Gig Companies Violate Workers’ Rights: Amazon Flex, DoorDash, Favor, Instacart, Lyft, Shipt, and Uber claim to offer workers flexibility but end up paying them less than state or local minimum wages.

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• Laser@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I have never used any of these (except Uber once in 2016 maybe?) because of the exploitative model. Even though the situation here in Germany is a tad different with them. Fuck them. Regular companies are bad enough already

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• henfredemars@infosec.pub ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  If your business needs such low wages to be viable, your business isn’t viable.

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  • Quill7513@slrpnk.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    it shouldn’t be, anyway. unfortunately slavery has long been a way to make a failing business model seem more successful than it would be under a sensible system

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    • CalipherJones@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      It’s okay because it’s an app ☺️ /s

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• RagingSnarkasm@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Of course. How else would you get all those venture capitalists to invest in them?

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  • gian@lemmy.grys.it ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    The gig economy is nothing new in itself, it was already present, the only thing these companies did is to make them “modern”. Here were not uncommon that people got some gig works to have the money for holidays (teenagers) or to round up salary from time to time.
    It is not a problem per se.

    The problem is that the gig economy is the only way to have a salary for some people, for various reasons.
    That let the companies to pay way less because they have a big pool to choose from and have not any obligations (or advantages) to have a stable set of employees and to resort to gig workers only in peak times.
    And that is true expecially in place like the US where the llabor laws are ridiculous.

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    • odelik@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      The big problem with modernization of gig work by these companies is that they’re screwing of the gig workers by inserting themselves in the middle and fucking over everybody else involved.

      Town car services existed for years before Uber came to the scene. Before Uber you’d have to call a town car service that may be a single person operation, or a small group of people getting together and hiring a calling service.

      The idea of the modern, centralized, gig services is not a terrible idea in itself. But running that as a capitalist business is terrible. This is one of those things that should be required to be a government service or a non-profit.

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• Tattorack@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Europe created something called “the platform work directive”, or something along those lines. Basically means that platform jobs (i.e. Uber, Wolt, Just Eat) can no longer operate under a so-called “freelance model”.

  Basically, if it looks like you’re hiring employees, you must give them contracts like employees (along with everything that entails).

  It’s already been agreed upon, so it’s a matter of implementation. It’s considered a “pillar” of the EU now, so being part of the EU means having the directive. Deadline for the implementation, as I’ve heard from 3F Copenhagen, should be 2026.

  I can’t wait.

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• Eyedust@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Big corp exploiting the wage workers? Who’da thunk it…

  Imagine if we all stopped doing the “little jobs”.

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• FriendBesto@lemmy.ml ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  This has been said for over a decade. People were either ignoring this or not paying attention.

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• lobut@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Whenever these things come up you always hear “then the company won’t survive!”

  CEO and managers make bank somehow but it doesn’t matter that the workers can’t live on that wage. It’s always so weird how when workers actually take a pay cut, that the businesses get used to it. When the CEOs get bonuses they have to get used to that too.

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• AntelopeRoom@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  You also have no stability. With a wage, you know what you’re getting and your employer can’t just cut wages easily. With gig work, you can wake up one day and suddenly they’ve slashed payouts without any negotiating.

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• deathbird@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Oh no you see I am the Dasher/Uber driver/whatever who actually makes money. You see…

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• gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  No shit sherlock.

  But the decline in real (inflation-adjusted) wages is a broader phenomenon and not constrained to gig-works, and that’s what deserves attention.

  Background:

  For years, inflation has been under-reported. Inflation should be measured mostly based on food-items, as the production methods don’t change over time in these areas, so prices there (inflation-adjusted) should stay constant. But if you look at official inflation rates, they are much lower (approx. 1% annually). Since wages barely keep up with official inflation, they fall behind on “food”-inflation. And that principle is basically at the core of the current “cost-of-living”-crisis.

  The basic issue is that wages are dropping because progress is ending. Progress creates demand for human labor, and that keeps wages up. Since progress worldwide is slowing down, that depresses wages. That’s why we need fundamental reform, or revolution.

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