For drivers, the results are unpredictable and too often unfair. Data obtained by the Star shows Uber Eats’ platform can offer two food couriers different wages for the exact same trip.
Labour advocates charge that the app collects data on driver behaviour and can use it to decide who it can pay at a lower rate, allowing the company to pocket the difference and boost its revenue. This concept is widely referred to as algorithmic wage discrimination.
Wild
Par for the course based on Uber’s history. I stopped using them in lieu of a local/community app…which is honestly absolute garbage, but it is essentially completely pass-through and free for my local area restaurants to use.
I maintain that it would be relatively simple to create an open source version of an app/protocol like this that serves people’s needs for this exact use case, and if it were designed for any community to use, it could be essentially free as you say and high quality, and be a single point of service for everyone.
If this were done right it could put all these thin platforms out of business and allow delivery drivers to establish fair terms for themselves.
This would be a really good fit for federation I think.
As a software engineer I’m down to help out on this, free of charge.
I’m a developer too, and I appreciate the offer very much, but I’m not really in a situation where I could work on something like this. It’s just an idea though, anyone could run with it.
Time to change your name from Patel to Smith
Had a colleague that did it as a side gig and no matter how many times I told him to do it, he always refused to do the calculation to figure out how much he was making after expenses.
Living in denial is the only reason we aren’t already eating the rich.
That and fear of imprisonment
What a sad country, where people have to accept being paid so little.
I’ve been arguing for decades that EU needs to tax imports from USA, because USA is using social dumping to compete unfairly.
The US minimum wage is not a living wage, and employers can even go below that if they can claim tips are part of the wage. And they don’t even provide healthcare for all. This is causing extreme poverty unbecoming of a developed country, and is social dumping.USA has created a system where employers are not paying the actual cost of labor. By tilting the power balance to vastly favor employers, and fail to regulate against abuse.
Apparently this is in Canada, which surprises me a little, I thought they were better regulated. This gig economy shit should clearly be illegal, and workers should be paid a reasonable living wage.
Did you even read the article? This is not about or in the USA.
Paywall
I admit I thought it was USA, I’m surprised Canada is just as bad.
So you didn’t bother to read the article but felt the need to make a top level comment about it?
Good job! You can open websites! We’re so proud.
It shows paywall.
Oh, in that case how did you manage to come to such strong conclusions if you didn’t read the article?
Because I know it happens in USA.
I hear the smallest violin Everytime I hear about UberEATS executive complain about the company not being profitable.
I know GrubHub is bad too but I typically only pay a small fee of 3$ for their service and a tip of 20% to the driver.
Yet UberEATS usually includes a $10-15 UberEATS fee which the employee sees none of. Yet “oh no UberEATS is not profitable, oh no my 3rd yacht isn’t big enough”
I only use eats if there’s a solid promo, and then I pick up the food myself. They don’t get the fee, I don’t have to tip, and I get the deal. A lot of time the price per item is cheaper on pickup too. Their fees are absolutely ridiculous, and they are just a middleman. They for sure are losing money on me.
Best to just call it in. Even for pick up, all these online providers take a huge cut, eating the profit margin from the people actually making the food you like.
I try to only use online orders for restaurants that have their own website cart. I do sometimes resort to the big ones when I’m busy / lazy, but I make a point to try to make sure the actual restaurant gets my money, because I want them to survive and keep making me tasty food.
Tipping culture caused this mess, meritocracy bullshit
Food delivery only made sense as an operating cost of the business, so third party delivery would have only made sense as something that the businesses subsidized. It also only makes sense if it is structured around the busy times of day as well.
I worked in a few businesses in the late 90s that offered delivery. In every case the delivery drivers were basically kitchen staff who went on deliveries OR the business itself was primarily delivery based in the first place and they still had the drivers do some other work around the place during downtime between meals. Both approaches spread the cost of the employees over more than the literal time delivering, because otherwise the cost per hour would be ridiculous. They also delivered food that held up to delivery times, so the food waiting 10-15 minutes before being delivered wasn’t an issue.
There was a reason that pizza places and Chinese restaurants frequently had delivery even in smaller towns while things like McDonald’s did not. The food held up to delivery and was frequently of a volume that made the restaurant subsidizing the cost of delivery feasible.
Well this is a more or less solved problem in BC:
https://www.moneysense.ca/earn/careers/gig-worker-rights-in-canada/
The gig worker min wage is 20% more than min wage to account for the “non-engaged time”.
I think the trick is you’ll never make it just driving for one service, you have to do Uber Eats, DoorDash, Grubhub, maybe even Instacart as well if you want to do it for a living.
Just like the people who drive for both Uber and Lyft.
I will never use uber so long as I shall live.
We don’t have to use that service. Who’s with me?
I’ve never used the third party delivery apps because it was clear their business model was going to screw over the drivers from the beginning.
And be very expensive for the customer at the same time. Food is expensive enough already without adding more fees and overhead.
I use it, I just tip way more than anyone else in my area tips. Mostly out of guilt, partially out of solidarity for the working person. I like to think my order at bumps that avg hourly rate up at bit.
This just makes your house a target for robbery because the criminals who deliver on the side will think you have lots of money
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I think for even the shortest delivery of a place 10 minutes away with a 2 mile distance is supposed to tip at least $5. and if the delivery is done in 30 minutes, that’s an effective wage of $15/hour, that is, if they get orders back-to-back.
Since these shitty companies don’t provide vehicles or gas money most of that $15 is going to vehicle costs.
When I delivered for a pizza place in the late 90s in a midwest college town with my own car I got 15-20 per hour between base pay, gas and car use subsidy, and tips. That business was 90% deliveries, so the delivery was baked into the cost.
Americans be crazy. I never tipped in my life and ain’t about to start.
“Let me help subsidise a company paying below minimum wage” totally normal not batshit insane idea.
Buddy, I cant use that service in any good concience…
This must be that innovation which is making the world a better place that these tech parasites keep gushing about.
How much did the CEO of Uber, Dara Khosrowshahi, earn last year?
“Minimum wage and the idea that hard work should lead to economic security, can be — and are being — destroyed by these A.I. systems.”
Not A.I, just a terrible system that incentivises (and even demands for public companies) abusive behaviour.
Yep, blaming it on A.I. is just an easy way for corporates to shift the blame to something they can’t control. A.I. is just a tool, the people using it and HOW they use it are responsible for the outcome.
Yeah, AI is making the same practices worse, but tryijg to destroy the concept of the minimum wage goes back to at least the early 80s if not before.
