The Gig Workers For Target's Delivery App Hate Their Algorithmically-Determined Pay (vice.com) 237
In 2017 Target bought a same-day home-delivery company called Shipt for $550 million. Shipt now services half of Target's stores, reports Motherboard, and employs more than 100,000 gig workers.
Unfortunately, they're working for a company that "has a track record of censoring and retaliating against workers for asking basic questions about their working conditions or expressing dissent," reports Motherboard. For example, an hour after tweeting about how there was now much more competition for assignments, one Seattle gig worker found their account suddenly "deactivated" — the equivalent of being fired — and also received an email saying they were no longer "eligible to reapply".
"They stamp out resistance by flooding the market with new workers..." complained one Shipt worker, "and they're actively monitoring all the social media groups." On its official national Facebook group, known as the Shipt Shopper Lounge, which has more than 100,000 members, Shipt moderators selected by the company frequently censor and remove posts, turn off comments sections, and ban workers who speak out about their working conditions, according to screenshots, interviews, and other documentation provided to Motherboard. The same is true on local Facebook groups, which Shipt also monitors closely, according to workers. Motherboard spoke to seven current Shipt workers, each of whom described a culture of retaliation, fear, and censorship online...
Because Shipt classifies its workers as contractors, not employees, workers pay for all of their expenses — including gas, wear and tear on their cars, and accidents — out of pocket. They say the tips on large orders from Target, sometimes with hundreds of items, can be meager. Workers say Shipt customers often live in gated and upscale communities and that the app encourages workers to tack on gifts like thank you cards, hot cocoa, flowers, and balloons onto orders (paid for out of their own pocket) and to offer to walk customer's dogs and take out their trash, as a courtesy. Shipt calls this kind of service "Bringing the Magic," which can improve workers' ratings from customers that factor into the algorithm that determines who gets offered the most lucrative orders...
Unfortunately, that new algorithm (which began rolling out last year) is opaque to the workers affected by it — though Gizmodo reported pay appears to be at least 28% lower. And Motherboard heard even higher estimates: "Our best estimate is that payouts are now 30 percent less, and up to 50 percent on orders," one Shipt worker in Kalamazoo with two years under her belt, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, told Motherboard. "I fluctuate between extreme anger and despair. It's been three weeks since this has been implemented, and one of my good friends told me that she's down the equivalent of a car payment."
Another Shipt worker in Palm Springs, California provided Motherboard with receipts for a 181-item order that included six Snapple cases, five La Croix cases, and 12 packs of soda. They had to wheel three shopping carts out of a Ralph's grocery store and deliver them -- and earned $12.68 for the job. The customer did not tip. (Under the older, more transparent pay model, they would have earned $44.19.) "That's a real slap in the face," they told Motherboard.
Unfortunately, they're working for a company that "has a track record of censoring and retaliating against workers for asking basic questions about their working conditions or expressing dissent," reports Motherboard. For example, an hour after tweeting about how there was now much more competition for assignments, one Seattle gig worker found their account suddenly "deactivated" — the equivalent of being fired — and also received an email saying they were no longer "eligible to reapply".
"They stamp out resistance by flooding the market with new workers..." complained one Shipt worker, "and they're actively monitoring all the social media groups." On its official national Facebook group, known as the Shipt Shopper Lounge, which has more than 100,000 members, Shipt moderators selected by the company frequently censor and remove posts, turn off comments sections, and ban workers who speak out about their working conditions, according to screenshots, interviews, and other documentation provided to Motherboard. The same is true on local Facebook groups, which Shipt also monitors closely, according to workers. Motherboard spoke to seven current Shipt workers, each of whom described a culture of retaliation, fear, and censorship online...
Because Shipt classifies its workers as contractors, not employees, workers pay for all of their expenses — including gas, wear and tear on their cars, and accidents — out of pocket. They say the tips on large orders from Target, sometimes with hundreds of items, can be meager. Workers say Shipt customers often live in gated and upscale communities and that the app encourages workers to tack on gifts like thank you cards, hot cocoa, flowers, and balloons onto orders (paid for out of their own pocket) and to offer to walk customer's dogs and take out their trash, as a courtesy. Shipt calls this kind of service "Bringing the Magic," which can improve workers' ratings from customers that factor into the algorithm that determines who gets offered the most lucrative orders...
Unfortunately, that new algorithm (which began rolling out last year) is opaque to the workers affected by it — though Gizmodo reported pay appears to be at least 28% lower. And Motherboard heard even higher estimates: "Our best estimate is that payouts are now 30 percent less, and up to 50 percent on orders," one Shipt worker in Kalamazoo with two years under her belt, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, told Motherboard. "I fluctuate between extreme anger and despair. It's been three weeks since this has been implemented, and one of my good friends told me that she's down the equivalent of a car payment."
Another Shipt worker in Palm Springs, California provided Motherboard with receipts for a 181-item order that included six Snapple cases, five La Croix cases, and 12 packs of soda. They had to wheel three shopping carts out of a Ralph's grocery store and deliver them -- and earned $12.68 for the job. The customer did not tip. (Under the older, more transparent pay model, they would have earned $44.19.) "That's a real slap in the face," they told Motherboard.
So...stop? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't get it, why don't they just stop working for this company. If everybody finds out how s***** they are, they'll have to change or go out of business. This is gig work, and there are dozens if not hundreds of companies that offer that type of work. Are these people somehow trapped?
Re:So...stop? (Score:4, Informative)
Some people probably can't afford to. Same as DoorDash and other "gig economy" services. I have a membership for shopmeijer.com which is Shipt in the background. I haven't heard anything about them stealing tips unlike DoorDash which got caught and supposedly changed their policies.
There is an opaqueness that makes it difficult to know if you're making the problem worse or not but I physically cannot drive, don't own a car, and ordering the groceries is one of the ways I contribute to the household. We tip well, but I don't know with Shipt if they get all the money or not; they claim they do.
Re:So...stop? (Score:5, Insightful)
Some people probably can't afford to.
You hear this a lot, but in almost all cases it's simply not true. Sure, folks may feel like they can't afford to, but then again can they afford to work for an employer who pulls this nonsense?
I remember my shit-job era very clearly. An extra week between pay checks was painful when I changed jobs ( I didn't eat for a week, had to pay a late fee on my rent once, car payment was late...went without car insurance for that matter...), but it was doable, and if it brought stability or a better work environment, it was worth it.
Point of fact, folks who stick around at a job with shitty conditions are parts of the problem; managers don't see problems until they hit THEIR bottom line, and if turn over and work quality impacts the bottom line, then it'll get addressed. Sticking around for the abuse rarely accomplishes anything.
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> I didn't eat for a week
If you can find $1/wk for 10 weeks you can eat basically (beans and rice) for a week. Dollar Tree will sell you 5lbs of beans and 10lbs of rice for that here
Food pantries and thrift stores will give you things like that too (pots and hotplates are common).
There are health benefits to occasional fasting but nobody ought to feel like that's their only available option. Social workers will talk to people to help them find resources.
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Good information for folks to have; I didn't at the time. I was uniquely unsuited to be an "Adult" during my younger years, so made plenty of mistakes like this one ( assuming there wasn't any help to be had ).
It's fine; I learned from the hard times and my mistakes.
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I wasn't very lucky; I had bad credit because of it, and I lost a car because of my insurance situation.
I made bad decisions, and those were the consequences. Because of those consequences, I learned how to make better decisions.
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You were lucky enough to be able to recover from bad credit and losing a car.
The point stands. Some people can't just quit and get another job. Assuming there are better jobs available they might not be able to stand losing a car because they need it to support their family or to get to those other jobs, for example.
At the very least it's a gamble that might not pay off, and you got lucky.
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I "couldn't" stand losing a car, yet I did, and I survived. I was about as poor as you can get, and it was miserable experience that my choices led me to. It taught me, among other things, that I need to start making better choices.
You seem to be advocating for the adjudication of responsibility; the belief that people's situations are not the result of their actions. That's simply not the case, nor would I want to live anywhere it was. The US is not that place, no matter what the political nuts may tel
Re: So...stop? (Score:5, Interesting)
It doesn't matter for me. I will not order from a company that does not use reliable deliveries, employed full time. I am not fucking with third rate companies that use the lowest paid worst deliveries, damaged goods the norm. Do no ever work with companies with high labour force churn they are shite companies. Need a new law, they must declare the delivery contractor on the order form. I will not have goods delivery by the lowest common denominator gig workers, the idea is insane.
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If you tip in cash they'll definitely get all of the money. I understand it might be personally hard for you to get hold of cash, but if you're regularly getting groceries and other household goods by delivery, it's the right thing to do.
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I thought the whole thing with "gig jobs" is that the working schedule is completely flexible and people can easily move between them. What makes it so they can't simply overlap a new job, and then quit when they're established in the new one?
Perhaps they're lying, but Shipt claims "Work part time or full time â" any time. Set your own hours for a completely flexible schedule."
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Avoid ambiguity. Tip in cash.
BTW, how DoorDash stole tips is done by a lot of companies. I don't know why they uniquely were singled out..
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The opacity you mentioned is the real problem, and it causes problems not just for consumers, but for companies throughout the supply chain.
My rule of thumb is that the more opaque a given company's practices are, the more likely they are up to no good.
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Re:So...stop? (Score:4, Insightful)
Isn't that the reason that we give the wealthy tax breaks? So they can give us all jobs? So it seems like they DO owe use jobs or gigs.
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Your idiotic question presumes that the wealthy owe you their earnings. A tax break isn't a gift, its stealing a bit less than you want to.
Your idiotic response presumes that the workers owe the wealthy their earnings. A wage increase isn't a gift, its stealing a bit less than you want to.
(See how one could easily turn it around?)
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The point about tax breaks was idiotic for precisely the reason described. The only thing to be upset about is that not everyone is entitled to the same tax breaks.
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Because that voluntary agreement is not made between equals. There is a huge power imbalance which should be obvious from the first responses above -- the company can EASILY survive workers quitting because they are a cheap commodity, but the workers frequently can't survive the loss of the job. Hence the comany can say "I'll pay X" and the worker's response is "X > 0, but X livable, but again I have no choice because I have to eat...". This is why unions emerged way back when.
I asked the original quest
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Anonymous Coward is right, as you now have to have an account to post to Slashdot but you don't have the courage to reply under your nom de plume.
To burst your bubble, I never advocated for "everyone getting the same paycheck". Not everyone does the same amount of work, nor is all work of equal value. The Law of Supply and Demand is a harsh, but honest, mistress.
For the record, I started out as a Republican as I inherited my political thoughts from my parents. As I grew and explored the world, I change from
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(See how one could easily turn it around?)
Nope. Yours makes even less sense than his.
At least taxes are an obvious taking. The only way I can avoid them taking taxes out of my pay is either to not earn it or engage in activities that the government wants to encourage(putting up a solar roof or such).
Meanwhile, yes, a wage increase isn't normally a "gift". Wages are an exchange of money for labor. Increasing the pay rate for labor is an attempt to keep productive workers around. It costs money to replace workers, and to train the replacements.
T
Taxes are a bill, not a "taking." (Score:4, Insightful)
Most conservatives think it's the rich subsidizing the poor, but it's very much the reverse. The poor, taking less than they could, getting exploited, like the shipt workers...allow the Target CEO to offer attractive prices while paying management's exorbitant salaries. The gov-funded education provides their workforce from the cashier to the highly skilled engineers building their software infrastructure supporting their business to the elite lawyers and accountants overseeing their many deals. The gov-funded roads ensure the shipt drivers can get to the delivery destination safely and get more orders out in a day as well as ensuring customers can get to the stores. The welfare safety net ensures people who fall on hard times from reasons ranging to bad luck to incompetence to illness and unfortunate circumstances that could happen to you....ensures they can afford to buy the essentials they need from Target, Amazon, & others. Law Enforcement & the military ensure the safety of the workers & shoppers.
Wealth is the produce of exploiting your environment . The economy is an ecosystem. Without the plankton and minnows and bottom feeders, and smaller fish, seals, etc the mighty sharks and whales would starve. The alpha predators are the first to starve in most disruptions. Taxes are a bill for that environment...the env target/shipt, Amazon, Apple, etc thrive in. The wealthy need to pay their share....or collectively push our leaders to actually lower spending. I'm sick of hearing people whine about paying taxes...and I pay a lot of taxes, without reservation. I know that my success in life has been a product of my environment, not anything special about me. Had I been born poor in Guatemala or China...instead of being born poor in the US (in an era with good economic mobility), I would be just as poor as anyone else in those environments. My success and the success of most people who earn a lot of money as a product of luck and their environment, much more than their excellence.
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> If you think anyone owes you anything else, then fuck off, slaver.
I want my 22c per dollar back from embedded income taxes plus withholdings. The slavers extorted it.
Re:So...stop? (Score:4, Insightful)
Your idiotic question presumes that the wealthy owe you their earnings. A tax break isn't a gift, its stealing a bit less than you want to.
You're entitled to what you can produce, and what you can obtain from others on a voluntary basis. If you think anyone owes you anything else, then fuck off, slaver.
-jcr
John Galt was a diner cook and a terrorist. The book was complete crap, from a policy perspective.
The wealthy would not exist without your help! (Score:5, Insightful)
A tax break isn't a gift, its stealing a bit less than you want to.
You're entitled to what you can produce, and what you can obtain from others on a voluntary basis. If you think anyone owes you anything else, then fuck off, slaver.
Lovely myth you have there. The wealthy are not wealthy based on their merit alone, but based on them maximizing the environment we all create. A lion is would be nothing without the grasslands feeding it's prey. When land is taken away, the glorious alpha predators are the first to go extinct. Any American Billionaire benefits from the laws and protections the United States provides....from military and police protecting them from looters to a rich legal system ensuring their contracts are enforced.
I don't get why conservatives can't grasp that the economy is an ecosystem. Appropriately funding the government creates jobs and thus customers. Jeff Bezos is only wealthy due to Amazon sales. When people have jobs and money to spend, they buy things either from amazon.com or the many customers who rent servers on AWS. When they suffer, he suffers. The wealthy are paying far less taxes than they ever have historically to the detriment of the economy and ultimately their business.
The wealthy need to pay more taxes and will realistically only get more wealthy in doing so. If you don't like high taxes, pressure your elected officials to actually cut spending. The GOP hasn't effectively balanced the budget or reduced spending since the 90s. They've actually increased the deficit more rapidly than their DNC predecessors.
My CEO is a wealthy man....he's a sharp and smart man...arguably superior to me in nearly every objective metric. That said...he's nothing without me and 7000, mostly highly skilled, workers...ensuring his company is running smoothly.
He owes us, not the other way around. The same can be said of nearly every major company. The wealthy are nothing without the people propping them up.
They have earned our respect and sometimes even our admiration, but not our worship...and they need to either fund this government keeping their business thriving...educating their workers, ensuring their safety, enforcing their business deals...or the collective bunch needs to exert pressure to actually reduce spending. I have no pity for them and think they've had enough fun at our expense.
Re:Nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
Consumers are the job creators. Employers are profiteers. Capitalist society is designed to confuse the issue. The issue is fairly gray until you get up to the corporate level where there are whole structures of management which exist simply to get in the way. We should eliminate the majority of corporations and replace them with cooperatives, and cooperatives of cooperatives. That's the only way not to screw the workers.
In small business the owners are often themselves workers, who actually perform necessary functions. In publicly traded corporations, the owners are just performing graft. In between there is a gray area.
Corporations effectively collect welfare. At the highest end there are bailouts, and other forms of special treatment. They get tax breaks on necessities like materials and parts. In a few countries there are tax breaks for the workers' essentials like clothing. In the US the only universal tax break for the workers is on unprepared food. Most people can't write off what they wear to work, for example.
Government operates multiple kinds of businesses. Municipal utilities generally have higher satisfaction at lower prices than private ones. Point to Flint's water supply and I'll point to PG sure you can find counterexamples but the general rule is that eliminating the profit motive increases efficiency. Regulatory agencies aren't businesses, or at least, they aren't supposed to be. When you run then that way then they are horrible, witness Ajit Pai's FCC.
Re:Nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
Because the mouth-breathers in IT all think they're going to be rich someday and don't want their dream-wealth to be taxed away from them. They are so funny because they are all going to die broke. Today, a $150,000 per year salary is a truckload closer in buying power to the minimum wage in 1980 than it is to the threshold that puts you in the 1%. You all (99% of IT workers) are sliding backwards into the economy of the 1930s. Enjoy the suffering. You voted for it starting with Reagan and you've admirably upped the ante with Trump.
Re:So...stop? (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, that is what all the rich people like to say, so they can sleep well with their full stomachs and piles of stuff.
The real story is that 'gig work', just like 'corporate restructuring', 'outsourcing', and any of dozens of other cost cutting routines are designed to undermine the American workers (white collar and blue collar) ability to make a decent wage, while shoving all of the money into the bank accounts of the wealthy
who then complain about the poor looking for handouts
you disgust me, and likely can't even see why
Re:So...stop? (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason story is that modern companies have learned how to break minimum wage laws with impunity.
Re:So...stop? (Score:5, Insightful)
'are designed to undermine the American workers'
They also are an excellent way to avoid the expense of matching the employees FICA, unemployment, state disability and benefits that every company provides as a benefit package, and that's the issue that should motivate government. Uncle Sam doesn't take lightly to getting fuck for too long.
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Perhaps we shouldn't be funding the government with payroll taxes.
Payroll taxes are regressive, have the wrong incentives, and are easy to evade.
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Sure, that is what all the rich people like to say, so they can sleep well with their full stomachs
Who doesn't sleep with a full stomach? Seriously, find another metaphor. Be descriptive in your writing, don't quote cliches.
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Who doesn't sleep with a full stomach?
Almost 604 million people, according to this: https://worldpoverty.io/ [worldpoverty.io]
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Re:So...stop? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:So...stop? (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh... this is wrong on so many levels I don't even know where to start.
The fact there are people who *have* to choose between a roof over their heads and food already indicates everyone in your country has to be rightfully ashamed of themselves. From the worker that can just make ends meet and has a right to vote but chooses not to up to that fat orange in the capitol.
Also, being overweight isn't always an indication of being well fed. Especially with the poor more often than not it's an indication of someone too poor to buy sufficiently healthy food or not having enough time to properly do his/her household and cook healthy. If you have to do three jobs to make ends meet, you don't have time to take care of yourself. That's where a livable minimum wage and 40 hour work week gets to become important.
Then again, my country has it's fair share of homeless too. Due to things like, to be eligible for benefits*, you need to have a postal address. Which means there is a catch-22 where being homeless means its very difficult to apply for benefits because there are virtually no landlords willing to rent out without a month worth of deposit. Especially a problem for ex-detainees wanting to re-integrate into society and long-term homelessness due to (for example) mental problems.
*(70% of minimum wage if you have a single person household and show your willingness to find a job, 50% per adult if you share a household with 2 or more, special benefits if you have kids. 70% of minimum wage is politically called the 'existence minimum'. The minimum amount of money someone should make to be able to exist in this country and be a full member of society.)
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Try actually talking to and living near the homeless,
I have, pretty near every day.
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The real story is that 'gig work', just like 'corporate restructuring', 'outsourcing', and any of dozens of other cost cutting routines are designed to undermine the American workers
Workers of other nationalities can go fuck themselves, or something?
This is a global issue, in case you didn't know.
Re:So...stop? (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems that European countries still have working unions that preserve the middle class, and the rest of the countries never had it in the first place
I focus on the US because it is actively savaging its own middle class
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Now it would be time for me to say that the USA and the EU, together, are less than 15% of the whole world, population-wise. In China only, the middle class population amount to roughly 140+ million people . The USA middle class population is roughly 123+ million people. Sure, percentage-wise the picture is painted differently (10.7% in CN compared to 37.7% in the US) but when we look at middle-class issues, they are similar everywhere.
In my country, middle class represents 10% of population (compared to in
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Yeah, I have the same question. Why don't they just quit?
Don't get me wrong, I think Target should be punished, and I think labor laws should protect against this kind of exploitation. The old conservative/Republican bit about "If they don't like their job, why don't they just get another one?" doesn't really work in reality, because it eventually leads to EVERY employer being equally shitty to their employers. And we are getting close to that point in the United States.
BUT...we aren't there yet. So why do
Re:So...stop? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, I have the same question. Why don't they just quit?
As some have pointed out they can't afford to. Many are living from payment to payment, have immediate dues that can't be postponed (rent, a meal, gas for car). There is also perception that the "big bucks" are just around the corner, only need to "pay your dues."
Re:So...stop? (Score:4)
Re:So...stop? (Score:5, Informative)
The thing is that once a company demonstrates cost cutting, then all the other companies follow suite
Do you remember how IT companies used to fight over talent, and provide excellent benefits?
Yes, it was a long time ago, since all of the tech companies decided to collude and blacklist to keep employees from job-hopping, or how they trimmed away benefits, killed retirement plans and instituted restructuring so they could fire the more highly paid people...
Staying may be foolish, but what are their other options when every single other company follows the same play book?
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Hmmmm
Maybe you could enlighten those tech executives about the glut in American IT workers, since they have been complaining about the need to import 100,000 workers a year due to lack of tech workers...
That's not what traps you (Score:4, Insightful)
That's not what traps you. Believing you're trapped, living payment to payment is what traps you. The moment you believe that, you give up trying to find a way out. And when you give up, that's when you really do become trapped.
It's a work-when-you-want delivery service. You have far more time flexibility to look for another job, work on growing your own home business, collaborate with friends to start a new company, whatever; than you'd have if you were working a 9-to-5 job. The reasons you gave are just excuses not to try.
Nearly all of my extended family immigrated to the U.S. Most of us came with only ~$1000 per family in our pockets (because South Korea was a dictatorship at the time, and feared people emigrating would drain all the capital out of the country so they limited what you could take). Out of nearly a dozen families that started this way:
So why are our immigrant families mostly successful? Because when we first arrived in this country, nobody like you told us that it was hopeless, that becoming successful if you "pay your dues" was a lie, and that we'd be trapped living paycheck to paycheck. We tried, and for the most part we succeeded. With work and effort, you absolutely do have a good chance of lifting yourself up. But if you listen to the naysayers and don't even try, then that's what guarantees that you will fail. (The family on welfare doesn't try. The other families give them hand-me-downs, handouts, and even business opportunities, but they don't seem to want to try to do anything that could lift them out of poverty.)
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Congratulations on your family's success
Since you are familiar with Korean shops, then you will know that every single one has the owner's college degree on the wall behind the register
Between that and an indoctrination in the 'right kinda way to do things', that can border on savage, recent Korean immigrants were primed for success when they arrived in America
Unfortunately, America, as a society, has shown a lot less care for their citizenry (often based on race), which results in broken segments of societ
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One of the reasons we have mass immigration from low-wage countries is to support this kind of shitty exploitation.
Many of those workers cannot afford not to work, and won't get any other income, so they're forced to keep working for these people.
If history has taught us anything, it won't stop the new "mill owners" from exploiting the workforce until there are riots and deaths.
Re:So...stop? (Score:5, Funny)
If everybody finds out how s***** they are...
You mean, if everyone finds out how shipty they are. Because, when pronouncing Shipt, the p is silent.
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Well, for one the economy sucks, and even that little pay helps keep the bills paid. They may have several gig jobs and will do a task for any of them in the long periods between them. Why not ask people why they hang out on a street corner for hours just to earn a few grubby coins? The more stories like this you read the more you should realize that many people are in a tight situation and desperate to avoid homelessness or moving back home to live with the parents.
Re:So...stop? (Score:5, Insightful)
Are these people somehow trapped?
Yes, they're trapped in a system where they need to feed and house themselves but the land which might enable them to achieve these things on their own is all owned by the rich. Any more questions?
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The Victim Industrial Complex is strong with this one.
Life is full of choices, particularly when you live in a free country. Those choices can lead one to bad situations, but rarely is someone so needful of cash that they have no job mobility.
Sure, there are tradeoffs for switching jobs sometimes ( I didn't eat for a week once, late rent/car payments, ect... ), but I made that decision because the job I was in was worse than the one I was going to. Sure, I could have pretended that I was stuck in that job
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Life is full of choices, particularly when you live in a free country. Those choices can lead one to bad situations, but rarely is someone so needful of cash that they have no job mobility.
Not rare enough to prevent the formation of a reserve army of the unemployed for the gig economy, apparently. But keep chalking it all up to bad individual choices that a huge chunk of the highly-educated population is apparently making.
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Ah, I see. So in order for your argument to remain cohesive, you are attempting to link exceedingly rare life situations with the choice to participate in gig jobs.
A false dichotomy, particularly without any supporting evidence. Your second fallacy was in bringing up the education level ( again, without supporting evidence that those taking "gig" jobs are predominantly highly educated, but that's beside the point ), as if to suggest that highly educated people don't make mistakes. In fact, I'd say highly
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Ah, I see. So in order for your argument to remain cohesive, you are attempting to link exceedingly rare life situations with the choice to participate in gig jobs.
What exceedingly rare life situations? Can't be the "choice" to participate in the gig economy, since 20% of the US population is engaged in it:
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/2... [cnbc.com]
Your second fallacy was in bringing up the education level ( again, without supporting evidence that those taking "gig" jobs are predominantly highly educated, but that's beside the point ),
Good point, it turns out that gig economy workers are actually more educated than the overall average worker:
https://www.gigeconomydata.org... [gigeconomydata.org]
https://www.glomhi.org/gigsrep... [glomhi.org]
In fact, I'd say highly educated gig workers, by virtue of their life situation, rather telling demonstrate their ability to make poor choices. If we accept that "highly educated" means "high student loan debt", and these folks are taking gig work? Either the degrees they got are worthless ( poor choice in degrees ), or they're uniquely incompetent in this economy to not be able to score something a bit more lucrative.
Or maybe the only mistake they made is that they believed all of society when it told them that they had to get degrees to get a decent job instead of deliver
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In fairness, the poster is in the US. If you're in a freer country, like ones in Europe, it might be easier to overlook your advantage.
Re:So...stop? (Score:5, Informative)
Aren't we talking about America? One of the worst western countries for people to get ahead.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Most toliet cleaners are contractors (Score:2)
ShiPt pay (Score:3)
Is that like Shit but with Pee added in?
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Is that like Shit but with Pee added in?
No, there's a Pee bottle in the front seat, cause ain't no Gig worker got time to stop at a real restroom. Then you get Shit.
I don't know why people don't work on better names for their organizations.
ShiPt seems even worse than most, which is saying a lot.
Reminds me of Walmart (Score:5, Interesting)
1) That is so messed up - walk the dogs for free for no reason?
2) This reminds me of our first holiday season selling on Walmart Marketplace. Walmart emailed us and said customers would be happy if you upgraded them to overnight shipping, for free.
Uhh... how about fuck no? USPS First Class Mail, 8 ounces (our average product) costs us $3.67. The cheapest guaranteed overnight service starts in the $20's. Some products only have a 2 dollar margin when all is said an done, so where is this extra $17.00 supposed to come from?
The most worrisome thing is the sense of entitlement customers have. And the free pass to be ignorant. "Free" shipping is just baked into the product price. And since every carrier mostly uses zone-based pricing, you have to bake in the worst/farthest distance price into the product price. Then raise that even higher, since the marketplace takes their cut. And let's not even get started on the Amazon customers who think being a prime member = free 2 day shipping on everything. It doesn't. Not even prime listings have to offer 2 day. A surprising number of Amazon sellers don't seem to grasp that either. There are intricate differences and you really have to study the terms and conditions, but they are there. Unfortunately intricate = tl;dr for most people.
Re: (Score:3)
yup, welcome to the new world order, its a bit like the ancient world order of aristocrats with all the wealth treating the peasants like they were owned property. We just changed the definition of aristocrat from "landed gentry who got their power at sword point" to "rich mans club of stock options and buy-to-let property rentier"
Re: (Score:2)
yup, welcome to the new world order, its a bit like the ancient world order of aristocrats with all the wealth treating the peasants like they were owned property. We just changed the definition of aristocrat from "landed gentry who got their power at sword point" to "rich mans club of stock options and buy-to-let property rentier"
Don't be melodramatic. People that will pay extra to not have to go shopping themselves are of course far more likely to be rich anyway.
Re: Reminds me of Walmart (Score:4, Insightful)
I wouldnt call it entitled as much as misled. Its not that they insist everything get cheaper and more inclusive every year, its the mega monopolies/ cartels that drive this trained thinking. Look how freaking cheap telecom and bandwidth had gotten over the last decade. We have gone from a 10x1 cable service to 200x200 fiber for the same price without even factoring inflation. We went from bundled minutes, to rollover minutes, to unlimited talk, texting, and data for like $50 per phone, or cheaper. Naturally this insane economies of scale started hitting things like shipping. Its a monopoly driven sickness of consumerism.
Re: (Score:3)
Its a monopoly driven sickness of consumerism.
A lot of it isn't due to monopolies, quite the opposite, it's due to competition and economies of scale. Not a sickness, it's abundance: we have an unbelievable array of goods at incredibly low prices at our disposal. Not to worry, we can still (rightly) complain about sustainability, circular economies and exploiting overseas workers, but the truth is that a lot of this simply happened because we figured how to scale up and drive production costs down.
None of that translates to me walking your dog for
Re: (Score:2)
Free-shipping, when done in bulk (ie, using normal services like fedex, usps, etc) makes sense. The people are making a better wage and are working a full day without stops. What breaks things are the "free shipping in 4 hours", which means a lot of people doing deliveries one item at a time; it's not economically viable to pay a living wage to that sort of worker, so they rely on gig work.
Re: (Score:2)
Even when I order 5 things and ask for it arrive next week it comes in a minimum of 3 boxes.
I'm going back to shopping at the same online catalog stores I was shopping at 20 years ago, just so I can get my whole box of stuff in one box.
I remember reading in the Philippines (Score:2)
Looks like America's turning into that.
Welcome to 21st Century Capitalism (Score:3)
Where consumers are unaware of the value being extracted from them and workers don't know when or how much they're going to be paid.
Re: (Score:3)
When I was a kid many people I knew forgo college scholarships to work construction. Others, more successfully, rode the computer boom. Both ended up with much less at 40.
Stories like this are not going to convinced the unskilled worke
Re: (Score:2)
Workers and customers haven't changed. Employers and vendors have.
On further reflection (Score:3)
It appears as if gig jobs are an evil psychological experiment into how much you can make someone suffer before they leave.
Working conditions in jobs like these seem, horrible.
If you're not getting paid an equivalent of about $.55 a mile you drive, you are destroying your vehicle for essentially nothing.
Looks like it's time for all the gig workers to get together and create a new union to at least pretend to represent their interests.
Re: (Score:2)
It appears as if gig jobs are an evil psychological experiment into how much you can make someone suffer before they leave.
Working conditions in jobs like these seem, horrible.
If you're not getting paid an equivalent of about $.55 a mile you drive, you are destroying your vehicle for essentially nothing.
Looks like it's time for all the gig workers to get together and create a new union to at least pretend to represent their interests.
They are counting on people being too dumb to do the math. It seems to be working too.
Re: On further reflection (Score:2)
They require drivers to use a car no older than 8 years and it has to be clean and in decent condition. Probably 4-6k minimum, beaters won't qualify.
Re: (Score:3)
They don't need a union for this. They need a math education so they can stop working for a pay that is lower than their costs. Target should also make their pay structure public so workers know what they're getting into. There should be a law to enforce that if it doesn't already fall under false advertising.
The wave of the future, unfortunately (Score:5, Insightful)
As wealth becomes more and more concentrated and manual labour is replaced by various tech innovations, the gig economy is going to become the ONLY employment option for more and more people. When such jobs are increasingly the only ones available, and competition for them is fierce, those on the lower 80% or so of the economic ladder will effectively be slaves.
I also predict that those who are 'fired' will be blacklisted and therefore unable to earn a living. Complaining about the way one is being treated, (never mind actually fighting for fair and decent working conditions), will carry with it the risk of homelessness and starvation.
From where I'm sitting the future looks like a shitty amalgam of SF dystopias. I'm a bit relieved to be an old fart with no kids - but I'm still worried about the children of my friends, and I'm very saddened by what I see as humanity's probable future.
Re: (Score:2)
As wealth becomes more and more concentrated and manual labour is replaced by various tech innovations, the gig economy is going to become the ONLY employment option for more and more people.
Which gig jobs would those be? The one that are going to be replaced by self driving cars, or the ones that are going to be replaced by delivery drones? Guess they're gonna have to get into something like lawn maintenance which hasn't yet shown much sign of pending automation. Or maybe handyman...lord knows we don't yet have enough people in that sector offering services they're unqualified to offer.
Re: (Score:2)
Eventually people will figure out that working for themselves, or together in cooperatives for bigger things, will be better than working slave wages for corporate overlords.
For example, I do woodworking as a hobby "from the tree". That means starting with trees on my property, having the logs sawn into boards, then building things with them. It's incredibly cheap once you have the equipment.
So a "building cooperative" could split the cost of the equipment (pickup truck, log trailer, bandsaw mill, constru
Re: (Score:2)
That's a great solution, and I can see it working in some circumstances. But it's predicated on the ownership of real estate, which in this case is a fundamental 'means of production'. If things continue as they seem to be going, the 'not a pot to piss in nor a window to throw it out of' syndrome may prevent people from building their own businesses or forming co-operatives.
Manna (Score:4)
Shouldn't that be illegal? (Score:3)
Doesn't sound like a free market to me.
Sounds like local monopolism. This "*technically* you can choose something else, but it's deliberately not that simple" kind. Just like vendor lock-in, imaginary property, or that shit they do to practically-slave workers in South America.
Re:Shouldn't that be illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
The market is free, not necessarily the participants. There is no confusion here, and everything is working as intended. You can have a free market among prisoners. You can have a free market in literal slaves. The market is free, not the participants. Hell, sometimes people participate in markets by being the goods exchanged, such as in chattel slavery or advertising. The market is free, not the participants. The market is free, not you. Can it get any clearer? A free market does not always mean free people. The converse may be true, but that's another story.
If you believe that free markets will reflexively and automatically make their participants free in every situation, you should ask yourself why you believe something so idiotic.
Mod parent up (Score:2)
Does anyone really think that... (Score:2)
Let them! No action needed. (Score:2)
They stamp out resistance by flooding the market with new workers...
This is a good thing. It won't be long before they burn through enough workers that no one ever wants to work for them again. Then they will die the death they deserve. This is a much better solution than trying to legislate some sort of compromise that always has unintended consequences (which usually turn out to be negative for the workers involved).
Algorithmically-Determined Pay (Score:2)
That fact the pay is "algorithmically determined" means one thing: pay the workers as little as possible. Any company with such a business model is going to suck to work for. Period. They care nothing about you. You are completely expendable.
It comes down to the capitalist notion that profit (and growth) must be maximized above all other objectives. And for publicly-traded corporations, it's actually illegal for them to do otherwise. (They can be sued by shareholders for not performing their fiduciary duty)
Is this the 21st century ver. of the late 19th? (Score:2)
It has been said before and I'll say it again.... (Score:2)
The gig economy is fundamentally broken. Its success is reliant on the exploitation of their workers. These are not tenable long term career jobs for most people.
STOP WORKING FOR THESE COMPANIES.
Re: (Score:3)
The gig economy is fundamentally broken. Its success is reliant on the exploitation of their workers.
Not only that, but many of these services are reliant on venture capital just to stay solvent. Even while abusing their workforce, they still don’t have a viable path to profitability.
So quit (Score:2)
Dont fucking complain. Quit.
Shipt won't have a business if they don't have drivers.
Re: (Score:3)
Dont fucking complain. Quit.
It’s important they do both. Otherwise, prospective new drivers have no idea what sort of crap job they’re walking into.
It’s not as if a person applying for a job has access to the previous history of that position.
home-delivery without Commercial insurance (Score:2)
home-delivery without Commercial insurance for the divers is bad also makeing them 1099's just passes the blame in case they get to an car crash while on the job.
encourages workers to tack on gifts like thank you (Score:2)
encourages workers to tack on gifts like thank you cards, hot cocoa, flowers, and balloons onto orders (paid for out of their own pocket) That sounds like an BIG NO NO under the labor laws.
Hell fucking no (Score:3)
Yeah, let me just take 20-30 minutes out of my day that I could be using to actually make money to walk some rich fuck's dog. If any company asked me to do something like that, I'd be out the door before they finished saying it.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Sad thing is that magates will believe any lies that oozes from his lips
Re: (Score:2)
Sure, just look up false equivalency
Re: (Score:3)
And that is demonstration of "Big Lie" technique as employed by Hitler and Gobbels
Here is an OSS (CIA precursor) psych profile of Hitler, it is strikingly familiar to anybody who watches fox news (but they will be the last to see it)
His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wro
Re: (Score:2)
No, some tip in cash, but you can tip through the app instead.
Re: (Score:2)
If you're treated like shit, QUIT for FUCK'S SAKE and find another gig or whatever!
But if they did that, companies would have to treat workers better to keep them, and we wouldn't get to read articles like this anymore.