Coronavirus: Instacart’s response ‘a sick joke,’ strike still on today, workers say

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Angry delivery workers for groceries-to-your-door giant Instacart vow they’ll go ahead with a planned strike today, calling the company’s response to their coronavirus-related pay and safety demands “a sick joke” and “insulting for a number of reasons.”

A group of workers known by Instacart as “shoppers” who shop for and deliver groceries issued demands last week, including $5-per-order hazard pay, an increase of the default tip amount in the ordering app to 10% of the order total from what workers say is zero to 5%, and safety items such as hand sanitizer and sanitizing wipes. The workers also demanded increased and extended pay for shoppers having “a doctor’s note for either a pre-existing condition that’s a known risk factor (for COVID-19) or requiring a self-quarantine.” The group, which has said it represents thousands of shoppers across the U.S., argued in an online post that Instacart was “profiting astronomically off of us literally risking our lives.”

The company said in an online post last week that shoppers’ earnings “have been increasing considerably as customer demand has surged over the past few weeks.” Instacart said it was offering up to 14 days’ pay for shoppers diagnosed with COVID-19 or ordered by authorities into mandatory individual isolation or quarantine. The firm said it would give shoppers bonuses of $25 to $200, based on number of hours worked from March 15 to April 15.

Over the weekend, Instacart responded to some of the demands. Noting the well-publicized shortage of hand sanitizer, the company said in a Medium post that it had worked with another firm to make an alcohol-based spray hand sanitizer for shoppers, “which will ship in the next week.” Instacart also said it had worked with retailers over the past few weeks to provide disinfecting supplies for in-store shoppers, and sanitation stations.

The San Francisco company said it had also changed the tip setting to default to a customer’s previous tip amount.

The workers’ group countered that they had been asking for hand sanitizer for many weeks, and they questioned how Instacart was saying it could now source it quickly. “It’s abhorrent that it took this long for them to act, but on the bright side, it shows that a strike will work to change their behavior,” the group said on Medium.

Setting the tip to the previous amount, the group said, would likely “provide no meaningful benefit” because most previous customers would’ve tipped a smaller amount “back when things were more normal.” Their hazard-pay demand was ignored, they said. “The average pay per order is well under $10,” the group said. “Workers should not be risking their lives for pocket change.” Also, they said, “Workers who must stay home due to conditions that put them at high risk are still not being given sick pay.”

Food-delivery jobs have been deemed essential by the shelter-in-place orders that have cloistered millions of Americans in their homes. Workers’ rights advocates have said that essential workers such as those at Instacart, along with grocery employees and ride-share drivers, are at increased risk of contracting the virus, while receiving relatively low pay.

Instacart said Monday that in the past week it had “added nearly 50,000 new shoppers to its platform,” adding, “this will help the company more effectively serve customers nationwide and support communities during this time of need.”

Instacart and many of its shopping-and-delivery workers have been fighting since 2016 over pay and tip settings. In 2017, the company, without admitting wrongdoing, agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit by shoppers over alleged improprieties with tips, expense reimbursement, and a service fee said to resemble a tip but instead going to Instacart.

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Coronavirus: Instacart grocery-delivery workers threaten to walk off job MondayInstacart ‘shoppers’ to walk off the job in protest of company’s tip policyView, Instacart topped 4Q deals as 2018 VC funding rises to highest in 18 yearsIn November, shoppers who had walked off the job over a tipping battle said the company scrapped a bonus program to get back at workers for the job action. Instacart said it didn’t cut the $3 bonus for five-star customer reviews as retaliation, but because the bonus program “did not meaningfully improve quality.”

The company and its shoppers are also in a dispute over California’s AB-5 “gig worker” law, which classifies many workers as employees entitled to benefits rather than as contractors. In February, a state court judge in San Diego ruled in a preliminary injunction that Instacart was probably misclassifying shoppers as contractors instead of employees.

 

Source: https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/03/30/coronavirus-instacarts-response-a-sick-joke-strike-still-on-today-workers-say/