Why Do Gig Workers Want You To Delete Instacart?

Instacart gig workers are organizing for better pay and working conditions. Their demands include a return to being paid by the order, reintroduction of item commission and a return to the default tip of 10%

Robin Pape is a gig worker and Founding Member of the Gig Workers Collective. Errol Schweizer led the Grocery team at Whole Foods Market for 9 years, including during 2015 when the retailer was an early adapter of Instacart.

Errol Schweizer: What's it like to be a gig worker?

Robin Pape: There's a lot of uncertainty involved with being a gig worker. You never really know what you're gonna make, how much you're going to work. You generally don't have health care. And there's no sick pay, no paid time off. There's just a lot of uncertainty. 

Errol: How is it different than being a regular employee?

Robin: Well, as a gig worker, we're classified as independent contractors. And we at the Gig Workers Collective believe that that's an intentional misclassification and that it's done to specifically skirt the labor laws. So you know, if we worked for the company as a direct employee, we would have access to health insurance and sick pay and paid time off, and they would be paying into our taxes and towards social security. We would be using their vehicles instead of our own. So that there's a lot of differences in how we're treated.

Errol: What's the issue with the business model? 

Robin: So usually, the pay with these good companies starts out pretty well. And then as time goes on, it's unsustainable. And it drops and there's changes to how the pay models work. Initially, they'll usually start with a very clear and concrete pay model, and then switch to something that's more of a black-box, an algorithm where we can't really compute what exactly it is that we're being paid for, what's mileage, just the simple base pay for an order. The company makes money by charging extra money to the customers. And in addition to that, they'll pay service delivery fees to the company.

So getting into these gigs, it can feel initially like you're making good money, because you haven't been educated about all of the costs and the expenses involved. But at the end of the day, you're lucky to break even.

Errol: How have you seen gig work change during COVID-19? What's it been like?

Robin: There's been a huge increase in the number of people who are using delivery services. I think that's tapering off a bit now that people are feeling more comfortable and more people are vaccinated and getting back into the stores themselves. So while there was this huge boom in customer base, Instacart, in particular, cut our base pay, And they hired twice as many shoppers, and they sent us inadequate PPE, the shelves were empty, customers were upset about this, it was taken out on shoppers, it was out of our control. People were frustrated. It went from shopping usually one, maybe two orders at a time to most often shopping three orders at a time, and having to communicate with three different people, while you're in the middle of a pandemic, and everything is taking so much longer as you're going back and forth, back and forth, fulfilling requests for three people who aren't going to get everything that they want. And you know, there were limits. You could only have two bags of frozen vegetables. And, one case of water and people weren't happy about it. 

But people were proud of what they were doing. They weren't ashamed to say that they worked for Instacart or one of the other gigs, there was some pride. And all of these people were going somewhere that no one else wanted to go, that people were afraid to go. 

But overall, in general, we've seen pay cuts from 30 to 50%. And a lot of it is out of our control, a lot of it doesn't have to be this way. And the things that we're asking for right now are things that we've had in the past that were taken from us so that the company could be more profitable. 

Right now they want to paint this glowing picture, and they either want to sell the company or announce an IPO. And we're hoping that it's a lot harder to do that when investors understand just how poorly this company cares for its employees, for its independent contractors. 

Errol: What are the five demands that the Gig Workers Collective has around reforming Instacart and other similar apps?

Robin: All of our demands are things that we we've either had, or have been told we have, but it hasn't really been made clear.

So the first demand that we have is that they return to paying by the order instead of by the batch. So people think of as a batch as one order, but it can actually be one order, or two or three full service orders where you shop and deliver. And in some areas, including mine, it can be as many as five delivery orders. Right now, the minimum pay for a delivery order is $5.00. But if they put five of them together in one batch, there's still only guaranteeing $5.00. And that's not a base pay. That's a minimum pay. So that can include the mileage, that can include heavy order pay.

So that that's the first one is that they pay us by the order. That's the easiest way to make sure that we're paid fairly and at least a minimum wage. The second demand is that they reintroduce item commission; this was removed in late 2018. We used to receive a base pay for an order plus item commission. So you could pretty easily figure out what you're going to get paid for an order by looking at the number of items in it. In 2018, they change that to a black-box algorithm. At one point they took away the ability for customers to tip. We had to fight to get that back, you know, they stole our tips. They used our tips to subsidize pay, they had to apologize publicly and pay us back tips. So there have been all sorts of issues with tips and pay and commission. So in addition to having batches only contain one order, or if more than one order, have them be fairly priced. we would like them to reintroduce item commission. 

We'd also like them to stop punishing shoppers for issues that are out of their control. So this could look like a lot of different things during COVID-19. We were having, you know a lot of markdowns because things weren't available in the store, or because people wanted three of something and the limit was one. So there were issues there with things not being delivered on time, and shoppers would be penalized for that. And then, you know, the thing that's most out of our control is that not all customers are honest. We like to think that most of them are. So all these things together can really have an impact on ratings. Instacart keeps track of the last hundred orders that you shop. So the way that it is right now if you have a perfect five star rating, you get to see the best orders that they're offering. When I had a 4.98 I was seeing the best offers. I shopped a few orders and didn't get any ratings. So some of my five stars fell off which gave weight to the four star I have. And that brought me down to a 4.97 and I didn't see any good orders. Now it could take weeks for somebody to get their ratings back up where it needs to be and it's really unfair to the independent contractors. 

The fourth demand is that we're looking for a clear occupational death benefit. The contract says that they may pay death benefits. Just like they said that they may pay for COVID. And it's still not really clear what they mean by that they may pay occupational death benefits. We'd like them to be guaranteed, We'd like them to be accessible. We'd like to know how they're accessible, and we'd like them to be comparable to properly classified employees. 

And then the final demand is that they return the default tip to 10%. Currently, it's 5%. So if a customer tips 10%, or 20%, the next time they go into order, the default tip should be set to that higher percent. And Instacart removed it at one point and replaced it with a service fee that didn't go to the shoppers but went to Instacart. We had to fight to get them to reinstate it. But when they did, they reinstated it at 5% instead of 10%. The other 5% remains a service fee for Instacart. In some areas that 5% is closer to 8%. And then in other markets for delivery orders that service fee is as much as 15%. And that's on top of the item markups. You know, when the default tip is set to 5%, people tend to think that that's the fair amount, the customary amount to tip for this kind of a service. 

All jobs deserve a living wage. If you can't afford to pay the people who make it happen for you a living wage, then you don't deserve to be in business. 

Right now we're getting the short end of the stick while Instacart makes money and it's money that should be in our pockets right now. We'll just keep getting louder and louder because we've got nothing to lose.

Errol: So how can folks support you? 

Robin: So we successfully registered to be a nonprofit. We have a website, it's Gig Workers Collective.org. You can donate there, you can provide your information to get connected with us and be more aware of what we're doing and how we're organizing. You know, we've done a boycott, and we've done a protest, and we've done a walk off, we've asked customers to delete the app. We're not just going to go away until things get better. So delete Instacart, do the curbside pickup, and tip when you can.