Seattle gig workers are advocating for a 10 cent fee that app companies should pay to fund enforcement of workers rights – like a minimum pay standard and prevention of unjust deactivations – when apps try to violate those rights. Which they do. Constantly.
Instacart emailed all of its Seattle customers to tell them that this fee is an illegal tax on groceries.
The truth is, the legislation specifically exempts groceries.
Instacart’s real beef with this fee is that they don’t want to pay ten cents to protect workers.
Instacart is pretending it’s concerned about working families. But it didn’t seem all that concerned about working people it spent years fighting in court to avoid paying workers pandemic hazard pay.
And it definitely wasn’t worried about working people when it hit a profit of $428 million in 2022 by adding its own delivery fee, service fee, busy pricing free, customer pricing fee, and item pricing fee to orders.
Don’t let Instacart lie to you.
The company has never had working people’s backs and it’s not going to start now. (And by the way: we wouldn’t need this fee if Instacart and other app companies would stop breaking the law.)
