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Uber, DoorDash and Grubhub sue New York City over $18 minimum-wage law

Uber, DoorDash and Grubhub sue New York City over $18 minimum-wage law | Engadget

https://www.engadget.com/uber-doordash-and-grubhub-sue-new-york-city-over-18-minimum-wage-law-103531552.html

Uber, DoorDash and Grubhub are suing for an injunction to stop New York City's new $18 minimum wage law for food delivery app workers..

56 comments

Rhoeri

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This tells you all you need to know. Those companies need to be shut down.

BrooklynMan

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I prefer they be made to suffer the indignity of paying workers a fair wage.

kromem

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They need to be out competed with less predatory offerings.

Which is about to become trivially possible at a fraction of their startup costs over the next few years.

I cannot recommend enough to people worried about the future of AI on economics to read the essay "The Nature of the Firm" from the 30s and think about what happens when AI drives transactional costs to zero.

The enshittification of corporations right now is like the black plague preceding the Renaissance.

breakingcups

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It's hard to ethically compete with those who break the law.

kromem

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Not really. Do you have any idea the margins they have, and how much of those cover what will end up being unnecessary overhead in about two years?

Do you think companies trying to appease quarterly focused investors are going to make wise long term competitive decisions?

Do you think companies focused on maximizing net revenue for executives and shareholders are going to be more competitive to shoppers than ones that pass on savings? Do you think they'll be more attractive to suppliers than ones that pass on revenue?

Thin intermediaries are going to be much more competitive as transactional costs decrease. The reasons why the other has historically been more advantageous is predicated on factors that are quickly changing.

I often see lay people online offer up an almost learned helplessness worship of corporations and executives as if some powerful and majestic creatures like they are dragons from fantasy. And having consulted for many of them, there's way more ineptitude than you'd realize, it's just insulated within high transactional costs in operations and marketing (and why I'm recommending the essay from nearly a century ago which effectively won its author the Nobel in economics outlining the direct relationship between those costs and the need for large corporations).

sndrtj

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What do you mean by the transactional cost is not zero yet? The literal price of a bank transfer in my country is already zero (and near-instanteneous). And you can initiate one with a QR code or text message, both of which are very common.

But people still primarily go to aggregators for food delivery. Why? Because network effect: 80% of restaurants are there, so if you're not 100% sure where you want to buy you're food, you go there. Even if that ends up being 20% more expensive than going to www.websiteofrestaurant.com

kromem

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Transactional costs in the 1930s Nobel recognized paper is different from a bank fee.

It's things like searching for where to buy food from or finding an employee or training them up, etc.

sndrtj

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I see, thanks for the explainer.

mycatiskai

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So what you are saying is some software developer needs to make a slightly different copy of all these food apps that passes the money to the restaurant and the driver while only keeping a fair amount for themselves rather than ripping off everybody along the way to pay the shareholders.

kromem

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Pretty much. Especially if by "some software developer" you mean "multiple layers of coding AI leveraging more generalized open source projects serving as a foundation for more tailored domain specific software."

squilox

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Is there a name for that way of thinking?

athos77

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what happens when AI drives transactional costs to zero.

Oh, oh, I know this one - record profits and C-suite bonuses!

SCB

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I get the exact opposite from this. Those companies should be given special exception due to the nature of the work.

Minimum wage should only apply to jobs you actually have to clock in and work a schedule to perform.

Rhoeri

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Are you an idiot?

SCB

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Nope

Syltti

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You do realize that you have to clock in and out to do these things, right? It's not like you just do it then say, "Hey, I did that one thing! Pay me!" Even if its on a self-made schedule, these people deserve to be paid a proper wage for the work they do. This would also make drivers far less reliant on tips, which not every rider can give.

SCB

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Tipping culture makes tipped employees more money. If you can't afford the tip, you can't afford the tipped service, and you wouldn't be able to afford it after their pay was scaled either. You do realize that, right? The income has to come from somewhere, and "people who can't afford to tip" just wouldn't be able to get the ride.

Minimum wage laws fuck up "work when you want" jobs because they crush your flexibility, which is the entire point of these jobs.

kitonthenet

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Lol, I mean it really says something about gig economy when concepts such as "minimum wage" threaten to flat out kill their industry

DreamerOfImprobableDreams

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If your business can't afford to pay its workers a living wage without going bust-- then it deserves to go bust.

Zebov

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But if they get the $18/hr, there's no need to tip, right? Right?

luthis

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Tipping culture needs to end anyway. Pay the employees properly.

outbound5231

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My social anxiety increased to an all time high when I visited the US. The pressure to tip is real.

Lzwzli

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The problem is that those receiving the tips will continue to expect them no matter how high their wage is. Some would even argue that they get overall lower income if the increase in base wage eliminates tipping.

SCB

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Tipped employees make WAY more than minimum wage

My 18 year old with her first job made $130 in 4 hours this week. Minimum wage will never keep up with tipped wages, which is the exact reason that people choose tipped jobs.

RGB3x3

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MANDATORY tipping should end. Tipping on top of fair wages can and does still exist in most of the world.

SCB

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No it really shouldn't. No tipped employees thinks it should

LucasWaffyWaf

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Tipped employee. I like the tips, but it'd be nice if my livable wage was guaranteed from the company and not by the potential gratitude of random strangers.

SCB

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Work back of house.

newthrowaway20

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Lol I like how you're first like "no tipped employee wants to lose tips" and when someone chimed in you just immediately dismiss their opinion and tell them to get a different job instead.

Sounds like you wanna keep tipping culture and you're just trying to justify it however you can.

LucasWaffyWaf

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It's a cave lol

GunnarRunnar

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It's a step forward at least. Tipping culture is terrible but think what good press one of these apps would get with "tips included in delivery fee" or whatever perfect marketing slogan they can come up with.

vacuumpizzas

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Can’t afford the new minimum wage, but they can afford the lawyers and the lawsuit.

lod

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Lawsuit is a one time expense, paying fair wages would cost them forever

MxM111

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It is not that they can't afford, they will rise the prices and because of that they will lose lots of customers, so they will contract and as result the absolute amount of profits will be reduced.

RagingNerdoholic

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My sincere hope is for NY to respond with two words: "get fucked"

BrooklynMan

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“Fair wages‽ We’ll fight this by spending hundreds of millions on a sure-to-fail legal defense of worker exploitation rather than spending far less money by paying our employees fairly!”

— Capitalists

finkrat

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"But then our customers are going to eat more service fees because our shareholders can't take the L"

filister

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It is sounds almost like a dystopian utopia. And it comes to prove that having such big and influential corporations is only good for their shareholders.

I think the whole subscription model get its birth from the constant desire of those corps to grow infinitely, while leaving the normal people to truly struggle to meet their ends with ever growing expenses.

ocassionallyaduck

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This is the definition of late stage capitalism. Growth cannot be infinite, but capitalism demands infinite growth unless restrained or check put in place. Ergo, workers are resources to be exploited to the utmost limits of what is possible. Not moral, possible.

If they have to live on foodstamps good that means you are not overpaying. Clearly the model works because they haven't gone elsewhere yet. /s

filister

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Yes, in lights of the housing crisis, and the double digit inflation, I have the feeling that all of them exist so that you can't afford to really retire early and stuck you in the job market for an eternity, exactly how big corps want you to be. So we are modern day slaves, who don't own anything (soon even our cars would be on a subscription), our houses are already on this mode.

exohuman

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$18 an hour in expensive as hell New York City and they have the nerve to sue. That’s bold.

Lemmylefty

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Just think of it as a “service fee”.

antim0ny

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$18/hour is just barely a living wage in NYC. Actual living wage for an adult with 0 children in NYC is about $25.50/hour:

https://livingwage.mit.edu/counties/36061

On top of that you have the challenges specific to these jobs. If you’re on bike, that’s hard work and limits the hours you can do without risking injury. If you’re driving (which is maybe practical in outer boroughs) you’re shouldering all the costs of the vehicle working for a delivery app. Either way that’s way too little after taxes per month, even at $18/hr.

whatsarefoogee

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I am all for "gig apps" being required to pay minimum wage.

But the minimum wage in New York is $15 as far as I can tell. Why are delivery apps seemingly being required to pay a different minimum wage? I am not aware of any other case where the minimum wage depends on the profession.

I find this kind of policy very troubling. Would anyone be ok with accountants having a $25 minimum wage and teachers having $17 minimum wage?

DreamerOfImprobableDreams

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My guess is it's to offset the lack of other benefits-- health care being a huge one-- that you lose when you sign up to be a gig worker, not a full-time worker.

And we already have different minimum wages for at least one industry: servers at restaurants. The economy isn't going to collapse if we put gig workers in their own category, too.

reliv3

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The article answers your question.

Unlike most jobs, contract jobs are taxed more and require the worker to pay the out of pocket to operate. In the case of food delivery workers, this means the gas or electricity to run their vehicle and the maintenance costs for said vehicle.

AnonymousLlama

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That dam government getting in the way of them making nice extra fat profits! They're paying them a pittance, is that not enough for them 🙄

MxM111

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I honestly think that the delivery boys do not exists on salary, but on tips.

moozogew

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So if they pass this people will be able to sign onto the app, ignore the deliveries and demand 18 an hour? So they'll have to start firing anyone that doesn't accept deliveries when offered and refuse people sign on when there aren't enough orders to go round, etc.. end result making it harder for people to earn by delivering food, making food delivery more expensive, but it strikes a blow against something new so everyone will feel like they're winning.

Hawke

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What the fuck are you even talking about?

moozogew

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I take it you've never delivered and don't understand how the platform works?

The law change would mean that people can't do things like multiapp or choose to only do one or two deliveries then stop for a bit, this ruins the flexibility which most people want when choosing to do it

buddhabound

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Couldn't they prorate the hourly rate to account for the time that your actually assigned to an active delivery? That wouldn't interfere with multi-apping, as a driver would be "on the clock" for their delivery time. It seems like the companies would be able to figure out how to do the right thing if they wanted to.

moozogew

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Yeah that would be a good solution but not what the law proposes, the problem is the government isn't getting to do the right thing either it's just a knee jerk responce to a new thing existing.