For Instacart workers across the country, the popular grocery delivery app promised flexibility and a solid wage, perks that enticed thousands to join the app during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.
But amid worsening working conditions including plummeting pay, safety concerns, and a punitive rating system, Instacart employees, known as shoppers, will be staging a walkout on 16 October and will continue striking until the company meets their demands for better treatment.
You want to talk about crappy jobs? The delivery biz—Instacart, DoorDash, Grubhub, etc.—is ground zero. If anything better is available, you'd grab it.
And better jobs are available! There are allegedly millions of unfilled jobs right now, many of them requiring little or no experience.
Now, I acknowledge that jobs aren't all interchangeable, and delivery jobs are popular with workers who want to work on their own schedule. Still, does it really make sense that with millions of open jobs out there, Instacart can be reducing pay?
Once again, this doesn't compute. Are all those "open jobs" for real? I'm beginning to wonder.
Instacart is a poorly run company. They're not necessarily a rational actor, due to managerial incompetence.
If it's an opening you don't have to fill or worry about until the absolutely perfect ideal candidate comes along who will beg you for it on bended knee, it's probably not a real job.
Or if it's a job for a project that won't actually start for eighteen months or more, but you're taking applications, it's probably not a real job.
The problem is a mismatch between (1) what employers think they need to staff a job and (2) what employees who would be great at that job can offer. Employers ask for a person who basically could be the manager of that employee so the job stays open.
It used to be that almost anyone with a college degree could qualify for basic entry-level jobs, but now these jobs can require very specific (usually IT-based) training or skills. And these things are usually nothing skills, like being familiar with specific bookkeeping programs that anyone who's seen a spreadsheet can pick up in a couple hours. A paralegal (again, a job any reasonably competent person can do) might need to know a bunch of pretty simply computer programs they could learn in a day, but if you don't already know it you won't get hired.
It's all part of the neo-liberal "you are a mini corporation" ethos where employers feel no loyalty to employees or any obligation to provide anything to them.
So that leaves tons of people working Amazon warehouses or delivery.
My son owns a taxi company in CA. He provides health insurance and is setting up 401's for them now. He says he will provide what it takes to get and keep good employees. BTW, his business is very successful, and says that's because of his employees. No mini corp. mentality.
It might be that as the pandemic (apparently) wanes, demand for services like Instacart might be going down, and since they pay by the job that would be reflected in a drop in what they're paying their exploited-labor "contractors".
Following the method of most Americans, since I don't know anyone who is not working, I assume that everyone who wants a job has one. Just kidding.
The delivery service jobs are not "ground zero". Or if they are, it's a pretty big ground because their are lots of jobs with similar quality. Amazon Warehouse jobs, retail, resturant and leisure service jobs - they all suck just as much.
Lol. I got my start rolling screws on the assembly line. You think that is a bed of roses??
They're pretty much ground zero of bad jobs,
At least restaurants don't usually try to turn servers into contractors.
I've worked all the jobs on the list, and while I enjoyed delivery alot, the risks and personal outlay were not commensurate with the pay.
The problem with restaurant jobs is that they are turning young kids into enforcers of county mandates. No mask no entry. A 20 year old hostess puts up with a LOT of abuse from unruly customers when she tells them they have to wear a mask to enter but can remove it while eating.
Our nation has become very uncivil when it comes to masks. AND at the same time we have become too used to confrontation.
It is grossly unfair to the employees who have to put up with this type of immature behavior
Anybody that serves alcoholic beverages has long been co-opted into a law enforcement role. It's nothing new.
They're not even supposed to be allowed in unless they have a mask on which is why I said what I said.
As for cutting someone off? Usually done by the manager or bartender on the advice of the waitress/waiter.
But to put guard duties on a hostess?
Agreed, there are many jobs (likely including Instacart) that are undesirable: low pay, bad work conditions and a lack of job security. However, I think its a leap too far to say these are not real job: these jobs were filled at a much higher level just prior to Covid.
IF our workforce had returned to the pre Covid level,THEN perhaps one could claim undesirable jobs are not real. However, in fact, we are still several million jobs short of the pre Covid level....
There used to be a ready supply of undocumented workers as well as more immigrants. They are missed.
Nope. That isn't it. Most of them weren't even candidates for current jobs. The problem is US population growth crested around 1960 and hasn't grown since. The amount of debt expansion people want in services drains labor. If the US economy grew 1-1.5% as it should. There would be no labor shortage.
This doesn't make any sense at all.
Yes, usually, Ofgrey makes no sense. When he does make sense, it's always just worse. At least his comments are consistently useless.
Since delivery is paid basically as piecework, it stands to reason the Instacart folks would be getting paid less if there were fewer deliveries. So, are there fewer deliveries?
They were getting paid less per piece, too.
I would argue skills mismatch and a lower selection of candidates than they desire+multimedia ability to spew out "job openings" has created the job " crunch". Slower, more production focused economy is healthier. But won't produce the profits.
This post seems to assume that Intacart (and other such jobs) are the primary job of their workers where I bet a huge percentage of the employee's this is their second (or third) job. Anecdotal my co`worker, and a friends son in law both have full time jobs with benefits but work Instacart and Uber Eats to earn extra money. I had an Uber driver a few months back who was a UPS driver.
How does it assume that? And what does it matter if it's not their only form of work?
I had an interview for a new job earlier this afternoon. I already have a job as a professional and I get inquiries all the time. In the plant where I work we cannot keep up. Not enough people. One of my co-workers put in his 2 week notice yesterday for a new job with another company. It's a job seekers market... if you have the skills and abilities to compete.
Can't say what is going on with unskilled labor like delivery. Quite a few restaurants in my area close early evening now. And none of the fast food places are open 24 hours anymore. A mid range restaurant nearby doesn't even open for lunch except Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. 4 - 9 pm rest of the week.
I think it's great. There are way too many crappy restaurants anyway.
What I don't see is why anyone would manufacture fake job openings. All they accomplish is upward pressure on wages. Why would any employer take that risk?
Except of course: Maybe employers are not rational actors. Would that surprise a lot of folks?
Why? To do market research. What is the state of the market? What kind of candidates respond to the ad. What kind of pay do they want. Work from home?
Fake job openings don't hire anyone so they don't create wage pressure.
I think this takes econ 101 too literally. Something is true as far as the market is concerned when enough people believe it. If enough fake jobs are advertised it creates the expectation of rising wages in both workers and employers. For those who want to keep wages down it will make hiring harder, not easier.
We had this problem, a surfeit of unfilled job openings, after 2000 and 2007 too. I blame technology. It is much cheaper and easier to post a job opening than it used to be. Until the late 1990s, a job opening advertisement meant a few lines in the jobs section of a newspaper, and newspapers charged by the line and issue. A job opening cost money. When job listings moved online, the cost went down to near zero. You can list all the jobs you want for free.
It's like college applications. When it was all done on paper, applying to a college meant filling out forms by hand or using a typewriter. Then, you had to bundle up all the materials, stuff them in an envelope, pay the postage and mail them. There was usually an application fee that was not insignificant. (Back in 1970 when I was applying, it was around $20 which is about $140 now.) Applying cost time and money. Now, it can be done online. You can cut and paste. Many colleges use the same application, so that the marginal effort is minimal. The application fees are lower. It was rare to apply to more than five or six schools back in the paper days; now ten or more applications are common. More applications mean lower acceptance rates.
You're prioritizing pay over flexibility. I'm not at all convinced this is the prioritization of many workers. We know, for example, that plenty of these sorts of workers were against the CA ballot initiative about this.
How widely supported is the strike? Is it something where 80%+ of employees are for it? Or is it one of these bitterly contested things, where 50% see this as some cosmic ideological battle to make some marxist point or other, while the other 50% just want a damn job that pays something while also allowing them to choose their hours very flexibly to meet all their other commitments, and dread the possibility that the job may transform into a "normal" job -- better paid, yes, but losing precisely the feature that made it so desirable in the first place.
Marxist?
Plenty? Were any that weren't paid?
Most of that pushback was astroturf.
> You want to talk about crappy jobs? The delivery biz—Instacart, DoorDash, Grubhub, etc.—is ground zero. If anything better is available, you'd grab it.
These are great jobs ... for certain people. The requirements to get hired are basically non-existant, and you get to set your own schedule. For my kids, who don't have to worry about any expenses related to using my car, including paying for gas, these are wonderful jobs.
Its not so hard to understand Kevin
Back in 2018 Pew Research estimated that by 2024 There would be at least 13 Million workers aged 69 to 75 still IN the work force. Given the sheer number of jobs created above NORMAL - along with COVID which drove MOST of the elderly out of the work force - lack of immigration - and NOW increased spending by consumers - along with population declines for those working age.
Yeah I can see increased churn int he job market = which forces employers to raise wages. It is more noticeable in the skilled jobs - nursing, IT, truck driving etc
THOSE jobs are now becoming really attractive enough to make low skilled employees seek the training they need to get those higher wages.
And if the economy continues to grow at it's VERY high rate (above traditional norms) the situation will get worse before it gets better.
This is a HUGE paradigm shift in the job market. Employers are desperately trying to hold onto existing help.
Costco, WalMart, Amazon, and Target offering tuition for employees?
Part Timers getting health care bennys from JP Morgan, Costco, Walmart, even Dunkin.
Now you pump 1.2T into the economy and all the leverage will be on the workers side.
Biden has some options but he's gonna have to ease off on some restrictions
My son owns a taxi company in CA. He provides health insurance and is setting up 401's for them now. He says he will provide what it takes to get and keep good employees. BTW, his business is very successful, and says that's because of his employees. No mini corp. mentality.
When I got out of the service I had some extra $ and didn't know what to do with it so I opened a bar. Corner bar type thing. My Dad and I renovated the property etc. I hired 3 guys all veterans that I knew. All part timers
None of them cared about wages too much. All they really wanted was healthcare. The bar was profitable (as most are). Neither me nor any of the guys were heavy drinkers so the profits didn't bet eaten up by us.
At the time Blue Cross Blue Shield was the only game in town so thats what I provided for them. The premiums weren't that bad. They were happy. I sold the bar a year later to one of my employees, a retired medic. He made enough money running the place to pay off his daughters college education costs. The bar is now gone. It was great time, but the guys said they would NOT have stayed working there UNLESS they had healthcare. They all had VA benefits but our nearest clinic was a 50 minute drive and was horrible.
I'm glad your son's company is doing well. His attitude alone will attract quality help
"Still, does it really make sense that with millions of open jobs out there, Instacart can be reducing pay?"
I don't know, those "Now Hiring" signs outside practically every business where I live seem real to me.
It may be the case that many firms will do more hiring of "perfect" job candidates — by which is meant not only possesses the right experience and credentials, but ticks lots of other boxes: young (good for holding down healthcare costs), pristine references/work history (good for holding down legal risk), and willing to work cheap (good for profits in general). In the absence of perfect candidates, a lot of firms are turning to ever-more aggressive use of labor-saving technology. Also, because pandemic adjustments hit the entire economy, many employers know that their competitors, too, are in a similar boat, and so competitive pressures are lessened. If you, say, run a regional restaurant group that operates 38 fast food franchises, you're not quite as desperate to fully staff because you're aware your competitors likewise are having to reduce hours of operation (or shift to take-out).
In any event my sense is a healthy portion of the remaining under-employment hangover is food-service related. I've been something of a skeptic of the "the pandemic changes everything" viewpoint. But I do suspect the restaurant sector really is an industry whose trajectory and longer-term outlook have genuinely been altered. Basically, the industry massively expanded over the decades in a low(ish) wage environment. When you change that dynamic, a retrenchment and period of adjustment follow.
One thing that Kevin misses here is the "dis-joint" between annual stats and federal stats because the federal stats are based up the Fed Fiscal year which runs Oct 1 through Sept 30.
What we will see after Jan (which start 2Q for the Feds) is the new report on Social Security recipients. Gross numbers have been going up for them just because of boomers retiring. Thats a given. but what we have to look at is the rate of those retiring early (ages 62 to 65).
Because of the fiscal year thing the rise of covid and subsequent delta wave will all be caught in one single fiscal year.
It will be an interesting read for sure