Three-fifths of Seattle voters are opposed to proposed legislation that would significantly weaken the PayUp ordinance the city adopted within the past few years to increase wages and provide worker protections for delivery drivers, a new citywide poll conducted for the Northwest Progressive Institute and its allies has found.
Asked if they supported or opposed repealing part of the Seattle law that provides minimum pay standards and workplace protections for app-based delivery drivers working for companies like DoorDash and Instacart, with the goal of lowering high delivery fees, 60% of our respondents said they were opposed. Only 18% expressed support.
Another 22% said they were not sure.
Our survey, which fielded last week, also asked about the city’s upcoming transportation levy, another weighty matter now before the Council. We published our levy-related findings earlier this week, preceding the Council’s first meeting to discuss the mayor’s proposal. To investigate voter attitudes towards the legislation that would weaken PayUp, we partnered with our friends at Working Washington, who have been organizing for years in support of stronger protections for workers, including delivery drivers.
The PayUp ordinance is so named because its intent is to get companies that employ gig workers to step up and do right by the people who are providing the labor that is creating their profits. Companies like DoorDash don’t like the law and would like to roll it back. They have found an ally in Council President Sara Nelson, the cofounder of Fremont Brewing, who is one of two at-large members of the current city council.
As Business Insider put it in an article that ran earlier today:
Since January, gig delivery workers in Seattle have been reaping the benefits of a local law mandating a certain pay level. Just months later, they could see their incomes cut under proposed revisions.
PayUp, which took effect in the city in January, requires DoorDash, Uber, Instacart, Grubhub, and other delivery apps to pay independent contractors the equivalent of the city’s $19.97 minimum wage — a rule that the app companies have opposed.
But CB 120775, a proposal introduced last month by Seattle City Council President Sara Nelson, would lower the minimum pay for drivers and roll back protections for workers, according to a draft of the legislation.
Under the proposal, gig workers would be paid an hourly rate of $19.97 for their time spent retrieving and delivering orders. While that seems consistent with Seattle’s minimum wage for employees, the gig workers covered by the PayUp law are only paid for “active time” spent working on orders — meaning that time spent trying to claim an order is uncompensated. They’re also responsible for their own costs, such as gas.
Those aspects of the job had led Seattle’s city council to create a system that pays workers based on the miles they drive and the minutes they spend on the job. PayUp also demands that no offer pays less than $5.
The latest proposal would do away with that $5 minimum and the per-minute payment. Instead, gig workers would get paid 35 cents per mile — down from the current 74 cents.
It would also eliminate or cut back other protections for gig workers in the city. For example, a PayUp rule giving workers two minutes to review an order before accepting it would shrink to 45 seconds.
The bill is scheduled for a committee vote on Thursday. If it passes, the proposal could face a vote by the full Council on May 21.
The Seattle Times and KING5 have also recently reported on Nelson’s proposal.
City Hall reporter David Kroman wrote about it for the Times on April 26th and provided a good, factual, neutrally worded explanation of what the ordinance would do. We liked that explanation so much that we incorporated it into our question.
Here’s the question in its entirety and the responses:
QUESTION: The Seattle City Council is considering repealing part of the PayUp law that provides minimum pay standards and workplace protections for app-based delivery drivers working for companies like DoorDash and Instacart, with the goal of lowering high delivery fees. The Council President’s proposed legislation would:
- Cut the hourly rate to roughly 33 cents per minute and 35 cents per mile, below the IRS’s per-mile reimbursement rate for vehicle wear and tear of 67 cents
- Make it so drivers would not be paid for trips canceled by the customer
- Return more power to the companies, allowing them to more easily limit worker access to the platforms, limit hours, garnish tips, and more
- Eliminate drivers’ ability to sue the companies over alleged labor violations
Do you support or oppose the proposed legislation?
RESPONSES:
- Support: 18%
- Strongly support: 8%
- Somewhat support: 10%
- Oppose: 60%
- Somewhat oppose: 17%
- Strongly oppose: 43%
- Not sure: 22%
The words in the list portion of the question above were taken almost verbatim from Kroman’s article. We also made sure to emphasize in the text of our question that the goal of the legislation is to lower high delivery fees. As you can see, most Seattle voters had a very negative reaction to what Councilmember Nelson is proposing. They may not like high delivery fees, but they don’t think Nelson’s legislation is a solution to that problem.
You can also see that not only is there an overall opposition to support ratio of 3‑to‑1, but the percentage who strongly oppose the legislation is more than four times greater than the percentage who strongly support it. This is clear and compelling evidence that Nelson is on the wrong track. The Council must abandon this proposed legislation.
There’s a much more logical alternative course for the Council to take, and we asked voters to weigh in on that as well, which is capping delivery fees:
QUESTION: Do you support or oppose capping the amount of delivery fees that delivery apps like DoorDash and UberEats can pass on to consumers?
RESPONSES:
- Support: 64%
- Strongly support: 50%
- Somewhat support: 14%
- Oppose: 17%
- Somewhat oppose: 6%
- Strongly oppose: 11%
- Not sure: 17%
For readers’ awareness, the above question actually came first in our survey, preceding the longer question above about Nelson’s proposed ordinance. Respondents were thus weighing in on the idea of capping delivery fees before they shared their views on the ordinance. The support for this alternative course of action is very strong: close to two-thirds of respondents were enthusiastic, with half of our respondents very enthusiastic.
Our survey of 647 likely 2024 Seattle general election voters was in the field from Tuesday, April 30th, through Friday, May 3rd, 2024.
The poll was conducted entirely online for the Northwest Progressive Institute by Change Research and has a modeled margin of error of 4.1%.
DoorDash, Instacart, and other companies can be expected to strongly oppose any effort to limit the fees they can charge. And they will.
But that doesn’t mean the idea shouldn’t be pursued.
President Biden has made taking on junk fees a big part of his first-term agenda, and research suggests voters absolutely love it. Councilmember Nelson should take note of that. And all of our elected representatives would do well to remember that checks and balances aren’t just a crucial facet of our system of government — they’re a crucial facet of our system of free enterprise, too. We need markets to be well-regulated to ensure that our economy remains healthy and vibrant well into the future.
As the late Senator Paul Wellstone liked to say, we all do better when we all do better.
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As an Uber Eats driver who has made more than $50,000/year each of the last three years working part time I've written to the city council multiple times asking them to repeal this law. I used to easily make $1,000/week before this new law went into affect and since it started have only made $650 a couple weeks and average less than $400/week. This law only guarantees higher pay while you are in the middle of a delivery, but those are few and far between now. The city is swarming with drivers from far outside of Seattle who think they can make more here which has led to almost nothing available. Next time people try to create a law like this, only do it if it is state wide, otherwise it creates more problems then it fixes.
The drivers that I know who live in Seattle as well as the restaurants that I pick up from and people that I know who use the apps have overwhelmingly complained about this Seattle law. Easily 90% of the people that I've talked to oppose it.