Delivery workers are keeping California fed. They say no one’s keeping them safe

https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2020-03-28/coronavirus-delivery-workers-sick-leave-protection

119 53 6 years ago

neonate• 6 years ago

fergie• 6 years ago

Thats the whole point of creating a precariat: rich peoples lives get safer and easier, poor peoples lives become less secure and harder. The system is working as intended. Three cheers for the gig-economy!!

DoreenMichele12• 6 years ago

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

I doubt that the birth of the precariat was consciously and intentionally master planned by anyone. In some sense, that's attributing too much competence to the upper classes to think they could mastermind such a plan.

In another, it's calling them more deeply and comically idiotic than they merit because even rich people are scared here lately of what is going on in the world. At least some of them wish they could figure out how to stamp out the economic instability we have and they just can't figure out how on earth that works.

It's hard to design good systems. It's much easier to design a system that does some of the things you want while overlooking a lot of important details and thereby fostering a lot of unintended consequences.

monadic22• 6 years ago

Malice or stupidity makes no effect, and shared incentives are far stronger forces than conspiracies anyway.

pdkl95• 6 years ago

I doubt that the birth of the precariat was consciously and intentionally master planned by anyone.

It was consciously and intentionally create, but the planning is usually obscured behind euphemisms. Nobody directly says they are trying to make employment more precarious; they say they are making a new type of business that is "more efficient".

unintended consequences

The consequences may not be intended, but pretending they weren't obvious results of a new design is gross negligence. The long term economic impact and its secondary/tertiary effects on society of a "gig-economy" business "disrupting" a traditional employer are hard to predict. The fact that it would make a lot of people's employment far more precarious is not only obvious, it's the core feature that differentiates the new type of business.

crysis2917• 6 years ago

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

"that's attributing too much competence to the upper classes to think they could mastermind such a plan"

ROFL

raws4• 6 years ago

Yet it is quite clear and obvious how the rich have easier access to the regulators of the system through subsystems like lobbying which in effect skews the rules in their favor especially since the regulators are hardly ever issued from the lower classes which has the artificial indirect effect to reinforce their representation in the system and consequently the creation of rules for this highly privileged class just on the simple fact of ease of access in comparison to the lower classes whom don't even necessarily have the proper education to understand how such systems negatively affect their proper democratic representation on the political level.

amelius• 6 years ago

At least the wealthy have placed the urgency of the situation above the economy.

altmind• 6 years ago

with the food-industry people cannot afford healthcare for themselves and made to work, to get the means to live, I'm very scared to order anything from any prepared-food establishments. the chances of getting contaminated food are incredibly high, esp if you order smth not thermally processed.

netfl02• 6 years ago

the chances of getting contaminated food are incredibly high

Source?

raws4• 6 years ago

I think that independently from what the original comment said, it can be easily conceived and taken into account how UK style restaurants health and sanitary ratings could easily correlate with one's possibility of contracting the virus given the sanitary level of an establishment. The same could be done for any country.

bamboozled• 6 years ago

Why do people keep asking for a source to back up pretty straight forward statements. Was that an unusual or surprising statement?

It would seem like common sense at this stage that if someone with an infectious disease sneezes on your raw salad leaves or your cold lasagna, you're probably getting it too no?

If you think the OPs comments are important, maybe you could also go verify this information yourself and post back if you find something worthwhile refuting the original claim.

erpellan• 6 years ago

The really stupid part is that keeping the delivery workers safe is ALSO keeping the wealthy consumers (and owners of those businesses) safe!

If you're holed up at home and SARS-CoV-2 strolls in your front door on the outside of your toilet paper then you might as well have just taken the risk and gone shopping yourself! Such painful short-sightedness.

pixl97• 6 years ago

That said, it's a lot easier to take precautions on surface contamination versus aerosol contamination.

DoreenMichele12• 6 years ago

There was a recent article on HN about nurses being evicted from their homes for being nurses because of the pandemic. So it's really honest to god not just gig workers who are getting shafted here and treated like "lepers" so to speak.

Some of the stuff described in the article is really unfortunate and all too often an outcome of a large bureaucracy. That doesn't make it okay. They need to come up with better procedures and err on the side of making sure people don't deliver while infected and that they get any sick pay they deserve.

Supposedly, there's a stimulus package coming out that may help give some people relief as well. And I think we need a whole lot more emphasis on preventative measures generally for this pandemic.

If the US had universal healthcare, this would be less of a problem. If we solved some of our other issues, like our housing supply issues, this would be less of a problem.

Blaming the distress these workers are experiencing entirely on the fact that they are gig workers isn't reasonable. That's just one piece of the picture here.

humanrebar4• 6 years ago

...all too often an outcome of a large bureaucracy
If the US had universal healthcare, this would be less of a problem.

Italy's socialized healthcare apparently didn't cut it. There are plenty of examples of the existing U.S. healthcare bureaucracy royally screwing up in the covid response.

Do I'm not buying the logic that an even bigger bureaucracy is the solution to Kafkaesque bureaucracy, at least not for this problem.

I especially don't understand people who are railing on the responses of Trump or BoJo also arguing that the U.S. president should be even more in charge of this sort of thing.

DoreenMichele12• 6 years ago

In the US, the borked healthcare system is a root cause of poverty. That's where universal health care would help with this. There would be fewer people living hand to mouth.

simoom22• 6 years ago

I can't imagine there's any healthcare system that has more bureaucracy than the US.

Teever• 6 years ago

Any idea how Canada is fairing during this crisis?

vangelis• 6 years ago

You're assigning certain biases to government. It would be replacing a thousand small bureaucracies with one. Wasn't the talking point that single payer would put the actuaries and medical coders out of work?

vkou• 6 years ago

The great part about the flexibility afforded by participating in the gig economy is that gig workers can't get unemployment, and you don't have to provide them with health insurance.

That was the major innovation of the last business cycle. It's coming home to roost in a truly spectacular way over the past month.

humanrebar4• 6 years ago

Before gig delivery workers, all I could get delivered was on behalf of Domino's or UPS. It's a complicated question to answer, so it's probably rhetorical, but if delivery workers needed to work full time and get significantly higher compensation, would we even have the same magnitude delivery service we're talking about here?

empath75• 6 years ago

Maybe we shouldn’t. The companies don’t make money and the workers are getting shafted. What’s the point of it?

danbolt• 6 years ago

I’m okay with that in all honesty, and wouldn’t consider it a market failure. I don’t think the true cost of Thai food to my door during a pandemic is represented in its price.

onetimemanytime• 6 years ago

strike, ask for more money and protection. F the rest. Placing the life on the line for less than living wage, just not worth it.

DyslexicAtheist• 6 years ago

in some cases they might not have a choice. One of my friends is a nurse at the largest hospital in Croatia which has so far not too many cases and they're still bracing themselves for what happens when they reach capacity. They're not allowed to speak up about what's happening inside the hospitals or complain - they are in fact threatened with prison if they decide to speak up.

Despite this 2 nurses have tested positive but are asymptomatic. They aren't allowed to stop working as long as they don't develop strong symptoms. To add insult to injury there are no PPE and even if there are limited quantities available they're not allowed[1] to use it due to rationing. Visiting a hospital right now can be deadly if you're not certain to be positive already or if not in a life-threatening condition. I'd imagine it's similar in many other undeveloped or poor countries.

[1] in Croatian https://www.medicinskasestra.eu/2020/03/25/medicinske-sestre... images from article OCR'ed and google translated: https://pastebin.com/nVXTdDgT

zamadatix• 6 years ago

I think they were referring to the delivery drivers in California the article talks about not nurses in Croatia.

Regarding the bracing situation (outside of going to jail for talking about it) that does seem to be the effect everywhere. Heavily rationed PPE, mandatory overtime, PTO cancelled.

grandridge• 6 years ago

So tired of all this living wage crap. Hopefully you are just young idealogues. Sorry but working at McDonald's, Walmart, Disney World, or instacart were never meant to pay a living wage. They are unskilled positions meant for young workers entering the workforce to gain skills and experience or other workers to make extra money. And they don't have to exist at all. Someone think of a way to create extra money for people and all of the sudden it must support a living wage! Stop repeating platitudes ad nauseum. You are not as smart as you think you are. Why should picking up someone's groceries and bringing to their house justify a living wage as you call it?

Delivery workers are keeping California fed. They say no one’s keeping them safe

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