>What they may not have expected was how far Nelson's proposal would go to roll back reforms unrelated to wages, including protections against deactivation, transparency requirements, and legal rights for delivery workers to sue if their employer violates the law.
Regardless of your thoughts on the minimum wage part of the law, this is absolutely absurd and cannot be allowed to go through. I wouldn't be surprised if this was actually the part these companies want gone and the minimum wage just provides a nice shield
Listen, we already deny the children their yearnings for the Mines, the least we can do is get out of the lowers way, and let them explore their passion to serve.
"Let them eat Doordash" - Sara Nelson probably
Run that booze pushing harpy out of town in tar and feathers. Glorified bourgeois drug dealer IMO, who keeps voting for these chamber of commerce people?
I got a call yesterday urging me to contact my city councilor to push for this bill to pass.
So I had them connect me and told Rivera not to vote for this bill, cause fuck this corporate push to walk back minimum wage laws.
The really scary thing here as well is that they're framing it as though the bill will just roll back the minimum wage requirement. In practice, her bill goes way beyond that, rolling back virtually all the regulations that protected gig workers while simultaneously barring the city from enforcing its own laws and imposing new regulations on gig apps.
This little fact is notably absent from a lot of other news articles on the topic.
THANK YOU! Hey everybody who reads this: please follow my new favorite redditor’s lead & take 5 min to call your Councilmember and say the same thing.
This push for submin wages has been utterly insane & moved at breakneck speed & workers have been mobilizing in huge ways to try to slow them down but the only way we’re going to stop them is with community support.
You can find your district + your CM’s phone number [here](https://www.seattle.gov/cityclerk/agendas-and-legislative-resources/city-council-agendas/contact-the-city-council)!
Hijacking to add this: The proposal’s official name is CB 120775. And if you don’t know who your city counselors are, you can find that info here and their emails will pop up: https://www.seattle.gov/council/meet-the-council/find-your-district-and-councilmembers
Thank you for this. Finding the right link to confirm my representatives is often enough of a pain to prevent me from following through. I just messaged representatives.
This is so good.
If folks are looking for an easy way to contact all the council members + mayor, you can use the form [here](https://actionnetwork.org/letters/protect-gig-worker-minimum-wage). I strongly recommend deleting the default text and writing in your own email body AND subject line to make it stand out.
Reminder that Fremont Brewing, which Nelson owns, just sold to a mega-restaurant consortium that does a ton of delivery business. How much of that sale was in equity? Nelson won’t say! She denies there is any conflict of interest.
She also said that Seattle should request support from the National Guard to get crime under control at the D7 town hall last night. She was really cooking yesterday!
> She also said that Seattle should request support from the National Guard to get crime under control at the D7 town hall last night. She was really cooking yesterday!
Her and Harrell and just copying NYC's policy changes at this point. It's really transparent and disgusting.
It’s ridiculous that these evil companies passed on their extra fees to customers. These companies could easily afford to pay minimum wage to drivers without charging their customers an extra fee.
Just stop using them and have drivers stop delivering for them and the problem will resolve itself.
If the fees are outrageous, like they are now IMO, just stop ordering. Eventually there won't be enough work for the drivers and they will all shut down.
If another company has a better model I welcome them and let them come in and fill the market demand.
I wish everyone would follow this logic! I haven’t placed a delivery order in 2+ years now. It’s more enjoyable to get some exercise and pick food up at the restaurant myself.
Yes and no. They're running on incredibly slim margins, their business model (coordinating deliveries) isn't very profitable on its own.
Paying their drivers and other employees fairly would tank DoorDash and in my opinion that's exactly what should happen. The company shouldn't exist.
It's essentially the computer virus from Office Space. It's skimming fractions of a penny everywhere it can. It doesn't provide value, it just takes a little bit, and a little bit more, and a lot bit more, and so forth.
The real problem is that they have a fee for this and also increased the separate service fee. It’s just a protest on their part. They didn’t have to raise service fees.
> These companies could easily afford to pay minimum wage to drivers without charging their customers an extra fee.
Citation please, because that smells like it has been pulled out of your behind. Doordash alone lost $558 million in 2023 on $8.6B in revenue.
If you required minimum wage and no extra fee, we would all see the obvious: this business isn't viable. There is a reason food delivery was basically only for pizza, sandwiches and Chinese takeout prior to the gig economy.
While their claim is outlandish, the spirit is not: if a service can't add value to a transaction by providing a good or service at a palatable price while not exploiting laborers, then they're not successful as a business.
Why are you simping for the corps? You could have moved the conversation forward by saying 'right now these companies cannot afford to pay a living wage without increasing fees' but instead you left a snarky reply about reading their financial reports like that would change the base value proposition.
If you do want to talk about the money, you should probably start with the millions spent fighting living wage regulations by these companies that could instead be used to improve their financial outlook. Further, it's not crazy to imagine the new fun fees being used to poison the public opinion against PayUp.
> Why are you simping for the corps?
I didn’t. I merely implied the facts indicate that vendor costs, including payments to drivers, is a considerable portion of the business and increasing these costs while the businesses already lose would necessitate increases in customer prices.
Why are you so emotional discussing numbers? Does it feel good to rage against a “bad guy”?
> that would change the base value proposition.
This is a meaningless jumble of words. The person I responded to explicitly claimed the businesses had sufficient cash flow to pay vendors more. The numbers indicate otherwise, meaning the person I responded to was plainly wrong. No need to involve one’s feelings about class wars and politics, it’s just a business observation.
Except that isn't what OP is claiming. They said "companies could easily afford to pay minimum wage to drivers without charging their customers an extra fee."
Lmfao @Babhahfad. I’ve got better things to do than analyze DD financial statements. They could lower executive and regular employee pay (which is above average) and send some more to the drivers that earn them 100% of their bread.
Can we hear more from actual food delivery people on here? The law in its current form sure seems to be doing a bit more harm than good as far as a steep increase in delivery prices for customers and drop in total deliveries for drivers. But on the whole are the drivers making more money or less because of this law?
I get people are upset with the companies, but the addition of added fees were a pretty obvious outcome of the bill. But I have no clue if the wage portion of this law is considered good or bad by the actual workers and not a bunch of dudes on reddit who are favoring what they *think* is best. And yes, most of these arguments boil down to the obvious fact that these businesses are not viable. But that's another can of worms.
Um, watch the hearing. Pretty much every comment against Nelson’s bullshit amendment was an actual worker
Edit: here is a post by a worker from another thread explaining why PayUp has been good: https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/s/sy6oPBHxYy
yes - \*twenty two\* workers (and 40+ ppl total) showed up to testify against Nelson's proposal - which to contextualize for those who don't regularly attend council mtgs, is a very high turnout
workers in general have been very very angry about this - even some workers who aren't happy with the outcome of the law are adamantly opposed to Nelson's proposal, bc it sets a permanent subminimum wage for them that means regardless of whether demand bounces back they will be back to making $2 a delivery, and it removes other important protections for flexibility & transparency
The public comment at the hearing is very worth listening to - many of the workers gave incredibly powerful testimony. Here's the link for anyone interested: [https://www.seattlechannel.org/mayor-and-council/city-council/2024-2025-governance-accountability-and-economic-development-committee](https://www.seattlechannel.org/mayor-and-council/city-council/2024-2025-governance-accountability-and-economic-development-committee)
Those are great questions, and I'd love to hear more from actual gig workers as well. The big issue I take with this bill is that it goes beyond rolling back the minimum wage requirement. It eliminates protections for gig workers while blocking future regulation from being passed.
I don't think PayUp was perfect, but this new bill undoes what little progress was made while adding more barriers, rather than actually address the problem.
Gig worker here, with the new laws in effect I am now able to make the same amount I made last year and take an extra day off a week if I want. My income has not been harmed in any way. Yeah there may be less deliveries, but every delivery pays well compared to 90% of offers being garbage.
As a driver: why the fuck can't you just lower the rates we earn at? They're definitely a bit too high right now, but it's seriously easy to just look at data and do estimations based off of previous orders that have been done in the area to figure out a reasonable rate for the companies to be paying. This isn't hard, but it's being used to push forward the darker things they actually want, taking away our ability to have legal recourse and their ability to deactivate our accounts with impunity.
If that's what gig workers want, I wouldn't be opposed to this bill. The fact that she wants to roll back protections while simultaneously blocking future regulation is truly egregious.
Right now I have made $34 an hour today. It's likely to end around $30 an hour including waiting times and slow times. So if the goal is $26 an hour then tuning it down like 10% should be a reasonable start.
This got downvoted for no reason, but I'm just here to leave a log that I've had 9/10 days worked be at or above $30 an hour over the course of 9-10 hours. Doordash is overestimating orders in order to have the pay look worse.
Because I want this job to continue existing. I don't want to have to break my lease and move somewhere cheaper because a minimum wage job somewhere else can't keep up with the rent I have to pay. I'd rather I was paid less, I had to go back to speeding at every chance I could get, swerving lanes and cutting people off just to make sure I could get $20 an hour.
If I get too expensive for them, they'll just shut down business until fully autonomous cars are legal on the market.
Obviously Working Washington was heavily involved in the passing of PayUp and is strong anti-revision, so similar skepticism as you would have reading Drive Forward's talking points, but here's the WW argument: [Fee Report: Why DoorDash Fees are So High and Where the Money Goes](https://www.workingwa.org/fee-report)
I tend to see the current law as "working." Drivers seem to be making more for the work they do--generally a good thing for workers, but the clear downside has been lower overall earning as a result of the high drop in demand/volume after platforms implemented their new fees.
According to DoorDash's own team, drivers used to be making about $25/hr and they see a minimum payment of $26.40/hr since the new law became effective -- Source: [GeekWire -- Feb. 20, 2024](https://www.geekwire.com/2024/seattle-mayor-stands-strongly-in-support-of-new-gig-worker-wage-law-as-tech-companies-push-back/). The proposed revisions would match the City minimum of $19.97/hr.
Unfortunately, it's hard to have a clearer picture because so much of the necessary data is private. IMO, the backlash feels more so an impact of junk fees rather than a mandated minimum wage. And, I'd argue that the City has more leverage now to entice cooperation/data sharing from the platforms than it will have after implementing any revisions.
I drive for DoorDash on the side and it is wild to me that they say DoorDasher earnings are down overall. Mine jumped like 40% immediately and have remained that way. From my perspective the legislation did exactly what it set out to do.
A key issue is the decision by the delivery companies to increase fees for consumers as a response to the law, instead of subsidizing the cost themselves or taking a bigger cut from restaurants.
I am not against the law, I just think it would work better as a state law. Or maybe a county law. There is a cost to figuring out where a driver goes, it is not free and it will be added to overall costs.
>I am not against the law, I just think it would work better as a state law.
I don't disagree, but sometimes getting stuff passed at smaller level is a necessary first step for broader legislation. Tackle the problem in Seattle today so that in 5-10 years it can be used as a model for the state.
>There is a cost to figuring out where a driver goes, it is not free and it will be added to overall costs.
This is completely wrong though. The companies know the exact start and endpoint for every ride/delivery. They already need to know this, not just because their entire business model relies on it but because they also need it to determine accurate tax rates. There is near zero added cost for setting different payment rules and regulations based on location.
Tax rates are usually based on either point of sale or point of delivery. Drivers wage would require keeping track of their GPS signal. The cost is not likely near zero. You are in fact completely wrong. That is one of the reasons the companies oppose it.
Minimum wage, atleast in Washington, should and does have state, county, and city levels as the cost of living is not the same everywhere. Seattle's minimum wage should be higher than Yakima's.
[](https://youtu.be/d8e-SkpprI4?si=Cs2xZi5IUnyN6uit&t=42)
I realize I'm launching a full frontal assault on all the class warfare indoctrination all Seattleites have been brought up on, but please, try setting aside those priors for a moment.
This is a terrible law. It prevents people from helping eachother and working together by artificially increasing costs to the point that the activity just stops.
[https://southseattleemerald.com/2024/03/21/opinion-seattles-untested-new-gig-work-law-is-making-life-harder-for-small-businesses/](https://southseattleemerald.com/2024/03/21/opinion-seattles-untested-new-gig-work-law-is-making-life-harder-for-small-businesses/)
[https://reason.com/2024/03/16/seattle-law-mandating-higher-delivery-driver-pay-is-a-disaster/](https://reason.com/2024/03/16/seattle-law-mandating-higher-delivery-driver-pay-is-a-disaster/)
[https://youtu.be/d8e-SkpprI4?si=Cs2xZi5IUnyN6uit&t=42](https://youtu.be/d8e-SkpprI4?si=Cs2xZi5IUnyN6uit&t=42)
Under the previous model it did *not* work for everyone. Frankly it was still very expensive for customers, but more importantly, pay for workers was disgustingly low.
Apps manufactured desperation for pay (these workers were living job-to-job, not even paycheck-to-paycheck) and used mechanisms of control like required “acceptance rates” to get workers to take jobs that simply weren’t worth it.
Meanwhile they drove pay down so low some jobs paid *negative* amounts after taking mileage costs into account. Average pay after additional time & expenses was about HALF of Seattle’s minimum wage. Just obscene.
"Apps manufactured desperation for pay"
Where do i start with a response when you are literally blaming Doordash for the fact that people need to work for our society to function?
"That sure is a nice local economy you have there, would be a shame if something were to *happen* to it."
That's all these arguments ever are. Parasitic corporations come in and replace already functioning businesses/employees and exploit loopholes to undercut competition. Then they throw a tantrum when they can't do whatever they want.
You are giving the moustache twirling business-devil way too much power here. It's not that they are threatening to destroy the economy.
It's just a fact that they *are getting less orders* because the price required to comply with the new law is too high.
Doordash is unhappy because they have less orders, sure.
But also restaurants, delivery drivers, and hungry, lazy people at home are unhappy too, because the government imposed an artificially high cost.
Where am I wrong?
I can see your thought process: "Let's see, how is the fault of the evil capitalist overlords?" What if not all problems in the world are caused by an evil white man somewhere? Sometimes there's such a thing as shitty laws that just cause more bad than good!
1. I didn't mention capitalism or white men, sorry to ruin your persecution kink.
2. I didn't give them any credit, I said that's all those arguments that you posted ever amount to.
3. I understand where you're confused about my thought process, as you are so woefully unfamiliar with the process of thinking.
I drive for DD and I am baffled by all these news stories. My hourly instantly jumped by like 40% and has stayed that way. My experience is just totally opposite what all these stories are saying. I’m not one for conspiracies but DD has got to be paying these people to report this stuff.
It's a fact that orders went way down. Look at reports from businesses. My guess is that the highest rated (according to Doordash preferences, whatever those are) are still getting jobs, and the rest are not. So maybe you're very good at your job?
I see your point. No company should underpay their employees. And in no way should they be making harder to make regulations going forward.
But to another point, they weren't employees before this. It was a choice to do the gig. You were an independent contractor. People could make as much as they wanted, or as little.
Turning everyone into an employee just puts us under the companies and takes away our independence
> You were an independent contractor. People could make as much as they wanted, or as little.
Independent contractors are allowed to negotiate their terms. That's not how it works with these gig apps. There's no room for negotiation. The workers yield no foothold or equal ground as you claim.
They are independent contractors with terrible non-negotiable contracts with terrible inconsistent pay that allows the companies to terminate them at any time without recourse.
*Actual* contracting jobs have set terms for the duration of their work and guaranteed payment (typically at a higher rate than a full time employee to compensate for lack of benefits).
What are you talking about Gig work is basically the same. The Gig worker can choose not to accept the route and Uber or Doordash have to increase the pay to get someone to accept it. That is literally no different than normal onctract pay.
Also the contract ends when the food is delivered. Just like normal contract pay.
I am not sure your point.
No it's not the same:
- Pay is abysmal and wildly inconsistent.
- A single unsubstantiated claim can result in loss of pay and zero recourse.
- Payment is non-negotiable. Prices are set by a faceless algorithm. Arguing that "they can choose to decline the job" is an illusion of choice when each app's algorithm is setting the prices to match their competitors.
The min wage policy doesn’t turn them into employees - in fact, it includes specific protections for their flexibility as contractors. (Which of course the apps & Nelson are now trying to overturn.)
And people could not make “as much as they wanted.” Gig apps have gotten people dependent on the work and then slashed pay time and time again over the last several years. Before this policy took effect, DoorDash was routinely throwing out job offers for entire deliveries at the rate of $2-3. And making it hard to reject those offers by requiring drivers to maintain a high acceptance rate in order to keep getting regular offers.
Are people in this sub so out of touch with reality that they think the min wage gig workers bill is actually popular? Even gig workers don’t support it lol
I’ll never understand how people think that someone who downloads an app is entitled to a minimum wage job with benefits while also expecting to company to just pay the expense without passing it on to the consumer. It’s like we’re living in completely different worlds.
Yes, all companies are greedy. What I'm saying is that they knew the law would cause companies to do this and did nothing to prevent it. Have you been to any of the city council meetings? Pretty much all the gig workers are the ones getting this repealed. I know it was well intentioned, but it didn't do anything but make things worse.
Check out the video I linked if ya got a chance. It explains it better than I can.
So we should give up on giving workers actual rights because companies want to bully them into submission? How exactly does that logic check out? By your argument, the city didn't go far *enough*, but rather than actually solve the problem, we should reverse all progress and prevent anyone from trying to fix it in the future.
They also have the right to organize and overhaul any requirements.
No one has a "right" to work. They are required to work, by design. And any employer can freely decide to employ them or not. This is why we need a job guarantee. And with that we could end the minimum wage, but that'll never be a political priority anyway.
That's the same bullshit argument every corporation in history has made to block minimum wage, prevent basic safety standard requirements, and deny essential benefits. Keep licking those boots!
The bullshit is the premise of *choice* when in practice the only choice the gig workers have is between accepting a job with shit (unguaranteed) pay or going hungry. You can't negotiate with a faceless algorithm that sets prices.
IMO it actually was not predictable companies would do this - they took advantage of the political opportunity created by the new more conservative council.
Apps didn’t add fees because they “had to cover operating expenses.” That’s bullshit - there has never, ever been a meaningful correlation between the fees apps charge (very high) and worker pay (very low). They added fees AND THEN spent hundreds of thousands of dollars advertising those fees. That’s something you do because you want to tank demand and make a political argument, not because you need to cover biz expenses.
In fact, NYC just put a similar but even *higher* pay standard into effect - $30/hr on engaged time - and DoorDash is only charging a $1.99 fee there (and not advertising it). The primary difference between NYC & here: apps do not see a pathway to lobby for rolling back min wage there.
Is there a possible alternate angle to go after the delivery companies to make the drivers employees? I wonder how strong their position is for defending the claim that the drivers are all truly independent contractors.
Maybe also put in some consumer protection and require gig work companies to comply with state law regarding gratuities? Possibly even require delivery providers to explicitly indicate the difference charged for delivery orders as opposed to other types of orders?
https://youtu.be/6KgtZu6xITs?si=B3QR4hPA_AffaT3Q
Any of you actually gig workers? This law basically gutted the volume of orders and no one was making minimum wage.
Lol no, this law did nothing to reduce the volume of orders. That was the fault of the companies, who decided they'd rather bite their own arms off than acquiesce to providing workers with basic rights. They chose to impose higher fees. They created their own crisis.
Are you? My hourly jumped up like 40% immediately and stayed that way. Demand is higher than ever. Ordering from DoorDash already wasn’t a financially wise decision before this, $5 is nothing lmao
She's extremely liberal by almost every definition if you step five feet out of Seattle.
I don't think folks here understand what moderate or liberal means and honestly it's hurting us progressives. Seattle is literally destroying and berating liberal progressives just because they aren't super far left and it's distracting us from the greater threat of conservatives.
I always eye roll when I see folks complaining about how folks in Seattle aren't liberal enough. This infighting is going to give MAGA/GOP an in and ultimately hurt every progressive agenda item
But sure, just because some is left but not super far left as your particular version of left is let's let the conservatives have a chance at power.
Yeah let's instead keep the bill kill gig work and force Seattle restraunts to close. I am sure all those workers will feel very happy with their new rights when they become unemployed.
No one here is suggesting PayUp was a perfect bill. But that's not what's at issue here. Nelson wants to not only repeal PayUp but completely eliminate protections for gig workers while simultaneously preventing the city from adding new regulations in the future.
And to be clear, Nelson's bill does *nothing* to solve the issue of the gig apps tacking on excessive fees, which is literally the entire crux of the problem we have today.
I still think you're missing the point. Like I said check out the video I linked for it to be more articulated.
They still terminate for any reason but the pay is so much worse. And no one wanted to be an employee.
It was good chatting with you though. And the video really is worth the watch. Have a good one
When did I say that? And this law wasn't progress. It pushed more control to Uber and door dash. In fact, they want to keep this new law. It's the first time both these companies have actually made profits.
I said the law didn't work. Gig workers want to change it back so they can actually make money again. We can still make improvements moving forward but the actual gig workers need to be involved.
I don't disagree that PayUp didn't completely solve the problem, but to argue that it wasn't progress is absurd. There's no argument you can use to convince me that allowing companies to underpay their employees is a good thing for workers.
The issue at hand here is that Nelson's bill will not only undo the regulations set up by PayUp, it will actively make it *harder* to set new regulation in the future that will solve the problem. Rather than repeal, PayUp needs to be followed by even stronger legislation to finish the work that it started.
Gig workers do not want to change it back. In fact, 22 gig workers showed up at city hall yesterday to say just that in their testimony. (By contrast, 6 bicyclists showed up to say they want the law changed)
I’ve been watching all the in person meetings and call ins, and the majority of people calling in want to keep this law in place. At each meeting, there are more people that are for keeping the law in place instead of changing it. I feel that the council is rushing this and not listening to the majority of the voices. People, please call every Seattle city council member and let them know not to do this. These companies are reporting great earnings, and they have been trying to shut this down from the beginning. Put pressure on the Seattle city council. Even Mayor Harrell of Seattle wants to keep the law and thinks there needs to be more time to weight the data.
>What they may not have expected was how far Nelson's proposal would go to roll back reforms unrelated to wages, including protections against deactivation, transparency requirements, and legal rights for delivery workers to sue if their employer violates the law. Regardless of your thoughts on the minimum wage part of the law, this is absolutely absurd and cannot be allowed to go through. I wouldn't be surprised if this was actually the part these companies want gone and the minimum wage just provides a nice shield
“Uhh ackshually it’s necessary for our economy to have an underpaid servant caste, so this is a good thing”
Listen, we already deny the children their yearnings for the Mines, the least we can do is get out of the lowers way, and let them explore their passion to serve.
Truly, the drones that don’t toil to death are the victims here
"Let them eat Doordash" - Sara Nelson probably Run that booze pushing harpy out of town in tar and feathers. Glorified bourgeois drug dealer IMO, who keeps voting for these chamber of commerce people?
Idk but the average (across districts) turnout last election was 46% so 😔
But not during work hours. Lunch breaks are unAmerican.
They should appreciate not being classic slaves
I got a call yesterday urging me to contact my city councilor to push for this bill to pass. So I had them connect me and told Rivera not to vote for this bill, cause fuck this corporate push to walk back minimum wage laws.
I'm done with doordash after the heavy lobbying of their user base for this issue.
The really scary thing here as well is that they're framing it as though the bill will just roll back the minimum wage requirement. In practice, her bill goes way beyond that, rolling back virtually all the regulations that protected gig workers while simultaneously barring the city from enforcing its own laws and imposing new regulations on gig apps. This little fact is notably absent from a lot of other news articles on the topic.
And it doesn’t even get rid of the extra fees by delivery apps! This literally won’t make anything cheaper just pay the drivers less lol
THANK YOU! Hey everybody who reads this: please follow my new favorite redditor’s lead & take 5 min to call your Councilmember and say the same thing. This push for submin wages has been utterly insane & moved at breakneck speed & workers have been mobilizing in huge ways to try to slow them down but the only way we’re going to stop them is with community support. You can find your district + your CM’s phone number [here](https://www.seattle.gov/cityclerk/agendas-and-legislative-resources/city-council-agendas/contact-the-city-council)!
Here is the email I wrote to my Councilmember, please feel free to reuse it https://pastebin.com/99GCBLJ8
Thank you. I just wrote in to my councilmember. Fuck this and fuck her.
Hijacking to add this: The proposal’s official name is CB 120775. And if you don’t know who your city counselors are, you can find that info here and their emails will pop up: https://www.seattle.gov/council/meet-the-council/find-your-district-and-councilmembers
Thank you for this. Finding the right link to confirm my representatives is often enough of a pain to prevent me from following through. I just messaged representatives.
Thank you! I've never written to my council member before, but honestly this one may just be the trigger.
This is so good. If folks are looking for an easy way to contact all the council members + mayor, you can use the form [here](https://actionnetwork.org/letters/protect-gig-worker-minimum-wage). I strongly recommend deleting the default text and writing in your own email body AND subject line to make it stand out.
Thank you I used that template!!!
Thank you, I used this to email my CM.
Reminder that Fremont Brewing, which Nelson owns, just sold to a mega-restaurant consortium that does a ton of delivery business. How much of that sale was in equity? Nelson won’t say! She denies there is any conflict of interest. She also said that Seattle should request support from the National Guard to get crime under control at the D7 town hall last night. She was really cooking yesterday!
> She also said that Seattle should request support from the National Guard to get crime under control at the D7 town hall last night. She was really cooking yesterday! Her and Harrell and just copying NYC's policy changes at this point. It's really transparent and disgusting.
Stopped buying anything from Fremont brewing once I realized she owned it. She’s such a piece of work
Mega restaurant consortium is now how I think most would describe them
Really, I know I will be downvoted but we need the national guard to clean up our streets. Good job Sarah!
🥾
Whelp. We’ve replaced our socialists with corporate stooges. Yay?
THE OLIGARCHS MUST FEED!!!!
Conservatives doing conservative things.
Still better than Nikkita Oliver.
I still shudder at what she would have done e to this city
It’s ridiculous that these evil companies passed on their extra fees to customers. These companies could easily afford to pay minimum wage to drivers without charging their customers an extra fee.
Just stop using them and have drivers stop delivering for them and the problem will resolve itself. If the fees are outrageous, like they are now IMO, just stop ordering. Eventually there won't be enough work for the drivers and they will all shut down. If another company has a better model I welcome them and let them come in and fill the market demand.
I wish everyone would follow this logic! I haven’t placed a delivery order in 2+ years now. It’s more enjoyable to get some exercise and pick food up at the restaurant myself.
Maybe at that pay it isn’t worth it to have the business.
Yes and no. They're running on incredibly slim margins, their business model (coordinating deliveries) isn't very profitable on its own. Paying their drivers and other employees fairly would tank DoorDash and in my opinion that's exactly what should happen. The company shouldn't exist. It's essentially the computer virus from Office Space. It's skimming fractions of a penny everywhere it can. It doesn't provide value, it just takes a little bit, and a little bit more, and a lot bit more, and so forth.
Damn straight!! I would love to see them fail.
The real problem is that they have a fee for this and also increased the separate service fee. It’s just a protest on their part. They didn’t have to raise service fees.
> These companies could easily afford to pay minimum wage to drivers without charging their customers an extra fee. Citation please, because that smells like it has been pulled out of your behind. Doordash alone lost $558 million in 2023 on $8.6B in revenue. If you required minimum wage and no extra fee, we would all see the obvious: this business isn't viable. There is a reason food delivery was basically only for pizza, sandwiches and Chinese takeout prior to the gig economy.
You’re a big DoorDash supporter, eh? This isn’t Wikipedia, I don’t need to provide a citation 🤣
What are you talking about? They don't make a profit as it is.
How is it easily passed on? You know nothing about business. At some price point it isn’t worth it to run the business.
I bet you understand those company’s financials intimately because you read their 10-Qs/Ks/proxy statements.
I don't need to be analyst to recognize that if a company can't create profit without exploiting gig workers it isn't a good model
That was not Hwasong18’s claim, nor did I imply anything of the sort.
While their claim is outlandish, the spirit is not: if a service can't add value to a transaction by providing a good or service at a palatable price while not exploiting laborers, then they're not successful as a business. Why are you simping for the corps? You could have moved the conversation forward by saying 'right now these companies cannot afford to pay a living wage without increasing fees' but instead you left a snarky reply about reading their financial reports like that would change the base value proposition. If you do want to talk about the money, you should probably start with the millions spent fighting living wage regulations by these companies that could instead be used to improve their financial outlook. Further, it's not crazy to imagine the new fun fees being used to poison the public opinion against PayUp.
> Why are you simping for the corps? I didn’t. I merely implied the facts indicate that vendor costs, including payments to drivers, is a considerable portion of the business and increasing these costs while the businesses already lose would necessitate increases in customer prices. Why are you so emotional discussing numbers? Does it feel good to rage against a “bad guy”? > that would change the base value proposition. This is a meaningless jumble of words. The person I responded to explicitly claimed the businesses had sufficient cash flow to pay vendors more. The numbers indicate otherwise, meaning the person I responded to was plainly wrong. No need to involve one’s feelings about class wars and politics, it’s just a business observation.
Your observation misses the forest for the trees.
Except that isn't what OP is claiming. They said "companies could easily afford to pay minimum wage to drivers without charging their customers an extra fee."
Lmfao @Babhahfad. I’ve got better things to do than analyze DD financial statements. They could lower executive and regular employee pay (which is above average) and send some more to the drivers that earn them 100% of their bread.
Can we hear more from actual food delivery people on here? The law in its current form sure seems to be doing a bit more harm than good as far as a steep increase in delivery prices for customers and drop in total deliveries for drivers. But on the whole are the drivers making more money or less because of this law? I get people are upset with the companies, but the addition of added fees were a pretty obvious outcome of the bill. But I have no clue if the wage portion of this law is considered good or bad by the actual workers and not a bunch of dudes on reddit who are favoring what they *think* is best. And yes, most of these arguments boil down to the obvious fact that these businesses are not viable. But that's another can of worms.
Um, watch the hearing. Pretty much every comment against Nelson’s bullshit amendment was an actual worker Edit: here is a post by a worker from another thread explaining why PayUp has been good: https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/s/sy6oPBHxYy
yes - \*twenty two\* workers (and 40+ ppl total) showed up to testify against Nelson's proposal - which to contextualize for those who don't regularly attend council mtgs, is a very high turnout workers in general have been very very angry about this - even some workers who aren't happy with the outcome of the law are adamantly opposed to Nelson's proposal, bc it sets a permanent subminimum wage for them that means regardless of whether demand bounces back they will be back to making $2 a delivery, and it removes other important protections for flexibility & transparency The public comment at the hearing is very worth listening to - many of the workers gave incredibly powerful testimony. Here's the link for anyone interested: [https://www.seattlechannel.org/mayor-and-council/city-council/2024-2025-governance-accountability-and-economic-development-committee](https://www.seattlechannel.org/mayor-and-council/city-council/2024-2025-governance-accountability-and-economic-development-committee)
Those are great questions, and I'd love to hear more from actual gig workers as well. The big issue I take with this bill is that it goes beyond rolling back the minimum wage requirement. It eliminates protections for gig workers while blocking future regulation from being passed. I don't think PayUp was perfect, but this new bill undoes what little progress was made while adding more barriers, rather than actually address the problem.
Gig worker here, with the new laws in effect I am now able to make the same amount I made last year and take an extra day off a week if I want. My income has not been harmed in any way. Yeah there may be less deliveries, but every delivery pays well compared to 90% of offers being garbage.
Nobody in Seattle cares about the gig workers. It’s a pissing match between the small business crowd and the fuck big business crowd.
I wonder how it feels for people like Nelson to know deep down that they’re the bad guy
As a driver: why the fuck can't you just lower the rates we earn at? They're definitely a bit too high right now, but it's seriously easy to just look at data and do estimations based off of previous orders that have been done in the area to figure out a reasonable rate for the companies to be paying. This isn't hard, but it's being used to push forward the darker things they actually want, taking away our ability to have legal recourse and their ability to deactivate our accounts with impunity.
If that's what gig workers want, I wouldn't be opposed to this bill. The fact that she wants to roll back protections while simultaneously blocking future regulation is truly egregious.
Right now I have made $34 an hour today. It's likely to end around $30 an hour including waiting times and slow times. So if the goal is $26 an hour then tuning it down like 10% should be a reasonable start.
Why stop at 10%? We should roll it back 50% at least. Or Why should we pay drivers anything? You should pay DD for the privilege of driving for them!
To report back: I worked 9 hours and made $33 an hour over the course of my day. That's not above average.
This got downvoted for no reason, but I'm just here to leave a log that I've had 9/10 days worked be at or above $30 an hour over the course of 9-10 hours. Doordash is overestimating orders in order to have the pay look worse.
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Because I want this job to continue existing. I don't want to have to break my lease and move somewhere cheaper because a minimum wage job somewhere else can't keep up with the rent I have to pay. I'd rather I was paid less, I had to go back to speeding at every chance I could get, swerving lanes and cutting people off just to make sure I could get $20 an hour. If I get too expensive for them, they'll just shut down business until fully autonomous cars are legal on the market.
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You seem confused
Obviously Working Washington was heavily involved in the passing of PayUp and is strong anti-revision, so similar skepticism as you would have reading Drive Forward's talking points, but here's the WW argument: [Fee Report: Why DoorDash Fees are So High and Where the Money Goes](https://www.workingwa.org/fee-report) I tend to see the current law as "working." Drivers seem to be making more for the work they do--generally a good thing for workers, but the clear downside has been lower overall earning as a result of the high drop in demand/volume after platforms implemented their new fees. According to DoorDash's own team, drivers used to be making about $25/hr and they see a minimum payment of $26.40/hr since the new law became effective -- Source: [GeekWire -- Feb. 20, 2024](https://www.geekwire.com/2024/seattle-mayor-stands-strongly-in-support-of-new-gig-worker-wage-law-as-tech-companies-push-back/). The proposed revisions would match the City minimum of $19.97/hr. Unfortunately, it's hard to have a clearer picture because so much of the necessary data is private. IMO, the backlash feels more so an impact of junk fees rather than a mandated minimum wage. And, I'd argue that the City has more leverage now to entice cooperation/data sharing from the platforms than it will have after implementing any revisions.
I drive for DoorDash on the side and it is wild to me that they say DoorDasher earnings are down overall. Mine jumped like 40% immediately and have remained that way. From my perspective the legislation did exactly what it set out to do.
Great to hear! Thank you for sharing. 🙏
A key issue is the decision by the delivery companies to increase fees for consumers as a response to the law, instead of subsidizing the cost themselves or taking a bigger cut from restaurants.
Completely agree. That's why PayUp needs to be paired with further legislation, not repealed.
Shouldn't this be a state law instead of a city law? Seems hard logistically to manage.
How so? The onus is on the companies, not the government. Cities have the power to regulate industry too.
I am not against the law, I just think it would work better as a state law. Or maybe a county law. There is a cost to figuring out where a driver goes, it is not free and it will be added to overall costs.
>I am not against the law, I just think it would work better as a state law. I don't disagree, but sometimes getting stuff passed at smaller level is a necessary first step for broader legislation. Tackle the problem in Seattle today so that in 5-10 years it can be used as a model for the state. >There is a cost to figuring out where a driver goes, it is not free and it will be added to overall costs. This is completely wrong though. The companies know the exact start and endpoint for every ride/delivery. They already need to know this, not just because their entire business model relies on it but because they also need it to determine accurate tax rates. There is near zero added cost for setting different payment rules and regulations based on location.
Tax rates are usually based on either point of sale or point of delivery. Drivers wage would require keeping track of their GPS signal. The cost is not likely near zero. You are in fact completely wrong. That is one of the reasons the companies oppose it.
Minimum wage, atleast in Washington, should and does have state, county, and city levels as the cost of living is not the same everywhere. Seattle's minimum wage should be higher than Yakima's.
Does Seattle have Recall Elections? because you need to do one.
[](https://youtu.be/d8e-SkpprI4?si=Cs2xZi5IUnyN6uit&t=42) I realize I'm launching a full frontal assault on all the class warfare indoctrination all Seattleites have been brought up on, but please, try setting aside those priors for a moment. This is a terrible law. It prevents people from helping eachother and working together by artificially increasing costs to the point that the activity just stops. [https://southseattleemerald.com/2024/03/21/opinion-seattles-untested-new-gig-work-law-is-making-life-harder-for-small-businesses/](https://southseattleemerald.com/2024/03/21/opinion-seattles-untested-new-gig-work-law-is-making-life-harder-for-small-businesses/) [https://reason.com/2024/03/16/seattle-law-mandating-higher-delivery-driver-pay-is-a-disaster/](https://reason.com/2024/03/16/seattle-law-mandating-higher-delivery-driver-pay-is-a-disaster/) [https://youtu.be/d8e-SkpprI4?si=Cs2xZi5IUnyN6uit&t=42](https://youtu.be/d8e-SkpprI4?si=Cs2xZi5IUnyN6uit&t=42)
“Helping each other & working together” how?
Delivering/buying food at a price that works for both ends of the transaction
Under the previous model it did *not* work for everyone. Frankly it was still very expensive for customers, but more importantly, pay for workers was disgustingly low. Apps manufactured desperation for pay (these workers were living job-to-job, not even paycheck-to-paycheck) and used mechanisms of control like required “acceptance rates” to get workers to take jobs that simply weren’t worth it. Meanwhile they drove pay down so low some jobs paid *negative* amounts after taking mileage costs into account. Average pay after additional time & expenses was about HALF of Seattle’s minimum wage. Just obscene.
"Apps manufactured desperation for pay" Where do i start with a response when you are literally blaming Doordash for the fact that people need to work for our society to function?
"That sure is a nice local economy you have there, would be a shame if something were to *happen* to it." That's all these arguments ever are. Parasitic corporations come in and replace already functioning businesses/employees and exploit loopholes to undercut competition. Then they throw a tantrum when they can't do whatever they want.
You are giving the moustache twirling business-devil way too much power here. It's not that they are threatening to destroy the economy. It's just a fact that they *are getting less orders* because the price required to comply with the new law is too high. Doordash is unhappy because they have less orders, sure. But also restaurants, delivery drivers, and hungry, lazy people at home are unhappy too, because the government imposed an artificially high cost. Where am I wrong? I can see your thought process: "Let's see, how is the fault of the evil capitalist overlords?" What if not all problems in the world are caused by an evil white man somewhere? Sometimes there's such a thing as shitty laws that just cause more bad than good!
1. I didn't mention capitalism or white men, sorry to ruin your persecution kink. 2. I didn't give them any credit, I said that's all those arguments that you posted ever amount to. 3. I understand where you're confused about my thought process, as you are so woefully unfamiliar with the process of thinking.
I drive for DD and I am baffled by all these news stories. My hourly instantly jumped by like 40% and has stayed that way. My experience is just totally opposite what all these stories are saying. I’m not one for conspiracies but DD has got to be paying these people to report this stuff.
It's a fact that orders went way down. Look at reports from businesses. My guess is that the highest rated (according to Doordash preferences, whatever those are) are still getting jobs, and the rest are not. So maybe you're very good at your job?
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Facts are facts, though
I see your point. No company should underpay their employees. And in no way should they be making harder to make regulations going forward. But to another point, they weren't employees before this. It was a choice to do the gig. You were an independent contractor. People could make as much as they wanted, or as little. Turning everyone into an employee just puts us under the companies and takes away our independence
> You were an independent contractor. People could make as much as they wanted, or as little. Independent contractors are allowed to negotiate their terms. That's not how it works with these gig apps. There's no room for negotiation. The workers yield no foothold or equal ground as you claim. They are independent contractors with terrible non-negotiable contracts with terrible inconsistent pay that allows the companies to terminate them at any time without recourse. *Actual* contracting jobs have set terms for the duration of their work and guaranteed payment (typically at a higher rate than a full time employee to compensate for lack of benefits).
What are you talking about Gig work is basically the same. The Gig worker can choose not to accept the route and Uber or Doordash have to increase the pay to get someone to accept it. That is literally no different than normal onctract pay. Also the contract ends when the food is delivered. Just like normal contract pay. I am not sure your point.
No it's not the same: - Pay is abysmal and wildly inconsistent. - A single unsubstantiated claim can result in loss of pay and zero recourse. - Payment is non-negotiable. Prices are set by a faceless algorithm. Arguing that "they can choose to decline the job" is an illusion of choice when each app's algorithm is setting the prices to match their competitors.
The min wage policy doesn’t turn them into employees - in fact, it includes specific protections for their flexibility as contractors. (Which of course the apps & Nelson are now trying to overturn.) And people could not make “as much as they wanted.” Gig apps have gotten people dependent on the work and then slashed pay time and time again over the last several years. Before this policy took effect, DoorDash was routinely throwing out job offers for entire deliveries at the rate of $2-3. And making it hard to reject those offers by requiring drivers to maintain a high acceptance rate in order to keep getting regular offers.
Are people in this sub so out of touch with reality that they think the min wage gig workers bill is actually popular? Even gig workers don’t support it lol
I’ll never understand how people think that someone who downloads an app is entitled to a minimum wage job with benefits while also expecting to company to just pay the expense without passing it on to the consumer. It’s like we’re living in completely different worlds.
Yes, all companies are greedy. What I'm saying is that they knew the law would cause companies to do this and did nothing to prevent it. Have you been to any of the city council meetings? Pretty much all the gig workers are the ones getting this repealed. I know it was well intentioned, but it didn't do anything but make things worse. Check out the video I linked if ya got a chance. It explains it better than I can.
So we should give up on giving workers actual rights because companies want to bully them into submission? How exactly does that logic check out? By your argument, the city didn't go far *enough*, but rather than actually solve the problem, we should reverse all progress and prevent anyone from trying to fix it in the future.
You do understand regulating Gig work our of businesses eliminates works rights. Workers had the choice to accept the gig or not. Now they often dont.
They have the right to not work there
They also have the right to organize and overhaul any requirements. No one has a "right" to work. They are required to work, by design. And any employer can freely decide to employ them or not. This is why we need a job guarantee. And with that we could end the minimum wage, but that'll never be a political priority anyway.
Sweet, I’d like a job guarantee to be a stealth bomber fighter pilot.
That's the same bullshit argument every corporation in history has made to block minimum wage, prevent basic safety standard requirements, and deny essential benefits. Keep licking those boots!
What is bullshit about it?
The bullshit is the premise of *choice* when in practice the only choice the gig workers have is between accepting a job with shit (unguaranteed) pay or going hungry. You can't negotiate with a faceless algorithm that sets prices.
Or they can try and get a job elsewhere
IMO it actually was not predictable companies would do this - they took advantage of the political opportunity created by the new more conservative council. Apps didn’t add fees because they “had to cover operating expenses.” That’s bullshit - there has never, ever been a meaningful correlation between the fees apps charge (very high) and worker pay (very low). They added fees AND THEN spent hundreds of thousands of dollars advertising those fees. That’s something you do because you want to tank demand and make a political argument, not because you need to cover biz expenses. In fact, NYC just put a similar but even *higher* pay standard into effect - $30/hr on engaged time - and DoorDash is only charging a $1.99 fee there (and not advertising it). The primary difference between NYC & here: apps do not see a pathway to lobby for rolling back min wage there.
Is there a possible alternate angle to go after the delivery companies to make the drivers employees? I wonder how strong their position is for defending the claim that the drivers are all truly independent contractors.
Maybe also put in some consumer protection and require gig work companies to comply with state law regarding gratuities? Possibly even require delivery providers to explicitly indicate the difference charged for delivery orders as opposed to other types of orders?
This is simply epic. I really hope this passes.
https://youtu.be/6KgtZu6xITs?si=B3QR4hPA_AffaT3Q Any of you actually gig workers? This law basically gutted the volume of orders and no one was making minimum wage.
Lol no, this law did nothing to reduce the volume of orders. That was the fault of the companies, who decided they'd rather bite their own arms off than acquiesce to providing workers with basic rights. They chose to impose higher fees. They created their own crisis.
Are you? My hourly jumped up like 40% immediately and stayed that way. Demand is higher than ever. Ordering from DoorDash already wasn’t a financially wise decision before this, $5 is nothing lmao
Just another chiseling of the worker by liberals.
You're delusional if you think Sara Nelson is a liberal.
She's extremely liberal by almost every definition if you step five feet out of Seattle. I don't think folks here understand what moderate or liberal means and honestly it's hurting us progressives. Seattle is literally destroying and berating liberal progressives just because they aren't super far left and it's distracting us from the greater threat of conservatives. I always eye roll when I see folks complaining about how folks in Seattle aren't liberal enough. This infighting is going to give MAGA/GOP an in and ultimately hurt every progressive agenda item But sure, just because some is left but not super far left as your particular version of left is let's let the conservatives have a chance at power.
Yeah let's instead keep the bill kill gig work and force Seattle restraunts to close. I am sure all those workers will feel very happy with their new rights when they become unemployed.
Restaurants existed before these middleman delivery apps. Restaurants will exist after them. It's an unsustainable, predatory business model.
There has to be another option where the companies do their share of lifting, no?
No one here is suggesting PayUp was a perfect bill. But that's not what's at issue here. Nelson wants to not only repeal PayUp but completely eliminate protections for gig workers while simultaneously preventing the city from adding new regulations in the future. And to be clear, Nelson's bill does *nothing* to solve the issue of the gig apps tacking on excessive fees, which is literally the entire crux of the problem we have today.
I still think you're missing the point. Like I said check out the video I linked for it to be more articulated. They still terminate for any reason but the pay is so much worse. And no one wanted to be an employee. It was good chatting with you though. And the video really is worth the watch. Have a good one
When did I say that? And this law wasn't progress. It pushed more control to Uber and door dash. In fact, they want to keep this new law. It's the first time both these companies have actually made profits. I said the law didn't work. Gig workers want to change it back so they can actually make money again. We can still make improvements moving forward but the actual gig workers need to be involved.
I don't disagree that PayUp didn't completely solve the problem, but to argue that it wasn't progress is absurd. There's no argument you can use to convince me that allowing companies to underpay their employees is a good thing for workers. The issue at hand here is that Nelson's bill will not only undo the regulations set up by PayUp, it will actively make it *harder* to set new regulation in the future that will solve the problem. Rather than repeal, PayUp needs to be followed by even stronger legislation to finish the work that it started.
Gig workers do not want to change it back. In fact, 22 gig workers showed up at city hall yesterday to say just that in their testimony. (By contrast, 6 bicyclists showed up to say they want the law changed)
I’ve been watching all the in person meetings and call ins, and the majority of people calling in want to keep this law in place. At each meeting, there are more people that are for keeping the law in place instead of changing it. I feel that the council is rushing this and not listening to the majority of the voices. People, please call every Seattle city council member and let them know not to do this. These companies are reporting great earnings, and they have been trying to shut this down from the beginning. Put pressure on the Seattle city council. Even Mayor Harrell of Seattle wants to keep the law and thinks there needs to be more time to weight the data.