A multibillion dollar corporation is throwing its weight around and trying to bully our city AGAIN. Surprise, surprise: it’s DoorDash.
Here’s what DoorDash is big mad about. Food delivery gig workers in Seattle finally won first-time protections from “deactivation” – what we call it when app corporations use algorithms to fire workers without any human involvement, explanation, or recourse. Deactivation protections and the funding to enforce our protections mean that our workplaces are fairer and our lives are more stable. And it’s been working. Already, companies like UberEats have been busted for violating our deactivation protections, and workers have won our money back.
DoorDash hates that, and it’s communicating its tantrum the way it always has: by price-gouging Seattle workers, customers, and small businesses. And why? Certainly not because the company (that just reported $3 billion in Q1 revenue) is struggling financially. No, DoorDash is using a page in its own Bully, Buy, and Bamboozle playbook to try to make us all think that fair pay and fair workplaces are bad for workers.
But Seattle sees through that. We have reaffirmed time and again that we care about good workplaces and that we support all workers getting paid fairly, and DoorDash knows it. The company spent tens of thousands of dollars in May running a poll in Seattle to see if people support gig workers making a fair wage, and then… never published those results. We’re going to take a wild guess and say the results of the poll weren’t helpful for DoorDash because they demonstrated what we already knew: Seattle values fair pay and fair work.
The deactivation protections for drivers are basic and common sense. Apps have to tell a worker why they can’t accept new orders, can’t just make up a bogus reason, and have to give us a chance to fix its firing algorithm’s mistake. These are bare minimum protections against billion dollar corporations that treat their workers like we’re disposable – most of whom are working parents, immigrants, and workers with disabilities. Delivery apps have already tried to quietly violate these worker protections, but drivers aren’t having it and we’re fighting back to enforce our rights and hold the big gig apps accountable. The city’s Office of Labor Standards (OLS) has stated that dozens of drivers have reached out since January about needing help in enforcing driver protections and getting the app to reactivate them. We know our rights.
Despite the app’s corporate spin, its real message to politicians, workers, and customers has been clear from the start: if you make the company pay workers what we’re owed, DoorDash will extort our city in the hopes that we back down and allow wealthy corporations to go back to getting rich by screwing over everyone else. But Seattle workers stopped this corporate strategy in its tracks last year, despite DoorDash spending over $1 million lobbying the city in just the first half of the year.
At the end of the day, organized people power beats organized money, and organized money just embarrasses itself.