A bumpy ride: The challenges of app-based gig work

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It wasn’t easy for Guramar Sidhu to continue his career as an engineer in Canada after moving from India, so he turned to truck driving. But when he lost his job, he decided to become a rideshare driver to be with his family at the end of the day.

However, Sidhu’s daughter is fast asleep both when he leaves home early in the morning and when he returns in the evening after a 14 or 15-hour shift of driving across Metro Vancouver for Uber and Lyft.

“It’s not the preferable living condition altogether, but if I’m not working that time, I’ll not be able to feed my family,” Sidhu said.

There are about 27,000 food delivery workers and about 11,000 rideshare drivers in B.C., the province estimates. The multinational Uber and Lyft are part of the 21 rideshare companies licensed to operate in B.C., with seven food delivery platforms also allowed in the province.

Last fall, B.C. Labour Minister Harry Bains unveiled legislation to consider online platform workers as employees under the Employment Standards Act (ESA) and Workers Compensation Act (WCA). The amendments passed and received royal assent in November.

He also introduced proposed regulations like establishing tip protections, a compensation standard for work-related car expenses, rules on suspensions and terminations, and transparency about earnings and pickup and delivery destinations.

These standards also include having minimum pay be set at 120 per cent of B.C.’s minimum wage, which will only apply to the time drivers work on assignments.

“[A] 20 per cent bonus is added to the minimum wage. … Some workers have made a claim that they wait longer than 20 per cent. Well, we don’t have that data,” Bains told The Runner in March.

In the meantime, he said companies will provide the government with information for determining what the waiting times are. Some drivers also work for multiple apps, which poses a challenge in determining who should pay for their waiting time.

The province is implementing the basic, minimum standards that will be monitored and re-examined next year based on data, Bains added.

Areas not being considered under the ESA at this time are paid leave, hours of work and overtime, annual vacations, and statutory holidays, but they will be monitored as well.

Creating the legislation involved the ministry getting emailed feedback and meeting with drivers, platform companies, academics, and labour unions before writing a report and getting further input. With the legislation passed and the parameters set for developing regulations around it, the ministry has returned to consulting with drivers and others on finalizing the standards, Bains said.

The issues rideshare drivers face

On Feb. 14, more than 100 Uber and Lyft drivers gathered near Vancouver International Airport (YVR) to protest low wages and poor working conditions. It was part of a global strike that saw similar demonstrations in cities across North America and the U.K., Vancouver is Awesome reported.

Sidhu, who participated in the protest and is a part of a gig workers’ group that attended meetings with the labour ministry, finds drivers’ “biggest frustration is helplessness,” with deactivated Uber accounts being a common issue he sees. Some never get reactivated again, and even if a driver’s ID gets deactivated for only one day, he worries about the income lost during that time.

“Every other driver is working more than 70 to 80 hours a week. And that’s every week. … There is no recognition,” Sidhu said. 

“There could be a driver who [has been] working for the last seven years, and all of a sudden, his ID got blocked just because of a simple message by a customer who just wants to get some other kind of discount for his next ride. That’s how these guys work.”

Uber Canada spokesperson Keerthana Rang wrote in a statement to The Runner that often when drivers are deactivated, it is temporary and related to account eligibility or a report investigation. An expired document, an issue with a background check, or persistently low ratings from Uber users are some reasons why a driver could lose access to their account.

“When drivers and delivery people lose access to their account, they can check their inbox for messages from Uber about the reason,” Rang wrote. “They can request an appeal if their account has been permanently deactivated and they receive an email and in-app message that they have access to an appeal.”

If a driver is unable to resolve their issue through Uber’s review centre, they can contact United Food and Commercial Workers Canada (UFCW Canada) — the country’s largest private-sector union in the food, retail, and service industries — for free representation services, she wrote.

During his three years of driving for Uber, with the past 1.5 years working full-time, Sidhu also noticed his car maintenance expenses go up. He used to drive a Toyota RAV4 and saw his oil change increase from $90 to $167.

“If you’re doing Uber, your vehicle is going to go for around 8,000 to 9,000 kilometres every month. That means an oil change after every 45 days or so. That thing [has] doubled,” he said. 

“If you want to have some coffee, if you want to have some breakfast outside, those expenses have gone up. Your tires and tire maintenance have gone up, inspections have gone up.”

Amid these expenses, what Sidhu finds has not caught up are the wages and help for drivers to earn more.

An Uber Canada statement to Global News in February said Vancouver drivers make $36 an hour during engaged time, which means when a ride is accepted and completed and not the time waiting for trips on the app.

Sidhu said drivers are kept busy with trips when first starting out on Uber, but as they get more settled, rides are passed along to new workers.

“You will be sitting in the lot for about two, three hours, still no job. When you start in the beginning, it doesn’t happen like that,” he said.

Rang denied Uber favours newer drivers over those who have been working on the platform longer. She wrote there are many factors that affect trip requests, like the demand in an area, weather, and number of drivers on the app at a given time.

Sidhu also does not want to see drivers allowed to work for more than 13 hours, which would be the time on the app instead of just completing trips.

“So lesser drivers for lesser hours on the road, we can still get some business. We don’t want a cap on the drivers. That’s not how we are approaching it,” he said.

Full-time Metro Vancouver Uber driver Rupinder Singh believes the percentage the platform takes from trip fares, which is 25 per cent for UberX in Vancouver, is too high.

For instance, he said he received $22 for a 38-kilometre trip, but after factoring in his $7 gas cost for that ride, his take-home pay was $15. After voicing his concern to Uber customer service, they added $5 to his account.

“Basically, what I think [is] they put a value on me for $5. I’m driving a $50,000 car and my value is $5,” Rupinder said.

He also feels stressed from working six days a week for 12 hours a day and feeling the weight of inflation and gas prices reaching more than $2 per litre.

“I know Uber is flexible. You can come whenever you want, but if somebody’s [working] full-time … obviously they’re going to come back if they make something out of it,” Rupinder said. “And to make something out of it, the same money you make [in] other jobs in eight hours, you make in Uber [in] 13 hours. Too much running, too much stress.”

Sidhu said he and other drivers spot Uber sometimes keeping as high as 50 to 60 per cent of what they charge customers daily, and that discrepancies occur at least two or three times every 10 trips.

“I did a trip from White Rock to the airport. The customer was charged $53, but they reflected on my board that we charged the customer $44. So those $9 are nowhere in the record. All the booking fees, all the percentage would be deducted out of $44, not $53,” Sidhu said.

In a statement to The Runner, Rang wrote fares and fees are disclosed to drivers on trip receipts and weekly and monthly statements. When a customer sees their price, it includes the trip fare plus additional fees, like airport and booking ones.

“The additional fees a rider pays can inflate the overall price of the trip but are not reflective of what the driver earns. The driver’s earnings come from the fare which include the base price, per-minute amounts, and per-kilometre amounts,” she wrote.

Part-time Uber driver Rajbir Singh, who works across Metro Vancouver, said 99 per cent of the time his work environment is great, allowing him to make extra money on top of his earnings from his main job. However, one year into driving for Uber, he has experienced three incidents where he felt unsafe.

In an incident from January, Rajbir said a customer compared him to Hamas, a Palestinian militant group. The rider then continued to racially abuse him and swear, which included yelling at him to go back to his country. Rajbir later reported him to Uber support, who told him they would suspend the rider’s account.

Rajbir also makes a point to not exceed 25 hours a week on the platform after feeling the impact from driving more.

“I tried for one week driving for like 65 hours. I noticed that [after] driving that long, my characteristics, my habits changed. My parents [felt] like I was being rude,” he said.

The difficulties of working food delivery

On top of his full-time job at a law firm, Tarandeep Singh works as a delivery driver for SkipTheDishes, Uber Eats, DoorDash, and Instacart. He delivers everyday — weekdays from 6:00 pm to midnight and weekends for about 14 hours.

He will work these long hours until meeting his financial goals of paying his brother’s tuition, like his parents did for him, and saving up to buy a house and start a food truck.

When Tarandeep started doing food deliveries in 2018, he was just on SkipTheDishes, where he would get back-to-back orders. Now, to complete his goal of $100 each weekday, he has to work longer due to reduced rates and increasing buffer time in between orders, which he attributes to more drivers — and therefore more competition — in Metro Vancouver.

“On Saturday, if I’m going to even West Vancouver sometimes between 12:00 to 1:00, I won’t get a single order. I’m just sitting there doing nothing,” Tarandeep said. “It pays less than minimum pay.”

SkipTheDishes did not respond to The Runner’s requests for comment.

Another issue Tarandeep faces is “tip baiting,” which is when a customer initially gives a larger tip to encourage a fast delivery and then takes some or all of it back once they get their food. On one occasion, he said he received a $60 order for 10 kilometres, so he decided to go home after delivering it. Two hours later, he saw the order drop to $10 because the customer removed their $50 tip.

“Now, I’m sitting at home, I don’t want to go out again. I think it’s the guilt of sitting at home now. I could be on the road and making money instead of sitting at home and watching T.V. or anything,” Tarandeep said.

After delivery, Instacart customers can either increase their tip for up to 14 days or reduce it for up to 2 hours. Uber Eats customers can edit a tip amount for up to one hour after an order arrives. DoorDash drivers are not at risk of tip baiting because they are shown upfront their amount of guaranteed pay and nothing less, according to the company.

Like rideshare drivers, Tarandeep has experienced lowered satisfaction ratings and deactivations on the apps for reasons he tries to dispute. Customers who report they never received their food and difficult restaurant employees are among the challenges he has faced.

For example, he said he got deactivated once on DoorDash and waited about four months for a decision on his appeal. The platform decided to suspend him, so he later applied for a new account using a different phone number and email.

“But now, we cannot even do that, because now, they ask for [Social Insurance Numbers], so the chance to get another ID is really low,” Tarandeep said.

According to DoorDash, the platform may deactivate a driver’s account for severe or repeated violations. Examples of contract violations include failure to accurately record completion of a service and failure to complete services in a safe or timely manner.

Regarding the provincial regulations on app-based gig work, Bains said his timeline is spring this year to have them ready. He also aims to give companies some time to implement the changes.

“There are some drivers that think we’re not moving fast enough. I understand that. And ‘Oh, [you’re] not going far enough,’ some of them will say,” Bains said. “But on the other side, there are drivers who are saying, ‘Yeah, don’t do too much. I don’t want to lose my job.’ So it’s a fine balance.”