Factually! with Adam Conover - The Gig Economy In the Time of COVID-19 with Johana Bhuiyan

Episode Date: April 22, 2020

Delivery workers are more important than ever - so why are they getting screwed? Business and tech reporter for the LA Times, Johana Bhuiyan, joins Adam to how tech companies are bungling the pandemic, the importance of gig workers to our economy and what will happen to these employees if it tanks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You know, I got to confess, I have always been a sucker for Japanese treats. I love going down a little Tokyo, heading to a convenience store, and grabbing all those brightly colored, fun-packaged boxes off of the shelf. But you know what? I don't get the chance to go down there as often as I would like to. And that is why I am so thrilled that Bokksu, a Japanese snack subscription box, chose to sponsor this episode. What's gotten me so excited about Bokksu is that these aren't just your run-of-the-mill grocery store finds. Each box comes packed with 20 unique snacks that you can only find in Japan itself.

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So if all of that sounds good, if you want a big box of delicious snacks like this for yourself, use the code factually for $15 off your first order at Bokksu.com. That's code factually for $15 off your first order on Bokksu.com. I don't know the way. I don't know what to think. I don't know what to say. Yeah, but that's alright. Yeah, that's okay. I don't know anything. Hello, welcome to Factually. I'm Adam Conover, and I'm still here. I'm still in my house, just like I hope you are in your house. I am washing my hands, just like I hope you are washing your hands. I'm wearing my mask, just like I hope you're wearing yours. We're still doing this, and it seems like we're going to be doing this for a while. Buckle up, because we are in the middle of an unprecedented global public health crisis. And we're starting to realize that's just the beginning of the bad news, because we are also

now in the middle of an unprecedented global economic crisis. When people have to stay home to stop a rampaging, murderous virus, less people work. In fact, jobs that seemed solid just weeks ago have evaporated. Not to get too technical with the economic terminology, but the national employment picture is fucked right now. It's really grim. I'm sorry. Let me break it down. Over the last decade, as the economy clawed its way out of the Great Recession and financial crisis of 2008, America created around 22 million jobs. Well, it has only taken a month, a month to erase nearly all of them.

Unemployment was at 4.4% in March, but some expect this April's unemployment rate could be 17%. Again, that is a month's difference, and that is higher than at any point since the Great Depression. Remember the Great Depression? You know, it was a global economic cataclysm that led to untold suffering and transformed

the relationship between American citizens and their government. We're not almost there. We're there. And while some experts think that as many as a third of these jobs could come back in July under the rosiest scenarios, it will take years for overall employment to return to where we were just six weeks ago. Industry after industry has been hit. Everyone from lawyers to pork processors are feeling the pain. But there's one group of workers who are more in demand than ever and who we have all come to rely on more than ever. That's right. I'm talking about delivery workers.

In order to avoid being infected by COVID-19 and to avoid spreading it to our friends and loved ones, we're all staying home. So we're all ordering a hell of a lot of delivery. But you need to remember that when you order delivery, you're not eliminating risk. You're just offloading it to the gig worker who has to go to the store and touch all those Corona-covered door handles for you. And in return for taking on that risk, many of these workers are being treated like garbage rather than the essential labor heroes they are. Take Instacart. Workers for Instacart say they haven't received adequate protective

gear like hand sanitizer or hazard pay, and that their paid sick leave system is pretty much completely inaccessible. And in the meantime, they've had to navigate long lines and the risk of infection in exchange for what are basically poverty wages while the company is booming. Well, it's no surprise that some Instacart workers went on strike and other workers are noting similar problems. The pandemic is only making us more reliant on Amazon, for instance, but some Amazon delivery drivers have received half-assed safety instructions asking them to maintain only three feet of distance from others as opposed to the six recommended by the CDC. And while Amazon has given out some raises

and hired more people, some of their subcontractors are pushing delivery workers to work longer hours to keep up with demand. Now, look, tech companies have been abusing gig workers since they started, but COVID-19 is making the problem more acute, even as these services become more and more essential. The very same people who are getting us through this pandemic are some of the most disrespected abused unprotected workers in america how fucked up is that i mean we're all cheering out our windows for the doctors and nurses as we should be but at least doctors and nurses get health insurance and sick leave well here today to talk more about gig workers and the special challenges and risks they are taking on at this critical moment, we have today Johanna Buja. She's a technology reporter at the Los Angeles Times. She has

covered this subject extensively, and I'm so excited to have her here on the show. Please welcome Johanna Buja. Johanna, thank you so much for being on the show. Thanks for having me. So you cover the tech industry, the gig economy for the Los Angeles Times. What are the stories there regarding the gig economy and coronavirus? How are the folks doing that kind of work being affected by this strange moment that we're all in? They're really being affected. I think that it's hard to overstate how much this is

impacting them, um, largely because gig workers are among the few essential workers right now who are still allowed to freely operate outside of their homes. Um, and also because they're, they were already kind of in this precarious situation where they didn't have access to protections and benefits that employees do that make it easier to stay home if you're sick without having to sacrifice an income. So it's been really difficult for a lot of Uber and Lyft drivers who have seen demand go down because nobody is going anywhere anymore. There aren't events. People aren't even flying. It's been really difficult for delivery workers who have seen demand skyrocket, but they're not given enough protections, or at least that's what they say from the companies that they contract with.

It's really difficult to access the paid sick leave that the companies have made available to them because the qualifications are almost near impossible to meet in some cases. near impossible to meet in some cases because one, you have to either be diagnosed for coronavirus, which there aren't enough tests, or you have to be directed by a physician or a public health official to self-quarantine. But even in those cases, I've had several workers come to me and tell me that they were rejected anyway. So people just don't have access to the regular protections that we do. And when the companies say that they will give them more access to that, it actually is still very, very difficult for them to, you know, stay home if they don't feel well. Well, let's start by talking about the delivery workers. You had a piece on this in the L.A. Times last week, I think, that, look, so many people right now are relying on delivery workers. I mean, just here in LA, yesterday, I believe, the head of public health said, don't grocery shop this

week if you can avoid it. So I'm not grocery shopping, right? I'm getting delivery like everybody else. I'm down to trying to keep it sane and do, you know, grocery delivery a week. But a lot of people are in that position. But how does that, does that expose the folks delivering our food to, you know, possibly getting coronavirus or suffering health effects? Yeah, I mean, I think that's what's been happening for a while. It's the reason why we've seen such a spike in demand in grocery deliveries, is that people are already trying to avoid going to the store. Now, more so in LA in particular, because they told us not to go to the grocery store. These workers, up until recently,

Amazon delivery workers, Instacart workers, DoorDash workers didn't have access to masks and gloves provided by the company without being charged for it. So a lot of them are using their own masks. One Amazon delivery worker told me that he made a mask out of a paper towel and rubber bands. And at that point, the CDC wasn't telling us that we have to wear masks all the time. But these workers are not, you know, they're in a warehouse together. They're not able to practice social distancing. And while the grocery stores may be less busy while the rest of us stay at home, they're still competing with all of these other delivery workers who are there shopping for customers as well.

You know, Instacart in particular, a lot of workers are being assigned two to three orders at a time. And they're also they're only being paid for, in a lot of cases, a single order. So they'll be shopping for three customers and then delivering to those three customers, but only being paid for one of them. So in addition to being exposed in terms of their health, they're also being exposed in terms of just their financial situation. And tell me more about some of these sick leave policies that you alluded to at the beginning. I mean, first of all, clearly these workers are going to get sick more than those of us who have the privilege of staying inside are going to. I mean, we're treating outside the world, like a toxic waste site right now that we all have to be very careful with.

And those folks are working in that site eight to 10 hours a day, like making our deliveries. Like we're very clearly outsourcing the risks to them in this really deliberate way. And so, you know, and a lot of people are in that position, not just gig workers and, and, you know, we should thank them for doing that work. But in terms of what these companies have offered, what Instacart has offered Amazon in terms of protecting their health and helping them when they do get sick, what have they done and where have they fallen short? in short? Yeah. So all of the companies after, not on their own, after, you know, Congress members asked them to provide sick leave to their workers, announced that they would provide up to 14 days

of sick leave, paid sick leave for those who have been diagnosed with coronavirus or who have been directed to self-quarantine. And that on its own may sound easy enough, but as we said before, there aren't tests. So it's very difficult to get easy enough, but as we said before, there aren't tests, so it's very difficult to get diagnosed with coronavirus. But also, even in the cases where people have gotten doctor's notes saying that they need to self-quarantine, there have been little loopholes that the company has used to not give them that pay. For example, in my last story, or one of my last stories, this one DoorDash driver was directed to self-quarantine by a physician, had a doctor's note that said he is being directed to self-quarantine to not infect other people with a viral infection. And he was rejected without appeal.

It wasn't until I reached out to DoorDash because he wasn't given any reason as to why he was rejected. It wasn't until I went to them that they told me that it was because the note didn't specifically say the words COVID-19 related symptoms. Wow. Which is, it's a really high bar to meet because, again, there isn't testing. So it's really difficult for doctors to say, you know, this patient definitely has COVID-19 related symptoms. has COVID-19 related symptoms. And it's also just sort of a, it's a small thing that makes it that they're using to not give this driver his pay. That story ended up having a happy ending because after I wrote my story and I let him know that that was the reason why he was rejected, he got another letter from a doctor that said those specific words and ended up getting that pay. But the fact that I

even had to step in as a journalist, as this outside party to get him that pay, I mean, just shows you kind of the limitations of the policies that they've provided. Postmates has also created this health relief fund where workers can apply to get sort of a grant to help them through all of this. But some workers are only getting about $30. And I've seen receipts where they've said, I'm immunocompromised, I can't keep working. And then the company has still only given them $30 out of that fund. So there's a lot of talk and a lot of fanfare about what the companies are doing. And in some cases, workers are able to access it,

but it's extremely difficult in a lot of cases. Do you think that these companies should be held to a higher standard? And why aren't they? I mean, some, I know that, for instance, just in the entertainment industry, my business, you know, Netflix made a lot of noise about, you know, they started a hundred million dollar relief fund and, you know, the sort of higher flying

white collar tech companies seems like they've been very, hey, they're treating their employees as people who need to be protected and, you know, offering them the time that they need. And I've seen a lot of those types of stories. And this is also the tech industry, but it seems to be the opposite. So, yeah, why aren't these companies treating their workers better and being held to a higher standard? Well, I mean, even those companies, even if you look at Google and Facebook, they have this sort of underclass of contract workers who didn't get all of those benefits at first either. Like they were giving out bonuses. Facebook was giving out bonuses to all of their employees. But then it was revealed that they were actually not giving that to their contractors who probably needed the most, aren't making, you know, that six-figure

salary that other corporate employees are making. And they were still asked to come into the office when the rest of the companies were, you know, told that they had to stay home. Some of those policies have since changed, but that's kind of stay home. Some of those policies have since changed, but that's kind of the case in Silicon Valley. We have like this first class group of workers who are the corporate workers, typically engineers. And then there's this sort of underclass of contractors. And it's the same with these gig workers. If you look at Amazon, for example, a lot of warehouse workers are not, they're told that they basically can take unlimited days off if they feel uncomfortable

coming into the warehouse, but they will not be paid for that time. Whereas their managers on the floor are salaried and can just stop showing up. Yeah. That's like, oh, you can quit and stop getting paid anytime you like. Wow. What freedom? It's basically being furloughed. You can come back whenever you want, but you won't get paid for any of that time. And it was the same thing with Uber in the beginning as well. And Lyft, you know, Lyft send all of its employees home. But Lyft drivers are still driving and are not being we're not at that time being given paid time off. It's it's it's kind of the norm here. And I think part of it is that a lot of these companies, particularly in California, where we have a law like AB5 that makes it harder

to treat workers as contractors, a lot of these companies do have to kind of toe this line where they don't want to give work contractors things that look a lot like employee rights, because then they might be seen as an employer as opposed to, you know, contracting with these workers. This really seems to me like a heightening and a calcification of like the two class system that's been developing the tech industry that like there was already so much talk about, well, wait, are we, you know, creating a system where, you know, we're just having gig workers do, you know, this less protected, more vulnerable class of workers who makes less money, has less job security, less income security, no benefits. And, you know,

we're giving them all of this, you know, low level work to do deliveries, driving, things like that. Hey, anyone, Uber's original tagline, everyone gets their own private driver. Yeah. And now we're really seeing the fallout of that, that that two class system isn't just sort of like hypothetical or income based. It's like whether or not you get the plague. No, absolutely. It's, it's, they, the contractors around the country, not just in Silicon Valley and California, have to make this choice between their health and their income

because they were struggling to survive even well before this. So they were extremely, not even paycheck to paycheck, ride to ride, order to order. And now while, yeah, delivery workers may see an increase in demand, they, a lot of them don't want to work, they have to work. Yeah. Are you seeing any, you know, as someone who's followed this industry for a while, is this revealing anything new about this employment system about the gig economy? Are you seeing any trends be amplified? Are you seeing any trends be amplified?

So new is interesting. I think that the companies have made the same argument for years and years. They've just taken very different forms and they've had to be more formal recently because, again, there is a law in California that they are combating with that would make, essentially, if it was enforced by courts or the cities, could force them to treat all of their drivers and their delivery workers as employees. So they have Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart, and a few others have launched this $110 million campaign against the bill, sort of proposing this alternative third worker classification where the workers will continue to be independent contractors, but will have access to a few employee rights. I think paid sick leave is sort of on the table, but it's again, it falls well short of what we as or I as an employee would get. That being said, it does provide them way more protections than they

have as independent contractors. I think the new thing is that I've actually seen for the first time ever workers kind of fall on both sides of that debate. I did a story specifically about AB5, but this is kind of across the country as well. Workers are saying that because of AB5, they actually don't have access to easy income that they can make just sitting at home, which now more than ever they need. People don't want to leave their homes to get jobs. But there are a number of companies who won't work with California contractors anymore because they're scared of violating the law. So those workers are completely against a law that would make them employees. Whereas, on the other hand, I have workers who have told me that now more than ever, they need access to

these employee protections, that in fact, they are employees and they've just been misclassified as contractors. And they want the city and the government to begin enforcing AB5 in order to give them access to things like paid sick leave. They don't have, they have to go through a few barriers to get unemployment insurance right now, even with the federal bill that was just passed. Yeah, this is a tough one with, I want to ask you about AB5, but let's get into it. I mean, so AB5 is this law that would make it illegal to classify many different types of workers as contractors rather than employees. And you're seeing different industries change how they're working with contractors as a result of that.

One I've heard a lot about is like freelance writers, for instance, in publishing. It seems to have disrupted that industry in a way that has meant a lot of people have lost their work. that industry in a way that has meant a lot of people have lost their work. But I'm not sure what to think of it because I'm kind of new to thinking about labor issues, but I do think about them a lot. And it seems like, you know, anytime that you have, you know, workers organizing for more rights, you might have people saying, no, no, no, I liked it the old way because it was easier for me to get that shitty job. And it was actually OK for me. Like I you know, I was only trying to make, you know, maybe someone's doing gig work.

I was only trying to make a hundred bucks a week, you know. And now you can only be an Uber driver if you're going to be a full time Uber driver and it's going to be, you know, you're going to have full employment. Maybe these companies reduce the number of slots that they have, but they pay all those people well. Right now, I would say if I'm a I'm a labor activist. Well, yeah, that's a good thing. I don't care about the number of people who are working the job. I care that this job pays a living wage. The people who are doing the job don't get sick and die because they don't have health care, et cetera. Yeah. And it's a little bit hard to weigh those two concerns. Yeah. And it's a little bit hard to weigh those two concerns. I mean, I generally fall on the side of like, well, no, we should have a we should have humane conditions and then we can work on trying to have more of those positions available.

But we you know, we shouldn't have like lots of child labor jobs. We should have a small number of skilled manufacturing jobs. But at the same time, when a freelance writer is or a freelance anything is saying, hey, I have lost my income here and I'm angry. That's a hard thing for me to argue with. I'm curious how you think about it as someone who's actually covering this transition. Yeah, I think I think a few things. Well, one, I think that there's there are a lot of misconceptions about the law. It doesn't, you know, doesn't dictate exactly how any company needs to treat their employees or their contractors. It just says that if you

are misclassifying your employees as contractors, then you have to change your business model. And there's this three-pronged test that says, you know, if the contractor is an essential part of your business, if you control the way that they operate and they do their jobs. And one more prong, but it basically makes it harder to treat workers as contractors as opposed to making it illegal. And then also, you know, there is this kind of question about part-time versus full-time. You know, you can be a part-time employee. It's not preventing companies like Uber and Lyft and Amazon from having part-time drivers and things like that. So there's this, you know, the big debate is over flexibility. And Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, who is the author of the bill, has said, I've never said, and there's nothing in the law

that prevents this job from continuing to be a flexible job. That being said, you know, the law is fairly broad right now. And this is something that the author of the bill has conceded herself. It's, you know, applies to a number of industries that feel like they don't really need this kind of law, freelance writing being a prime example of that. And she's introduced new language that should help freelance writers, because I think the big complaint for them is that they have this, you know, they're arguing it's arbitrary, but they have this 35 article a year cap on how many articles they can write for a single publication before they're considered an employee. So I think that there's new language

that's coming out about that. There's new language that's coming out about musicians. And a lot of those workers are just asking, you know, for right now, just given that they can't go outside and get other sources of income, they're asking for a suspension of AB5 for exactly that reason. They don't have income and companies will not work with them. So I think that there are valid arguments on both sides of it. I do think that there are cases where Uber and Lyft drivers, Uber and Lyft and all the companies will argue against this. And that's exactly their argument, that these workers are contractors, they want to work whenever they want to. But a lot of Uber and Lyft drivers say that they've already been treated as employees. They can't decide how much to charge customers. They can't decide where to drive, really, because they follow the demand. So they go where the app tells them to go.

Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, they believe that they they are employees and that they should have been entitled to these employee protections well before AB5 was even around. So it is, I think, very different industry to industry. There are even Uber and Lyft drivers who are against AB5 because they do genuinely, as the company will say, want that flexibility of the job. But again, I think AB5 does not prevent Uber and Lyft from continuing to have these flexible sources of income. They're the ones who get to decide how flexible it is. Yeah, it seems like there are companies that, you know, had built a business on, oh, we've got all this labor that, hey, we don't have to do W-2s and we don't have to give them benefits and we don't have to jump through all these hoops. You know, because we forget it's not just salary and sick leave.

It's like there's so many unemployment insurance. There's so much more like when you're when you're an employee, you have the company has duties towards you and you have rights as far as the company is concerned. And those are enshrined in law and all these other laws. And these companies have built a business on not having to do any of that. And then a law is passed that says now they do have to do that. And they experience a moment of like, well, how are we going to do this? Okay, I guess we'll just not have those people for now. And the question for me is like, who do you get mad at?

Like, I would get mad at the company because, you know, the company is saying, okay, either we're going to get to lie or we're not going to employ these people at all. And I'd say, no, just fucking figure it out. Like, figure out how to have your business with employees like you can do it. Right. There's plenty of industries that work with, you know, even unionized workforces, which are far you have far more rights and responsibilities, far more limitations that the company has to work through.

Guess what? Capitalism figures it out. They figure out how to work with those constraints and make a profit anyway. The point of the law is to make it more difficult for them in order to make sure that workers are well protected. And yeah, it might take a little bit of time, might take some tweaks and some time, but that's my general feeling about it. Yeah. I think a lot of the companies that I do sympathize with are the smaller companies bit of time might take some tweaks and some time, but that's, that's my general feeling about it. Yeah. I think a lot of the companies that I do sympathize with are the smaller companies who just cannot afford to work with non-contractors. And that again, you know, that mostly applies to freelance writing and things like that. There are transcription services that, you know, would fold if they had to treat all of their California workers as contractor or as employees. But in the case of Uber and Lyft and the gig companies,

I mean, they've said it themselves, the issue here, and they've said this in their IPO filings, like the issue here is that this would severely, severely damage their bottom line. It would be extremely expensive for them to change all of their contractors into employees. And that's, again, because just like you said, they profited off the backs of the workers who they've given very few protections to and didn't have to pay salaries out to and cover insurance and anything else. And then on top of that, they're not paying into this unemployment insurance fund, which makes it very difficult for the workers who now, even in California, are arguing they're misclassified to get any kind of unemployment insurance, even if the state decides that they are they do qualify for that benefit. to be misclassifying their workers by courts or the states, it'll show just kind of like how much damage they've done to this social benefits that we as an entire state and all

the employees here depend on. Because if Uber and Lyft have not paid out, paid into the social benefits fund or the unemployment insurance fund, all the workers that are now applying for unemployment insurance who work for Uber and Lyft or who did work for Uber and Lyft, they're dipping into funds that didn't come from those companies. And the fear here is that those funds will dry up eventually because the right people aren't paying into it. Yeah. I also just, you know, you mentioned transcription services. I used a transcription service last year when I want to transcribe like an hour of standup so I could look at it for a script. And, and it was so cheap. It was something like, it was something like 40 or $50 to transcribe like an hour of video. And I was like, oh, wow, how quick and efficient. And then like a week later, I read an article about how poorly those people are paid. And like, I think part of the solution is it doesn't need to be that cheap. Like it doesn't like, yeah, sure.

That company can't offer it that cheaply anymore. Yeah, sure. Uber and Lyft are going to have to raise the prices of like a cab ride. Yeah. I mean, I've been benefiting from those cheap prices, but as someone who's not had to pay them. But if if a service is being offered for less than the price that it can humanely be performed, the price needs to go up at the end reason the price is even cheap is because, like, the rest of our social safety net is paying for these folks other expenses is paying for their Medicaid and everything else that they need because they're not making a living. So it's also because the venture capitalists that invested in these companies were subsidizing those rides. You know, now that they've gone public, Uber and Lyft prices, at least here in California, are much more expensive than they were before that. Partly because they may be five, but partly because now they actually have to make money.

Yeah. And then, hey, oh, no, the price went up. Maybe more people will take the bus again. Like and maybe we'll maybe we'll then they'll agitate for better bus routes. And, you know, there's just like this idea that if, I think people are resistant to disrupting the system that we have because, oh, wait, what if the prices go up? What if there's less of these positions available? Well, wait, the prices are too low and the positions suck and you can't live on them. So a little bit of disruption might be the price of like creating a system

that people can actually live under, perhaps. on them. So a little bit of disruption might be the price of like creating a system that people can actually live under, perhaps. In terms of the coronavirus specifically, are we starting to see workers fight back against this? I know I've seen word of Instacart strikes and things like that. I know in the past there was an Uber strike a year or two ago and it made almost no impact. I remember like it was still very easy to get an Uber ride that day because most people driving Uber didn't even know about it. Are they starting to get any more traction with those sort of actions now? Yeah. So we have there's about, you know, five strikes a week.

It feels like Instacart workers are still striking. So they're on week two of their strike because the company has not met their demands, which include, you know, something as small as five dollars per order in hazard pay because they are navigating a health crisis right now. Amazon warehouse workers have walked out of their warehouses because there have been several positive cases of coronavirus among the employees. And Amazon hadn't, you know, shut down to clean the warehouse. The company is now making a few concessions, which included temperature checks before you walk in. And if you had more than 100.4 degrees or your temperature was more than 100.4 degrees, they would send you home, but they would send you home without pay. And then I think yesterday was the first time they finally said that they would give them half the amount of half their hours worth of pay if they had to send them home,

which is something we had, you know, Whole Foods workers are walking out. Target delivery workers are walking out. And yeah, I mean, all of these workers have, you know, the things that they're asking for right now, they've been asking for for years. But as you said, it's incredibly difficult to mobilize a workforce of independent contractors. that it's really hard to organize workers that don't know each other, don't have this central meeting place, you know. But a lot of these groups, a lot of these workers have labor groups that they've their own network where, you know, they can notify them anytime there's an action. That same group has now created a tool to make it easier to ask for back wages because you're misclassified and to apply for unemployment insurance. The Instacart workers who are striking right now have been mobilizing for the last three years. They're essentially asking for the same things that they've always asked for, which is better pay, more transparency, more protection. And because they've been doing these strikes for so many years, they have a lot more national attention at the moment that they need it the most. I think while it's still difficult and while the companies probably are still able to not give them what they want, because as Instacart has already bragged about, their demand, their business is doing the best it's ever been doing.

These workers do have more leverage than they ever had before because, and they've said this to me so many times, it's not just about their own health. It's also about the health of their customers. It's about not passing on anything to them. Um, and I think customers more than I've seen in the past have actually, even those who are like, I can, I'm so sick. I cannot go to the grocery store. Even they're saying, you know, pay them better.

Like, I don't want us to get sick. I don't want them to get sick. We need them right now. So it's a moment where you're really seeing both customers and the workers kind of work together to get better protections for these workers. But again, I mean, these companies have not made these concessions for a reason. I think partly it's extremely expensive and they're not all doing well. They were they were all money losing businesses before any of this happened. That's the dirty secret. Yeah. I mean, they haven't made a profit. So, yeah, it's really difficult to give people things because you don't have any money.

difficult to give people things because you don't have any money. But they do have they do have funds that they could, you know, sort of give to account for just the drivers and the workers. They have the ability to give them these. And in fact, it would be better for their business, possibly because customers would feel like they're actually, you know, they actually care about the workers that are doing this work for them. So, yeah, it's a really interesting moment. I've never seen this many labor actions at once in the gig economy. But again, it's not something that's really new. Like you said, they've been protesting for these benefits and protections for years. It just takes new weight now because of coronavirus.

Well, I want to ask you so much more about how because I'm feeling the same thing. And I want to ask you more about how COVID-19 is changing labor and changing the economy. But we've got to take a quick break. We'll be right back with more Johanna Booyah. I don't know anything So, Johanna, you were just talking about how, you know, we've seen this unprecedented rise in labor actions in the gig economy. I've also noticed just a rise in activism generally. There's rent strikes around the country.

There's the two unions that I'm a member of are seem to be more active than ever. Do you think that are you starting to feel as though, you know, COVID-19 is is going to cause any larger sea change in American labor in the workforce? I think that's the hope on both sides, actually. We have, you know, kind of equal and opposite forces trying to push forward long-lasting change. You know, on the one hand, we have workers who are seeing these small gains because while paid sick leave that the companies are offering them may fall short, it's more than they have ever had before. They're hoping that these small gains will, you know, continue to be built upon in the future. And a lot of workers, as well as labor groups, are asking both, you know, state governments as well as the federal government to give them

these employee rights and to give them access to the protections that could help them in the next pandemic during the next crisis. But then you help them in the next pandemic, during the next crisis. But then you see, on the other hand, the companies also asking for the ability to continue treating these workers as contractors. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi wrote a letter to President Trump asking for some kind of protections and relief for gig workers in the relief bill, but also is asking going forward if they could consider creating this third umbrella of worker that is neither a contractor nor an employee, but kind of combines the flexibility of being a contractor with some of the protections of being an employee. And they've

gotten some support for that as well. I mean, the California Chamber of Commerce just put out a letter asking the California government to suspend AB5 right now. And they do have a good deal of supporters among workers. So it's kind of interesting. I think that what we saw happening in California over AB5, it was always happening on a federal level, but now it's happening, you know, it's just much louder and the stakes are much higher. Tell me about this, this way that Uber wants to create a new tier of worker between employee and contractor. I mean, that immediately is a red flag for me. It sounds like they want to create a lower tier of employees

so they don't need to give rights and benefits to the people who work for them. It sounds like they're literally trying to create a legally enshrined underclass. But tell me, tell me more about the details of that and what you think it means. Yeah, well, I mean, the way that you described is exactly how labor advocates often describe it. It's this, you know, you it's not independent contractors plus benefits, it's employees minus benefits. And whereas Uber

would argue, well, actually, we're giving independent contractors more benefits than they ever have had before, which, again, true. But I think what you have to add into that context is that Uber, similar or, you know, almost they have some some rights that offer gig workers employee rights or laws that offer gig workers employee rights. In places like that, they say that they that would be giving them far fewer rights and benefits than they already are entitled to. So it would be kind of it would be kind of a slight at them. It would be taking something away from them that they should have had from the beginning. So yeah, I mean, this, this third category of worker for Uber, the reason why they're pushing that is because they, as, as contractors, Uber cannot offer them, these workers, any protections, any benefits without potentially violating independent

contractor laws. So for them, being able to have this third category worker, it gives them a little bit more flexibility to, you know, offer paid sick leave without potentially being accused of being misclassifying all of these workers. So it's a legal attempt to protect themselves legally, right? It's not necessarily just motivated by giving workers more rights. Has anyone, this is maybe a crazy hypothetical, but has anyone done, to your knowledge, a model of what it would look like if Uber were to actually try to run their business with the drivers as employees? Just like how would that work, you know, and would the business exist? Because to me, it's it's, you know, arguing a negative hypothetical that it's impossible.

But I'm like, why are we so sure it's impossible? Like, has anyone given this a shot? Yeah. So there have been financial models that have looked at that. But I mean, if you look at New York, so New York City imposed and implemented a minimum wage for rideshare drivers. And as a result of that, Uber and Lyft had to really change their model. They basically throttled how many people could drive at a time in order to keep demand or to yeah, to keep supply at a pace or at a level that they can afford to pay them that minimum wage. So drivers couldn't sign on into an area that there was a really, really high supply. They would have to go somewhere else or wait a little bit. Oh, sure. Great.

There are ways to do this. And the companies, of course, are considering and contemplating those ways. Uber, in fact, as soon as AB5 was enacted in January, began changing their model in California. You know, drivers were suddenly given a lot more control than they ever had before. They were told what the rider's destination would be before the ride started. There were a number of other things like that. There are some hangups with destination. I think it could potentially introduce destination bias. But it just shows that Uber is able to adapt the way that they operate in order to abide by the law. Yeah. And this gets back to my point that, look, they're going to keep saying that they need to pay everybody dog food and, you know, have the worst possible conditions as long as you let them. But I mean, the people who run these tech businesses claim that they're the smartest, greatest business people in the world. like make them pay people better, if you just like give them a law that forces them to raise the floor a bit, which is the traditional role of government in these situations, let's raise the floor and make sure that meat isn't tainted and that, uh, you know, electrical lines aren't killing people and, uh, that, um, and that employees are, are not abused. Um, then the

business will adapt because I mean, they're so fucking smart. Like they say they are not abused, then the business will adapt because, I mean, they're so fucking smart, like they say they are. And that means that when you look at what Uber and Lyft are doing, they're not like arguing for their survival as businesses. They're just trying to win regulatory battles on a city to city, state to state level, like any company. And they'll, you know, they'll pay people as cheaply as they can get away with. So, you know, we should have some laws passed to raise the floor and improve that. It ends up looking pretty straightforward once you look at it that way. Well, yeah, the issue the issue there is that I mean, and I keep harping on AB5, but it's the best example that we have of a state

attempting to do that. Nobody's enforcing it. Lawyers have filed lawsuits on, you know, citing AB5 against the companies, asking judges to file injunctions against the companies, forcing them to treat their workers as employees. But even those judges have asked, you know, why, you know, they're wondering if they do have a role here in enforcing that law. Cities and state attorney generals have been given the power to enforce this law as well. And it hasn't happened. Obviously, with coronavirus, a lot of things are on hold right now. But I think a lot of labor advocates and workers would argue, actually, we need this now more than ever. And we'd like you to enforce the law right now. So even in places where we do have laws that could force the companies to do that, there hasn't been any enforcement and there's

still so much controversy and debate over it. Yeah. Well, it seems like it'll take a few years to sort out at least as it should for any change that's that big. But returning to coronavirus, big. But returning to coronavirus, I wonder if what this is changing in American labor. And, you know, we had author Stephen Greenhouse on the show a few months back talking about the history of American labor and how it's changing in the future. And that's a perennial topic of interest on this show is like, are we going to see a revitalization of the workers' rights movement here in the U.S.? And I wonder if this is a moment where workers are starting to suddenly ask themselves, workers from all walks of life are asking themselves, hey, wait, what responsibility does my employer have towards me? And it's greater. I think they have a greater responsibility towards me than they seem to think that they have.

And even just as regards sick leave or giving me a fucking mask and gloves. I wonder if you're seeing something similar. Definitely. And I think that this is, again, building off on just a movement that was that was budding way before this even happened. If you look at Silicon Valley alone, just this year, we had contractors striking and protesting and sometimes getting a lot of what they wanted alongside corporate blue collar tech workers for the first time ever agitating publicly against their company. So, yeah, those two things together can be really powerful because for the first time, the people who got all these benefits and these, you know, were paid extremely, extremely well, who have shied away from organizing and unionizing for years are finally speaking up and they and they have real power. And they were also speaking up in solidarity with these contractors and actually speaking up for these contractors in the case of Google workers and the Google contractors that they that they have at their company. So I think right now you're seeing just just the, you know Kickstarter unionized recently, and I believe was the first major tech company to do for their workers to receive recognition for a union.

Yeah. Have you heard of that sparking any movements at other companies? time, Google was Google workers had been kind of talking, you know, in early stages about unionizing. The Google walkout was this really mobilizing moment in the tech industry. And I think if Google workers who, you know, are paid more money than God, like, like basically can live out of their offices. Yeah. Jerry Garcia's chef is cooking food for them famously. Yeah. So, I mean, if, if they're walking out, that kind of gave a lot of other tech workers the, I don't know, kind of the permission to also walk out and speak out against their company. And you've seen kind of the fallout for that. A lot of Google activists have been fired. The company says not because of their activism, but they have

been fired. And internally, because the company did not give them a lot of what they asked for or suddenly became less transparent when they were demanding more transparency, workers began thinking about what a formal union might look like for them. And for really well-paid workers, a formal traditional union may not be the exact thing that the exact vehicle for them, because the big benefit of a traditional union is, you know, collective bargaining. And they don't really need to do collective bargaining for them. But what they're also talking about is sort of a solidarity union where they have this kind of, you know, central group of workers who kind of act as this, the voice for all of the other employees. So there are real talks about unionization and organizing, some version of organizing at Google right now. Yeah. And it's interesting because you're also seeing them organize rather than

around collective bargaining, like you said, around the company's environmental responsibility or around sexual harassment in the workplace. I know at Amazon, I believe a large number of workers like signed on to a joint letter to Jeff Bezos, which was really brave because they had specifically been told not to speak about this publicly. And that's and that's not a union, but that's organizing. Yeah, absolutely. So that's kind of the big thing that defines the corporate tech worker movement, is that it's not so much about pay, except in the case of the contractors. It's more about ethical decisions, more about moral responsibilities as these companies that have, you know, vast influence over everything

that's happening in our world. Yeah. Well, let's talk about the coming recession that seems like it's just around the corner. Do you have any feeling of how that might affect gig economy workers or this this large contractor class? Do we have any historical precedent for what that might look like? No, I think that's the issue. Okay. I spoke to, and I did a story about how coronavirus will affect gig workers in particular. And I spoke to an economist and I asked him like, what's gonna happen?

And he was like, I don't know. Like, nobody knows. Like, this is unprecedented for the gig. It's unprecedented for all of us, but particularly for the gig economy. They have never been all of us, but particularly for the gig economy. They have never been around for a recession before. They weren't around in 2008. They weren't around during 9-11.

And the companies, again, they didn't have, you know, the best business. Their bottom line wasn't great before this. And so it is it's it's going to be really interesting and possibly devastating for these companies as we go forward and move into a recession. The one thing that the economists did tell me that was kind of heartening was that what we're seeing now are sort of artificial constraints on consumer spending. And hopefully, as shelter in place orders get lifted, those artificial constraints will be removed and potentially will kind of get, like, they'll be able to bounce back after that. The people who are really hurt by this are obviously the workers themselves. Yeah. Because artificial constraints are not, they're not going to, it's going to be very difficult to make the money back that they would have made in the last two to three months.

to three months. Again, like Uber and Lyft rides are the demand for the rides that themselves are way, way down. So they just don't really have access to income and they don't aren't getting unemployment insurance and aren't, you know, they either don't qualify or the EDD, which handles that doesn't know how much to give them because the companies haven't turned over any driver income information. Or if they're delivery workers, you know, they're not always getting paid for that extra labor. A lot of them are relying entirely on tips. And as, you know, the economic downturn continues, consumers and customers will be able to, you know, tip less and less because their own income is being hurt. And so it's just this cycle where the people at the bottom, the people who are the most vulnerable and are in the most

precarious situations are just going to be, are both like the most essential people in our economy right now, but are also being, you know, screwed over. Yeah. I mean, you know, everybody, you know, everybody used to complain about, about yellow cabs and yellow cabs are very bad, have been historically very bad in some cities, depends on what city you live on, live in, but like and, you know, the convenience advantages of Uber and Lyft are, are huge, but you know, it is that question of, you know, now that those have replaced cabs in so many of our cities. And now that for instance, the, your, your Chinese restaurant down the street doesn't employ its own delivery people anymore, but now goes through Grubhub or DoorDash or whatever.

And all those workers are working more precariously and they're being wiped out by this. It's, yeah, I mean, it really might be that everything's got to change moment of like this system is suddenly collapsing. Yeah, I mean, it really might be that everything's got to change moment of like this. This is this system is suddenly collapsing. Yeah, I mean, it definitely exposes a lot of the cracks in the system. I mean, if you mentioned Grubhub, there were complaints in a lot of reporting about Grubhub where restaurants weren't even getting like, you know, the full payment from, you know, the between the customer transaction and Grubhub workers. And I reported this a few months ago, but or last year that, you know, Amazon wasn't giving their the full tips

to delivery workers. And that was the case for a lot of companies as well. They were using that tip to meet the guaranteed minimum payment that they promised to workers. Can we just expand on this a bit? Because what this reporting shows, and this is stunning to me, is that, and tell me if I've got this right, some of these companies where you're looking at the tip you can add, I know Instacart did this famously, and it says, 100% of your tips go directly to drivers. And so sometimes I will tip a lot, you know, because I'm like, I feel guilty for even using this service because I know how poorly they pay. So I'll tip like far more than 20%. And it turns out that actually what they're doing is they're using an accounting trick

to say it goes to all of them. But it's like reducing, it's giving them all that money, but it's simultaneously like reducing their other pay so that they actually don't make that difference up, which is really hard to see as anything other than theft to me. Yeah. I mean, they basically use both accounting tricks as well as, you know, semantics to use the tips that you and I as customers give to cover their contribution to workers. So workers are getting, you know, if you tip them $100, they're not getting $100 more. They're getting $100 minus the minimum payment that the company said that they would give them.

A lot of these companies have reversed that policy, but it just kind of shows you the fundamental relationship between the workers and the company. There's these little things here and there where workers, even if they're being asked to do more, aren't necessarily getting that pay. Another example is Instacart workers have now, they can be assigned, you know, three orders at a time. And I think I mentioned this before, but a lot of the times they're told that they would get a minimum $7 to, I think, $10 per order. But if they do it all at the same time, Instacart is only paying them out for a single order. It treats it as if it's one customer's order. But if they do it all at the same time, Instacart is only paying them out for a single order. It treats it as if it's one customer's order. So even if it takes three hours to shop for all three customers, and with the lines and the shortages at grocery stores, it often does take that long. And then another two hours to deliver to all three customers.

Instacart is only, in a lot of of cases paying for a single order, which is minimum seven to ten dollars. And it often is around that much money. Plus whatever tip the customers give and then 60 cents per mile only between the grocery store and the customer's home where they're delivering the groceries, too. So there's just all of this other labor that Instacart is not paying their workers for. They're shopping on its own, you know, especially with shortages. Workers are saying, I'm on the phone with these customers the whole time I'm there. And if I have three customers at a time, I'm like switching between them to tell them, oh, this item isn't available. What can I replace it with? Or they're waiting, you know, half an hour in the line for the deli or something like that.

half an hour in the line for the deli or something like that. And they don't get any money for that labor except for the minimum pay per order. And I have seen several receipts where workers who have done, you know, three orders at a time have only been paid out $17. Wow. I'm also thinking about the Uber drivers who are, you know, they still need to go out if they're trying to make their income that way. They still need to go out if they're trying to make their income that way. They still need to go out and sit in their car with the app on, but they're getting a lot less rides per day because of how low the demand is. And, you know, one of the most vivid things I ever saw, and I can't remember where I saw it. I forgive the person who, I apologize to the person who tweeted this or who wrote this. But it was that, you know, at a normal job, when business is slow, they pay you anyway.

If you work at a convenience store and no one comes in for half the day, you still get your hourly wage. But when you hear gig economy, you should really think of it as a company that clocks you out when business is slow. Right. If you're sitting in your in your car with that Uber app on and no one is ordering a ride, you don't get paid until somebody does. And that means that if you're driving for Uber, you, you're spending the same number of hours, but your, your hourly wage has plummeted as a, as a result. And especially so many Uber drivers are like, you know, uh, incentivized to like lease special cars just to drive Uber to like, you know, oh, think yourself as a small business person and like lease a nice car so that you can like be a full time Uber driver. Then they realize maybe six months later that that they are losing money doing that in so many cases. But it's really it seems really devastating. Yeah. I mean, drivers are not

paid for all of their time. I think that's the big thing that people, you know, maybe aren't seeing about gig workers is that they're being paid for a small part of the labor that they're doing. And it's that the labor is the, you know, that the thing that they're being paid for is the thing that you directly see that I, as a customer, see someone delivering something to me, they'll be paid for that. But there's a lot of stuff that happened before that. And waiting around is a huge, huge part of it. Imagine that's labor waiting around is labor. Yeah. Cause, cause you gotta go to the neighborhood and sit in your car and wait for the thing to come in. That's like not your time. The, the, you know, the company's not paying you for that. Absolutely. And right now,

workers are just, you know, drivers are just sitting at airports just hoping, you know, that one person gets off a plane so that they can take them to a ride. At airports are usually the busiest places right now. And it's, you know, they're not they're not being paid for their time and they're not making any money for the time that they actually are doing work. And when you talk about, you know, car rentals, I did a big investigation. Uber actually stopped offering car leases, I think, last year or something like that. But Lyft continues to operate this car rental program called Express Drive. And it's, you know, on its face, the whole premise of it is that, you know, you want access to income. Here's an easy way to access this type of income.

is that, you know, you want access to income. Here's an easy way to access this type of income. You can get this car and it's like, it's very easy to qualify to rent that vehicle. The issue is that the rent is extremely expensive. It's like, you know, in California, I've had workers who tell me that they pay $119, $125 a week. I have, you know, up to 250 a week. It's, it's, you know, it's really expensive. And, you know, if you can think about a regular car lease, you're paying only a thousand a month, right. Or $500 a month, sorry. And these workers are paying more like a thousand a month for a vehicle and they rent it week to week. But one, you do not make any income until you cover the rent. So you can't take anything home unless you cover that $119, $200 rent. And then two, you have to do a minimum of 20 rides in order to keep the vehicle, which already kind of violates independent contractor

rules because you're not allowed to tell contractors how many, like how to do jobs. rules because you're not allowed to tell contractors how many, like how to do jobs. And so alone, that was kind of, you know, a difficult situation. And my story, this, I published that, you know, months and months before coronavirus and a lot of workers, you know, couldn't cover the rent or they, you know, couldn't cover the, after they covered the rent, they had nothing to take home. And so that was sort of the issue before this, but now it's that there's no demand. So they can't cover the rent, but they still have to pay the rent there. They can't meet that minimum ride requirement. Lyft has, you know, in the last few weeks said that they'll waive the minimum ride requirement, but they didn't do it across the board.

They only did it as states were getting hit by coronavirus. And it just seems like a very easy thing to just offer your drivers. Like you don't have to do 20 rides when there are 20 rides to be done. Yeah. But yeah, I've had workers reach out to me saying, I don't know how I'm going to cover the rent, but I need this car because it's my only vehicle right now. In my original story worker, there were workers who were homeless and living out of their cars. And so they rented it because like, oh, this is an access to some kind of flexible income, but also gives me a place to sleep. So the idea, Lyft's whole thing is, you know, return it when you can return it. Like you can return it whenever you want. Like you don't

have to pay the rent. But for a lot of workers, it's not a feasible thing to return a vehicle. And now all of their hubs are closed because of shelter in place orders. So they don't even have a place to return it to. And they're not, they're not waiving the weekly rent. Wow. That's that's reprehensible in my view. I and that's stunning. I never considered the idea of Lyft drivers sleeping in the vehicles that they're using for Lyft. But it makes so much sense now that you've told me that it's happening, that, of course, it would, because we're again talking about like the very bottom rung of the American economy here in many ways. Do you think that, you know, Mark Cuban, who is, let's say no angel himself, but he said, you know, companies will be remembered for how they treat the people who work for them here.

And I've seen many cases of that. I've been vocal about some myself in the, uh, uh, you know, entertainment industry that, you know, how the operations is great theater has been treating, uh, its employees at all laid off and, and et cetera. Um, do you think that is true of these gig economy companies at all? Do you think that, you know, Lyft will see any fallout from treating its employees or treating its contractors in this way once all this is over?

Yeah. Having covered this for a few years now, I have seen waves of outrage at these companies, both from customers and drivers. And oftentimes they just don't stick. customers and drivers. And oftentimes they just don't stick. The closest thing that I've seen, or I mean, obviously this, they did have to really change the way that they operated, but the whole delete Uber movement really did change how Uber it, like it, you know, it kicked out their entire executive team. That being said, it wasn't, you know, a single moment. It was just, you know, they were getting hit over and over again.

And like their past was brought up so much. Things were just getting exposed over and over again. One of the worst months I've ever seen a company experience. Yeah. And before that, even when it was the early days, I had been covering Uber for so long. And they had done really horrible things in the past and weren't, you know, held accountable for it for very long. And so in the beginning of Delete Uber, I was like, oh, it's I mean, this is going to be the same thing. Uber will like find its way out of it because of just the way that it is. But it was the first time I'd seen

Uber actually had had to, like, you know, recognize and acknowledge the things that they had been doing and apologize in a real genuine way and make real changes. So I think the hope is among workers that, you know, if they whatever gains they make in this moment will actually be long lasting gains and that customers and the government will just see how essential they are and how poorly they're being treated. But it takes a lot. Having covered this, it takes a lot to really change the way that these companies operate. Even while Uber was changing all of its business operations and changing the way that it operates, you know, competing companies weren't doing much. So it's not as if, you know, if we focus on one company and they completely change how they do business, it may not be the whole industry.

But I think any change is welcome for workers. I think that it'll, yeah, I mean, I think that this might be the moment because the stakes are so high. This is a completely unprecedented moment just for everyone. And I think there's sort of this almost call to activism because of just how dire the situation is right now. Well, let me, let's close with this for the people listening who avail themselves of these services. I mean, I do as well, as much as I've criticized ride sharing services. And as much as I read public transportation, I do use them on occasion, or at least I did. Uh, when I use delivery, I think my local grocery delivery place I use has its own employees and it's not

gig economy, but I'm not entirely sure. And occasionally I am ordering stuff off of Seamless. So for folks who use those services, what advice can you offer about how to make sure they're using them ethically? And is there a way that folks listening can support these movements among the workers? Yeah, I think one, and it's pretty obvious, but people still don't do it. Tip gratuitously. Just tip as much, like assume that the workers are not being paid well for each order and try to make up for that and give them enough money for the labor that they put into giving you these deliveries. give them enough money for the labor that they put into giving you these deliveries.

Workers also really want customers to strike in solidarity with them. So if they're striking, you know, Instacart strikes, Instacart workers are still striking right now. They want Instacart customers to not use the service until they receive their demands. And then, yeah, I mean, I think the big thing that I've heard a lot is that they just want, you know, us as customers to acknowledge the fact that they're out there doing all this work to understand how much labor goes into their jobs. And they're, you know, a lot of them are like, well, this is not low skilled work. I'd love to see any of my customers try to go shop for five people at a time and get it right. You know, and it's just some kind of acknowledgement that they're doing really hard work.

They're doing it when we're kind of hunkered down at home and they're doing it in the face of a global pandemic. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for covering this and bringing light to these issues. And thank you so much for coming to the show to talk to us about it. Thanks for having me. It's been fun. Well, thank you once again to Johanna for coming on the show. I hope you check out her work at the L.A. Times. Give the L.A. Times a subscription, by the way. They could really use the help right now.

Local news is being devastated by this pandemic. But hey, in the meantime, hope you keep listening to this podcast as well. That is going to do it for us this week on Factually. I want to thank our producer, Dana Wickens, our engineers, Brett Morris and Ryan Connor, our researcher, Sam Roundman, my executive producer, John Cohen, Andrew WK for our theme song. Hey, you can find me anywhere on social media at Adam Conover. My website is adamconover.net. That's for our theme song. Hey, you can find me anywhere on social media at Adam Conover. My website is adamconover.net. That's a lot of credits. Look, we'll see you next time on Factually. Thanks so much for listening. That was a Hate Gum podcast.