To decode the above: Uber was already running a $2/bonus per trip (6 for 3), then driver supply was so low that Uber has to offer surcharges (the various amounts) to incentivize drivers to increase supply. Some spots offered as high as an $11 surcharge (not seen due to scale).
Uber is offering a $200 referral not just for new drivers, but to get people who haven’t driven in five weeks back to driving. Five weeks! Meaning that if you drove for Uber, but haven’t since March 19th, I get $200 for merely suggesting your name and you start driving again. They’re done looking for new drivers, they just want their current ones to stop quitting.
I wonder what happened on March 19th for driver supply to have shrunk like that?
This right here is the part that simply boggles my mind. You know what they could do; you mention it in your very next paragraph! PAY MORE. How hard is that? If you can’t get anyone to work at $15, offer $16, then $17. Keep going until you find enough people.
“Oh, how can we make a profit like that?!?!?”
How much profit are you making shutting down your restaurant because you can’t find staff? How much profit are you making from people who drive away because the wait is too long?
Do the math, and pay what it takes. If you really can’t make a profit, then your business should shut down.
There is no health insurance for servers. For my friend there was also no state unemployment (she was part time). No disability When she had her heart surgery she was under her husband’s insurance but her restaurant money just stopped. We set up a GoFundMe and a MealTrain for her time off.
I’m guessing that there’s no benefits for most fast food workers, as employers are scheduling everyone for under 30 hours (not just for the pandemic, but forever).
Obamacare does a lot to help cover that gap for servers, fast food workers and gig workers. You don’t need an employer to buy you a plan, you can buy it yourself. And if you don’t make much money it’s reduced cost. But at $8-10 an hour, a $200/mo plan that doesn’t cover everything completely feels like a waste of money or an impossible cost for most people. It’s there for them but I’m not sure how many people use it (I actually have an Obamacare plan, since I have my own business. But I am financially stable.)
Being on unemployment and Medicare is way way way better than any other choice people have right now.
Anyway, lack of health insurance is a non-starter for people going to gig work. They’re not getting health insurance elsewhere, either. So why not have flexible work with very little physical or emotional demands? Better than not getting health care standing on your feet.
I’ve said this a million times and I’ll say it again - I don’t know why business owners aren’t up in arms demanding universal health care. If workers and employers didn’t have to worry about health insurance this would be a waaaay different economy and we’d be having a different discussion about workers right now.
I am in no way qualified to explain the hows or whys of it all, but I’m quite certain the conversation about illegal (and legal) immigration is related.
I saw a guy on CNN or something, a rancher in Wyoming. He had to import field hands from Argentina, he couldn’t hire any American guys how knew how to herd cows AND were willing to put in the long hours and hard work. He had to hire another guy just to deal with all of the Immigration paperwork.
Similarly, the vegetable fields of California are chock-a-block with immigrants, legal or otherwise, picking vegetables while the unemployment rate in the county hovers at 10 percent. Americans just aren’t going to do that work.
Further, you’ll hear of towns – Beardstown, IL; Carthage, MO; Dodge City, KS – where the main industry is something unpleasant like meat-packing, and the locals won’t do it, so we import Mexicans or Somalis or what have you who are glad to have a job.
So all you conservatives who complain about illegal immigrants taking your jobs: are you prepared to kill turkeys on the midnight shift? Pick vegetables in the 100-degree sun?
Yep. It’s not “Nahployment” as if people are just being lazy, when employers won’t raise their compensation and conditions to meet society’s minimum standards.
I have to agree. Higher compensation for a shitty job is not the worse thing.
It was one thing when these jobs were mostly filled by teenagers and young twenty-somethings still living at home. But to expect adults to work these crappy jobs for minimal money is pretty much bullshit.
So if this rushes in more automation, that is also part of the free market.
I wonder if there’s fewer teens/younger adults working because there’s no place to spend the money. Working in high school for money for grad night and prom? Not now. Want to bum around Europe for a summer? Nope.
Some places may do that. They can raise their prices enough to cover the increased labor costs.
Some places are franchises, and are not allowed to raise their prices without permission from corporate.
I’ve had labor issues, and I’ve raised my starting wage pretty substantially, and passed some of that cost onto my clients.
There is also the problem of starting wages vs core wages. If I hire someone, it’s usually a month or so before they stop costing me money, another month before I am actually making any money off of them. It’s hard to pay really high wages for people that you lose money on.
I have other employees that are well trained and productive, and I pay them pretty well (most make well more than I do).
But, even food service has something of a learning curve to it. People do get better after they’ve been there a while.
As a business owner, I agree entirely. I mean, not exactly “up in arms”, but metaphorically, yeah. I would far rather have a UHC than try to cover my employees, or have them go without. I look into it every year, and it’s always been out of reach. Ironically, if I could get a bit more staffing, then I would be able to do it.
However, if I were a large business (with no personal ethics), then I would be against UHC, as healthcare as a benefit traps my employees, keeps them from trying out new things, working for small businesses, or starting their own.
I’m not trying to drag you but I really dislike this attitude. Why is it ok for young people to be under paid? If someone is still living with their parents they’re not trying to be poor. They’re trying to save money to start their lives. Whether they’re 16 or 18 trying to save for college, or 23 trying to pay off their student loan or 25 trying to save for a home or a wedding… or 45 trying to pay for a mortgage or diapers…all people who work deserve to be paid a living wage.
I don’t understand the mentality of underpaying young people, mixed with the mentality of young people not working hard. We expect young people to put themselves through college, pay for their own living expenses, get their own health insurance, contribute to “the economy” (which is usually measured by interest rates and stock values earned on old people’s money) and come out happy to change the world. But not at the cost of capitalism, oh no.
Employers should pay what jobs are worth, regardless of who is filling that job. Period.
Another point - the average citizen should be up in arms about health care costs too. The city I represent as a council person pays a higher chunk of our yearly budget for employee health insurance. We’ve got fire, police and service unions making sure we’re providing good insurance. I don’t hold that against the unions, I’m very pro union and our city employees are very satisfied. Our finance and HR departments are always looking for the best rates. Due to the size of our city our group is too small to qualify for huge group discounts. Everyone is doing the best they can. But residents are paying tons of their tax dollars every year for these health care costs. People who say “I love my company’s health coverage and it doesn’t cost me a thing” probably have no idea how much it costs them to cover other people’s health insurance. And it’s part of everyone’s taxes no matter where you live in the US.
Most of the time when they do the math the automate the job. So one waitress for an entire resteraunt with kiosk ordering and paying. The Wendy’s here in town has had a banner for two year advertising starting wages at $15/hour. The last time I was there they had given up and had gone to the kiosk ordering. Doing the math is a bad thing as we near $20/hour.
Not wanting to get the thread derailed on a sidebar of what a ‘living wage’ is (THANKS, EVERYONE), but would like to note that even for a 16yo, $8 an hour is not it. Just read above.
You obviously don’t mean that. There are lots of jobs that are barely worth anything. The employees aren’t allowed to pay what it’s worth instead they need to pay a minimum wage or an ideal wage so the job goes undone.
We were just talking about hiring a cleaning person for my company but it would only be a two day a week job and so a bit annoying to staff but if I hired them to also clean my house, and the homes of my two employees then I could make a full time position but now that’s expensive and I’m ok having my engineers clean the bathroom once a week so the job goes un paid for
We would be better off with UBI that covered the living wage and then employers could just pay what jobs were worth to them and their employee.
Of course, they are on salary. It costs me the same if they scrub a toilet as if they surf the straight dope. I’m on the cleaning rotation too but every job has down time and when it’s your week you can spend your down time with a scrub brush rather than me paying someone else a living wage.
Sounds inefficient. I don’t know how much you pay your engineers, but I had a friend with just an associates degree, and he usually billed at least $45 an hour doing markups on plans(that’s not how much he made, that’s what his employer made off him). Downtime sounds expensive.
But sure, if you cannot afford to hire someone to take care of cleaning and maintenance, then don’t hire them. Let someone else hire them who can afford to pay them a livable wage.
I pay my groomers their usual 20+ an hour to clean up after their shift. I could hire someone else to do it, I suppose, but it wouldn’t be a full time job. It sounds more like that is what you are trying to say, that there’s not enough work for it to be fulltime, than that it’s not worth the opportunity cost of having someone who’s time is far more valuable do it.
There are service companies that you can hire that you can have just come in once a week or so. That may be more suited to a small offices needs than a full time cleaning employee.