Have you ever order some food from a restaurant to be delivered? Now a days you don't have to order from a finer Restaurant. It could be from McD's or the little mom and pops taco Restaurant around the corner.
User of these services have no idea how this system works. All they know is that in most cases there would be a delivery fee. For The restaurant which people definedly don't know, there will a 20-30% fee right off the top for having the gigi company give the job to a car. But who pays the driver?
When you seat at a table in a restaurant and a waiter takes your order and brings it back when ready is entittled to at least 17% if the waiter did everything right. No Most people understand the work of the waiter and that they don't get not even the minimum will give 20% or even more at times. If you don't like the food because you ordered it and never had it before, the waiter does not cooks it. He should still gets his tip since the restaurant does not even pay half of the minimum wage in most cases. He/she (waiter)needed no gas, repairs, traffic tickets to pay and and did not have to sometimes risk their lives while they keep a clean diver's license to walk a few pces and gives you the food. People don't want to know that. They think that Postmate or Uber, Dash, etc. pays the driver good money and they don't even need tipping.
Now the customer does not even have to face the driver, the customer can just ask to leave it by the door. Customer never sees the driver and why would they feel bad if they don't tip?
Why should they tip? They should tip because that is why it keeps the driver coming back to serve you. The gig comapny who does not have drivers nor many employees because they even use the drivers to solve the problems of other drivers to save on money. So you get yourself a good computer and pay someone to built the applications to get tthe calls and assign the drivers to the deliveries. Google will let them know where the driver's are. and will tell the driver where to go. Most drivers will pay data fees on that. Now the owner sit down and wait for the 30% come in from the restaurant and 15% for the customer~~ and that is it!
What about the gig driver? He/she has to pay for the gas, repairs, tickets, data, Insurance and when traffic is bad guess who faces the customer? Who will be punished? The driver alone.
The gig company will pay the driver a portion of the 15% they charge the customer. But there is a cap to that. For instance most gig driver's get $2.90-$9.00 (rare) for the average gig, $2, which is unfair when compare to aa waiter with no expenses. A server brings a tab of $95.00 for food, dessert, etc. The gig driver for the same thing if the food was ready when he went to pick up and the customer lives 2 or 3 miles away...$2.00 would be the average. tip Yes some will pay more than $2 but others that asked that it be left outside will give you nothing. If the driver drove to get the pick up and spent his gas. Pick up and sometimes if the food is not ready the driver waits which makes him loose the rhythim of timimng of the computer as it assigns drivers to a job and to another job next to that job.
No the customer is not going to make up for it with a tip because the customer does not know how the system works. If late is the driver's fault. He/she will pay. Doesn't mean driver's don't screw up but when they do they will pay with their money for it.
Why people out there would work for nothing? That is what they used to ask to the ladies working behind sewing machines for pennies a day.
If there is a need there will be a human desperate enough to fill it.
What does the Gig driver gets: Shitty pay but also gets no boss most of the time telling him what to do (If a dispatcher has it in for him/her becausse he has been refusing orders, he will no work for a while).
He gets to drive his car and be afraid he is going to scratch someone's car and will have his insurance go up. Then go and top it off Mayor DiBlasio in NYC, . Well he has filled the streets of NYC particulalrly places with lots of trees, when they can hide cams. You doing 40 on hwy, drops to 30 the cam is there, then to 35 and 200 ft to 25 and thee were cams waiting to get him in one of those , fair? DiBlazzio does not care because he needs money. From whom is he getting the money? Profesional driverswho have to drive up and down the Streets. There are rules to mke sure the sytem works in a fair way. And there rules to make sure you get as much as you can from whomever. WHo pays the ticket? The gig driver. I heard of a drivver who gets 10 tickets for $50 each.
If you sat 4 hours in a car getting off to get food at the restaurant and maybe be drop off at the customer's door and you get for those 4 hours $25 lets say, you willl need the tip to get you out of the whole. With a bad back would you want to work 4 hrs so you go down to 2 (they tell you you work as many hours you want, not so). Now you might want to work 8 hrs but the business is not there at all hours every day. How about on slow days? You drive around where you know customer restaurant are in case something comes in and you are the first one to get it, but you will blow a lot of gas. Or stop somewhere and read the paper. Oh but the call comes but is taking you a little too long to get to the restaurant so another beats you to it and you are at the restaurant and you have no order.
The reporting is been done by Adam Gonzalez, publisher and has been working on it for the last few months and spoken to Gig workers from Dash,Uber and Postmate (which is now own by Uber).
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In 2020, Willy Solis became a voice for thousands of gig workers at Target-owned Shipt, leading calls for better treatment and pay during the pandemic and beyond. |
How The Pandemic Turned An Introvert Into A Voice For Gig Workers
SHANNON BOND
NPR
Willy Solis never saw himself as an activist.
"I'm an introvert, extreme introvert," he said. "That's my nature."
But 2020 changed that — like so many other things.
The coronavirus pandemic drove many people to recognize gig work as "essential" for the first time, but the crisis also revealed the stark disparities between jobs that come with security and benefits and gig work, which does not.
And Solis, the introvert, became a voice for thousands of gig workers, leading calls for better treatment and wages. He organized walkouts and protests over pay and safety concerns at Shipt, the grocery delivery app owned by Target. He also joined the Gig Workers Collective, a group pushing for better treatment of workers across apps, including Instacart and Lyft.
No one was more surprised by this newfound activism than Solis himself.
"It's taken me to a place where I never thought that I'd be," he said.
The 42-year-old resident of Denton, Texas, delivers for Shipt and other apps. While he had some frustrations with gig work before the pandemic, he enjoyed the flexibility it promised and the opportunity to control his own time.
But then in January, Shipt started changing the way it calculates pay for many of the hundreds of thousands of workers who pluck items off the shelves of stores like Target and Kroger and deliver them to customers' homes.
Solis had been commiserating with fellow workers — whom Shipt calls "shoppers" — for months. But that pay change pushed him over the edge.
"In a two-week period, I talked to over 600 shoppers," he said. "And then next thing I know, I'm finding myself talking to national media."
When the pandemic hit just a few weeks later, it made everything worse. Shipt shoppers struggled to get protective equipment, like masks and gloves.
Solis was on his phone from morning to night, connecting with other workers in Facebook groups and messaging apps. Soon he was in touch with thousands of people.
The first walkout came in April. Shoppers refused to accept orders. They did it again in May, July and October. A few also protested outside Target's headquarters in Minneapolis and Shipt's main office in Birmingham, Ala.
Organizing is now a huge part of Solis' life. While sitting in his car waiting for orders to show up on the different apps he works for, he responds to tweets and Facebook messages, checking in with fellow shoppers.
This summer, he was laid up with COVID-19. Still, he kept going — talking to reporters and keeping tabs on the organizing work from his sickbed.
"I know that that sounds crazy," he said.
His efforts have forced change. After Solis and fellow activists raised repeated complaints, Shipt acknowledged in August that some workers were not getting the tipscustomers paid.
The company said it was "a system glitch that caused a very small number of tips from being transferred to shoppers." It paid the missing tips and added an extra $5 for every affected shopper.
Shipt said workers' feedback is important to the company. "We encourage shoppers to speak freely to Shipt about their shopper experience through multiple feedback channels we offer. We also have teams dedicated to hearing, logging and sharing shopper feedback we receive among the company," spokeswoman Danielle Schumann told NPR in a statement.
The company says the new pay model did not change shoppers' average pay. A studyby MIT researchers reached the same conclusion, but found pay varies widely, with 41% of workers in its survey earning less under Shipt's new system.
Solis still thinks the pay is too low. And, he says, the work is hard. He waits a long time to get orders, since so many people affected by the pandemic have signed up for gig work to make ends meet.
"The reality is that I could go out and find another job and bring myself up into a better financial situation," he said. But he feels he is able to speak out, while others cannot take that risk. "I decided to go ahead and stick it out as long as I possibly can."
Solis doesn't want to relive his battle with the virus or spread it to others. So he uses a lot of disinfecting wipes and hand sanitizer — more than the 6 ounces a month that Shipt supplies. (The company provides free reusable masks, wipes and hand sanitizer to workers who say they want it. It also makes free masks and gloves available at Target stores.) And he works just enough hours to cover his bills. Christmas with his four kids was a low-key affair this year.
Solis says the trade-offs are worth it. He found his voice.
"It's beyond one person and one family," he said. "My story is everybody's story. And there's thousands of people that I speak for."
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