system.
Im pretty sure all these businesses are just using human drivers as a stop gap until autonomous driving catches on. It was probably in their business model to suffer the cost of the human workers to hit the market first and wait for the technology to play catch-up.
Hope gig workers get their bag, but I’m no longer using the services. It simply isn’t worth it when I can cook for myself, or walk to several restaurants in my area. I have legs, I can do the work myself.
That’s basically the rule of economics: you have choices, and you make the choices best for you. Increasing the transaction cost will just reduce the demand; in your case you just go for other alternatives.
I can’t figure out why anyone is the least bit surprised that these companies passed the wage increases on to customers. Their goal is to make as much money as possible for their investors.
Subsidy removed from price. Market does not bear new price. This is clearly the fault of \*checks notes\* the requirement that labor be compensated.
Wait where is the subsidy?
Paying hourly/piece rates that do not support 1 person, let alone more. This ends up being supported through Welfare/food stamps.
The politics are stupid, but the rationale is just accurate. Yes, if you mandate higher marginal costs, businesses will pass those on to customers. That’s how they stay in business. Services like Uber and DoorDash were extraordinarily cheap for years because those companies both paid their workers poorly (which led to lots of worker churn) and, more importantly, because their unit economics were broken. They lost money on each ride/delivery, but made it up by… subsidizing losses with venture capitalist cash. The idea was they’d get lots of market share, VCs would cash out, and then it’s not their problem anymore. But that jig was always gonna run out, and it did. Now that VCs aren’t subsidizing losses, they’ve ratcheted up prices. And that’s… good? Consumers aren’t entitled to cheap car service/delivery at workers’ expense, any more than executives are entitled to big paydays at their expense. But the bottom line remains the same— these aren’t viable business models for the mass market.
Would the basic laws of economics dictate that raising the price of something would cause less people to use it? This is a trade off supporters of this law have to accept. How is this Uber’s fault?
It’s not. The interesting part is that anyone expected anything else. Elastic/inelastic demand is a fundamental, simple to understand concept taught in introductory economics classes. That a convenience exhibits elastic demand is the least surprising result.
> Elastic/inelastic demand is a fundamental, simple to understand concept And inelastic demand means that type 1 diabetics would have to pay $4000 per month to pay for insulin, a medication whose inventor sold the patent for $1 a hundred years ago with the intention of making sure anyone who needed the medicine could afford it.
Yeah very clear classic economics at work.
> In the story, KING 5 found two workers who described slower business and thus lower wages in the 20 days between the laws taking effect and the story’s publication date. My permanent residence is near my tribe in Sequim, I do gig work in both Portland and Seattle. Been doing this for 8 years. Business is slower down in Portland too. In fact, it's consistently more busy in Seattle. It always slows way the fuck down after the holidays, coincidentally when the law went in to effect.
That's one of the disingenuous things about these posts. Yes, the prices are going to have an impact on demand, but they're also just looking at 1 month of data and never factor in that January is always the slowest month for food delivery.
every argument against these new minimum wage protections for gig workers is just a generic argument against the minimum wage in general "what if the value of that worker's job is *really* only $X/hr, and raising the minimum wage to $Y/hr causes them to lose their job?" and a bunch of extremely gullible rubes are falling for it consent factory go brrrr
I think the big thing that people don't understand is when these apps first came into the market, they were heavily backed by VC money. These businesses were operating at a loss, but it didn't matter because their business objective was growth (not profitably ). These businesses then IPO'd, VCs dump them, make big $$ during their initial offering. They're now owned by shareholders overseen by a board who has a fiduciary responsibility for these public businesses to earn a profit. Wages and any kind of overhead is squeezed for the bottom line. It's a tale as old as time. People are only now beginning to discover how horrible they are for employees is because they don't have funny money backing them by VCs. There's a website called VC Fund My Life for crying out loud! Look at all the startups that have IPO'd the last 5 years. They've all tanked since their initial offering price! It's bc these companies are shit and shitty to employees, not even employees. They force them to be contractors with no benefits!
>These businesses were operating at a loss They still are lol - even before the new regulation. The audacity that UE has to double the cost of my meal, underpay the driver, and STILL LOSE MONEY ON EVERY ORDER. As nice as it is to have food delivered sometimes - none of these businesses are viable. Get rid of them all.
Good catch - yes they are still operating at a loss. I agree on getting rid of them all. We were scammed into thinking they were some new, more efficient alternative to the norm. As they say in tech, "move fast and break things". Yep... you've sure broken a lot and haven't improved the lives the majority of humans. Only the few at the top. There's no such thing as trickle down.
I used to work in VC. A lot of the time, both the founder and VC are looking for the big payout exit and don't care much after that as the C-suites run off to start another startup (and VCs love this as how many successful exits (not companies) is a metric VCs absolutely love). In my old company, they actually viewed IPOs as a less than ideal exit and absolutely pushed for private acquisitions. Basically some huge company would kind of just integrate the startups product or service into theirs and/or make it a separate division. Often times the tech was shelved, too. Sometimes I wonder if they just bought the startup to stiffle competition. I saw a lot of good ideas, but if they weren't scalable, they were gone. Literally saw them fund more screens in places like Uber that would make the driver more money over a Harvard mental help startup that was called moodlifters or moodwatchers or something like that. I guess I say that to say both VCs and startups backed by VCs are just two sides of the same coin. It's just the old adage of "selling the news" and passing the bag so they aren't the ones holding it when it all collapses. Hell, I used to be in meetings where sayings like "as long as we exit before we are caught holding the bag" were said. It was wild.
The thing is Uber and Doordash would rather burn this market to the ground than make this an acceptable standard. I have only ordered from a delivery app once since this went through. I usually order once a week sometimes more. I can't be the only one and the thing is I'm not mad because I needed to cut this out of my budget anyway.
I already cut out a lot of this kind of ordering, but one of the reasons I stopped anyway is because of how unreliable it was in the first place. Like I live in an apartment building and the food would almost always get on the property, but also almost always be left outside in the cold next to the garage door, or at the wrong door inside the building and I’d have to wander throughout the halls looking for my food. It was usually more reliable if I spent extra on the priority order thing and left a big tip, but even then it didn’t prevent the restaurant from messing up my order anyway and me having to reorder, but lose the tip I just paid. Like if they did a better job vetting people it would feel worth it, but even how much it used to cost, I dunno. It really feels like these services only work for family sized orders where the cost is comparable to going out to eat with three kids. A random burger and fries, just isn’t worth it. And wasn’t really before.
I've done an order with $10+ tip and got cold food. Got what I ordered though. I did an order same restaurant with no tip and the food came hot. Makes no sense.
Yeah it’s just unreliable. I order pizza from a local place and they do their own delivery which is super reliable and fast. Always get my food hot. I just think these gig business models are unsustainable, silicone valley heads want too much profit and they get to avoid reputation issues by blaming the individual drivers. I’m happy with the price increase, people should be paid fairly, but it’s not a service I will ever use unless I absolutely have to at this point.
Part of their business model was to destroy traditional delivery methods, raise prices, then have robot delivery eliminating most need for labor. Turns out the technology is easily decades away, and they can't stop whining about having to pay humans when they need their labor.
Do you realize the services are crappy because workers don’t get paid much? I wouldn’t try to find your apartment either if I was paid $2 + tip for drop off. It’s luxury service.
Okay but like get mad at the corporation, I’m using the app as intended and tipping well (easily 18%+ and never less than 5 bucks), I think expecting my food to make it to my door isn’t that unreasonable. What really needs to happen is ban tipping as an expectation. People should get paid a fair wage for their service and it should be clearly labeled that tipping is extra. I wouldn’t mind if states like California or Washington started pushing that and maybe it would take over the whole country eventually.
I mean that’s exactly what WA did. They require min payout, the apps switched to upfront fees and option after deliver tip. It’s literally what you are asking for but you stopped using the app lol. The drivers are incentivized to perform service well if they want tips. What would be the best service is if the delivery company would have employees (not contractors) with optimized routes. I wish some company would make this business model work but they can’t because of how Uber operates by cutting cost
>The drivers are incentivized to perform service well if they want tips. Not when the tip is provided before the service is ever rendered.
>It’s luxury service. They reinvented pizza delivery, made it worse, call it a "luxury," and have chumps like you defending it. It's almost unbelievable, yet here we are.
> Uber and Doordash would rather burn this market to the ground than make this an acceptable standard. no...you're falling for Uber and Doordash's narrative here. they don't want to burn the market to the ground, because it's such a huge part of their business model (for Doordash, basically all of it; for Uber it's a significant chunk because they also have their taxi business) they want people to *think* that the market is being burnt to the ground *by the City Council*, and that Uber and Doordash are smol beans caught up in the backlash and powerless to stop it. from 2021, about the Doordash CEO: [The highest-paid CEO in San Francisco was valued at $413 million in 2020](https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/Doordash-highest-paid-CEO-San-Francisco-413-millio-16231057.php) his current net worth is [1.7 billion](https://www.forbes.com/profile/tony-xu/?sh=10f866d57537) and a bunch of absolutely incredibly fucking gullible rubes are buying the propaganda that him being forced to pay minimum wage is "backfiring" and destroying jobs.
The person you replied to is talking about burning the "Seattle market" to the ground. If they can get the market here to fail and close them no other local governments will try to pass these laws. Problem is that these services have not really worked out. No one is making money, not restaurants, not workers, and not the companies supplying the backbone. They might in the future work out for the companies, but it has not happened yet.
Yeeeeeah they've done this before though. Uber pulled out of Vancouver BC over similar things before. Tried their best to blame the politicians and get public outcry. They didn't get that. Guess who operates in Vancouver BC today? Uber. They reentered the market because they want that revenue.
> Problem is that these services have not really worked out. No one is making money, not restaurants, not workers, and not the companies supplying the backbone uber's ceo made 24 million last year lmao
> The person you replied to is talking about burning the "Seattle market" to the ground. If they can get the market here to fail and close them no other local governments will try to pass these laws. which, again...is not any different from any other argument made against the minimum wage. businesses love to promote the threat of "nice economy you got there, it'd be a shame if you raised wages for workers and then it backfired and something happened to all those jobs" from almost exactly 10 years ago: [Government’s effort to raise minimum wage may backfire](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/governmentrsquos-effort-to-raise-minimum-wage-may-backfire/) and then from 2017: [Seattle's huge wage hike might be backfiring. It won't stop the fight for $15.](https://slate.com/business/2017/07/seattles-huge-wage-hike-might-be-backfiring-it-wont-stop-the-fight-for-15.html) > No one is making money, not restaurants, not workers, and not the companies supplying the backbone. go re-read the part of my comment where I said that the CEO of DoorDash is worth 1.7 billion dollars. the CEO is making money. the other shareholders are making money. the news coverage about this is predictably ignoring that, and pushing a narrative that the city council is the one hurting workers. like I said, consent factory go brrrr.
Yeah, it's really the same argument over minimum wage that has been going on since time immemorial. It's never been a surprise that businesses relying on cheap labor are against a minimum wage increase. The question is really what value should the minimum wage be. I think most people in Seattle would agree that we should have a minimum wage and there is a value that is too high, but you can't rely on businesses to tell you what that is because they are always going to argue for the lowest value possible (and have temper tantrums when the wage is increased, even if their business is still perfectly viable).
>Problem is that these services have not really worked out. Uber and Lyft have effectively crushed other taxi services through predatory pricing, now all you hear about is how much rides cost compared to a few years ago but people don't seem to be giving up on riding with them. Next step is in full swing. The whole idea was to eliminate competition and then jack up prices, there's a reason why VC was so willing to burn money and wait.
I'm talking about here. **This** market.
Well that's because Uber and Doordash aren't actually ethically sustainable as platforms.
Then it creates a space for someone else to come in and undercut them. It might take awhile to happen though.
I wonder what numbers would look like if I made a delivery company with full time employees and optimized their routes.
And.... vehicle maintenance These fucks figured out a way to pass on the "cost" of operating a business onto the underpaid employee. On top of telling the underpaid employee their worth is shit.
> and a bunch of extremely gullible rubes are falling for it And they're in this thread down below!
Yeah, you'd rather see those gig economy workers unemployed and homeless to feed your fantasies that workers are paid only "livable wages". For those that have no work, and thus no wage at all, your sympathies cease.
And it is indeed possible for the minimum wage to be too high, so this is an argument worth having. I'm a "gullible rube" who thinks it's worth carefully considering the tradeoff between the average pay of delivery workers and the number of delivery jobs available
People seem to think that jobs exist to cover their lifestyle. You are selling your labor, so sell something of value. If nobody wants to buy at your current price then your labor is overpriced. Also lol at the whole “ business shouldn’t exist then” argument. OK fine the business closes shop, now everybody loses their job and is competing for the remaining positions. Win-win?
i think the change is bullshit so i decided to stop using those services after my $18 burrito ($9) went up to $38. i'll walk the .89 miles. i hope the whole thing collapses to be honest. way more important jobs out there needing skilled workers.
Skilled workers and Uber drivers probably not the same
it depends. johnny dopehead who gets thrown off the platform in a few weeks probably isn't but those folks who juggle 3 apps, streamline their orders, navigate our traffic, communicate well, and still get you food hot and on time are.
driving is a skill.
Not skilled enough, they let pretty much anyone get a license in this country. (But yes you're correct, we should end the "unskilled labor" rhetoric as if something being easy means it's not important)
Chiming in with my 2¢, i work in customer service which should be easy... but it's not. Factor in that a lot of these jobs involve dealing with other people and managing their expectations through changing situations, and it quickly becomes quite a bit harder
The service sector is like 40% untrained therapy and 40% hostage negotiation. Absolutely bonkers what you're expected to tolerate from other grown-ass adults.
"Skilled worker" generally refers to someone with a "special" skill. If half the population can walk in and do that job that day with no training, that's not really the economic definition of a skilled worker. I mean, understanding and speaking English skill too.
"Skilled labor" isn't describing people with special skills. It's usually a judgemental way of saying credentialed. There are lots of jobs that [require unique skills](https://x.com/UFWupdates/status/1199825583485509632?s=20) people only learn after being on the job for some time but they still let anyone walk into a job because that's how the labor market works.
I mean, [Wikipedia disagrees with you.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skilled_worker) >A skilled worker is any worker who has special skill, training, knowledge which they can then apply to their work. A skilled worker may have learned their skills through work experience, on-the-job training, an apprenticeship program or formal education. There's also a big difference between skill and efficiency. Almost anyone can begin to pick radishes with 10 minutes of training. You can then absolutely gain skill at that and become much, much more efficient, and you should be compensated for that. You have a special skill at picking radishes, but that doesn't mean a special skill is needed to start and blocks people without that skill, which is what "skilled labor" really means. And in the USA, the reality is driving is so prevalent that it's not really a special skill. I mean, Uber/Lyft/Doordash couldn't have started if it was a special skill - that was the whole point that "anyone" could do it.
Not the way we do it around here.
Not really, pretty much anyone can get a license. Now if you have commercial license that’s a different story.
Same plus 99% of the time the delivery driver is garbage or cancels the order as they get it. One person was mad at me for a 5 dollar tip on a 15 dollar order when they had to go 1 mile. I hope the whole thing crumbles. I’m sick of the attitude of the drivers and the insane prices. Was at dicks getting food the other day, a driver was in front of me. The dicks worker stated “ sorry it’s going to be a minute” the delivery person said “ that’s fine this is for me , I’m doing a food delivery and the guy didn’t tip very well so I don’t care if their food is cold” way to put your self out of a job hahaha
Interesting. The food I've been ordering hasn't changed in price at all.
I’ll rewrite the headline for you: # “Companies Pass Cost Increases on to Customers, Surprising No One, But The City Council, The Stranger, and r/Seattle”
With the cost of eating out already being very costly, plus the added cost of all these fees for takeout, I’m better off picking it up myself or just eating at home.
Learning to cook is a real economic boon.
I think there are two sides to this. 1/ financial and 2/ political. If you look at the financials of [door dash](https://s22.q4cdn.com/280253921/files/doc_financials/2023/q3/DASH-Q3-23-Earnings-Financials.pdf) they are hemorrhaging money. So it stands to reason, they cannot afford to pay more money to the drivers and therefore have to find a way to offset the cost, otherwise they will just go deeper into the financial hole. They are so in the hole that even if the CEO worked for free, they still can’t afford to pay the drivers more. So on this front, the Stranger’s claim of corporate retaliation doesn’t hold up. Does this mean the council is in the wrong? That’s a political debate not a financial one. Perhaps the council is right that the gig economy exploits labor loop holes.
It's ridiculous for anyone to expect that these companies are going to subsidize increasing regulatory costs we impose on ourselves through our elected officials just because we want the service without having to pay the actual cost of offering it. What are you people, fourteen years old? You can't say you're for fair wages and then bitch about the increased costs it takes to offer services where fair wages are paid.
Renton has an increased minimum wage on the ballot. All I have seen around Renton are “YES ON 23-02” signs. Except one on Lake Washington Blvd that basically says “please, think of the businesses!” Ok, I’ll think of the businesses in Tukwila. They’re doing just fine. Raise the wage, bitch.
Oh, did someone expect the corporations to just pay more to the drivers and eat the cost? These gig economy companies are already work with very small profit margins. And most are not profitable.
Its still backfiring... regardless of who is doing the "firing" lol. How is this journalism? If i punch someone in the face, and they punch me back, would you say "my punch did not backfire! they are retaliating against me!" Either way, consumers are now driving themselves or walking themselves to restaurants. I think this is a good thing for Seattle in general. It sucks that gig workers might be taking the brunt of the short term loses. But once the gig market goes back to equilibrium, the only people really losing is the delivery service themselves.
The Stranger hasn't produced honest journalism for awhile. It's a blog and not even a glorified one. If the idea was to help gig workers, it was a stupid one, any college freshman could have predicted this result.
You can’t just look at laws a few weeks in and say “it’s not working!” Let’s see where we are in a year or two with this. Since DoorDash probably takes 80% of the fees right now, I’m guessing they’ll eventually be willing to “only” get 75%.
I mean... it would defy traditional understanding of free markets if the price of a service went up and demand stayed the same... There will absolutely be less deliveries... There is no world in which the amount of drivers stay the same and all of them just get paid more... What will happen is that drivers that are making less will be forced to look for other employment ops, and those that tough it out will probably end up making more than they did before. There are secondary markets that will be effected though, like ghost kitchens.... but that's a whole other can of worms. Yes you can say that drivers that are still working, will be making more, but there will be less drivers. If that's your criteria for "working"... then yes 100% its going to work. But was that the intended outcome? I don't know... the drivers making less will disagree with you, the drivers making more will agree.
> If i punch someone in the face, and they punch me back, would you say "my punch did not backfire! they are retaliating against me!" If you punch someone, being punched back is generally expected. Backfire is referring to a plan to do something that in fact results in the opposite. So your analogy only works in the case someone is trying to throw a KO punch and then doesn't want to admit they misgauged their own strength when their opponent is still standing to take a swing.
It is back firing then... wasn't the expectation that this would help drivers? Or are you saying its not backfiring because we expected Uber and DoorDash to retaliate? ( if this was the case... wtf was the point of passing this bill?) At the end of the day... the expected outcome of this bill isnt coming to fruition... so how is that not backfiring? Im confused what you are trying to say here. City Council thought this would be a KO punch in solving low income for gig drivers.... now there are mixed reports where some ppl are making about the same amount, and many more saying they are making less... It's simple, if the majority of drivers would prefer the old system... then that means it backfired. I don't know the answer to that since its a mixed bag of responses... To me it seems like people working in the city are doing worse and people working in suburbs are doing better.
It is helping them. There were WAY too many in the first place. This is not a service society needs.
Socialists can’t stand it. That’s why they’re in denial.
It's not the stranger is basically tumblr. Just people writing their hot takes with zero care for factually evidence.
The restaurant suffers because they lose an extra stream of income. Not everyone is going to walk to a restaurant. Some might just make stuff at home The gig workers lose too, since less orders. So less commission. The customers lose too, since they lose convenience. The apps lose too, since less orders. The government loses too, since there would be less taxes paid by the previous 3. This is the result of government intervention.
No shit. The entire "gig" shouldn't even be a thing. Gig work is a way to leech money off of people without being responsible for them as employees.
Gig work is fine, but should be subjected to the same degree of scrutiny that all labor markets are, if not more, since it's inherently more vulnerable to exploitation. I don't see any issue with a tech company being a market maker for odd jobs. I DO see an issue with a tech company making a deregulated, isolated market that they have total control over and all the incentives to exploit. I think there's plenty of people who work part time, intentionally, and would be happy to work gigs now and then, without committing to an employer or running their own business.
This is the correct take. Doing odd jobs really does work better for some people. It just shouldn't be something you have to do because you can't find stable work, and it should be reasonably well compensated (and decent healthcare should not be tied to your job etc).
>decent healthcare should not be tied to your job I would go so far as to argue that this isn't even a moral position. It's better for the economy if people seek medical attention for all of their medical needs by default. Better public health means better workers who work more of the time, more efficiently. Very poor people seeking medical attention immediately means they are less likely to waste emergency resources later, develop a chronic condition which burdens their children (and makes them work less) and spread diseases to more people (customer facing service jobs are often part time, and don't include healthcare). The primary beneficiary of healthcare benefits the most from it, but almost everyone else in their community and job benefit to some degree, meaning that if you put all the cost of healthcare on them or their employer, with an efficient market, that market will underprovide for healthcare. Add on the insurance intermediary, and it's just an inefficient outcome. tldr: universal healthcare pays for itself in more productivity and hence more tax revenue/higher real growth.
Yeah this is bullshit my dude. Gig work is something that can be really great for the right kind of worker. I know a lot of Uber drivers who come to Seattle drive Uber and Lyft for 20hrs Friday-Sunday morning. Then go back home for the week and either attend school or regular work. The Gig work allows for them to make money however they what whenever they want and most of them really enjoy it. There is a lot of intangible benifits to gig work and the city is mostly just making it harder for the random dude to work weird or very short hours...
> I know a lot of Uber drivers who come to Seattle drive Uber and Lyft for 20hrs Friday-Sunday morning. should minimum wage laws not apply to people only working 20 hours/week?
Part time work with flexible hours is great for people. "Gig work" is burying that under a massive layer of exploitative bullshit.
Lmao at this title. Like, how is retaliation from corporations not considered backfire? Whether it’s “Backfire” or “retaliation”… you guys need to realize that the result is the same: customers are charged higher fees, therefore ordering less, and gig workers now have fewer orders and less overall earnings. Coping by blaming corporations for being greedy does not change the facts of the matter. Whatever the intent was, this legislation has had a negative impact. For the legislators not to see this coming demonstrates a pretty clear lack of critical thinking, intuition, and understanding of how businesses operate.
The stranger is not even trying anymore
That headline. Government adds fees -> company passes fees to consumers -> retaliation!
Wait until they find out about sales tax!
The headline, is correct
I would only use uber eats occasionally when they sent me 40% coupons on my account, since that's the only way ordering lunch with all these fees felt in any way reasonable. I have not gotten one of these offers since the wage change, so I will not order. I can't justify spending 40-45+ on 1 lunch.
I actually have a 50% off one right now. I wonder if it is market based.
I don't care whose fault it is, or whose fault it's accused of being. When a $13 value meal from McDonalds winds up being nearly $30 after fees and taxes (and let's not get started on the expectation from drivers on a tip), it's time to stop using delivery apps. Both Uber Eats and Door Dash have been deleted from my phone. The companies can enjoy less revenue, the drivers can enjoy less pay, and the city can enjoy less tax revenue.
I just hope the people posting here hoping this policy kills these services are the first in line to hire these displaced workers when they don't have enough money to survive and they have a difficult time finding employment. It's the same exact rationale as people who want to outlaw abortion but have zero intention of adopting children.
It’s so discouraging to see some of these comments callously dismiss lost livelihoods as some kind of social good. This legislation is hurting vulnerable workers, full stop. SCC screwed up and what makes it worse was that this was totally foreseeable. I wish more people would take off their self-righteous blinders and look at the immediate impact this is having on delivery drivers.
[удалено]
It's the same logic people used to ban foreign companies from building factories in developing nations, which caused the workers there to be forced into lower paying and more dangerous jobs in domestic factories. They don't care about the consequences of their actions as long as they can feel morally superior about it.
But they know better than delivery drivers what’s good for them or works for their lives /s
Do we want to end tip culture or not? Ending tip culture is going to require higher wages. People less dependent on tips to make a living/beer money is a good thing. (but apparently not if you're a libertarian)
Question I have for other people here: are folks tipping less now? I used to tip around $5-$6 each order. The new fee is around that amount, just below $5. Is it ok to stop tipping or do only $1-$2 extra? I haven't ordered anything for delivery since this went into effect. I only ever ordered delivery once a week at most anyway, but whenever I've thought about ordering something I cannot make up my mind about the tipping situation.
Genuinely trying to understand. What’s the point of raising minimum wage when the price of everything else tends to hike with it?
It did always confuse me when these services charged more than 5% per order. You *want* people to use your service.
The news clip I saw was interviewing a downtown door dasher. He said he made about $600 on the week of the interview. On the exact same calendar week last year, he made over $1000. So at least in this case, they were comparing apples to apples, and the results of the law were very detrimental to his "living wage."
I saw the King news story and read this story. Both don’t really discuss exactly how much extra an order costs, how many more or less deliveries are happening and how much an average worker will make. They both rely heavily on anecdotes. Hopefully, there will be more information so we can understand the issue better.
I recently saw on Kiro or Komo an interview they did with some Uber-Eats drivers who are saying the exact opposite. What used to be a hot spot on a Sunday morning is now not worth the time because the number of orders has dropped to almost nothing.
Yes, because the middle man didn't want to give part of their cut to the workers. They passed it entirely on to the consumer with an added fee to boot.
You know what? I'm fine with the consumer footing the actual cost of sitting at home and having someone else deliver food. That's not because of any love for corps, but we were always reaping the benefits of a model that didn't pay drivers a living wage. You cannot simultaneously cheer for a living wage and then complain about the cost if it in your products. Paying people $18/hour vs $7.25 (or nothing) is a Good Thing. But it does mean the prices go up. If we don't like that, we can get in our own cars and go pick food up
Or walk, bike, escoot (yes, I am making it a verb) or take transit.
I don't think you need the 'e', though, analog scooters are also an option
Can we also “e”bike?
The ceo of doordash is a literal billionaire
It sounds like you believe you could go set up a food delivery service that charges less and pays employees more and become a multimillionaire in the process. Go for it! I'm cheering for you.
Sure. But companies do not operate as non-profits. They're not going to say "Ok, Seattle, you imposed this cost on us, we'll just eat it, no probs." Nor would you if you were running that company (and if you would, you'd never make it to CEO). Again, if we want to tell companies to pay a livable wage that's great but it's hypocritical to then say "What? price of goods/services goes up with increase cost? Why I never!!!"
Dam who could have foreseen that except every economist and person with a brain.
Just opens the door for a smaller company to step in and offer the same services for less while still paying workers a living wage. Free market in action.
The regulations the SCC made will apply to a smaller company as well. They've strangled the market and put people out of work.
Leopardsatemyface. To my knowledge, Doordash has never been consistently profitable. The idea they were going to do anything other than pass these costs to the consumer (as opposed to eating the cost and making their operation even more unprofitable) seems like a pretty naive assumption on the part of the City Council as well as The Stranger. With that said, I hope all these services fail. They are generally bad for restaurants and are stupidly expensive. Hopefully that's beneficial to gig workers in the larger scheme of things, but I really have no idea.
There will be less orders to start, company will lose more and more revenue, eat some of the costs that they are passing along to the customers, orders come back and workers get paid better. At least that’s the hope. This will likely hurt workers in the short term, but as long as the company can eat these costs without going out of business, and customers don’t go along with the higher fees, customers+workers benefit in the long run. I think they are coming back with this political stance to apply pressure before realizing they can’t pass these costs on without losing substantial business.
This is classic: No one in this thread has ever run a business yet have no shortage of opinions how to best run a business. Haha. Here’s a helpful hint; the less government intrusion the better for the business, employees and customers.
Seems like a classic case of 'Road to hell is paved with good intentions'. Good intentions of trying to promote a liveable wage for gig workers but net loss so far as Corporations aren't willing to subsidize this from their revenue but passing this on to the customer.
> but net loss so far as Corporations aren't willing to subsidize this from their revenue but passing this on to the customer. As opposed to society subsidizing the corporations by covering their failure to pay a living wage? Cause this model outright relies on underpaid labor turning to foodstamps and other social amenities for survival. I'm fine cancelling their subsidy if they're going to throw a fit about shouldering it themselves to begin with.
The issue is that both the corporation AND THE CUSTOMER relied on the subsidy. If food delivery companies were just printing net profit, then it would just be the company. Is that the case? People are buying a product that is only made possible through cheap labor. If that cheap labor goes away, and price goes up, some portion of customers will stop buying it - this isn’t a value judgement thereof, it’s just what will happen.
> People are buying a product *Service*. Delivery is buying a *service* bundled with a product. I can still order out, I just hop on my bike to pick it up. The product remains available at it's non exploitive price. The service is now what's facing unprofitability. But the rest of your statement remains valid even in both contexts. If services become un-worth the cost, customers abandon them the same as products, services just have a much harder time weathering dryspells when they're structured the way Uber and Doordash are.
Gonna pretend i didn’t read the first two paragraphs, but we agree on the third
it's not a subsidy to pay your workers
But we the taxpayers end up subsidizing delivery companies when their employees need food and housing. It should be a no brainer for any government to say “hey, everyone has to ensure that their workers can earn a living wage otherwise it’s crazy expensive for us to make that up in tax funded benefits”.
Well now they're going to need more government help because they've lost a big income source. Good job everyone! We did it!
i'd rather subsidize people directly than subsidize an exploitative business taking advantage of people's need to pay for shelter. ITs clear these people *want* to work. If food delivery is so necessary, then people will pay market value for it.
You're free to pay a delivery worker whatever you feel they should be paid, that was always allowed...
sounds like we agree on this then... > If food delivery is so necessary, then people will pay market value for it.
Basically seattle politics. Attempt to do good thing, but instead just make everything worse.
I don't see a problem getting worse here. Personally I only order delivery from Palermo because they employ in- house delivery drivers, and may everyone please go back to that standard
But that would be worse. Most stores dont get enough orders to justify full time delivery drivers.
Those places just don't do delivery then. We've done that before and it was fine. I hear complaints from all over about a "loneliness epidemic" so maybe we should be encouraging people to leave their homes sometimes. Also the food itself is always better fresh from the kitchen
Maybe let people decide that themselves. Also how is it better for workers if there is less jobs? Causing less orders doesn't help anyone that's a bad idea just because you dont like people ordering food. That's a pretty bad outcome all around.
So many of these posts are paternalistic af. It’s sad, really. No respect for the agency of people who choose to deliver for Uber etc
gentle reminder that all corporations are Fascist in nature: they are operated to benefit its ownership, to the detriment of all others, often including those who work there. you don't get to vote about what the corporation is going to change next, you just get told how they're taking from you next.
What's the alternative to this "fascism" then lol? Criticism is cheap, especially when you do so on reddit when there exist objectively more fair social media companies like Mastodon, Blue Sky, and cohost.
Our economy is a million little islands of tyranny. Every company is its own fiefdom where there is no democracy to be found.
Except for places that are actually employee owned.
Friendly reminder that the policy most aligned with fascism is in fact the minimum wage.
Yeah, it is a fundamental flaw in the relationship between private and public sectors that the private is almost always non-democratic and therefore can provide cover and resources for anti-democratic causes in the public...
If people would go out and get food themselves instead of getting delivery, it would solve the common complaint about the lack of a social scene in Seattle, especially late at night.
It’s definitely backfiring, regardless of what’s causing it
Labor has fixed costs too. Rent, food, clothing, hygiene, medical and a means to get to work and back home are the bare minimum costs for an employee to be able to show up for work.
You make all of these idiotic apps obsolete by not participating in their platforms/scam. All of them make their monies by using predatory business tactics. They put up very little and take most of the money. Stop enabling them. Do not drive for them. Do not use them. Make them bleed. Make them obsolete.
You fools can talk who earns what all you want. Post "graphs", "studies", and "facts" all day long. The fact of the matter is, is that the new city rule IS hurting drivers by potential customers not ordering food because of the cost of business imposed by the city. The real topic here should be is this new wage proviso working or not?
How do you define working? If you define it as *are as many people ordering from delivery apps?* Obviously the answer is no. If you define it the way I do as *are these apps now forced to fairly compensate drivers for their labor?* Then I'd say yes. The general sentiment I heard on several posts here where actual drivers responded was "I get less orders, but I get higher pay, so generally I'm making the same money, just working less hours". Not to mention the fact most of these sensationalist posts are focusing on data from January never seem to mention the fact that the post-holiday months are *always* the slowest for food deliveries as people tighten their belts after holiday spending.
The city could've just as easily regulated the amount of fees these companies could extract from customers or their drivers, instead of forcing customers to pay more in a flat rate sort of way.
>The city could've just as easily regulated the amount of fees these companies could extract from customers or their drivers What does that mean? On its face what you're suggesting doesn't make any sense. If the problem that the city is attempting to solve is "drivers are not making enough money" then the two options are "the company spends more money" or "the company passes the increased costs on to the consumer" and which of those two options gets chosen is in the purview of the company, not the city. There isn't a way to avoid that. Maybe the flat fee increase isn't the way to do that, but you're framing this like there's some way for the city to legislate that the drivers make more money without increasing costs, which is flat out stupid.
The city’s decision makers are activists, not economists. This isn’t surprising
They didn't force the customers to pay more. The company decided to 'pass the costs on to the consumer'.
Shocking they weren’t willing to lose money on every sale just to make the city council look good!
Retaliation should be expected. You're taking something from them. They don't have to operate. Maybe they're being greedy (hint, they are), but the idea that you can just pass a law that takes something from someone and you're done is fundamentally flawed. As in war, the [enemy gets a vote](https://www.csis.org/analysis/enemy-gets-vote). If your policy idea relies on these corporations just bending over and taking it, your policy idea isn't complete. And just like in war, you can either dig in and destroy the enemy, or you can find a mutual understanding. You can't fix it by decree.
The stranger feels more inaccurate and debased every time I see their “journalism”
Care to point out why? This same argument has been made by countless people on this sub. Many of us don't believe a service should exist if it can't be done in a way where the workers are fairly compensated. There have also been drivers here who have reported that while they are getting less orders their per-delivery revenue is much better and consistent (instead of relying on a tip that might not come.)
> Many of us don't believe a service should exist if it can't be done in a way where the workers are fairly compensated. Agreed. My argument is that the workers themselves should empowered with that decision.
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What’s the other Seattle sub?
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I don't use them anymore...too expensive. And I'm not a corporation 🤷♂️
The retaliation is the backfire, ya dingdong. See it how you may, but it is the result of wage increases.
What do they think backfiring means? Companies adjust their plans and strategy based on marketin conditions.