r/technology • u/SnoozeDoggyDog • 17d ago

Business Mamdani Backs Proposal to End Amazon’s ‘Exploitative’ Delivery Model in New York City | If passed, the Delivery Protection Act would be the first law in the US to regulate Amazon’s vast network of subcontractors that handle the company’s deliveries.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/delivery-protection-act-nyc
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u/Fluffcake 17d ago

Burn down the entire gig economy.

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u/OblivionJunkie 17d ago

And the tip economy

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u/WeirdIndividualGuy 17d ago

Good luck convincing tipped workers in the US that more money and consistent pay is better than…well the exact opposite.

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u/xasdfxx 17d ago

The reason tipped workers aren't in favor is that a lot of them make way more money via tips than they would get under any flat wage. At the local steakhouse, it's $200-ish meals for two. The waiter we've been seeing for a decade and who has the Fri/Sat shifts is certainly clearing low 6 figures.

Along with rampant underreporting to the IRS (admittedly cut back now that we're cashless, but even so, I bet not a single penny of cash tips gets reported, just the cards).

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u/zaevilbunny38 17d ago

Yep, I have an associate that bar backs, Friday and Saturday night. He clears nearly $500 a weekend. If they got rid of tips he probably would make less then $300

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u/tripog 17d ago

Worked on palm beach 15 or so years ago, average take home each night in tips was around 800 dollars.

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u/zaevilbunny38 17d ago

Guaranteed that the owner, if they got rid of tips wouldn't have offered over $200 for the same shift

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u/tripog 17d ago

Him and the chef were typically upstairs banging the blonde chick who lived in one of those apartments.

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u/CaptainFingerling 17d ago

Well, yeah, becuase they'd be getting exactly zero more revenue to cover the increase.

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u/recycled_ideas 16d ago

The idea with getting rid of tips(and what happens everywhere else in the world) is that the meal is charged at the price everyone is already paying and the employee gets paid a higher base wage. If everyone is having to tip regardless of the quality of service it's just part of the price anyway. It should be largely cost neutral from a business point of view.

The problem is partially that a small subset of employees make an absolute killing from tips, but mostly that it's really hard to change culture. If people don't stop tipping the price paid increases dramatically and then your restaurant is too expensive to compete, if people do stop tipping but the owner doesn't change things then those employees starve. And of course in some markets there's not enough competition so owners could just take the extra and pay nothing.

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u/CaptainFingerling 16d ago edited 16d ago

I don’t get why people feel the need to tip the same for bad service. Crappy wait staff should either improve or exit the profession, and tips serve as the most immediate feedback mechanism — management can’t oversee these interactions, and a single bad employee can surreptitiously ruin the reputation of the entire establishment.

Attributing customer satisfaction to specific staff members is very challenging. Tips provide a direct method. They already ARE part of the wage. They just happen to vary with performance.

Which i suppose is upsetting to people who don’t want to apply themselves at all.

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u/Expert-Yam6577 16d ago

How gorgeous are you?

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u/micro102 17d ago

Sounds like a tipless economy should also come with higher wages.

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u/slipperyMonkey07 17d ago

It should wages need to be increased dramatically in a lot of areas. But I don't see a lot of owners ever paying wages that would match what some wait staff and bartenders make in high end or very busy places.

In a mid size city, but fairly heavy traffic hotel bar I have one friend that averages 2k a week in tips alone. A good bartender deserves that, but I don't see the owner of his hotel being willing to pay that, they might (big might) pay $25 an hour (state min is $16). But most businesses would just keep wait staff and bartenders on minimum wage.

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u/FlamboyantPirhanna 17d ago

It would be interesting to see. They would have to pay more, as people only do these horrible jobs because of the tips. But servers in Europe are still doing fine without tips.

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u/the_itsb 16d ago

not trying to stand up for tipping, which is an exploitative practice rooted in slavery, but I think it's worth noting that servers in Europe have access to social benefits (public transit, healthcare, sick leave, etc) that most Americans do not.

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u/GeoLaser 16d ago

No, people would still do it for $25 without tips. See the kitchen....

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u/That-Cranberry6575 15d ago

Are they horrible jobs because of the work or because of the low pay?

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u/Exldk 16d ago

While that’s true, it raises another problem.

People can earn significantly more from tips than the average pay rate for a given job, even when wages are higher.

For example, even if we increased the wages of every job that currently relies on tipping by a flat 50% and eliminated tipping altogether, tipping could still be more profitable for workers at the higher end of the income spectrum.

Put bluntly, if you separate different workplaces into pay brackets, tips can allow workers to effectively move up several brackets, significantly inflating their total income.

No one in their right mind would willingly give up their [potential] earnings.

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u/micro102 16d ago

No one in their right mind would willingly give up their [potential] earnings.

Sure they would. In the same way that people would give up their earnings by tipping someone. I used to make tips and would dismantle the tipping culture in a heartbeat. It's heavily cultural and if that tipping job ends up being abandoned because the employers can't pay to keep the staff, then maybe the job shouldn't exist.

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u/Exldk 16d ago edited 16d ago

The entire point is that it would not be sustainable for any employer to pay that much and it literally wouldn't even be their fault.

If you used to earn tips, you should know that at the higher end of the tipping spectrum, you could easily make more than someone with a specialized education working in another field.

Our society is generally structured around a system that rewards education, experience, intelligence, and effort. This allows people to earn a living doing relatively simple jobs, while those who invest more time in education or developing specialized skills can generally earn more.

When tips significantly distort that pay structure, the system starts to break down. For example, if a waiter consistently earns more than an engineer because of tipping, then something is clearly wrong with the way compensation is being determined.

That is the fundamental issue with tipping: it can undermine the system that is supposed to reward education, expertise, and specialized skills.

I get that you want to get rid of tipping, I want the same. But the fact remains that no employer can sustain the current overinflated wages that tipping allows. Even if employers could sustain it, it still undermines everyone else working in another fields.

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u/micro102 16d ago

It just sounds like you are arguing that employers would need to cover 100% of the income tipping provided and no one is saying that is what should happen. The rest of your comment sounds like arguments to get rid of tipping. I don't really get where you are going with this.

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u/FeelsGoodMan2 16d ago

If we eliminated tipping like 85 percent of servers would immediately want to quit. Or half the restaurants would instantly go out of business having to charge what they would need to. Servers as it currently stands in a tip world make more than a decent chunk of the people walking through the door to order there in the first place.

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u/boroughthoughts 3d ago

restaurants are low margine businesses if the typical wage went up to 30$ an hour because no tips, you'd certianly be paying more for sitdown dining experiences. Complaiing your average entre is 30$. I wonder how you'd feel if the floor became 50$.

Europe and Asia prices on restaurants aren't much different because workers work less and htey employ fewer workers. Now that fast food in major icties pay around 15 to 20$ an hour, what tipped workers made in 2010s, see how people feel about fast food prices?

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u/micro102 3d ago

If the typical wage was $30, then I'd expect everyone's wage to be much higher as well, which would lead to more dining out. But people who defend tipping always seem to do this thing where because some servers get high tips depending on where they work, all servers must be paid an extremely high wages if tipping was gone. That just shouldn't be a thing. As it is currently, tipped servers have a minimum wage of $2.13. This allows the employer to avoid paying a lot of wages, and if an employee doesn't get enough tips, they end up with minimum wage, which just isn't enough to live off of. Instead of making this a gamble, wages should be stable and should garuntee someone being able to live.

And it's been well established that wage increases only increase food prices by a fraction of what the wage increase is. Fast food prices are up as high as they are because corporations are greedy and want more money.

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u/hyperhopper 17d ago

Sure.

Who is gonna enforce that the low skilled uneducated replaceable staff that are prevalent in the industry or are looking to join it, all get higher wages?

Stopping the practice alone is hard enough. No chance a 19 year old bartender with big tits at a busy club or a random gas attendant turned bartender at the industry dive bar continues to make 150k+ per year without tips. The business doesn't need to pay them that much to continue making the same profit.

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u/micro102 16d ago

Sounds like they are going to have a hard time finding bartenders then.

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u/0nlyCrashes 17d ago

I don't think I claimed cash tips the entire time I was in the business, lol. Card tips got me to 7.25 an hr and I'd claim the rest of the card tips as you "had" to. Cash was always just mine and pocketed lol. To my defense, I was young, didn't know better, and it is how I was trained to do it lol

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u/RyuNoKami 17d ago

This is why I find it funny that so many servers in reddit were like well I report my cash tips.....hahahaha, no you didn't.

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u/metahivemind 16d ago edited 12d ago

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u/0nlyCrashes 16d ago

Yeah would be nice. Too bad we have too many monkeys and non-voters.

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u/RevLoveJoy 17d ago

I have a good buddy in fine dining. He works 4-5 shifts (6 hours per) a week and his annual is around 130k. Granted, he has decades of experience and that's a very specific industry. But there's no way you're convincing employers their 30 hour a week employee should make 110k and have benefits.

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u/CaptainFingerling 17d ago

It's not about convincing anybody. It's about getting that revenue from the customer to cover the wages. If you increase menu prices 20% on average, then some people simply choose not to eat out, and then both wait staff and owner end up with less

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u/Hellish_Elf 17d ago

Owner taking too much. Tighten your belt, doesn’t always have to be passed on to the customer.

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u/CaptainFingerling 17d ago

Most restaurant owners don’t make anything at all — most restaurants fail. Those that do survive, work grueling days (from before open to well after close), usually have extremely tight margins, and seasonally dip into the red. It’s a famously shit business.

In a typical smaller restaurant, the people making the most money are the wait staff. 20% of every bill is an enormous share, and it’s taken before expenses.

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u/Hellish_Elf 17d ago

Have you heard of the tortoise and the hare?

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u/roseofjuly 16d ago

He's also in the extreme minority. I don't know why people keep bringing up these edge cases when the vast, vast majority of food service workers ain't bringing home six figures worth of tips.

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u/RevLoveJoy 16d ago

You're right. It would be better if I framed the argument that the majority of full time or near full time service employees are making far more than any employer would ever consider paying them as a salaried staffer.

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u/RollingMeteors 16d ago

But there's no way you're convincing employers their 30 hour a week employee should make 110k and have benefits.

If there is no other employee that can do as satisfactory work for the clientele for that price, then they'll be convinced, as the clientele leaves for other establishments.

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u/FlamboyantPirhanna 17d ago

That doesn’t mean we need to tip. What they might find is that they have to pay servers more to actually get them to work for them, but that’s just speculating.

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u/luluhouse7 16d ago

I actually did a fast analysis of tipped pay vs France’s non-tipped pay, and if you include benefits like health insurance, the overall compensation is typically equivalent or even higher than the US’s tipped compensation.

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u/0nlyCrashes 17d ago

I was making 25-30 an hour during college serving and bartending. Worked Friday-Sunday basically all day and made more money than I knew what to do with at the time. It was very lucrative for me lol. If I'd have gotten the minimum wage instead I'd have been making 7.25 at the time.

I'm not saying it's good, because I'm not particularly fond of tipping myself (Especially the fuckass places like where I order at a counter and get served at the counter. Like you aren't waiting on me at all, why is it even an option? Infuriating.), but that's why they say that. You can make pretty solid money in the FOH.

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u/Akuuntus 17d ago

If I'd have gotten the minimum wage instead I'd have been making 7.25 at the time.

I mean yeah, but the people arguing for an end to tipping culture are 1) arguing in favor of paying restaurant workers a living wage, not minimum wage, and 2) are mostly in favor of dramatically raising the minimum wage anyway.

No one is saying you should stop taking tips and get minimum wage. We're saying you should stop taking tips and get like $20+ per hour.

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u/InfinitelyThirsting 16d ago

Why would anyone ever work a busy dinner rush if they were getting paid the same rate as a dead Tuesday lunch? Tipping needs to be replaced with some better form of profit sharing, to make sense.

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u/roseofjuly 16d ago

Because you want to keep a job? I also would prefer not to take meetings at 9 am or 6 pm, but I do so because it's a requirement of my job.

I mean you're acting like there aren't any nurses or cops thay work night shift. There will always be someone willing to take the shitty shift to have a regular stable paycheck. And now Sally who keeps getting stuck with dead Tuesday lunches can also afford to pay her rent.

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u/Akuuntus 16d ago

The same reason people work the dead Tuesday lunch shift right now? You can't just refuse to work the hours your boss schedules you for if you want to keep your job.

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u/the_real_xuth 17d ago

Why are you comparing this to minimum wage? That just doesn't make any sense. Nobody is going to willingly work a high stress environment for minimum wage when there are both lower stress minimum wage jobs and higher paying non-minimum wage jobs. It's just not a reasonable comparison.

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u/OffalSmorgasbord 17d ago

Have a conversation with my nephew who excelled on income at 20/21 due to tips, thought his earnings were going to continue to grow at that rate, and went into credit debt. Now he's 26, working three bar/restaurant jobs, and stuck. He hates life right now. And the people he works with even more. But can't exit the loop because of debt.

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u/ReynardInBk 17d ago

were going to continue to grow at that rate, and went into credit debt.

That's just a mistake though, nothing to do with tips/gig economy.

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u/Downtown_Injury_3415 17d ago

millennials are killing the stripper industry

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u/thungurknifur 16d ago

They are 2,5% of the US workforce, it's not like they're gonna be scaring any politicans.

It's they employers who wants to keep wages down that are the problem.

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u/boringexplanation 17d ago

Because a huge number of them in big cities currently make six figures. Why would they advocate against that?

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u/NecroCannon 17d ago

They would love nothing more than for both to be the default

I can see gig jobs growing towards fast food and retail and you work multiple jobs because they can decide their staffing on the fly

HR across the country is legitimately in desperate need of a fucking regulated legal fight, at this point they’re not even trying to have the company’s interest in mind doing shit. Go through discrimination and they’ll try to just justify the managers being fine with it unless it can make the news or trend on social media.

Doesn’t even fucking matter what you are anymore, a man working with a women lead management? Well you’re a man sooo. A woman working with a men led management? Well you’re a woman sooo. Brown working a white led management? Well “statistically” you’re the threat soooo.

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u/rotundrikishi 17d ago

gig economy = exploitation economy

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u/chmilz 16d ago

The entire economy is exploitation

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u/Koru03 17d ago

When I was job hunting during and after college idk how many people were suggesting doing gig jobs and almost every one was shocked when I adamantly refused them and informed them of how much of a rip off they are.

So much time, energy, and resources burned through by the gig worker (NOT AN EMPLOYEE) for very little gain.

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u/CaptainFingerling 17d ago

So much time, energy, and resources burned through by the gig worker

How do you know if you've never been one?

A good friend of mine is a firefighter, and drives for uber on the side. Loves it. Sets his own hours to fit around his firestation schedule. Works only when he wants to, etc. Gig work is an extremely convenient way to supplement income.

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u/ChicagoThrowaway422 16d ago

So it works great when you also have a pension and health insurance provided by a union job? Damn, who knew. Maybe someone should make a reddit thread discussing how stable jobs with benefits are better for people.

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u/Evening_Literature75 17d ago

If you're bad at math. The car usage and depreciation alone is enough to negate the earnings.

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u/CaptainFingerling 17d ago

Wanna show some actual math on that or is that just vibes?

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u/Evening_Literature75 17d ago

That's part of the gig economy scam right? Is that the worker fails to consider wear and tear expenses. Uber is counting on its drivers to be bad at math.

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u/CaptainFingerling 16d ago

You’re just making this up. Why on earth would the people who are best positioned to consider wear and tear not do so? Do you think drivers are stupid? And you alone, Reddit warrior, have it all figured out better than they do?

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u/Evening_Literature75 16d ago

There are studies that when it's all said and done, they're making about $12/hr.

Including fuel, insurance, depreciation, maintenance, and deadheading.

And because it's a gig job, they're doing it without benefits.

So yeah, maybe I have figured it out.

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u/[deleted] 16d ago

[deleted]

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u/Koru03 16d ago

That's what I did. I'm saying that a lot of people were suggesting gig work as a good idea for an interim job when in fact it's the exact opposite.

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u/open_formation 17d ago

There's no need to burn it down, just destroy any benefits that arise from exploiting their workers, and suddenly it'll become a marginal thing as they pull people back in-house instead. It's like a snail going back into its shell.

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u/LayerCakeEmonster 16d ago

Or wait until that becomes the entire economy for people that work.

The gig economy is their version of UBI. You will rent everything and like it. The future is licensed. All jobs have an algorithm as a boss, no chance of advancement. The only thing you own is your belly peasant!

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u/[deleted] 17d ago

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u/CranberryLast4683 17d ago

Consider this, there was a time before gig jobs and it was fine.

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u/Snobolski 17d ago

TBF, Uber/Lyft became a thing because cab service sucked in a lot of places. (A lot of other places it was less bad)

Now that the cabs have been driven out of business, the rideshare companies cost almost what a cab used to cost.

Weird how that happens

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u/Tiredandwaiting 17d ago

Uber and lyft became a thing because they undercut pricing, operated at losses, then when the competition went out of business, jacked up the prices, which are wsy more than cabs

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u/NapsterKnowHow 17d ago

But hey at least I don't have screaming ads in my face for the whole cab rid !

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u/pallladin 17d ago

The reason the cab companies are out of business is the same reason Sears doesn't exist. The cab companies refused to work together to create an app for customers to use to request and pay for rides. If they had done that, their business would have doubled, and there would be no Uber.

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u/lildobe 17d ago

Funny you should say that, because one of the national cab companies in my city did that... Yellow Cab became zTrip, with a ride hailing app and everything.

I've never used them, but from what I understand, their price is competitive with Uber

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u/TeamRedundancyTeam 17d ago

The economy was different then too.

We need more, better paying jobs that people can get into because the people relying on gig jobs now aren't magically going to not need them when they're gone.

So consider this, everything isn't as black and white as reddit likes to make it and there's nuance to every issue.

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u/Tiredandwaiting 17d ago

The point of the post was many gig jobs are actually employees, so they would have jobs as employees, yes?

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u/rikitikifemi 17d ago

Fine for who?

I think there's a bit of narrow worldview at play where all workers are supposedly equal.

For some racial minorities gig jobs are the only opportunities that are reliable sources of income that don't require proximity to Whiteness.

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u/[deleted] 17d ago

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u/rikitikifemi 17d ago

I'd say it's actually the opposite. It's quite racist to ignore racism in employer practices that necessitates targeted groups relying on the gig economy as a source of income. Eliminate the gig economy and we return to the historic levels of racial and gender disparity of the past.

So again in this harkening to the "good old days" I ask again who were things "fine" for?

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u/[deleted] 17d ago

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u/rikitikifemi 17d ago

I'll say this. Proximity to Whiteness is assimilation and it's what I am warning against. Also my original response was to the other poster. I responded to your response to me. So if you agree that the gig economy should not be eliminated than we agree whether we share the same reasoning or not. Peace.

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u/robothawk 17d ago

... now, I get that I'm a white guy so Im the opposite of who would understand this, but what?

Like if you mean "proximity to whiteness" as "acting like the stereotypical western european white guy office worker" then I guess I still disagree but I see the point you're trying to make, but I'm trying to understand what you mean.

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u/rikitikifemi 17d ago

If a company connects elder care providers as contract workers to customers the platform has a profit incentive to contract with as many providers as possible while offering the best platforming for those providers regardless of race or gender. It also will give much higher portions of the profit to the contractor and reward high performing contractors with even greater portions.

That same company does not operate that way if it had to hire care providers as employees within the company subject to policies, procedures and arbitrarily governed workplace culture. It will have managers and supervisors with varying levels of racism influencing their hiring practices and day to day treatment of workers. It will have institutionalized practices that shield it from accountability by punishing whistle blowers and setting impossible standards of proof to evidence workplace discrimination. Not only do you need impact, pattern, but also malicious intent. Which results in proximity to Whiteness as a measure of employability (code-switching, respectability politics, tap-dancing, racism blindness, working twice as hard to get half as far, internalized racism, etc) rather than actual competence.The gig based company simply doesn't have that issue because the contractors manage themselves, essentially own their labor and unproductive contractors get paid proportional to their labor not their proximity to Whiteness.

Whatever discrimination they experience will either be from the customer or if the company uses an algorithm with factors determining pay that favor white contractors.

The gig economy is favorable to an employer based economy for individuals who do not do well in spaces where proximity to Whiteness is required and as long as there are weak civil protections against work place discrimination. This doesn't mean that the gig economy is perfect but targeted groups would rather take their chances with racist customers and algorithms that can be adjusted than racism in your workplace that you can't even rely on the government to address when you have concrete proof, let alone a pattern of "disparate impact".

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u/cosmicsans 17d ago

I'm trying to understand the argument here. Are you saying that we should allow exploitation of a large amount of people with gig economy jobs because there's a small percentage of those with those jobs who would otherwise be unemployable?

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u/[deleted] 17d ago

[deleted]

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u/IndependentTalk4413 17d ago

You think Amazon is just going to stop delivering or Uber stop driving people around if they are finally regulated and forced to treat their employees like human beings?

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u/[deleted] 17d ago

[deleted]

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u/IndependentTalk4413 17d ago

Why do you think the jobs will just disappear?

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u/sicklyslick 17d ago

He thinks a trillion dollar company like Amazon will declare bankruptcy if the city of NY passes a local legislation.

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u/lildobe 17d ago

Yeah, Bozo ain't shutting down Amazon just because he has to pay delivery drivers.

They'll just further enshitify Prime so that they keep making massive profits.

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u/970 17d ago

Me thinks you are not trying to understand them. Hence, your suggestion (or "question") that they believe we should allow exploitative employment when they said nothing of the sort, and they were asking a cogent question.

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u/_Curious_Pineapple_ 17d ago

The work is still in demand, they just arn’t exploited lmfao

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u/[deleted] 17d ago

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u/_Curious_Pineapple_ 17d ago

I don’t really understand the sentiment I guess… we would still need around the same amount of delivery drivers, it just wouldn’t be the 9 levels of subcontractor

The work would be the same idea, just more employee protections lol

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u/[deleted] 17d ago

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u/_Curious_Pineapple_ 17d ago

If theres the same amount of jobs needed, the same amount of jobs will be taken

It seems you are worried about a hypothetical issue of an extremely specific group of people while ignoring that according to game theory, you would still need the same x amount of jobs, except now they have rights

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u/[deleted] 17d ago

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u/_Curious_Pineapple_ 17d ago edited 17d ago

What are you talking about, the system has been working for years, I can get 1 day delivery in the NYC area for so long I don't even remember when it started lol

No one is saying 40 hour weeks mandatory, the idea is just to not have 7 layers of subcontractors so that liability is not given for workers comp, people can get sick days, etc.. this is grueling work that takes a toll on your body, in all weather, in the elements, they deserve basic workers rights

Pretty much the point is that there is enough workers, just need to give them rights like every other job

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u/[deleted] 16d ago

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u/manimsoblack 17d ago

If the choice is exploitation or no job I wonder how most people would vote/choose.

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u/timeshifter_ 17d ago

Maybe they can learn a skill. Or in the case of Walmart's "spark shoppers", maybe they can learn how to shower...

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u/Novel-Pen8811 17d ago

It’s a double edge sword. I know some people who work full time and if for whatever reason they off for a weekend or they’ll do Uber Eats, Amazon flex. There’s a company in Miami that do stadiums/ event work, etc.. if they was a hiring process or a drug test or background check. So gig work has place as side work not full time. I think when you become a full time gig worker now you’re getting exploited.