Vons, Pavilions to Replace Drivers with Independent Contractors

https://knock-la.com/vons-fires-delivery-drivers-prop-22-e899ee24ffd0

by danso • 6 years ago

87 118 6 years ago

knock-la.com

stevehawk• 6 years ago

If only there had been a way for California to protect its workers...

but on a serious note- union?

Danieru2• 6 years ago

Did you read the article? It is a union shop dropping all their union workers in exchange for contractors.

Mountain_Skies4• 6 years ago

They have a union but it seems to be passively rolling over and allowing this to happen.

gliese1337• 6 years ago

And that is why you should read the text of the laws that you vote for.

toomuchtodo3• 6 years ago

California voters seem happy to keep voting themselves destructive legislation regardless of long term consequences. Vote with your feet.

superflit• 6 years ago

But remember when you “vote with your feet” that you are a refugee not a missionary.

Dont vote for the same things that made you left on your new place!

d2v• 6 years ago

Or we should make it so companies can't write an unrepealable law and then dump hundreds of millions of dollars into a disinformation campaign to get it passed.

Both are probably wishful thinking though.

bpodgursky• 6 years ago

It's repealable the same way it was passed: by popular vote.

Rebelgecko• 6 years ago

The game Kingdom of Loathing had (has?) a short literacy test that you had to take before using the ingame chat function. A part of me wishes that there was a similar test that you had to take before making claims about a law online.

It wouldn't be practical for things like the latest omnibus COVID stimulus bill, but Prop 22 is only ~15 pages. I've seen so many people spreading FUD about Prop 22. It's obvious when someone is just regurgitating something they saw elsewhere and saying things that are contradicted by the actual text of the proposition.

slg14• 6 years ago

For those who maybe clicked through to the comments before reading or didn't make it several paragraphs into the article, this is a direct result of Prop 22 which was passed on the backs of a nearly $200m campaign by Uber, Lyft, and other rideshare companies. This is one of the exact results predicted by opponents of Prop 22. Also there is basically no way for Prop 22 to be amended or repealed through the state legislature. These companies effectively bought a law and are already repeating the benefits at the expense of the workers of California. Expect other industries to follow this path in coming elections.

mc325• 6 years ago

Wait... how come before AB 5, companies didn't do this, why wait till AB 5 was passed then repealed by Prop 22 before doing this (are they clairvoyant)?

In other words, had AB 5 not passed, this would likely have happened anyway as a progression towards off-loading "non-core" competencies to third parties as has continued to happen across industries (an iconic example is janitorial services which used to be handled in-house but were off-loaded starting in earnest in the early 90s?)

slg14• 6 years ago

Companies are unwilling to upend their business based on laws that are highly controversial and the likely subject of future changes. Prop 22 provides the stability that these companies need to drop their full time employees and commit to outsourcing this work to rideshare drivers.

mayneack• 6 years ago

Grocery delivery has grown by a massive amount since AB 5 was passed.

Jommi10• 6 years ago

Untrue. 1) This has always been allowed, but AB5 made it illegal. Then a shitton of industries got granted exceptions to it, and ride-hailing + food-delivery did the same.

2) Prop22 can be be amended only by a seven-eighths vote of the Legislature or a new ballot measure — AND state labor laws can be superseded by federal laws and regulations for enterprises that affect interstate commerce.

Please stop spreading false information.

slg14• 6 years ago

I answer point one here[1].

Point two is why I threw a "basically" in that sentence. Yes, you are technically correct that the state can change it with a 7/8ths majority. However requiring a supermajority that high is a nearly unprecedented requirement for the legislature and it is one that is going to be nearly impossible to achieve.

I honestly don't know what you consider "false information" here beyond me saying "basically no way" for something to happen when it is realistically unfeasible.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25641377

Anon10962• 6 years ago

Prop 22 which was passed on the backs of a nearly $200m campaign

You mean, passed on the backs of nearly 10 million voters.

I always find it strange to tout the line of how much money was spent in an election, as if to say that the voters have no agency or culpability. Clinton spent nearly 2 times what Trump did and still lost. Money does not equal votes if the people don't support an issue.

slg14• 6 years ago

Money buys votes at the margin. Everyone agrees on this including the people who supported Prop 22 otherwise they wouldn't have spent some $175m more than their opponents.

redis_mlc• 6 years ago

Clinton spent nearly 2 times what Trump did and still lost.

That election is a bad example since:

- Trump was already a TV and Twitter celebrity brand.

- Hillary Clinton was an unlikeable candidate who was ill, financially corrupt (received large Saudi contributions to her foundation) and avoided reporters for 2 months during the campaign (similar to Biden in 2020)

I've seen estimates that Trump added $2 billion in value to Twitter, so Trump also got some advantage out of that relationship.

What's interesting is that SV ad companies denied knowing that Trump was underspending until their end of quarter, then blamed their poor results on that saying, "Who knew?"

In fact, anybody who read a newspaper knew, so it was odd hearing that nonsense from people paid millions to know that.

seany• 6 years ago

but why is that a problem?

mullingitover5• 6 years ago

This of course has led to a lot of 'I told you so!' and finger-wagging that voters were too stupid, and shouldn't be allowed to have the initiative system because they're too easily manipulated.

Prop 22 wasn't unclear. The voters knew what they were voting for, which was to keep the status quo with regard to gig economy jobs, and roll back the broad, messy legislation that the state legislature had enacted.

Had Prod 22 not passed, jobs would've been lost in other areas. The small fraction of 'full-time' gig workers would've come out ahead. The much larger majority of part-time gig workers would've lost their side job. Overall, in the end Prop 22 was a wash. We can't paper over our lack of viable careers by creating low-skilled jobs that pay the same as jobs requiring a college education. There is no free lunch.

ndespres4• 6 years ago

>"We can't paper over our lack of viable careers by creating low-skilled jobs that pay the same as jobs requiring a college education."

Well, why can't we? If we are saying that these types of jobs need to exist, why can we not agree that the people who do the job deserve to be compensated with a living wage and deserve dignity and stability?

julienb_sea2• 6 years ago

No one is denying that independent contractors deserve dignity and stability. Imposing a forced employment framework violates the dignity of non-full time contractors who want a side income to supplement their normal job. This discussion also should account for the benefit to society of having safe and low cost transportation and delivery options, which raises the dignity of many people who otherwise could not afford the rates of for example taxis.

Living wage is a mutable concept and is determined in large part by where you live and how many children you have. Wages for a job are based on a fair market rate within reasonable bounds, like minimum wage. Raising minimum wage too high has adverse effects on job availability.

blackrock• 6 years ago

Because. Capitalism.

amluto2• 6 years ago

Perhaps we could decouple benefits from employment so that 8 hours of gig work per day would actually add up to roughly the same thing as 8 hours per day of employment.

JMTQp8lwXL• 6 years ago

We paper over the fact that stocks and real estate are predominantly appreciating due to the low interest rate environment. It's the only way to keep the party (and economic growth) going.

I concur. It's rich to me that, for some problems, papering over is a completely legitimate approach to 'solving' the problem, but when the same approach is suggested in a different context, it is immediately dismissed.

zajio1am2• 6 years ago

why can we not agree that the people who do the job deserve to be compensated with a living wage

Living wage based on locally inflated housing prices is just fundamentally broken concept. It is just ideological cover for wealth transfer from productive economy to landlords (by focusing on 'living wage' based on market housing costs and not on 'affordable rents' based on market wages). If there is an excess of workers and a shortage of housing, one cannot determine apriori where is a proper balance between 'living wages' and 'affordable rents', it is necessary to let market find the balance.

throwaway2011032• 6 years ago

Because the real economic value of those jobs is less than a "living wage."

A delivery driver is not a skilled job. I know, I delivered pizza when I was in college. And that was before mobile phones or navigation apps so drivers actually had to learn their way around their delivery area.

If you have a drivers license and a car you can be a delivery driver. That's not a very high bar. So those jobs don't pay very much.

gnicholas• 6 years ago

Had Prod 22 passed, jobs would've been lost in other areas. The small fraction of 'full-time' gig workers would've come out ahead.

You mean “Had Prop 22 failed”?

mullingitover5• 6 years ago

Indeed I did, fixed.

Spooky232• 6 years ago

Yes, it was clearly unethical to rob these employees of the freedom of being piecework contractors.

Only through pulling bootstraps and making lemonade from lemons will these uneducated wretches be able to bask in the sunshine of freedom. Back in the glory days of Victorian England you could flip a boy a farthing for grocery delivery... I for one and pleased the make these opportunities available.

renewiltord4• 6 years ago

As entertaining as it must be to you to write in this style, it is quite annoying to read.

Clearly GP was saying "we had to choose between a few well-paid jobs with many unable to access them or many low-paid jobs; it's a trade-off". It's obvious that that statement is intended to consider everyone's well being, not just some idle nobility as you imply.

takeda• 6 years ago

The law that prop 22 is overriding was patching loopholes with employment law. Where companies exploited employees by making them independent contractors so they don't have to provide benefits.

The law in question (AB5) essentially banned hiring employees as independent contractors if they were performing a primary function of the business.

While I didn't support prop 22, and still think it is bad that it passed (and no, voters are dumb and did not know what they were voting for), I think this is totally unrelated to Prop 22 or AB5. Most likely after many drivers got sick and became unavailable for weeks due to covid, Vons decided to outsource delivery.

dragonwriter• 6 years ago

Prop 22 wasn't unclear. The voters knew what they were voting for, which was to keep the status quo with regard to gig economy jobs, and roll back the broad, messy legislation that the state legislature had enacted.

Prop. 22 didn't restore the pre-AB5 legal status quo, which was set by the 2018 Dynamex decision which AB5 largely codified and created some exemptions from.

The small fraction of 'full-time' gig workers would've come out ahead. The much larger majority of part-time gig workers would've lost their side job.

No, they wouldn't. The Dynamex/AB5 would require some workers that under Prop 22 are contractors to be regular employees, but it would not require them to be full-time employees. This was among the very many bits of misinformation spread to sell Prop 22.

Jommi10• 6 years ago

AB5 should definitely not be regarded as the "status quo" at any point. It was a terrible terrible, which was evidenced by the 50+ amendments it has since received.

Full-time or not has no distinction in this argument. You are nitpicking.

bsder2• 6 years ago

Overall, in the end Prop 22 was a wash.

Really? We've got employees with benefits and healthcare who just got their healthcare yanked out from under them in the middle of a pandemic.

That looks like a pretty big net loss to me.

Melting_Harps• 6 years ago

California voters seem happy to keep voting themselves destructive legislation. Vote with your feet.

I did, and I left in the the early 2010's as the writing on the wall could not be ignored. But, this already happened with Kroger (King Soopers), Safeway affiliate chains and CVS in Colorado as I saw several advertisements on the stores for home delivery being done by cars and drivers with Doordash decals, these were seemingly outsourced via partnerships with Doordash, as Ubereats and Grubhub failed to obtain that Maketshare.

The logistics capability at the small scale home delivery model is actually very expensive/costly in an already low margin business model, especially when contrasted to its more common large scale volume based counterpart that has decades/centuries of iteration via economies of scale refinement, and this mainly because of last mile hindrances. It's pragmatic, albeit concerning, none the less but I can understand the reasoning behind it.

These companies effectively bought a law and are already repeating the benefits at the expense of the workers of California. Expect other industries to follow this path in coming elections.

Agreed.

Especially as Doordash has lobbied to not classify its drivers as workers and removed a large amount of the liability and costs associated with the well compensated FT drivers whose associated employment benefits are often seen as liabilities to the an eager bean counter wanting to reduce overhead from operations to justify their own position.

Big tech's version of the gig economy is actually pitting itself with people to choose between low, unstable government based benefits that can be precarious at best as they often come too little too late (if at all) or choose a more accessible route at gamble on taking a significant health risk and being in a perpetual underclass with no social mobility: Big tech and VCs are the new Wall Street and Bank predators of the 21st century, and are making full use of Naomi's outlined Disaster Capitalism model.

I can only hope those of you who choose to work there have a very deep introspective moment and ask yourself what exactly it is you are bringing into the World. Because Big Tech has made it clear it has aspirations to eventually get rid of its well compensated useful idiots (software developers) model, too. Which is probably why you see Google wanting to unionize while it still can while Amazon and Tesla will openly go to great lengths to quell any and all who even remotely suggest it.

Just to be clear, I don't like the notions of collective bargaining, non terminable labour, and ultimately a system that forces someone into what is essentially a legal form of racketeering (unions) with overbearing social peer pressure and ostracization as its main selling point.

I was asked to help get involved in creating one its early stages due to my anarchist ideology (perhaps a failure to understand that Anarchism does not necessarily mean syndicalist which is often more in line with socialist/communist/Marxits variants of anarchism), but I couldn't do so in good conscious.

I've seen its presence be in tandem with the darkest period of the Automotive Industry in the US in my lifetime, and seen how workers (directly or indirectly because of unions is not entirely clear) become complacent and quality control and quality assurance suffered significantly, as innovation lagged behind all other concerns as everything become a perpetual and existential struggle by the 'proles' against the 'Bourgeois' in respect to most other Countries... but as seen in German Auto manufacturing (which tends to have low wages for non-union, lower skill work) it can 'work' and must be said that in certain circumstances it is the only real deterrent to these kind of heavy handed overreaches in power. But it can also be horrible, as seen in the French Auto Industry. Especially as Unions then get to have far more power which eventually leads to influence in local and national political matters and elections, too: so its a double edged sword.

Context: I use the phrase 'useful idiot' in a colloquial way that in no way seeks to undermine the intelligence of any individual software developer fictional or otherwise, but merely as one that illustrates the POV that management, board members and executives are likely to have when evaluating what and where to cut costs next in order to further maximize profits and increase stock price all in the name of efficiency.

Sidenote: I wonder what the US' version of Battle Royale (a very acute depiction of the youth in a post bubble era Japan told via allusion in a superficially based gore story telling format) will be, because if it was the Hunger Games franchise, I was woefully dissapointed as it failed to hit the mark. It would have to be something that would do justice to most Rage Against the Machine and Run The Jewels tracks. CDPR's Cyberpunk 2077 franchise was a very attempt (No Save Point by Yankee and the Brave is on point) but sadly due to its rushed release impacted its likelihood. So was the Watchdogs franchise.

whalesalad4• 6 years ago

Everyone is so against this move but it I was a grocery store I wouldn’t want this responsibility either. These stores are in the business of groceries, not delivery.

They got into delivery because they had to and I’d imagine it was losing a lot of money and not to mention tough for them to accomplish and manage.

Everyone else and their brother is moving to doordash white label because it makes the most sense. They focus on their core competency and allow doordash to focus on theirs.

People are most upset about the health insurance aspect. The issues need to be decoupled.

kbar13• 6 years ago

i dont think anyone is arguing that grocery stores should run their own delivery service. the problem is that these delivery drivers / gig workers should be getting benefits and fair wages for essentially working full time jobs.

whalesalad4• 6 years ago

No they shouldn’t. That will perpetuate the issue. Healthcare needs to move in the direction of being provided by the state or at least needs to be decoupled from your profession and affordable.

The status quo is what needs to change. Gig economy work is going to take over. People need to insure and protect themselves. And it needs to be possible.

bluedino• 6 years ago

> People are most upset about the health insurance aspect. The issues need to be decoupled

The employer should pay for it. It’s a benefit like retirement savings.

If employers want better employees, they can offer fully-paid or low deductible plans to their employees.

I do not want the US government running healthcare.

CydeWeys• 6 years ago

Why, from first principles, should healthcare be tied to employment? Most other countries don't do it this way. That we do it here is just an accident of history (healthcare as a benefit is not treated as taxable).

renewiltord4• 6 years ago

You're trapped in the present and unable to think of a better future. This is all better horse rhetoric: "horses should be trained to go drink their own water and poop in designated areas just like they can be trained to seek food".

No. The right answer is to deregulate healthcare so that you can buy it from anywhere. You can still have your AMA-certified doctors, but if you can get other doctors as well, you'll be better off.

The reason for that is that while wealthy people like the US middle class worry about the quality of care, everyone below them merely worries about access. Even care that is a fifth as good, if accessible will be superior to inaccessible care that is currently available.

foogazi3• 6 years ago

The US government already runs housing, schools, retirement plans. But it doesn’t mean private lenders, private schools or private retirement companies have disappeared.

The same US government incentivizes employer healthcare by allowing the deductibility of those benefits - which allows the healthcare industry to capture that money, and employers to trap employees.

Mountain_Skies4• 6 years ago

Don't know about Vons nameplate stores, but their Pavilions stores offered delivery in the early/mid 90s. It wasn't as heavily used as today but did keep two fulltime employees booked up constantly. Since I no longer live in Southern California, I don't know if Pavilions has maintained this service continuously but suspect they have as it fits very well with their upscale customer focused business model.

dclaw2• 6 years ago

This grocery store chain had delivery at various times going back over a decade. It has nothing to do with the pandemic.

whalesalad4• 6 years ago

I grew up in California. I had friends who worked at Albertsons. I know that they had refrigerated trucks and tried to make it a thing. It never took off. They (all the local grocery chains) collectively wasted millions of dollars on their delivery systems.

kogir• 6 years ago

I don’t see how this is a bad thing? Albertson’s, a national grocery chain, goes all in with a single vendor (instacart) of an ancillary service (delivery) for efficiency.

It’s frustrating to see this portrayed as some local chain responding to local laws when it’s just natural streamlining after a business sale.

ndespres4• 6 years ago

It's a "bad thing" because there are benefits to being employed with a company that treats you like an employee, which you are not going to get when you're fired and told to go work for Instacart as a contractor if you want to keep getting paid. This is a bad thing for the employee who no longer has their job.

Jommi10• 6 years ago

Not surprising. I can imagine there are efficiency gains to be made by using Doordash software and infrastructure, not to mention potential pickup and dropoff route optimization.

Very weirded out tho on why the article has a prop22 angle. All prop22 did was amend AB5. This sort of thing happened already all the time before AB5. Now it will just continue.

Can someone help me out here? Maybe because its from Knock-LA, a left publication?

whatever1• 6 years ago

I will go one step further and say that in the developed nations, we need to abolish the concept of "contractors" at least in obvious cases where the contractors make minimum wage or even less for working fulltime jobs.

From my experience in most of the cases, companies (regardless of the country) use this window to circumvent employment regulation & protections.

A contract assumes that there is negotiating power from both ends. It is a joke to think that a poor Uber driver has any power to negotiate their "contract" with Uber to drive 14 hours per day for them.

paxys2• 6 years ago

Lmao "independent contractors"

Mountain_Skies4• 6 years ago

The UFCW sounds really weak in this article. When I worked for Pavilions twenty-five years ago, it was a closed shop and the union was protective of any attempt to change that. Allowing an entire segment of employees to be replaced with independent contractors seems to set the stage for other groups of employees, perhaps cashiers, to also be replaced with contractors. Grocery delivery isn't something new for Pavilions. They offered it at least as far back as the mid 1990s and maybe all the way back to their opening day as a premium-service grocery store.

paxys2• 6 years ago

Something I don't understand – everyone online is fuming that these drivers will lose health insurance and other benefits, but wasn't the point of prop 22 that DoorDash (and others) will have to provide these benefits to their drivers regardless? Why would any full time driver lose health coverage due to this?

dclaw2• 6 years ago

They're replacing good paying union jobs with contract workers for a 3rd party company. The original jobs that are being cut are not in any way comparable to what prop 22 offers gig drivers.

Vons, Pavilions to Replace Drivers with Independent Contractors

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