I spent two weeks delivering for Uber Eats and made $4.40 per hour

Time and time again, Uber has shown that undercutting their competitors in pricing is not done through smart technology or better business models, but by avoiding regulations and getting away with inhumane wages.

Yep, my impression was that Foodora was vastly more respectful of their riders, even though they certainly did push them physically (which is only fair enough I guess).

Uber deserves the bad rep they are getting.

Great write up by the journalist; I'm jealous of all the riding KMs. :)

The alternative for many unskilled people would be to be unemployed and having even less income, would that be more or less inhumane?

The people working for Foodora have the same qualifications. That's what the article is all about.

However has to be said that uber eats is not their core business. I've heard about it before but never used it. They should probably leave that business to others.

Not everyone can get a job at foodora. They clearly invest to those employees that they choose.

That would not be sustainable and would probably lead to some kind of uprising.

Not sure about that - might be that Foodora would not hire people who cannot speak Swedish well enough. Also, Uber had no cardio/speed test. It seems that everybody with a clean criminal record can apply at Uber, but Foodora is more restrictive. Maybe like Play Store vs App Store.

This is essentially an argument against having a minimum wage in general (and more broadly, certain labor regulations). It's a complex issue that we could argue about for pages and pages of comments, but suffice to say the vast majority of the population in the US, let alone Sweden, disagree with you.

Which is that in some cases it is better to have some unemployed people and some (ideally a lot more) people earning a good wage, versus both groups earning a crappy wage. Combined with a welfare system.

I order rather regularly from Foodora in Frankfurt/Germany. Their riders mostly do their best to look happy, but I can't help feeling guilty when I order when it rains/snows or there is even harsher weather (there was a particular nasty thunderstorm that made me crave Burritos...). I always give them an additional tip in these cases.

There's been bad experiences/odd situations though. Once a rider spilled half of my chili con carne on the stairs up to my apartment, without telling me so and bolted after he gave me the soggy paperbag with the rest of my food. I got a 10€ Discount Code out of that, but that hardly covered the cleaning of the walls.

Then now two times it has happened that Foodora called me roughly an hour after ordering if the Food had arrived yet, because they've "lost" their rider/couldn't contact them anymore. I really hope they just stole the food and didn't have an accident in traffic, but I'll never find out.

So we need a minimum wage? Or "capitalism will self-regulate"?

Isn't this just yet another example that our system is a total failure that requires constant tweaking / intervention?

Imagine someone here writing a post about a program to perform a mathematical operation. It gives the wrong answer. It takes ages to run also. But if you attach gdb, set a breakpoint and increment the necessary variables you can get the right answer.

They'd be laughed out of town.

This doesn't change a thing to the point which is that they are basically doing human slavery at 4 bucks an hour.

Sweden doesn't have a minimum wage. It has very strong unions instead.

Is Uber the real problem?

I mean, how is it that, in one of the richest countries in the world(1), in the more abundant period of human history, there are people that have to accept those conditions?

(1) and, supposedly, one of the more socialist also!

And most economists agree with the grandfather comment..

This is sweden; a country with a fine social safety net and no significant unemployment issues.

I have no idea if capitalism will self-regulate, but I'm not sure this is indicative either way.

The problem here appears to be that Uber is just plain lying about how much you actually earn. As the article seems to indicate, this results in the delivery crew calling it quits after a month.

I assume, if you had told uber eats 'employees' what's actually going to happen _before_ they go in for the interview, they wouldn't even go for it. Journalism like this will spread the word. More to the point, uber eats is one of the first such companies, so presumably people looking for a job in Sweden simply do not even consider they can be swindled out of a fair wage like this.

A few more uber eats and presumably word gets out and people will go online and do a little bit of research prior to taking these jobs. Between the vast numbers who won't even go for the interview and the fact that the few that do tend to wash out after a month, uber eats will soon find themselves with no drivers at all. At which point they have to pack up shop and probably end the adventure in the red (it does cost money to set up, advertise, etc), or start marketing that they NOW _DO_ pay a nice wage.

TL;DR: Uber is a shitty company that lies, but Swedes still need to learn they have to check what they're told for such freelance-based jobs, which is why they can currently get away with the scam.

We need to side step the need for wage regulation by giving the employees the ability to negotiate wages. This can be done with a universal basic income. We should also reform the tax systems to ensure that the tax plus social security system is smoothly and monotonically progressive to avoid the problem that increasing your gross income can reduce your net income as often happens in the UK.

What I've read in the German newspapers suggests they're not really any better than Deliveroo. I still use them sometimes, but tip generously.

Are you referring to a previous article that says Uber Eats is just to juice up Uber's revenue numbers for their investors?

I recall that Uber ride-share accounting doesn't use top line as revenue (only the cut), but for Uber Eats, they are allowed to use the whole order as revenue.

That's nuts, they probably pay out even more of the total amount for eats orders.

It could be anything from 10.000 to 500.000 unregistered illegal immigrants in Sweden right now. Possibly even more.

The government reports 20.000 people are 'missing' but that does not include those that never registered.

The legal status of the terrorist that was caught highlighted the fact that there is next to no control, but nothing seems to be done.

All those people need to work in some way or another.

The rates and stuff don't look like the main issue, the quote at the summary of his Uber section gives more insight - "The deliveries are too few". I dislike Uber as much as the next guy, but it sounds like they've either got too many couriers or not enough partner restaurants to make it worthwhile for the guys they have working or them.

Uber not penetrating the market yet is not an excuse for their actions nor does it contradict the statement above.

Not at all, no. Throughout the world, unemployment is correlated with the local minimum wage - as the minimum wage increases, unemployment decreases. Somalia (no minimum wage) has an unemployment rate of over 60%. Increasing the minimum wage in US states produces no negative employment effects.

There are, of course, paid professional conservative economists who will tell you whatever their bosses want them to in support of pro-billionaire economic policies.

> Between the vast numbers who won't even go for the interview and the fact that the few that do tend to wash out after a month, uber eats will soon find themselves with no drivers at all.

A significant number of the drivers are recently arrived immigrants with little chance to get another job. They definitely don't read Breakit. They are not in a situation to pick-and-choose. They might get by on a small wage by working crazy hours and sharing a cheap apartment with dozens of others in the same situation.

> Increasing the minimum wage in US states produces no negative employment effects.

Why not increase it to $500 an hour then? When you increase the price of cigarettes, people buy less cigarettes, when you increase the price of cars, people buy less of it. What do you think happens when you increase the price of labor and why do you think it has magic powers that makes it avoid these basic laws of economics?

What about people who prefer to work for Uber for $4 per hour rather than stay unemployed? Would you tell them "Sorry but this is inhumane, I can't let you do that to yourself and I'm ready to vote laws to forbid you to do as you please with your free time and send people like you to jail if they persist"? Do you know better than they do what's best for them and how they can use their own body? Doesn't that make you an authoritarian?

Wow. And there aren't any other conditions in Somalia beyond their lack of minimum wage that might be influencing that unemployment rate?

Lots of respected economists are on both sides of this issue, whether you want to be honest about that or not.

I really like the selection on Uber eats but the delivery fee is typically 2.5-5x higher than GrubHub, thusly I rarely use it.

Might be a contributing factor.

Ironically, parts of the employee protection in Sweden is based on semi voluntary deals between unions and employers. There is no law for minimum wage, for example.

> There are, of course, paid professional conservative economists...

Accusing the other side of bad motives without evidence is the refuge of people who divide the world up into "good" people who think like them and "evil" people who have different opinions that aren't worth studying.

It's intellectually lazy and kills intelligent discourse.

Consider the golden rule here. Are you a paid shill by unions? Are you an agent provocateur spreading socialist propaganda? Is this something the other side should accuse you of without evidence to dismiss your opinions wholecloth?

Should we all adopt this tactic and assume everyone else's motives are suspect unless they tow our preferred party line?

How would that ever produce useful conversations in any way?

If people adopt a certain position and you can't conceive of them adopting it without something sinister going on, then maybe you haven't sufficiently studied their perspective.

Yes, the rates are quite good if the system works as intended. From the article:

> “Hello Erik! Today you are guaranteed 300 SEK per hour in “generated amount” when you deliver with Uber Eats during 11:00 am – 1:00 pm & 5:30 pm – 8:30 pm. Hope to see you online!”.

The problem is that you need to accept 1 - 1.5 deliveries an hour to activate this, which wasn't possible for the journalist due to the reasons you're mentioning.

Uber is now revising the incentives system:

http://www.breakit.se/artikel/7575/efter-breakits-granskning...

http://www.breakit.se/artikel/7608/efter-kritiken-sa-forandr...

Disclaimer: I work for one of the companies handling the salary administration.

Or, more precisely, Uber is earning by systematically stealing the waiting time of their drivers (e.g., by misleading promotions getting everyone out to wait for orders).

In contrast to Foodora, which pays for shift time plus delivery commission.

Simply, Uber is based on shortchanging everyone but Uber itself and pocketing the difference. Unsustainable, and I always use alternatives.

Driving for uber eats and uber ride sharing will probably be much busier. Maybe even with no downtime.

We could be talking about lots of things when "their actions" - they're no stranger to controversy or being kinda shitty to their employees - so what specifically do you mean?

So how come the studies find that by introducing minimum wage no jobs were lost, it just increased prices by a very small amount?

A 2004 study of available literature, “The Effect of Minimum Wage on Prices,” analyzed a wide variety of research on the impact of changes in the minimum wage. The paper, from the University of Leicester, found that firms tend to respond to minimum wage increases not by reducing production or employment, but by raising prices. Overall, price increases are modest: For example, a 10 percent increase in the minimum wage would increase food prices by no more than 4 percent and overall prices by no more than 0.4 percent, significantly less than the minimum-wage increase.

In a 2010 study published in Review of Economics and Statistics, scholars Arindrajit Dube, T. William Lester and Michael Reich also looked at low-wage sectors in states that raised the minimum wage and compared them with those in bordering areas where there were no mandated wage changes. They found “strong earnings effects and no employment effects of minimum-wage increases.”

A 2012 paper published in the Journal of Public Economics, “Optimal Minimum Wage Policy in Competitive Labor Markets,” furnishes a theoretical model that lends some support to the empirical insights of Krueger/Card. The paper, from David Lee at Princeton and Emmanuel Saez at UC-Berkeley, concludes: “The minimum wage is a useful tool if the government values redistribution toward low wage workers, and this remains true in the presence of optimal nonlinear taxes/transfers.” However, under certain labor market conditions, it may be better for the government to subsidize low-wage workers and keep the minimum wage relatively low.

https://journalistsresource.org/studies/economics/inequality...

This made me think about the time I saw a deliveroo rider being carried away in a stretcher after an accident. It upset me to think that I'm pretty sure theres a customer waiting for their food and most likely cursing the rider/ sending angry emails

Correlation is not causation.

Whenever someone trots out the "basic laws of economics" it usually means they're trying really hard to ignore the complexities of reality and force the world to fit into a simplistic and wrong model in their head. Study after study supports his position while yours is purely ideological and not in alignment with the facts. Rather than even discuss the facts, you've flipped to accusing him of being an authoritarian, and you think you're being the rational one here... really?

Try and understand that not everyone thinks employment is the end goal, rather being able to live a decent life is and that requires a livable wage and most of the western world has decided it's better to have a decent safety net that defines that floor than to let people be forced by circumstances to work for less than a livable wage. Try and understand what the words "wage slavery" mean to those who find meaning in that term, regardless of how you feel about it.

All democracies are authoritarian in the sense that you use the word; the minority will always feel wronged in some way by the majority forcing them to do things they're ideologically against. Using the word in that way makes it meaningless and makes your argument look weak.

Stop the hyperbole. Your statement is insulting to all the victims of slavery and human trafficking.

I wonder. Would the delivery guy be happier to have no deliveries during a snowstorm (and thus no tips, or possibly no hours)? Maybe if their needs are well backstopped by the government. But otherwise perhaps not.

Unless it is, which it sometimes is.

In Many European countries the state covers when you don't earn enough. So it's against the interest of tax payers for companies to offer badly paid jobs if that means it becomes a race to the bottom.

Per the article, Foodora-Stockholm doesn't pay for shift time on weekends. But it sounds like Foodora has work around the clock, but UberEats does not.

The question is: Why is Foodora dominating Uber Eats in Stockholm? Is Uber a late entrant? Shunned by restaurants? Shunned by consumers? Too expensive for restaurants or consumers?

You can find just as many studies that say the opposite

https://mises.org/library/yes-minimum-wages-still-increase-u...

http://clas.berkeley.edu/research/brazil-progress-and-pessim...

http://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economic...

Regardless, there are two possible outcomes from minimum wage:

(1) inflation

(2) unemployment

Your cited articles support the former; others think it will be the latter. In either case, I doubt the market manipulation helps overall.

At that wage you are unemployed. You cannot afford anything at an effective rate of $5 an hour. All you are doing is making someone else richer.

Do your budget sometime with an effective wage equal to $4 an hour. What does it cover? What can a person do effectively with that $4 an hour? Will it lift them out of poverty? Can they live on an effective wage of $4 an hour working 40 hours a week and even afford shelter and food?

I mean, do people not get how little money this is?

> Imagine someone here writing a post about a program to perform a mathematical operation. It gives the wrong answer. It takes ages to run also. But if you attach gdb, set a breakpoint and increment the necessary variables you can get the right answer.

Won't surprise me if you can find this on Amazon Mechanical Turk.

Also, on a related note, there's enough jobs in IT which are already low wage as it is.

They might not read Breakit, but they might have internet access and might use Google where this article might get a high rank.

This is also why internet access is important. Almost as important as having clothes, food/water, and a roof above your head.

Uber Eats is less known in Stockholm and a later entrant.

Not sure why downvoted. Eats orders require Uber to pay a driver AND a restaurant.

Yes I agree, that is a systemic change instead of a fudge. I'd only want UBI if it's funded by LVT though as otherwise rent will simply absorb UBI funnelling yet more money to landlords and banks.

I'd get rid of income tax and replace with land value tax. Perhaps something at the extreme upper (> 200k) end but mostly I'd make rentiers pay.

$0 is even less than $4. So why forbid them from making even those paltry $4?

A minimum wage still sets the floor to zero. It just outlaws values between $0 and somelike like $8.

Walmart and McDonald's employ a big portion of their employers at minimum wage (and would perhaps pay less, if that was legal). Alas, the customers of Walmart and McDonald's are mostly poor people, too. If the price rises are real, those poor people are footing the bill.

Whereas rich people tend to shop at more upscale places where the minimum wage is not a binding constraint (ie people make more).

Instead of effectively taxing poor people to pay for other poor people via induced price rises; why not tax rich people with eg an income tax and distribute the proceed via a social safety net or a basic income to the poor?

There's at least one other possible outcome:

Workers take their compensation in a variety of ways. On the high end, Google famously offers perks like food and nap pods.

But even on the low end, people are interested in things other than immediate cash on hand. For example, learning and mentoring to grow their skillset and move up in life.

Some of these opportunities come for free, and even immediately bring benefits. Other costs the business money.

Without a minimum wage, employees and employers are free to choose different trade-offs. And especially young people early in their career might be willing to put quite a premium on mentoring.

With a minimum wage, a big part of the space of possible trade-offs is unavailable.

Now---this isn't just idle talk: there's a bunch of studies about how one effect of (increasing) minimum wage is decreased social mobility and people getting stuck at the bottom. (Sorry, not enough time to look them up now. But can do, if there's demand.)