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California Pizza Huts lay off all delivery drivers ahead of minimum wage increas

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21–30 of 109 posts

Re: California Pizza Huts lay off all delivery drivers ahead of minimum wage increas

#21
post #11

This feels a little short-sighted. Just this year, New York City implemented new minimum payment schedules for "self employed" app delivery drivers, which brings their minimum hourly payment to nearly $30/hr. I will strongly suspect that the big centres in california will do likewise, or potentially the state as whole.

Yeah, stopped using delivery for that reason. It got hilariously too expensive.

the pay bump i'm talking about is very recent, but yes, I agree, delivery became too expensive.

And it's no wonder. Restaurants delivering have very low overhead. A phone line and a delivery driver.

When you're on grubhub/doordash/etc, now somebody has to pay for a mountain of software engineers, marketing expenses, servers, customer service people, executive comp, etc. It inserted an expensive middleman where there was none.

alas, it's probably still a better option than each restaurant trying to build their own website/app. But not better than picking up food or calling the restaurant for delivery.

Re: California Pizza Huts lay off all delivery drivers ahead of minimum wage increas

#23

> The layoffs come as fast-food workers in California are set to get a pay bump of close to 30% in April as the minimum wages rises from $16 to $20 an hour. It's not "close to 30%," it is "exactly 25%." Whoever wrote that needs to be sent back to middle school remedial math. As if I needed another reason to not eat at pizza hut. This sounds like a cynical ploy to get sub-minimum wage gig economy delivery drivers via…

I guess that is probably what that sentence intends to mean, but it also presumes that all fast food workers are making minimum wage. On first reading, I would have presumed that they were talking about two different statistics -- the change in minimum wage and the change in average gross wage, but given the context I presume that is probably not the case.

Re: California Pizza Huts lay off all delivery drivers ahead of minimum wage increas

#24
post #20

What surprises me is that all states with high minimum wage (CA, WA, OR, etc.) are the ones with the most homelessness; while all others do not have homelessness, drugs, and other sort of problems; or at least, not to the magnitude of high-wages states. Probably because low-wage jobs are necessary for the lower class to find jobs.

So, it's not surprising after all, it sounds like. Pretending that every job is worth $20/hour apparently has "unforeseen consequences"... the kind that the legislators and voters were warned about repeatedly.

Re: California Pizza Huts lay off all delivery drivers ahead of minimum wage increas

#25

> Customers must use third-party apps like DoorDash, GrubHub and Uber Eats for food deliveries at the affected chain restaurants. I don't order delivery very often, so I was surprised when the last time I did it, the pizza place that advertised delivery just silently passed the order on to Doordash, with all the downsides of that process (data sharing, increased price, decreased pay for the driver, and generally wors…

> I understand that Doordash gives workers the option of being paid minimum wage…

Is it even an option in California?

"Guaranteed minimum earnings: When you dash in California you earn at least 120% of minimum wage (based on the local minimum wage at the pick-up location) for active time on the platform (time spent on a delivery, starting from when you accept an offer to when you complete it), plus $0.34 per mile during active time, when driving a motor vehicle (for example, a car, motorcycle, motor scooter)."

https://help.doordash.com/dashers/s/california-dashers

https://driver-support.grubhub.com/hc/en-us/articles/3600538...

> …but they get money only when the worker is actively making a delivery…

"Active time" is acceptance to delivery, including wait time.

Re: California Pizza Huts lay off all delivery drivers ahead of minimum wage increas

#26
post #20

What surprises me is that all states with high minimum wage (CA, WA, OR, etc.) are the ones with the most homelessness; while all others do not have homelessness, drugs, and other sort of problems; or at least, not to the magnitude of high-wages states. Probably because low-wage jobs are necessary for the lower class to find jobs.

> states with high minimum wage (CA, WA, OR, etc.) are the ones with the most homelessness

Adjust for GDP/capita or urbanisation (they go hand in hand) and housing cost.

Re: California Pizza Huts lay off all delivery drivers ahead of minimum wage increas

#27

> Customers must use third-party apps like DoorDash, GrubHub and Uber Eats for food deliveries at the affected chain restaurants. I don't order delivery very often, so I was surprised when the last time I did it, the pizza place that advertised delivery just silently passed the order on to Doordash, with all the downsides of that process (data sharing, increased price, decreased pay for the driver, and generally wors…

This happened to me as well. To my surprise, the DoorDash driver didn't actually deliver the pizza, they just grabbed it and went home, I guess. Quite funny. I got a refund.

Re: California Pizza Huts lay off all delivery drivers ahead of minimum wage increas

#28
post #20

What surprises me is that all states with high minimum wage (CA, WA, OR, etc.) are the ones with the most homelessness; while all others do not have homelessness, drugs, and other sort of problems; or at least, not to the magnitude of high-wages states. Probably because low-wage jobs are necessary for the lower class to find jobs.

So, it's not surprising after all, it sounds like. Pretending that every job is worth $20/hour apparently has "unforeseen consequences"... the kind that the legislators and voters were warned about repeatedly.

Every [1] study [2] on minimum wages [3] using empirical data showed de minimis to positive effects on employment. There is absolutely a wage where employment is curtailed. But there is no evidence anyone in America has hit it.

Much more corrosive to hiring is the amount of paperwork involved.

[1] https://davidcard.berkeley.edu/papers/njmin-aer.pdf

[2] https://irle.berkeley.edu/publications/working-papers/minimu...

[3] https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/685449

Re: California Pizza Huts lay off all delivery drivers ahead of minimum wage increas

#29
post #20

What surprises me is that all states with high minimum wage (CA, WA, OR, etc.) are the ones with the most homelessness; while all others do not have homelessness, drugs, and other sort of problems; or at least, not to the magnitude of high-wages states. Probably because low-wage jobs are necessary for the lower class to find jobs.

or maybe the states you listed have relatively mild winters, good social programs, and liberal (as in liberty, not as in libs) mindset.

Re: California Pizza Huts lay off all delivery drivers ahead of minimum wage increas

#30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re also allowed to order takeout and pick it up yourself if you don’t want to pay Grubhub prices

Delivery used to be free, especially at chain pizza places

It was never free, it was subsidized by pick up or eat in.

Now that prices are high and margins are tightened (blame practical downstream or “greedy corporations” or just MBAs, I don’t care) that subsidy isn’t bearable. So you pay for delivery.

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