The most dehumanizing aspect of being an activist against the gig economy leaders
The most dehumanizing aspect of being a gig economy worker and activist is seeing our loved ones continue to utilize the very companies we speak out about for convenience — essentially crossing our digital picket lines (if you weren’t aware there is ANOTHER strike for Instacart starting tomorrow). It’s bad enough having to fight to be paid a humane wage for our work — but it’s worse to watch our friends joke or brag on social media about their very recent experiences using these companies as if our struggle for wages didn’t even exist. And worse yet — I am constantly told people recognize our struggle and applaud our standing up when they discover the conversation — but then they continue to discuss seconds later how they’re STILL ordering from said company (and will continue to). Sometimes they give excuses as to why — sometimes they don’t. But they remain a customer.
Point blank — if you continue to order Doordash and Instacart (as well as other questionable services like grubhub, uber eats, shipt, postmates, lyft, uber, etc) knowing full well about the pay cuts and wage theft the shoppers/drivers are facing you are actively condoning the slave labor. If you are unwilling to make a more ethical choice you are further enabling the companies to oppress their work force. And the company appreciates the dollars you spend doing so — so much in fact that many of them are about to throw over $90M into the mix to fight any legal accountability where they would have to treat their workers like human beings (receipt). No ifs, ands, or buts — you are part of the problem.
I personally am so tired of people who label as progressive/democrat/left/radical/liberal/activist (whatever word you want to use) looking straight past gig economy workers in their activism and even joking about ordering from these companies with their only regret being how it busted their budget. Most of my social circle was formed in and around progressive campaigns in 2016 — and my own family has been marching for decades. In my experience even these people who are educated on labor struggles will happily boycott companies in other areas — but turn the other cheek when a Doordash driver is making $2 to drive their own food across town to their door step — even after watching someone in their life discuss this for a YEAR or more (I personally published a previous article last February here about Instacart’s pay before we suffered yet another pay cut). Politicians they follow have even discussed it at this point. These liberal people will talk about capitalism and the patriarchy (rightfully so) but refuse to acknowledge how that very much includes the CEOs of gig economies who are getting insanely rich in their cozy offices off the backs of their poor (and mostly female — 73% is the figure Instacart just released) workforce. An estimated 65,000 of those female IC workers are working moms just like me. (Further reading on their “mom culture” and fancy offices here. I don’t want Dani’s children to have less — I just wonder why our children aren’t included in her efforts for improvement and why our kids don’t deserve the basic things she discusses in that interview)
Seriously let’s break this pay difference down — Apoorva Mehta (Instacart) is worth $400 MILLION (that’s like $52 MILLION a year if you average out the 7 years since this company was created) while most of his Instacart shoppers are making less than half of minimum wage even before their expenses of doing the job and cut in work load. For my most recent Instacart orders, which seem to be average among the hundreds of shoppers I talk to, and hours (which are now less because Instacart over saturates their market with constant new shoppers to ensure our strikes are less impactful and that there will always be someone to take the low pay orders) on a yearly basis it would be less than $7000 annual income (again, even less now because the hours are less)— at a normal job before taxes a full time minimum wage job here (Pierce County, WA) would be around $24k a year. This does not account for the fact that we pay our own taxes, gas ($3.50 a gal here), insurance, car maintenance, etc just to work for Instacart which means in some instances we are actually LOSING money to work for Instacart (Working Washington has publicized several of these calculations on their twitter account). I certainly am not the only worker of theirs using a food bank and I even know of several who live in their vehicles. Apporva has a loft worth over $6M (where, rumor has it, he doesn’t even tip his own shoppers that deliver his personal food) — while people like me live in old dumpy apartments with our children and struggle with juggling bills, food, and parenting expenses. We get asked to carry anywhere from 2 cases of water to 800 pounds of water (yes, seriously, again these order screencaps are rampant on twitter) up 4 flights of stairs — and then we go home and eat ramen. We get asked to deliver 3 orders — including shopping them — for $7 (minimum wage here is $12 and we’re talking about over 2 hours of work) — while this man gets photoshoots and awards. How can a man be worth that much while his work force of roughly 130,000 people are struggling? And even worse he is working in an area with a massive homeless population — roughly 4,300 people — and choosing to hoard his wealth for himself instead of positively impacting his OWN community. This is a man who has millions to blow to fight having to pay his workers — many of whom are just trying to afford housing — a livable wage. But people in his own back yard are without shelter or food. It’s unethical — and yet customers keep giving him money. And journalists keep interviewing him as if he is some hero.
And before anyone gives me the tired victim blaming logic of asking why gig economy workers exist if conditions are so bad (which those of us trying to bring awareness to the situation hear constantly) — we need to work in between school, other jobs, health issues, childcare and need the almost immediate pay that is available in doing so.The services are necessary in our society and that is being taken advantage of by a few greedy people as the pay has gradually gotten worse. We are not the issue here — and we have been actively organizing over this for some time. Dismissing us based on individual choice or job access does nothing for the 130,000 people delivering just for Instacart alone and the many more of the similar companies — the government believes there may be as many as 75 million gig economy workers (though not all of those are specific to food delivery services). People are working for these companies, it is work that our society thrives off the existence of, and those people deserve to be treated as human beings. Asking someone why they don’t just leave is essentially admitting that you agree with the work being done for less by someone else. It is not a productive part of the conversation and is in fact dismissive. You can like certain aspects of a job while still acknowledging that the pay or culture surrounding it are harmful.
Between twitter, reddit, independent tech journalists (hell, even mainstream news), trust pilot, people like me who have loudly discussed this on facebook, etc — you have absolute access to the information about this situation. You are making an active choice to ignore it every single time you order. Some of you even justify this because one or two people said that the benefits of working for these companies outweighs the losses — that’s all it took for you to make another purchase. Some of them were even people that you asked while they were on the job trying to earn tips and therefore had to give an answer that may not have been honest! You “heard” that these companies fixed their wage issues and are happy thinking it’s an issue in the past instead of simply researching it further to confirm the accuracy (which would show you that was nothing more than a media gimmick and we actually faced another pay cut on every platform and are very much still struggling).
If gig companies treating their workers like garbage does not bother you — them ripping off their customers (many of which are lacking mobility and NEED this type of service) definitely should. When you order from Instacart and Doordash not only are you paying higher prices per item (which shoppers are instructed to hide from you) but you are paying constantly changing delivery fees or yearly membership fees (which can be renewed or charged after a “trial” without any notice to you!). Another example, yesterday Doordash’s platform went down (again) meaning not only did workers not get paid for peak pay shifts they’d signed up for days ago — but customers paid upwards of $60–80 for food that never arrived — or suddenly arrived without communication 3 hours later (cold and soggy, of course) after customers had already spent more money reordering food elsewhere. Most of those people (when I had last checked twitter several hours after the fact) had either been offered partial credits (to make them re use the service and pay again) or no refund at all — which means Doordash still profitted while customers AND drivers got the short end of the stick. A company worth $12.6 Billion should not be profiting when their app, which they certainly have the means to improve but prioritize their own profits instead, goes down. If customers had somehow managed to get a full refund it wouldn’t hit their account for well over a week — and couple charges like that with the massive data breach that doordash suffered in May and waited months to alert drivers and customers of — and the financial aspect for customers becomes a huge unknown. All the while the service you receive is getting worse (such as unsafe food as well as rampant sexual assault) because of the lower pay going to the labor. You work hard for your money — and it is going directly to garbage humans like Apoorva Mehta and Tony Xu to stroke their own egos and let them fulfill more of their entitled “entrepreneurial” dreams (at the expense of more humans) — and not even to always providing the basic service you are paying for. Customers constantly leave reviews about orders that never showed up or orders that showed up half fulfilled. Companies who are willing to treat their work force like less than human to enhance their own profits certainly don’t and won’t care for their customers either. Giving money to Instacart and Doordash (or, again, any of the other above mentioned gig apps) is enabling customers to be manipulated and ripped off while also letting the workers know their struggle is worth ignoring. Those of us standing up to these companies on behalf of workers also care deeply about the rising mistreatment of customers and use our time on this for the benefit of you too. Which is why it is so frustrating to see you cross our picket lines — hurting us AND yourself.
Before you order groceries, food delivery, or a ride share you should be looking it up. You should be taking the 5 minutes to read reviews, scores, lawsuit outcomes and current worker accounts before ever imputing your credit card number. Yes, food delivery is a wonderful service. Yes, it is convenient. Yes, it can give you back hours of your day which is great for self care. Yes, it can be so helpful if you have a lack of mobility, a car, childcare or a break at work. But which company you utilize is important. Are you empowering your local economy and the person doing the labor — or are you giving creeps like Apoorva Mehta states away from you even more money? There are other options out there. They may not have the same budget for marketing — but they’re out there. And you have all the tools you need to find them. You literally carry the internet around in your pocket and I can not understand in 2019 as self described activists why you would not be interested in looking this up for yourself before giving your money (particularly as most of you are also living on a tight budget and know so well how big of a deal every dollar is). I personally have partnered with Dumpling to run my own business, for example. I partnered with them because they basically have the opposite business model of Instacart which gives me the power to provide a much better customer service, make less of a negative impact on the environment and more importantly make a livable wage (and often I hear the untrue excuse that people stay with the predatory companies because they are “cheap” but my average order comes within mere dollars of their cost due to their hidden fees — and I am able to provide far more than just restaurant or grocery delivery. It only looks more expensive up front because my fees are shown ahead of time). Amazingly the app I use with Dumpling has a quicker growth as far as usability features and improvements (with far less issues) than the apps belonging to the greedy companies at the top where the leaders are hailed as tech geniuses. There are (and will be) many more ethical delivery services popping up. However as long as all the customers are on Instacart and Doordash people like me have less of a business opportunity to have a steady income. We end up stuck in a cycle where we still have to work for predatory companies — and that’s if we even can. I have been banned from Shipt for speaking out about these wage issues and know many shoppers who faced a similar result with other big name gig companies (which is why I speak so loudly about this — there are many workers who need this income to survive and fear speaking out even though their survival margin would be much bigger with a more humane income. Those of us who are open about this in an activist capacity hear from them every single day — it is not a fringe group of a few of us just simply being dissatisfied).
I can not stress enough how disheartening it is that people I otherwise admire are utilizing these companies. People who I see fighting so many good fights for our society (and while I don’t think they have to take on every battle and don’t expect them to — I also don’t expect them to continue to knowingly give mass amounts of money to the company oppressing me and 130,000 other workers). It weighs as heavily on my mental health and heart — as much as the mere existence of greedy selfish people like Apoorva existing and thriving in our society does. I’ve fought along side many of you for other people and know you are capable of displaying great empathy, courage, wisdom, and passion. I know you are capable of making informed decisions and of caring about more than one issue at a time. I know if you all banded together and at least didn’t order from these companies it would make a big impact — just as every fight mass activists have been behind has. Simply not giving these companies your money and choosing to spend your money elsewhere would make a difference for workers — and could lessen the future growth these CEOs see in their bank accounts. With each dollar they earn they become more powerful and untouchable and if the circle of every activist against them boycotted there would be a significant dampening of that. But I feel like myself, along with some other workers in the same situation, are often discussing this while you turn the other cheek — almost like people are walking right on by us or that our cause is not worthy of your efforts — even though I know your morals and I know this exact situation is one that does not align with them. While I understand the issues plaguing our society today can be an overwhelming problem that spreads us thin — Instacart, Doordash, and the like are not business models that deserve to be thriving and growing in the society we (as in those of us interested in a political revolution) often discuss wanting in 2019. But my generation and circle is contributing to their growth. As MLK Jr, who actively stood with the labor movement, said “In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends” — and continuing to purchase is a step further than even remaining silent on the issue. Please acknowledge the wage and ethical issues that are happening in the gig economy and choose to stand with us (instead of just acknowledging it and then not changing a single thing). Please think about us next time you want to order in food — and how you can best spend that money. Ask us for an update on where the conversation currently is or where we recommend ordering from for your area.