2y ago

Uber, DoorDash and Grubhub sue New York City over $18 minimum-wage law

www.engadget.com Uber, DoorDash and Grubhub sue New York City over $18 minimum-wage law | Engadget

Uber, DoorDash and Grubhub are suing for an injunction to stop New York City's new $18 minimum wage law for food delivery app workers..

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2y ago

Uber, DoorDash and Grubhub sue New York City over $18 minimum-wage law

www.engadget.com /uber-doordash-and-grubhub-sue-new-york-city-over-18-minimum-wage-law-103531552.html

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58 comments

This tells you all you need to know. Those companies need to be shut down.
- I prefer they be made to suffer the indignity of paying workers a fair wage.
- They need to be out competed with less predatory offerings.
  Which is about to become trivially possible at a fraction of their startup costs over the next few years.
  I cannot recommend enough to people worried about the future of AI on economics to read the essay "The Nature of the Firm" from the 30s and think about what happens when AI drives transactional costs to zero.
  The enshittification of corporations right now is like the black plague preceding the Renaissance.
  
  It's hard to ethically compete with those who break the law.
  
  what happens when AI drives transactional costs to zero.
  Oh, oh, I know this one - record profits and C-suite bonuses!
- I get the exact opposite from this. Those companies should be given special exception due to the nature of the work.
  Minimum wage should only apply to jobs you actually have to clock in and work a schedule to perform.
  
  Are you an idiot?

Lol, I mean it really says something about gig economy when concepts such as "minimum wage" threaten to flat out kill their industry
- If your business can't afford to pay its workers a living wage without going bust-- then it deserves to go bust.

But if they get the $18/hr, there's no need to tip, right? Right?
- Tipping culture needs to end anyway. Pay the employees properly.
  
  My social anxiety increased to an all time high when I visited the US. The pressure to tip is real.
  
  The problem is that those receiving the tips will continue to expect them no matter how high their wage is. Some would even argue that they get overall lower income if the increase in base wage eliminates tipping.
  
  Tipped employees make WAY more than minimum wage
  My 18 year old with her first job made $130 in 4 hours this week. Minimum wage will never keep up with tipped wages, which is the exact reason that people choose tipped jobs.
- It's a step forward at least. Tipping culture is terrible but think what good press one of these apps would get with "tips included in delivery fee" or whatever perfect marketing slogan they can come up with.

Can’t afford the new minimum wage, but they can afford the lawyers and the lawsuit.
- Lawsuit is a one time expense, paying fair wages would cost them forever
- It is not that they can't afford, they will rise the prices and because of that they will lose lots of customers, so they will contract and as result the absolute amount of profits will be reduced.

My sincere hope is for NY to respond with two words: "get fucked"

“Fair wages‽ We’ll fight this by spending hundreds of millions on a sure-to-fail legal defense of worker exploitation rather than spending far less money by paying our employees fairly!”
— Capitalists

"But then our customers are going to eat more service fees because our shareholders can't take the L"

It is sounds almost like a dystopian utopia. And it comes to prove that having such big and influential corporations is only good for their shareholders.
I think the whole subscription model get its birth from the constant desire of those corps to grow infinitely, while leaving the normal people to truly struggle to meet their ends with ever growing expenses.
- This is the definition of late stage capitalism. Growth cannot be infinite, but capitalism demands infinite growth unless restrained or check put in place. Ergo, workers are resources to be exploited to the utmost limits of what is possible. Not moral, possible.
  If they have to live on foodstamps good that means you are not overpaying. Clearly the model works because they haven't gone elsewhere yet. /s
  
  Yes, in lights of the housing crisis, and the double digit inflation, I have the feeling that all of them exist so that you can't afford to really retire early and stuck you in the job market for an eternity, exactly how big corps want you to be. So we are modern day slaves, who don't own anything (soon even our cars would be on a subscription), our houses are already on this mode.

$18 an hour in expensive as hell New York City and they have the nerve to sue. That’s bold.

Just think of it as a “service fee”.

$18/hour is just barely a living wage in NYC. Actual living wage for an adult with 0 children in NYC is about $25.50/hour:
https://livingwage.mit.edu/counties/36061
On top of that you have the challenges specific to these jobs. If you’re on bike, that’s hard work and limits the hours you can do without risking injury. If you’re driving (which is maybe practical in outer boroughs) you’re shouldering all the costs of the vehicle working for a delivery app. Either way that’s way too little after taxes per month, even at $18/hr.

I am all for "gig apps" being required to pay minimum wage.
But the minimum wage in New York is $15 as far as I can tell. Why are delivery apps seemingly being required to pay a different minimum wage? I am not aware of any other case where the minimum wage depends on the profession.
I find this kind of policy very troubling. Would anyone be ok with accountants having a $25 minimum wage and teachers having $17 minimum wage?
- My guess is it's to offset the lack of other benefits-- health care being a huge one-- that you lose when you sign up to be a gig worker, not a full-time worker.
  And we already have different minimum wages for at least one industry: servers at restaurants. The economy isn't going to collapse if we put gig workers in their own category, too.
- The article answers your question.
  Unlike most jobs, contract jobs are taxed more and require the worker to pay the out of pocket to operate. In the case of food delivery workers, this means the gas or electricity to run their vehicle and the maintenance costs for said vehicle.

That dam government getting in the way of them making nice extra fat profits! They're paying them a pittance, is that not enough for them 🙄
- I honestly think that the delivery boys do not exists on salary, but on tips.

So if they pass this people will be able to sign onto the app, ignore the deliveries and demand 18 an hour? So they'll have to start firing anyone that doesn't accept deliveries when offered and refuse people sign on when there aren't enough orders to go round, etc.. end result making it harder for people to earn by delivering food, making food delivery more expensive, but it strikes a blow against something new so everyone will feel like they're winning.
- What the fuck are you even talking about?
  
  I take it you've never delivered and don't understand how the platform works?
  The law change would mean that people can't do things like multiapp or choose to only do one or two deliveries then stop for a bit, this ruins the flexibility which most people want when choosing to do it
- Couldn't they prorate the hourly rate to account for the time that your actually assigned to an active delivery? That wouldn't interfere with multi-apping, as a driver would be "on the clock" for their delivery time. It seems like the companies would be able to figure out how to do the right thing if they wanted to.
  
  Yeah that would be a good solution but not what the law proposes, the problem is the government isn't getting to do the right thing either it's just a knee jerk responce to a new thing existing.

58 comments