r/DoorDash_Dasher

There exists a plethora of reasons why we ought to join a union like Drivers United and SEIU
(Service Employees International Union)

1. Maximal demand negotiating our own prices with customers. Minimal demand to end manufactured proportionality.

Historically taxi drivers were able to directly negotiate with customers for their fares based on a “medallion” or meter. Taxi drivers owned their own car, and generally were an accessible vocation for historically immigrant demographics to earn a living in America. Now the American taxi driver, With the advent of digital ride-share companies has disappeared. These ride-share companies devalued the labor market and lowered barrier of entry thus undercutting traditional taxi drivers. By circumventing regulations they then pushed the American Taxi largely into extinction save places like New York where New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA) was able to rally a balwark against encroachment of rides share companies, making the transition easier while protecting the existing iconic NYC taxis.

We should thereby demand maximally to return to the ability to negotiate with the customer for the fares and delivery fees. NYTWA was able to secure for example a historic 328 million dollar settlement with Uber and Lyft to recover stolen wages.

Minimally the app has been lowering base pay when customers offer high tips. This practice must come to an end. This would open the horizon for us to negotiate our own base pay. This is manufacturing proportionality to squeeze more value out of our labor. Base pay should at the very least match federal minimum wage + tips.

2. To be recognised as workers

Since rideshare drivers aren’t recognised as workers we aren’t eligible for the rights and protections workers are eligible for.
(Note: Did you know that delivery drivers are more at risk of violent and sexual crimes than police officers and other first responders are? Well now you do.)
Several states and cities like NYC, California, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Washington have granted rideshare drivers: pay floors, per-trip pay rates, workers comp, paid sick leave, medical leave, healthcare/insurance funds, accidental insurance.

With recognition as workers nationwide or at least in other states we’d get relevant tax protections, health and safety regulations we deserve.

3. Demand algorithmic transparency

We should be made aware of revenues and income reports of the company to also be able to see where it’s investing and reinvesting. With the rise of AI automation they’ve been doing the same value lowering tactics to diminish our labor power to then have us train our replacements.

4. Independent worker run safety nets

The ability to form our own unions would provide us with independent worker run and managed systems where together we’d know allot more than any individual worker. Our collective bargaining and organisational power would allow us to form our own safety nets and support systems in cases like deactivations or re-employment help. This would also primarily grant us the power to organise against the company for any maltreatment and pool for legal aid to pressure the CEOs for our earned share.

5. Emancipation from algorithmic slavery and true self proprietorship

A maximal goal would be to invest in making and winning our ability to work for ourselves. If we cannot be considered workers we should be able to negotiate with the customer directly rather than have this rent extracting algorithm which manufactures proportionality by lowering base pay when tips are given. This would be a call for open sourcing algorithms kept under patent and having a return to a digitized medallion form.

6. Just cause deactivation laws

We should demand 16 day notices prior to deactivation with just cause and eligibility for unemployment. The reason why gig work is considered gig slavery is because since we’re considered self-proprietorships we now retain a gap in our resume not allowing allot of us to find employment elsewhere. This forces us to take low paying offers until eventually our cars depreciate and allot of us are forced into homelessness or worse. No notice deactivations are also for obvious reasons unjust because they can render someone unprepared.

General Objections:

You can voluntarily reject offers and simple supply/demand will drive up the prices

So this doesn’t take into account that prices are actually sticky (sticky pricing) under an algorithmic monopoly because you’re enslaved to it and not supply/demand equilibriums. Offers generally go up by 15-25 cent increments while lower your AR. This has and will result in deactivations (sorry low AR anecdotes). This also presupposes that we don’t have the algorithm extracting rents over us and we are truly self-proprietorship; when we don’t have the ability to negotiate with the customers/stores directly.

It’s the immigrants accepting low paying offers driving the prices down!

It’s 2025 21-year-old rideshare and delivery driver Affan Kurniawan was struck and killed by an armored police vehicle while carrying home a plastic bag full of rice for his mother. He was a delivery driver for the company Gojek.

Gojek has won financial backing from investors including Astra International, Blibli, Google, Facebook, PayPal, Mitsubishi, Sequoia, Northstar Group, Temasek Holdings, KKR, Warburg Pincus, Visa, Parallon, Siam Commercial Bank, Tencent, JD.com, meituan.com, and Capital Group, among others.

Of these investors Temaek Holdings and Sequoia Capital have invested significantly into Doordash. Sequoia as a matter of fact is the main reason Doordash was able to overtake Grubhub and be subsumed by it in addition to a partnership with Facebook allowing them to place orders directly from social media. SoftBank is another noticeable investor in both.

Gojek drivers have protested these conditions multiple times. In 2019 2023, strikes occurred in Jakarta, Surabaya, and Medan over:

A. Dwindling per-order pay (as low as Rp 4,000–6,000 or ~$0.25–0.40 per trip after deductions)

B. Opaque health and safety systems

C. Lack of accident benefits

Drivers work 16 hours a day are often involved in exhaustion related crashes are categorized as “partners” not employees so families receive no compensation for accident related deaths

TL;DR: Look. It's not that complicated. Capital works across borders. Temasek puts money in Gojek and DoorDash on the same Tuesday. Sequoia does the same. They coordinate. They share playbooks. They have more in common with each other than with any worker anywhere. So why the hell aren't you doing that? You've got more in common with some exhausted Gojek driver in Jakarta than Temasek does with either of you. Same algorithm. Same no benefits. Same one accident away from ruin. The only thing separating you is a line on a map they don't even respect. But instead of reaching across that line, instead of acting like they do, you'd rather eat your own class for crumbs. Blame the immigrant. Blame the driver on the other side of town. Call it competition. Call it survival. It's not.

It's cannibalism. Class cannibalism. If you want to eat the guy next to you. You’re a cannibal.

And the only ones who win are the investors laughing all the way to the convention halls in Singapore counting quarterly profits and laughing about “labor-flexibility”. You know who’s not invited? Either you or the immigrants. You’re a cuck with racist predilations. Capital has no nation since when do workers have one?

The citizen driver who wins a shift over an immigrant has gained nothing, because DoorDash still pays $2.

The Indonesian driver who works 16 hours to outlast another driver still dies in a crash.

The only one who gains is the investor, who watches workers compete to see who can survive on less.

The value of your labor still goes down you just temporarily taste some benefits.

Go make your own app or choose another!

You can’t they patented the algorithms to cement their duopolies.

Forward:

Written by a homeless over educated 25 year old living out of his car. I’ve taken my time to interview and research the conditions of drivers here and the labour struggle at large. Allot of this is informed by interviews and research.

This morning my city had a pretty significant power outage to a entire area. I live in that area so I chose not to sit in the dark and drive to the part of the city still lit.

I then proceed to consistently get slapped with orders right in my neighborhood where I know the power is out. My lazy ass just declined them cause I couldn't be bothered to drive to stores that I knew had no power but it got me thinking.

Is there a restaurant has no power option in the app? I truthfully never looked. Also if there is do you get half pay or anything by choosing that? Anyone ever run into that?

Title basically says it. 2h45m online and I barely cleared 12 dollars. Absolute horseshit. Newer dasher as well so maybe that has to do with it. Earned a nice chunk of change the other day doing EBT, was this just unlucky or should I be doing EBO?

I had a $3 order for 2 pizzas, cash on delivery. Never done one before so I tried it out. Was real nice to the customer and everything. He paid around $65 and Dasher asked me to confirm he paid $58.

When he handed me that cash I got excited, thinking I just made $65 off of one order. I did question how Pizza Hut was getting paid.. found my answer at the end of the night when my app showed I owed around $15 after I made around $40 in total for my night

I’m in debt to DoorDash, man wth 🫩🤣

EDIT: oh man I just woke up to hella people mad over this calling me stupid 💀 yall I know I made a profit in cash, but I’m still negative in the app, meaning I gotta DoorDash for $15 before I can zero it out, because it won’t take any out of my digital wallet and I can’t put cash into it.

No I’m not “mad”, no I’m not “crying” I’m just sharing a funny story like “oh man I’m dumb check this out”

And yall got so heated over that, like damn why yall gotta be so uptight over me showing how I got humbled 🤣 I had a moment of being stupid and I wanted to share it as a funny story. Instead of laughing along, yall act liking I’m too incompetent to DoorDash, it ain’t that deep 💀

That is all. Not playing these games with them anymore!

Anybody else been having trouble with only having horrible orders the past week? It’s all $2-6 when they used to be $10 or $15 for the same mileage. Gas is too expensive to be accepting them. At this point I’m losing money.