
Instacart workers seek strike as jobs get busier, riskier - laurex
https://apnews.com/f5738dfa1c308affeac71d82a43c0214
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beerandt
They seem to understand that demand for this type of gig work has
significantly increased, which might usually mean a strategically good time to
strike...

But they don't seem to properly recognize that the available supply of idled
gig workers has just gone through the roof.

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SilasX
And Instacart doesn't recognize that the demand for this work is a reason they
should be paying their shoppers[1] more, charging more to customers as
necessary.

[1] I assume Instacart has a special term for them but don't care to look it
up.

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beerandt
You're kind of making my point- demand is meaningless if you don't also
account for supply. Also demand for the service correlates to instacarts
demand for shoppers, but they're not exactly the same thing.

As long as supply of workers is bigger than demand of workers, overall demand
for the _service_ is basically irrelevant with respect to shoppers pay.

I'm not saying they should or shouldn't be paid more.

I'm saying that at a time when you're easily replaceable isn't the time to be
a difficult employee/contractor.

As far as charging more, in many/most states it's now a moot point, as
emergency declarations means no price increases because of gouging laws. I
don't agree with it, but that's where we are. Yet another case of regulations
having unintended consequences.

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SilasX
Ah, sorry, you're right, I misread your point and agree about demand being
higher.

But I'm not sure that I agree that supply has increased in tandem -- at the
very least, in the short-term, because there's an onboarding period. Since a
lot of the jobless have access to unemployement benefits, they don't need to
start right away. And further, even those who do like gig work will probably
prefer food delivery, which has less interaction with others and thus lower
risk of contracting the virus.

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rootsudo
I wonder if Instacart some something similar to Grayball. Wouldn't be too hard
to parse names with facebook accounts and group associations.

