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California DoorDash workers demonstrated outside the home of DoorDash CEO Tony Xu on Thursday following a recent ruling by a California Superior Court judge calling Proposition 22 of 2020 unconstitutional. Proposition 22, which passed last November in California, would allow app-based companies like DoorDash, Uber, and Lyft to continue to classify workers as independent contractors rather than employees.
A group of about 50 DoorDash employees affiliated with rights groups We Drive Progress and Gig Workers Rising traveled by caravan past Xu’s home in the Pacific Heights neighborhood of San Francisco. They demanded that DoorDash provide transparency for tips and 120% of minimum wage, or about $ 17 an hour, put an end to unfair deactivations and provide free personal protective equipment, as well as adequate remuneration for the disinfection of cars and equipment.
“Dasher’s concerns and feedback are always important to us, and we will continue to hear their voices and engage our community directly,” a DoorDash spokesperson told TechCrunch. “However, we do know that today’s participants are not speaking for the 91% of California Dashers who want to remain independent entrepreneurs or the millions of California voters who overwhelmingly supported Proposition 22. The reality is that the The passage of Prop 22 addressed in law many of the concerns raised today through its historic benefits and protections: workers earn 120% of their local minimum wage per working hour in addition to 100% of their tips, receive free PPE and have access to health funds. ”
DoorDash drivers say they get paid for the time they are ‘active’, which means actively driving to pick up food and drop it off, rather than when they are online and waiting for concerts to arrive, leads to inadequate compensation. They also say a lot of their living wage comes from tips, which should be an added bonus, but ends up helping to make ends meet depending on DoorDash’s compensation structure. Proposition 22 also seeks to guarantee a refund of 30 cents per mile engaged, which drivers say “would be great if that were true.” DoorDash did not respond to follow-ups regarding its compensation structure or complaints from dashers that they had not received free PPE.
Rondu Gantt, a gig worker who has worked for DoorDash for two and a half years and who also drives for Uber and Lyft to get by, says his base DoorDash salary is often as low as $ 3 an hour, and that about 40% to 60% of their money comes from tips. While this model resembles the restaurant industry in the United States, which can be very lucrative for waiters and bartenders, for a delivery driver, it is an unsustainable way of making a living because the culture of tip is not as strong.
“DoorDash is paying so low because they want to make it affordable for the customer, but I would say for the driver it becomes unaffordable,” Gantt told TechCrunch, citing the costs of owning, maintaining, parking and refueling a vehicle as potentially crippling. “Last week I drove 30 hours and earned $ 405. It’s $ 13.50 an hour, which is below the minimum wage.
Gantt said drivers have also faced pressure to drive in unsafe conditions, and we can look at footage of delivery drivers in New York City during Hurricane Ida as an example of some conditions that drivers feel obligated. to accept. Over the past two years, DoorDash drivers have also been viewed as essential workers, interacting with and providing services to many people during a pandemic at risk to their health.
Gig Workers Rising says DoorDash workers “have received little or no safety support,” with some workers “being reimbursed as little as 80 cents a day for cleaning / disinfecting equipment and materials. PPE they use to ensure their safety and that of customers ”.
“At the moment, working together is not flexible,” a spokesperson for Gig Workers Rising told TechCrunch. “Workers are at the mercy of demand. If they were employees, the job would change as they would work knowing they have health care and can take a day off sick.
Because Proposition 22 was declared unconstitutional, the spokesperson said it should not be in force.
“Concert companies violate this law every day by choosing not to comply with it,” he said.
For his part, Gantt doesn’t necessarily want to be an employee, he just wants to make sure he gets paid what he deserves.
“Which is not the minimum wage,” he said. “The minimum wage would also be unacceptable. The cost of that, the danger, makes minimum wage unacceptable. And realistically, they only sometimes pay you pre-tax minimum wage. After taxes, you certainly earn less.
TechCrunch had access to DoorDash employee dashboards that break down their pay. For the week of July 12 to July 19, a dasher was paid a total of $ 574.21 for 53 deliveries, of which $ 274 came from the customer’s tip. His “uptime” was 14 hours and 21 minutes, and his “dash time”, or when logged into the app while waiting for concerts and deliveries, was around 30 hours.
DoorDash’s “guaranteed winnings” for the week were $ 300.21. (DoorDash did not respond to clarifications on how Guaranteed Weekly Earnings are calculated or what they’re based on, but an article on the company’s website indicates that Guaranteed Earnings are incentives for dashers in areas Specifics.) His base salary was approximately $ 257.62. , but DoorDash added an additional $ 42.59 to accommodate guaranteed winnings. If we divide the amount paid by DoorDash by the number of hours of “active time”, the worker was paid approximately $ 21 per hour. If we divide it by the “dash time” it looks more like $ 10 an hour.
Again, this is before tax. Self-employed entrepreneurs are generally advised to set aside around 30% of their salary as they have to pay self-employment tax, which is 15.3% of taxable income, federal income tax, which varies depending on of the tax bracket, and possibly a state income tax. After taxes, this dasher’s total pay for 30 hours of work, including his $ 274 tip, would be around $ 402, which comes to $ 13.40 an hour.
Tipping was a concern during Thursday’s protest as drivers called for transparency. Gantt says shooters can see a cumulative amount of tip winnings per week, as well as the amount of tip they receive for each order, but they don’t believe the amount they receive is actually the amount the customers give them.
Gantt and the other pilots aren’t just paranoid. Last November, DoorDash agreed to pay $ 2.5 million to settle a lawsuit alleging the company stole tips from drivers and led customers to believe that the tip money in fact went to the drivers. The lawsuit, filed by Washington, DC Attorney General Karl Racine, alleged that DoorDash was reducing drivers’ wages for each job by the amount of any tip.
One of the rallying cries of the protest was that Xu “share the wealth.” In 2020, the CEO was would have highest paid CEO In the Bay Area, achieving total income of $ 413.67 million, which includes salary and stock options. During the second quarter, DoorDash experienced a Earnings of $ 113 million adjusted for EBITDA, but was overall unprofitable with a net loss of $ 102 million.
“We all work for money and how that money is distributed as they go through their income tells you who matters and who doesn’t,” Gantt said. “It’s a clear sign of who is important, who is valuable. If they don’t pay you, they don’t like you.
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