Gigs are income supplements - not full time jobs. A lot of people think gig workers should be guaranteed an hourly wage but that’s equivalent to saying that contractors should be paid higher if they spend too much on labour. Gig workers are not employees and are volunteering their time to earn income that they otherwise would not earn. There’s nothing wrong with the gig workers declining to work. That is within their right. For gig workers to be guaranteed a minimum wage, then the entire business model falls apart because at first, the customers are priced out of the service since most people are earning low skill wages. In response to a lack of demand, service providers pull out of the cities. Lastly, the workers willing to work under the initial structure no longer get supplement income or in the worst case, they have lost their only income stream. The end result is less commerce in the city and in the worst case, higher unemployment.

These companies: Uber Eats, Grubhub, Postmates, Skip the dishes, Doordash are not employers. They are software service providers who connect customers to restaurants and delivery drivers. These gigs would simply not exist if these companies did not exist. By mandating that these companies pay the gig workers a minimum wage, the industry would not exist. There is no point in it, because the buyer would be paying the entire minimum wage per delivery.

Gigs are not supposed to replace actual work. A gig economy cannot exist without people working real jobs to pay the gig workers. A gig economy in most cases is not circular and thus it makes no sense to be the ubiquitous way to earn money.

The way I see it is that gig workers are a byproduct of failure in urban planning and public transportation. In terms of urban planning, there aren’t enough commercial stores near the residential units, so food delivery services make sense. Especially during COVID-19 lock downs where going out was discouraged.

Lastly, as a software developer, I will state the ideal situation. A cooperative service provider, where the connecting software is run at cost and the gig workers get all the supplier surplus compared to the present model where the service provider is eating the surplus of both the gig worker, the restaurants, and the customers. Take for example Uber Eats. Uber Eats takes a cut from the restaurants, charges service fees to customers, and takes a spread based on what they pay the driver. If these service providers aren’t profitable, then the surplus is actually going straight to the driver. When people claim that these companies make no money, they are actually implying that the delivery drivers are taking the most of the surplus value.