Ok, call your extra payment whatever name you want, and get the ball rolling on legislating new regulations to ensure fair pay. They deserve to get paid more, and when/if those regulations go through the drivers will have a better future.
That didn’t answer the question, though. We both agree that drivers deserve to get paid more, so why not open up your wallet and start paying them more now? Why wait months or years for legislation to go through to force you to pay more, when the power to make sure your driver is paid well is sitting in the palm of your hand today? Your individual act of tipping or not tipping will do nothing to address the system at large, but it will do everything to ensure your driver driver gets paid fairly for the labor they perform while they serve you.
Why is it my responsibility to ensure they’re paid fairly by me directly? It’s the employer’s responsibility to pay their workers fairly. If you can’t pay your workers fairly, why does your business deserve to exist?
You’ve got the wrong model. DoorDash is not an employer, and Dashers are not employees. Dashers are not assigned shifts, or expected to clock in and out at specific times. Dashers are free to refuse offers they don’t want to take.
DoorDash is a “broker”, not an employer. They attempt to connect a customer to a vendor and a Dasher. What you pay DoorDash is a brokerage fee, not a service charge. Your “tip” is not a tip: it is a bid for the Dasher’s delivery service. The Dasher is not obligated to serve you; if you want service, you need to offer payment for that service and find someone willing to provide it at that price.
Right…they are a middle man that only exists to extract money from other people’s work. Customers have to pay them for the privilege, restaurants have to pay them for the privilege, and then customers have to pay the driver to actually deliver it. Why anyone would use these services, let alone work for them, is beyond me…
Why is it my responsibility to ensure they’re paid fairly by me directly?
Because the price you pay for a service is a reflection of the relationship you have with the person providing that service, and to believe otherwise is something known as commodity fetishism
"What is, in fact, a social relation between people (between capitalists and exploited laborers) instead assumes “the fantastic form of a relation between things.”
We are defined both individually and societally by the relationships that we form with other people.
If you can’t pay your workers fairly, why does your business deserve to exist?
It does not deserve to exist. However, it does exist, drivers drive for them and are not paid enough for their labor, and you continue to use it despite all of that. I’ll ask again: why don’t you personally be the change you want to see in the world and pay them more now?
I’ll ask again: why don’t you personally be the change you want to see in the world and pay them more now?
Because it’s not my responsibility to subsidize your business. If a tip is required to get good service, then the question becomes how much of a tip required to get good service. It pits customers against workers, while you brush it off as just the cost of getting good service. But if people decide that the cost of your business plus a tip is too much, then no one will use your business. That’s capitalism…it works both ways. You can either decide to make less profit and pay your workers fairly without putting the onus onto your customers, or you can close the business. You are not entitled to exploit both your workers and your customers.
