The Seattle City Council today unanimously approved rules providing paid sick leave for food-delivery and other on-demand, app-based gig economy workers. The city appears to be the first in the nation to permanently ensure these protections.
[...] The measure applies to workers for companies such as DoorDash, Grubhub and Uber Eats, as well as platforms providing on-demand work such as laundry services and car washing. Similar benefits already exist at the state level for ride-hailing companies including Lyft and Uber. Seattle's legislation provides a suite of sick and "safe" time benefits including paid time off for:
- an illness and preventative health care;
- if a company stops operations due to a public health emergency or other safety reason;
- due to a school closure for a family member; and
- in order to seek services for domestic violence, sexual assault or stalking.
Mosqueda sponsored the legislation and was also the lead on similar, temporary protections put in place in June 2020 to aid workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Mayor Bruce Harrell drafted the new legislation in partnership with the council and lauded passage of the measure, according to a statement.
[...] "From a public health perspective, it is extremely important for all workers to have access to paid sick leave, and the ability to take it without retaliation or retribution," Baker said by email.
For many delivery drivers, the work represents their primary income. Among gig platform workers, 31% said it was their main job, while 68% said it was a side job, according to a 2021 study by Pew Research Center. The benefits will have an outsized benefit for BIPOC adults: higher percentages of Black, Hispanic and Asian adults work for gig platforms than white workers.
According to the new rules, gig workers will accrue one day of time off for every 30 days of work that include a stop in Seattle. The amount paid will be an average of the compensation earned in the preceding 12 months. Nine days of paid sick leave can be carried over annually. And delivery companies are required to provide workers with written information about these benefits on a monthly basis.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Mykl on Wednesday April 05, @07:22AM (26 children)
I'm sure that the invisible hand of the market is great at stopping people from getting sick in the long run, but I for one am a fan of initiatives that prevent sick people from handling my food because they need to pay rent.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Wednesday April 05, @07:25AM
Dammit - "Cue".
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Opportunist on Wednesday April 05, @07:35AM (10 children)
I think I just found another puzzle piece of the reason why Covid rampaged through the US as if it was a third world nation.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 05, @09:02AM (9 children)
Go to: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ [worldometers.info]
Sort by Deaths/1M pop descending. You'd find that the US did worse than a lot of third world nations.
Sure one could say that for many 3rd world nations the death statistics are not accurate[1] and that they tend to have more younger and fewer obese people who are less likely to die from covid, but whatever it is the USA still did very badly (being in the top 20 countries in deaths per 1M pop ain't something to be proud of)...
[1] Even so, I'm sure in some 3rd world countries the death statistics aren't grossly under reported even if the case statistics are. Many people may not bother to report that they got covid but if they die the police/hospitals etc are likely to report it. I'm living in a 3rd world country and I don't think the death stats were covered up. There were plenty of people dying per day and magnitudes fewer after the mass vaccinations. That said I suspect ironically many people got covid while going for the vaccines (millions of people going to the same places, touching the same stuff, sharing the same air)...
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by khallow on Wednesday April 05, @09:20AM (8 children)
This. Good thing you did the work of shooting down your own argument. Top 20 of countries that accurately report their covid deaths is not that big a deal.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Opportunist on Wednesday April 05, @10:30AM (7 children)
Please. We're not talking about Burundi or Kenya here, we're talking Japan and Australia. Also, looking at the "number of dead people" and "number of cases" doesn't make the US look any better either, with over one percent of infected people dying you're doing worse than Lithuania or France. And please don't tell me France doesn't have a problem with an aging population, there's a reason they have to push the retirement age upwards because they can't pay the effin' pensions anymore.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 05, @10:53AM (6 children)
We're also talking Europe. I got this covered.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Opportunist on Wednesday April 05, @10:58AM (5 children)
Europe had some countries with higher death tolls and some with lower ones, usually the cut is where the iron curtain used to be. You really want to compare your medical facilities with that of Moldova and Romania?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Wednesday April 05, @11:41AM (4 children)
I'll note also that gig delivery probably greatly reduced peoples' exposure to covid contrary to narrative. There's just a single point of contact with the delivery person rather than multiple equivalent points of contact to people at the pickup location, gas station, etc. I think it's absurd to blame gig delivery for the spread of covid, when it was probably a significant mitigation factor instead.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Wednesday April 05, @05:53PM (3 children)
The latter is hard to gauge. A counter argument would be that without, people would not have bought dinner out at all and instead cooked at home more, resulting in their only interaction with people being the once-a-week grocery shopping. And since that will happen anyway because you can't get everything from the burger delivery system...
I also don't think that gig economy is to blame, what's to blame is that gig workers need to work when they're sick. My company now has standing order that coming to work sick will get you written up, to quote my boss (and yes, we have this in writing), sick days don't matter, what matters is that you don't multiply them by infecting others.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 06, @08:22AM (2 children)
And the once-a-week everything else they'll do since they're out getting exposed to and spreading covid anyway. It's a terrible counterargument.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Thursday April 06, @09:37AM (1 child)
You have to get groceries. At least I have not found a solution that would deliver everything to my doorstep, from fresh bread to detergent. Or at least not at a price that I actually want to pay. So once a week, you are pretty much required to go to a store and get food and other necessities.
Ordering just adds one interaction that is unnecessary.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 06, @02:27PM
So much of this discussion is "If it's not good for me, it's not good for anyone."
Unless, of course, it is necessary.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 05, @10:25AM (13 children)
Gig workers wouldn't be handling the food. They would be handling the bags or other containers that the food is in. Still a safer situation than driving to a restaurant and picking up your food or worse, eating out. That bears thinking about in the two minute hate on gig work. It really was safer.
Actual food handlers would be restaurant workers who are normal employees - that never was threatened by the gig economy stuff. And we have a long history of non-market actors like governments compromising health, environmental, and safety regulations for the sake of expedience or incompetence. At least with private enterprise doing the food, you have separate entities for the food and the regulation, and a reduced conflict of interest.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday April 05, @05:04PM (8 children)
Heh. That didn't address his point at all. He's pointing out that the 'invisible hand' is unevenly applied and rarely learns lessons for very long. Every time we loosen regulations there's a train wreck. If Libertarians would finally come around to taking that into account we might be able to have a discussion more productive than: "Let's do this" "Nah, let's do nothing because someone was fined because their sink was an eighth of an inch too high in 1993."
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 06, @08:07AM (6 children)
Seems pretty irrelevant to the news story about Seattle piling on gig employers. And who learns lessons for longer? My take is the state of the art actually is a pure market betting market which trades on the probability of such lessons needing to be applied.
Except of course, when we have the opposite of a train wreck. That happens too. I'll note that the infamous Runaway and myself came up with some brazen counterexamples in his latest journal [soylentnews.org]. For example, you know a gun control regulation will be a train wreck when:
Similar nonsense happens in my EPA example of the Clean Water Act being arbitrarily expanded and changed because "the science". And it takes somewhere in the neighborhood of $250k to determine whether your construction project is in compliance. Superfund is another remarkably bad example of where EPA regulations go when they go off the rails. They couldn't criminalize legal pollution (that is, pollution from before it was regulated), but managed to force such businesses to pay for a ridiculously overpriced system. A bunch of states [reason.org] do a better job of cleaning up pollution sites for less.
If you can't think of any regulation that doesn't need to be curbed, then you haven't been paying attention.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Thursday April 06, @04:33PM (5 children)
Um, okay, but the rest of your (misdirected) post is doing the same thing you're trying to dismiss his words over.
^^ this little bit of self-conflict is one of the reasons I have to be in the right mood to dEbAtE with a Libertarian. Your first line that I quoted above counts, too. What he said is irrelevant but hey let's talk about gun control and the EPA! Or let's dismiss stuff entirely because the word 'timecard' is really really offensive!!
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 06, @05:07PM (4 children)
Was I incorrect in doing so? Why can't we get into the mode of offering details/helpful suggestions when we say someone is doing something wrong?
When someone makes a universal claim like "Every time we loosen regulations there's a train wreck." the obvious rebuttals are specific counterexamples that prove the universal claim is false. That's reason 101 stuff. That's why libertarians go to actual problems rather than argue that all regulation is bad or maybe that murder in the streets is good, I don't know what you we/they should be doing here or what in the world you think a counterargument to the claim above would be, but we're playing the game right.
Moving on, the "timecard" thing is primitive thinking and indicates unwillingness to even consider what gig work is.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Thursday April 06, @05:26PM (3 children)
A. You were responding to a post you misunderstood, and instead of adapting after being corrected you to dismiss his point entirely.
B. You're attempting to debate with ME about something someone ELSE said. You've basically created a situation where the motivation for my involvement would mainly be entertainment purposes.
Yah huh. It's involuntary, isn't it.
And also based on a fabrication on your part. I never said "punch clock". I can't join you in whatever it is you're imagining, here, because I know I don't have the same picture in my head. Sorry.
You have a habit of immediately changing the scope on a topic and I suspect it's because you're trying to find segues into topics you're chomping at the bit to argue about.
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 06, @06:19PM (1 child)
Adapting to what? Mykl's explanation [soylentnews.org] seems in line with what I thought it was.
Is there even a problem here?
It sounds a lot to me like doing it wrong [xkcd.com]. Trying to fit new systems and dynamics of work into the straitjackets of the old. But maybe they have timecards for Uber drivers? That would take the wind out of the sails of my argument.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Thursday April 06, @06:31PM
Hmm ... let's see...
Well that answers that. Heh.
🤷♂️
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 06, @06:23PM
Talk of the "invisible hand of the market" leaves great latitude in what the scope can be. Same with "first US city to..." of the title. Both story and comment. And even with your comment, I have yet to hear what the scope of this thread is supposed to be.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 06, @03:08PM
Keep in mind that the usual push for regulation isn't "Let's do this", rather it is "Let's do this because I read or heard something in the media that made me angry." with no regard for whether the regulation is relevant, useful, or even already exists! In such an environment, how can you have a productive discussion?
For example, consider how this happens with gig work. California passed a law to regulate gig work, AB 5 [wikipedia.org]. The end result after a series of shenanigans, court cases, and other changes, is that all the industries with political influence were exempted, including the primary targets: ride hailing and delivery services. It has turned into another waste of resources that makes contracting people in California even harder for no reason. That's an example of a regulation that was neither relevant or useful.
As to the third, it is routinely ignored that gig work is already heavily regulated throughout the developed world. Few employers can do it in the first place and it's typically for work that makes sense to treat as a gig, such as the ride hailing services or writers paid by the word. When someone demands [soylentnews.org] that I show why normal workers at restaurants aren't threatened by gig work, I didn't have much to prove. If restaurant jobs could be threatened by gig employment, then they would have been so threatened decades ago. Computer networks and such technology innovation aren't relevant to having a employee/contractor show up at fixed times with the knowledge/skills and care for your business and customers that you need.
Seriously, how would it work? Bring in a body for two hours who has never seen your operation before and may well never see it again? What's their stake in having happy customers or delivering anything for your restaurant versus just trying to steal everything that isn't nailed down? And every developed world country already has a check list of what constitutes an employee. Coming to work for an exclusive employer, not using their own gear, and being managed in detail to deliver results for the restaurant are all typical indicators used to determine that one is an employee.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Wednesday April 05, @06:51PM (1 child)
That's quite an assumption you're working there. Could you care to explain why you chose it?
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 06, @07:00AM
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Wednesday April 05, @11:52PM (1 child)
I agree that the delivery driver does not literally have their unwashed hands all over the actual food itself, however you will still be touching the same containers that they're touching, interacting during payment (hopefully not cash where you need change!) etc. It's a small, but non-zero risk - one that is reduced further when sick people stay home. More to the point, the sick person is out in public generally (using Public Transport to get around etc) rather than staying at home.
More to the point, there are other gigs that provide a much higher risk of infecting people when turning up sick, such as promo people ('booth babes'), casual laborers (who get the whole work site sick) and others.
As noted by another poster though, my comment was aimed mostly at the Libertarians who will find this an outrage and an assault on Freedumb, not realising (or admitting) that this actually benefits them too.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 06, @08:18AM
In other words, you agree that this instance of gig work did a significant job of reducing covid infections.
Are promo employees somehow less infectious than promo contractors? Somehow I just don't buy that. And what "casual workers" on a work site?
I guess it doesn't help your argument that they are right. The real counterargument is that this curbing of our freedom is necessary to deal with a real world disaster that was harming millions of people. Remember the principle is your freedom ends where someone else's freedom begins.
Your claim that this somehow furthers the self-interest of the Libertarians misses the point. Self-interest even when it really is self-interest is a matter of viewpoint. If they don't agree, then you get nowhere. And most of these "self-interest" arguments are blatantly false and don't take into account the actual self-interests of the other party! For example, if the person is 20, then covid is vastly less harmful to them than if they are 90. Self-interest will be radically different.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Opportunist on Wednesday April 05, @07:33AM (5 children)
You're telling me people can't get sick in the US?
The fuck?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Freeman on Wednesday April 05, @02:35PM
They can definitely get sick, they just don't get paid, if they work for a sucky company or just don't work many hours.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Tork on Wednesday April 05, @04:47PM (2 children)
That employee did go to the ER, after a bit of recovery they turned out just fine. AND the project was completed on time and on budget. I just had someone substitute for them for a couple of days, and even if I couldn't have done that we did schedule appropriately because ... you know, productivity ebbs and flows, and it's dumb not to account for that. We would have absorbed those two lost days and not thought twice about it. I do wish that employee had gone to the ER before calling me, and I let them know that.
Did I mention we tackled a bunch of the "nice to have" list and that client returned for another project?
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 06, @08:20AM (1 child)
You can be sure that a lot more "unable to reach the boss" issues will crop up once employees figure out that the boss is a dick.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Tork on Thursday April 06, @04:39PM
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mcgrew on Wednesday April 05, @07:13PM
No, here there's a huge fine for getting sick. Some have gone bankrupt from the incredibly heavy fines. A cold is just a misdemeanor but if you need a pacemaker, that's a felony with a huge fine.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 4, Insightful) by darkfeline on Wednesday April 05, @08:58AM (8 children)
Do "gig" workers in Seattle have required working hours?
I might have missed Seattle's revolution, but my understanding is that gig workers choose when they want to work. So how does sick leave work exactly?
"Well I was going to drive 8 hours today and I'm sick today, even though I only ever drove 1 or 2 hours on this weekday in the past few months, so I get 8 hours sick leave."
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 5, Informative) by Tork on Wednesday April 05, @05:08PM (7 children)
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Wednesday April 05, @07:26PM (4 children)
That doesn't explain how they use the time off. They can accrue it but they can't use it because they don't have required working hours to use the time on.
Or is it just a roundabout way of increasing how much they get paid for the work they do, but you have to pretend to be sick during a time when you were planning to work, pinky promise.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 3, Informative) by Tork on Wednesday April 05, @07:40PM (3 children)
My understanding ... which I'm deriving mostly from my own experience and not from this article, just being up front with you about that... is that you accrue a certain number of hours per month. So if you work 160 hours one month you might accrue... let's say for the sake of easy math... 8 hours of sick time. So if you work regularly and take no time off you'd have 12 * 8 hours of leave accrued. Then... one day you're sick, so you don't go to work but you do fill in a time card for however many hours. They may cap the # of hours depending on the context. If you don't have the hours accrued you just don't get paid. It's more like 'vacation time'... but having said that out loud I don't know that functionally the way you described it functionally different. From here it's a matter of how they want to do the math to make it 'fair'. Maybe it's not based on hours it's based on previous paychecks... eh maybe.
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 06, @08:42AM (2 children)
Time card? Why again are gig employers supposed to use century old tech? Sounds like the simpler approach would be to just not employ those people in Seattle. Two signs this will be a shitshow: 1) requires abandoning decades of technological advance for no reason (rather for bad reasons like protecting fat labor unions and cartels), and 2) is easy to bypass.
Sorry, I don't buy that this would have any positive effect on an epidemic for reasons I've already mentioned. It's one of the many cases out there where pretending the problem doesn't exist is actually a better solution. Yes, head in sand, butt in air.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Tork on Thursday April 06, @04:09PM (1 child)
Heh. Are you picturing sticking a slip of paper into a machine and it kerthunks?
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 06, @04:46PM
Pretty much. My employer has something similar (moderately more advanced - swiping cards and fiddling around on puters to fix the inevitable problems), but they're pretty backwards when it comes to this sort of thing. The internet-based gig economy stuff is pretty advanced on that front, but that goes to my complaint.
When you're thinking "timecards", you're thinking traditional employment and square pegging this round hole. Meanwhile these companies are thinking - let's keep track of it all in real time by those cell phones everyone has. And well, it works. But the kerthunk people just aren't going to get it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Mykl on Wednesday April 05, @10:54PM (1 child)
I hadn't appreciated it until just now, but this is also a brilliant way to get gig workers to accurately record their income for tax purposes. If you hide your income then you don't get the sick leave benefit that goes with it.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 06, @08:44AM
(Score: 4, Touché) by datapharmer on Wednesday April 05, @12:08PM
But these aren’t gig employees they are gig contractors so it doesn’t count, right?