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Tech companies block wage increase for New York City delivery workers
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2023
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You only get paid for completing rides. Having the app open does nothing. How much you receive per ride varies greatly depending on location and time of day. Typically there is a base fee for the ride plus a per mile or per minute rate and some other potential fees. Uber then adds a 25% commission that they keep.
Minimum wage would come into play if a driver complete x hours of driving but the average hourly rate over those hours falls below the state's minimum wage. In those situations it would be Uber's responsibility to make up that difference. This is similar to to how restaurant servers in the US are paid. Most of the time their tips far exceed the minimum wage when averaged over their whole shift. In the occasional cases where tips are terrible or business is slow the restaurant is responsible for making up that difference to meet minimum wage requirements. These "tech" companies are stating they shouldn't be responsible for that because they don't have employees, just contractors who use their app.
Hope that makes sense.
This is commonly misunderstood. The restaurant is allowed to average it across your entire pay period, not just the one bad shift. So if you have a bad shift in a two week pay period, your other shifts (above minimum wage) during that period will likely balance out to above minimum wage, and the restaurant won’t be required to make up any differences. You still made below minimum wage for that shift, but the restaurant is able to average it against all of the other hours you worked for that pay period.
Let’s say you have 10 shifts in a two week pay period. For nine of those shifts, you make $12/hr. Then for one shift, you make $0/hr. Even though you literally made no money for one shift, you still averaged above $10/hr for the pay period. And with minimum wage being $7.25/hr, the restaurant wouldn’t be required to adjust your pay for that one bad shift.
I'm aware. I assumed it was understood that this all gets averaged at the pay period (ie payday). I chose to frame it that way because I wasn't aware of Uber's payout schedule or pay period. I looked it up and they are calculated on a weekly basis. So if you average below minimum wage across the week Uber would/should be responsible for the difference.
It’s a common talking point for people who don’t believe in tipping. Lots of “it doesn’t matter if I don’t tip, they’ll still get minimum wage from the restaurant” justifications. It completely (and likely intentionally) misses the fact that the employee isn’t getting minimum wage adjustments on a per hour or per shift basis.