Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Instacart paying 80 cents an hour because worker received a large tip

workingwa.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

441–450 of 718 posts

Re: Instacart paying 80 cents an hour because worker received a large tip

#441

Post by FireBeyond »

pkaye wrote: post #200
function_seven wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Fair Labor Standards Act disallows this type of agreement for ordinarily-tipped jobs. I don't know how the contractor status of Instacart drivers affects this. They're not technically employees. But the verbiage of "Tip" in the UI is a strong signal to the customer that the money is directly credited to the driver. It should bear no relation to their fee from Instacart. This is wage theft. A horrible agreement do…

The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) covers only employees, not independent contractors.

Maybe so, but WA State Labor and Industries is not quite so "generous" to the gig economy, including their test for contractors, which is a bit more ... "rigorous" ... than some startups would like:

Does the independent contractor bring more than their personal labor?

Do they hire crew of their own or are they bringing other employees?

Or, are they bringing heavy or costly specialized equipment?

Are they an established business, working without your direction or control?

Are they free from your supervision, direction or control?

Is the individual’s business different and separate from your own?

Is the individual’s service “outside the usual course of business,” or in other words, does the contractor do something different from what you do?

Is the individual’s service being performed “outside of all of the places of business,” or in other words, does the contractor perform the service away from where you perform your services?

Is the individual contractually obligated to pay costs affiliated with the location from where the work is controlled (usually its headquarters)?

Does the individual have an established independent business that existed before you brought them on – OR – does the individual have a principal place of business that qualifies for an IRS business deduction?

Do you have evidence to demonstrate that the individual has an established business?

Does the individual have a principal place of business that qualifies for an IRS business deduction? Do you have evidence to demonstrate it?

Is the individual responsible for filing a schedule of expenses with the IRS, such as would be part of a business tax return?

Does the individual have all required registrations and licenses for their business?

Does the individual maintain his/her own set of books and records that reflect all income and expenses of the business?

This question is for construction contractors only: Is the individual a properly registered contractor?

Note that this is not an "Answer 'yes' to any question to be considered a Contractor", it's a "totality" thing. (https://www.lni.wa.gov/IPUB/101-063-000.pdf)

"I subcontracted some work to a guy who has a contractor’s registration with L&I. Doesn’t that mean he’s not my employee?"

Not necessarily. L&I auditors look at “direction or control” and other factors described on the previous pages. Because he is a construction contractor, all seven parts of RCW 51.08.181 must be met.

And so on...

Re: Instacart paying 80 cents an hour because worker received a large tip

#442

Post by FireBeyond »

lenticular wrote: post #228
gowld wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to what ruling? It depends on the agreement between Instacart and delivery staff.

Not sure why this is being downvoted, as you absolutely are not wrong about this. They are independent contractors who entered into a contract just like a restaurant could contract with a food supplier. They aren't employees in the least as far as the law is concerned.

Because Washington state is a little more rigorous than "did you enter into a contract? nope, not an employee!" than you describe.

Re: Instacart paying 80 cents an hour because worker received a large tip

#443

Post by atom-morgan »

kaishiro wrote: post #156
atom-morgan wrote: post #97

Seriously, this is the responsibility consumers have in a free market. If there's behavior you don't like, move on. You don't get to complain about bad actors when you're literally keeping them in business.

Can I ask - and this isn't just me being glib because I want to believe what you say is possible - but can I ask if you know of any consumer collective actions in the past decade that have succeeded?

Roku and Alex Jones just a week or two ago.

Re: Instacart paying 80 cents an hour because worker received a large tip

#444

Post by throwaway415415 »

nsenifty wrote: post #22

This is why the tipping system in the US is absurd. The whole "you must tip because they get paid peanuts" argument is a circular logic. How about making sure that the worker gets paid fairly by their employer and customers can then optionally tip for outstanding service?

This is why I refuse to tip in restaurants. Most people in san francisco that I know don't tip and as a consequence most waiters here don't expect a tip.

Re: Instacart paying 80 cents an hour because worker received a large tip

#445

Post by throwaway415415 »

B-Con wrote: post #32

> That's right: the customer's tip doesn't get added to the worker's check — it just gets deducted from what Instacart pays. In other words, up-front tips go to Instacart, not to the worker. My understanding is that the Fair Labor Standards Act does not allow for employers to whithold tips.[0] Gratuity/tip is a legally recognized concept. You can't just throw the word in your app and do what you want with the money i…

So wait, isn't this a good thing? It discourages people to tip.

Re: Instacart paying 80 cents an hour because worker received a large tip

#446

Post by bunderbunder »

ergothus wrote: post #371
shard972 wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the rich, powerful and elite are also not responsible for anything either? Just individually? That seems like quite the atomised society.

> the rich, powerful and elite are also not responsible for anything either? Just individually? The distinction is that money provides opportunities, poverty is the lack of them. You can hold the wealthy responsible for what they do with their wealth, or what they don't do with their wealth. Because wealth is something they HAVE. The poor, on the other hand, don't HAVE anything, so you can't say they are using their…

FWIW, you could argue that they are failing to handle their economic situation as well as they could.

But even that is fraught, since, in the current economic culture, consumers are pretty much constantly being preyed on, and actively encouraged to make questionable decisions. Consider, for example, the predatory mortgage practices on the part of the banking industry during the 2000s. Or predatory lending practices on the part of the student loan and private college industries. Or payday loan companies.

(There's arguably a double standard there - if it's a person with relatively little money swindling people out of relatively small amounts of money, it's con artistry. If it's a company with lots of money swindling people out of lots of money, caveat emptor.)

Re: Instacart paying 80 cents an hour because worker received a large tip

#447

Post by debacle »

cribbles wrote: post #100
B-Con wrote: post #32

> That's right: the customer's tip doesn't get added to the worker's check — it just gets deducted from what Instacart pays. In other words, up-front tips go to Instacart, not to the worker. My understanding is that the Fair Labor Standards Act does not allow for employers to whithold tips.[0] Gratuity/tip is a legally recognized concept. You can't just throw the word in your app and do what you want with the money i…

Instacart delivery workers are classified as independent contractors, which allows the company to flout basic labor laws. This is commonplace in digital age 'gig economy' jobs, but dates back to the early days of food delivery - e.g., most pizza delivery drivers are classified as independent contractors. That having been said, the concept of defining contractor wages in relation to customer tips is new to me. I could…

> Instacart delivery workers are classified as independent contractors

Only Instacart believes this.

Re: Instacart paying 80 cents an hour because worker received a large tip

#448

Post by atom_arranger »

burger_moon wrote: post #77
tedivm wrote: post #10

There's a related blog post up on Medium by this same group (Working Washington) where they placed the same order, once with tip and once without, so people could directly compare. From my perspective Instacart is stealing from its customers and workers by doing this. I'm a huge fan of instacart (my fiance and I use it regularly), but this is definitely going to push me away from the platform. At a minimum I'm going…

I love how even knowing the company is stealing from their employees isn't enough to get you to drop using their service. I'm going to send at most 3 angry tweets about this before I forget about it and move on to the next thing to be upset about today.

[flagged]

Re: Instacart paying 80 cents an hour because worker received a large tip

#450

Post by mikem170 »

JauntyHatAngle wrote: post #365
jyrkesh wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But asking consumers to vote for moral, intelligent legislative agents is somehow better? Optimizing for past opinions, moral fiber, understanding of the issues, etc. is easier? Personal responsibility is required in a good society, irrespective of the system of government or the level of regulation that currently exists. Even if it's consumers/voters pushing their legislators to build regulations, you need a mass of…

The problem is that corporations have people beat in terms of being able to obfuscate their business practices. While certainly true that people can often cause a business to change its actions when a big scandal come out, it's usually only the very obvious or very stupid, or relies on quality investigative journalism or things to quickly spread on social media to a large enough amount of people - and despite this se…

I wonder if this is all a problem of scale. Maybe it is unreasonable for us to expect very large companies and governments to be anything but corrupt and minimally responsive, nothing like the smaller scales that humans are evolved to deal with. This is all very new, and loaded with bugs...
Post reply on HN