January 27

• New York City maids organize to improve working conditions – 1734
• Mine explosion in Mount Pleasant, Pa., leaves more than 100 dead – 1891
• First meeting of the Int’l Labor Organization (ILO) – 1920
• Kansas miners strike against compulsory arbitration – 1920
• A 3¢ postage stamp is issued, honoring AFL founder Samuel Gompers – 1950

A group of Detroit African-American auto workers known as the Eldon Avenue Axle Plant Revolutionary Union Movement leads a wildcat strike against racism and bad working conditions. They are critical of both automakers and the UAW, condemning the seniority system and grievance procedures as racist – 1969

Resource: aftguild.org

DoorDash advertises that workers can make “up to $25/hour,” but we wanted to know what DoorDash workers are getting paid — after expenses like mileage and additional payroll taxes. So we crowdsourced pay data from more than 200 workers across the country and we ran the numbers.
We found that DoorDash is paying an astonishingly low $1.45/hour, after accounting for the costs of mileage and additional payroll taxes borne by independent contractors.

Meanwhile, the company itself is worth $12.6 billion. But their pay model is apparently to have workers deliver food effectively for free in hopes of collecting tips.
You can read the full report here, or read on for key details. (And don’t forget to check out the coverage in Hacker News, Gizmodo, Salon, Wonkette, and TechMeme.)
• On average, DoorDash pays just $1.45 per hour worked, after accounting for the expenses of mileage and the additional payroll taxes borne by independent contractors. The average job requires 6.8 miles of driving and takes 30 minutes to complete.
• A third of jobs pay less than $0 after accounting for basic expenses.
• Just 11% of jobs pay more than the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hour after expenses, and only 2% meet the standard of $15/hour + expenses.
• Despite the company’s insistence that they are no longer misappropriating tips, our analysis shows that jobs with higher tips tend to have lower pay. Jobs with higher tips tend to include less gross pay from DoorDash per hour, less gross pay per mile, and less net pay after expenses.
DoorDash was the first major food delivery app to use a black-box algorithm to set workers’ pay. They were the first major food delivery app to directly substitute tips for pay, and the last to back away from this wildly unpopular scheme. Now it appears DoorDash may soon become the first food delivery app to drive down pay to effectively zero after expenses.

It’s all the more reason why we’re building the Pay Up campaign: to reboot the gig economy with a pay floor of $15/hour + expenses, tips on top, and a detailed, transparent breakdown of pay.
If you’ve ever worked in the gig economy, if you’ve eer used gig economy apps as a customer, or if just want to show your support, click here to sign on to our campaign to make the gig economy pay up!

Thanks,
Working Washington

@workingwa

Indian field hands at San Juan Capistrano mission refused to work, engaging in what was probably the first farmworker strike in California – 1826

Birth of Terence V. Powderly, leader of the Knights of Labor – 1849

The United Mine Workers of America is founded in Columbus, Ohio, with the merger of the Knights of Labor Trade Assembly No. 135 and the National Progressive Miners Union – 1890

Five hundred New York City tenants battle police to prevent evictions – 1932

Resource: aftguild.org