SF-based DoorDash will offer a new gig-work version of hourly wages
DoorDash, the San Francisco-based food delivery giant, is changing how it pays its army of gig workers — but not the ones in its home state.
At the beginning of each delivery, DoorDash workers outside California, Seattle and New York City will be able to choose whether they’d like to be paid by time spent delivering or by the classic upfront total. California DoorDash workers already receive time-based earnings if their pay doesn’t reach a wage floor set at 120% of the local minimum wage for their time spent actively delivering.
The time rate option, announced Wednesday, will show workers the hourly rate they’ll be paid from when they accept a delivery to when they drop it off. After delivery, the app will allocate the pay based on how long it took. In the company’s promotional example, a 15-minute trip earns an Indianapolis driver $3 before tips.
For customers, cheap deliveries might now come a little quicker: The New York Times reported that DoorDash wants the new option to help drivers who accept customers’ less desirable, lower-value orders.
The new time option was made for DoorDash workers who “prioritize reliability in their earnings,” the company said. But, like California’s existing wage floor, it doesn’t mean that if a driver sets aside an hour for deliveries, they’ll get an hour of pay. Gig workers don’t get paid for the time they’re waiting for new orders to come in. So they only earn that prorated “hourly minimum” at the whims of the app — a policy that gig economy critic and University of California, San Francisco, law professor Veena Dubal has called “crucial to [the] practice of algorithmic price discrimination.”
By reclassifying gig workers as independent contractors, California’s Proposition 22 solidified gig companies’ ability to limit payment to what DoorDash calls “active time.” DoorDash spent almost $50 million to promote the proposition before voters passed it in 2020, but a challenge of Prop. 22 is set to go before the state’s Supreme Court.
A DoorDash spokesperson told SFGATE the company has no plans to make the new “Earn by Time” feature available in areas with minimum earning standards in place (like California), and said the time-based rate will likely end up paying out about the same amount as the classic upfront payments.
Wednesday’s announcement, which DoorDash called its “biggest app updates in a decade,” also included new search tools and the launch of SNAP payments on the platform for a few major grocery chains. SNAP benefits can’t be used on delivery fees or tips.
Hear of anything happening at DoorDash or another gig company? Contact tech reporter Stephen Council securely at stephen.council@sfgate.com or on Signal at 628-204-5452.
Source: SFGATE
