“If at first you don’t succeed, make the problem worse” seems to be the mantra of New York lawmakers.
Last June, the City Council set a minimum pay requirement for app-based food delivery at $17.96 per hour — which upended the delivery system.
Apps like UberEats scrambled to readjust their pay structures to contain costs, cutting back the total number of daily drivers and prioritizing the most active drivers, which iced out less-busy workers who may have used food delivery as a convenient way to earn a few bucks on top of their other gigs.
UberEats and DoorDash also had to shift the hike in labor costs onto customers with higher fees and changed the checkout process to add the option to tip after the order is delivered.
Drivers saw their hours and tips plummet.
The same story played out in Seattle.
When customers can’t stomach the sticker shock of getting fries delivered to their door, they cancel the order — or just stop ordering.
The math is simple: Fewer orders means less work for drivers and fewer tips.
A “minimum hourly wage” doesn’t do you much good if you’re working zero hours.
Now, City Councilman Shaun Abreu (D-Manhattan) is set to bring more pain: Convinced that the apps’ changes were an attempt to are retaliate against workers (instead of an effort not to sink under the new laws), he’s introduced two bills that would 1) require apps to prompt users to tip before the delivery is made, and 2) set a default minimum suggested tip of 10%, leaving it to customers to notice, and then choose to opt out or manually change the tip amount.
The predictable outcome is more of what we’ve seen before: fewer costumers using delivery apps and more delivery drivers missing out on work.
Rather than admit that government meddling didn’t bring his desired result, Abreu going for more of the same — a sure recipe for disaster for the drivers he’s supposedly helping.