Instacart Workers Set to Strike on Monday, Demanding Hazard Pay and Protections

[BeckyDem]

Sam Harnett
Mar 27

People are scared to go to grocery stores right now and risk exposure to coronavirus, so they’re hiring others to do it for them. It’s been a boon for delivery services like Instacart, which is planning to hire 300,000 more shoppers.

These shoppers will join other front-line pandemic workers — at grocery stores, in delivery trucks and behind pharmacy counters — who are risking exposure to coronavirus in order to make sure essential businesses and services stay up and running.

But because Instacart continues to classify their workers as contractors, they do not have the same kind of protections and benefits as employees. Instacart workers aren’t guaranteed minimum wage, have no paid time off and their employer does not pay into unemployment insurance.

To protest working conditions and a lack of protection on the job, Instacart shoppers are planning to go on strike across the country on Monday.

https://www.kqed.org/news/11809184/instacart-workers-set-to-strike-on-monday-demanding-hazard-pay-and-protections

[The Magistrate]

1. They Should Get Them, Ma'am

Odd, how a crisis reveals who the essential workers in a society really are....

[BeckyDem]

3. Crystal clear.

[The Magistrate]

5. One Thing You Can Depend Upon, Ma'am

A variety of shit-heels in suits and ties will decry such a strike as taking mean advantage of the situation, and try to turn anger from the unconscionable burdens placed on these people for dimes by grasping bosses who won't make the risks they undertake for us all today worth taking, or spend a nickel to lend these people some appropriate protection.

It is an old trick, long known as the Wheelwright's Dilemna....

A fellow is traveling by coach through the countryside to a seaport, and the coach breaks a wheel. The town wheelwright is summoned to the scene, and to repair this sort of thing for a townsman he would usually charge five dollars. In hopes of hurrying the effort, the traveler tells the wheelwright he must reach the port by early tomorrow, so he can present a bill of lading that allows him control of goods normally worth five hundred dollars, but which with a present scarcity could bring him two thousand dollars at least, and if he is late, this opportunity is forfeit. What should the wheelwright charge the traveling speculator now? And what are the rights and wrongs of his choices? Should the wheelwright confine himself to his normal charges, because that is what his work is worth by social convention? Or should the wheelwright demand a note for several hundred dollars, even a thousand, because clearly his work must be worth a great deal to the speculator who needs his labor? Some would denounce the wheelwright as a gouger and a cheat for taking the latter course, while taking for granted the intent of the speculator was a normal, even laudable example of good business. But where is the wheelwright's decision to demand a note for many times his usual charge different from the intent of the speculator with the scarce goods he hopes to control?

[BeckyDem]

7. The wheelwright met the challenge and the wheel is now strong enough to carry the load to save the

day. What will the market price bare? It will likely be met with a rigged game the wheelwright may not be able to control.

[ck4829]

2. K&R

[Sherman A1]

4. Yes!

They should as should the grocery store employees.

[Lars39]

6. I fully support them!

We've been totally dependent on them since isolating. I've been upping my tip.

[BeckyDem]

8. +1