President Ronald Reagan loved to quip that the most terrifying words in the English language are: “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”
Well, a Seattle City Council law designed to help app-based food delivery workers has backfired, cutting some workers’ pay in half and driving others out of the industry entirely.
First passed in 2022, Seattle’s PayUp law did not go into effect until January of this year. In addition to establishing “a minimum wage for app-based delivery drivers” — which, at over $26, is higher than Seattle’s existing $20 minimum wage — the legislation created five new bureaucratic jobs to oversee compliance with the new law at a cost of $1.2 million a year. This would all be paid for by a new delivery tax on each order.
Prices for everything DoorDash and Uber Eats deliver immediately shot up after the law went into effect, with consumers quickly complaining about $26 coffees and $32 sandwiches.
As a result of the rapid price increases, many consumers simply deleted their apps, and the demand for app-delivered food quickly plummeted. Instead of raising app-delivery driver pay, the law lowered it.
“They’re not telling the whole story,” app-delivery driver Mia Shagen told King 5. “Assuming that you are working constantly, then yes, you’re going to be making that much money. But that’s not what’s happening right now. Because people are not ordering as much anymore. The tips are going down because they think we’re making all this money.”
Drivers who were making $931 a week under the old system are now making just $464 under the new law, thanks to the decline in orders. Many are just quitting altogether. “I didn’t get an order for, like, six hours, and I was done,” Tony Illes, now a former Uber Eats driver, told KIRO 7.
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The law has been such a disaster that the mayor’s office has already said it is “open to making improvements” to the law.
Maybe the Seattle City Council should stop trying to “help” app-delivery drivers and just mind its own business.