Delivery Apps Raising Prices Statewide, Despite Prop. 22 Win
Image: Robert Anasch via Unsplash
Effective today, all Californians will pay more for a DoorDash order. That comes on the heels of Monday’s Uber Eats price increase of $2 more to every San Francisco customer, as reported by Eater SF.
All of the delivery apps are going to be raising their service fees after the passage of the terrible law Prop. 22, that ensures delivery drivers do not get employment benefits. That’s funny, because these tech companies said that prices would go up if Prop. 22 failed. But now that it has passed, they’re still raising prices anyway, to bolster huge engineer and executive salaries while delivery workers make as little as $1.45 an hour.
Uber claims that this extra charge is to pay for a set of new driver benefits, but a close look at these benefits shows them to be a combination of swiss cheese loopholes, inflated promises, and complete horseshit. They claim to now pay more than minimum wage, but they use the qualifier “When you’re active…” That means the benefits only apply to time when the driver has a fare or a meal to deliver. A UC Berkeley study found that drivers do not have a fare or a delivery for about 33% of the time they spend on the job (and those figures are from before the pandemic).
Uber also claims they’re providing healthcare, but the “details” are a complete fucking farce. The company says that “if you have a qualifying plan and average at least 15 active hours per week each calendar quarter, you’ll receive a stipend to help pay for your healthcare.” I count at least three ways they would job you out of that so-called “stipend” given the wording of that sentence.
“Today’s announcement by Uber is a corporate bait and switch,” says the advocacy group Gig Workers Rising. “Uber and other app corporations said time and again during their Prop. 22 campaign that if the measure failed to go through, riders could expect higher rates. Now that Prop. 22 has passed, Uber is announcing that riders will have to shoulder increased costs after all so that the company can continue to skirt its responsibilities to workers.”
“These benefits are too meager to meet the needs of workers in the middle of a pandemic and recession,” the statement says.
Billion-dollar delivery app corporations will never be profitable, but the money they lose goes only to executives, not to the people doing the actual work. Consider using local delivery services instead of these predatory apps.
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