It's not theft. It's the exact same way that it works for waiters. From a post elsewhere
In a restaurant
- The waiter is guaranteed normal minimum wage.
- The owner guarantees they will pay a minimum of <whatever waiter minimum wage is; less than normal minimum wage>
- The waiter gets tips from patrons, which generally brings them over normal minimum wage
- If the waiter's tips do not bring them above minimum wage, then the owner is required to pay them an amount that would bring them up to minimum wage.
With DD, it works more or less the same way, with the difference being that the minimums (upper and lower) are per delivery, not per hour.
If fact, odds are the DD deliverers are going to be worse off now, because DD isn't going to guarantee them a minimum amount; rather, they'll present "we pay you X + you get the tip which is likely around Y". And if the tip isn't enough, the deliverer winds up making less. Unlike before where they got the minimum.
Restaurants give you an hourly wage that is less than minimum wage, and if that wage plus tips is still less than minimum wage, they're required to pay you the difference. If your hourly wage + tips is more than minimum wage, restaurants cannot reduce your hourly wage to compensate.
My understanding is that DoorDash was doing the opposite: giving you a guaranteed wage and then subtracting the tips from that. It's as if a restaurant were paying you an hourly wage without tips, and then accepting tips on your behalf.
If a customer had tipped 100% of the guaranteed pay, do you think the deliverer would have seen any of that tip? Or would it all have counted against the guaranteed pay?
- DD provides a guaranteed wage of $1 per delivery, similar to a restaurtant's "under minimum wage" wage.
- DD provides a "you will make at least this much" rate. This is a parallel to normal minimum wage
- If the (<tip> + $1) is not at least <this much>, DD covers the difference
- If the (<tip> + $1) is more than <this much>, DD pays only (<tip> + $1)
The only real differences between that and a restaurant are
- The numbers are all per delivery instead of per hour
- The sub-minimum wage is $1 instead of whatever it is for wait staff ($2.50 or so?). How these numbers compare depends on how many jobs per hour there are.
- The "you will make at least this much" amount varies by the delivery, vs waitstaff where it's a set number for all.
If you consider the "you will make at least this much" number to be "if you don't get tipped enough to make this much, we'll make sure to cover the difference for you", it's more clear how it's the same as for wait staff.
Except that they can float the actual fee to avoid having to pay more than that because they have additional market flexibility and more information than anyone else, yes.
You are completely ignoring one huge aspect. With restaurants the expectation is that the tips are more than enough to cover the minimum wage of the waiters and therefore the waiters get paid based on the tips they collect. The actual price of the order goes to the cook. With door dash the "cook" and the "waiter" are the same person. Therefore the expectation that a door dasher only receives the tip is completely illogical. When a dasher receives a tip, the price of the order no longer represents money that the dasher receives, instead it represents the maximum amount of money door dash is taking away from the dasher and therefore also represents the minimum meaningful tip size (minus one cent).
In a restaurant
- The waiter is guaranteed normal minimum wage.
- The owner guarantees they will pay a minimum of <whatever waiter minimum wage is; less than normal minimum wage>
- The waiter gets tips from patrons, which generally brings them over normal minimum wage
- If the waiter's tips do not bring them above minimum wage, then the owner is required to pay them an amount that would bring them up to minimum wage.
With DD, it works more or less the same way, with the difference being that the minimums (upper and lower) are per delivery, not per hour.
If fact, odds are the DD deliverers are going to be worse off now, because DD isn't going to guarantee them a minimum amount; rather, they'll present "we pay you X + you get the tip which is likely around Y". And if the tip isn't enough, the deliverer winds up making less. Unlike before where they got the minimum.