Delivery apps skip the labour laws in B.C. by paying less than minimum wage
App-based delivery drivers are often on the clock earning less than minimum wage, but the sporadic good pay and the option to set their own schedule keeps the drivers coming.
For Ross Todd, a driver for Skip The Dishes in Penticton, his job is a love-hate relationship.
He loves how he sets his own hours and how he doesn’t have to deal with any supervisors.
“I love being independent,” he said. “Something comes up I have the flexibility to take an afternoon off – I don’t need to contact a manager or a boss.”
But Todd hates working for less than minimum wage, which he says is roughly 30% to 40% of the time he spends on the clock.
He understands the job is commission-based, “but it’s tough when you’re sitting for two or three hours and getting only a few orders.”
Todd, who became a driver for Skip The Dishes one year ago, finds it frustrating how gas prices are reaching record highs but the rates offered to drivers have not increased.
Despite the ebbs of the job, Todd said that when things flow, he can earn upwards of $35 an hour.
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Brent Hoath has been a driver for Skip the Dishes in Penticton for just over two years. He initially signed up to get some extra income in addition to his full-time job because he wanted to buy a new truck. He was able to save up for the new truck, but when COVID came around, he lost his job and decided to become a full-time delivery driver for the app.
Hoath recently delivered his 13,000th order.
Like Todd, Hoath said a major appeal of the job is getting to choose his own schedule.
For most of his tenure with Skip The Dishes, the local perimeter was around the city limits of Penticton. But in recent months it has expanded its service area to include Naramata, Okanagan Falls and Summerland, which can require a round trip over 40 kilometres from Penticton. The premium pay for driving that far out of the city is $7.95.
“If the customer doesn’t tip, that’s all we get,” Hoath said.
Including the time spent picking up the food, each round trip can take up to an hour, he said.
If drivers choose to decline a fare then their acceptance rate is lowered, and Hoath said that penalizes them in two ways – it lowers their priority in the queue for getting future orders, and if they fall below an 80% acceptance then they are no longer guaranteed a minimum of $6 per order.
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Many of the local drivers are connected online and share advice with one another. When one of them receives a far-out fare that they plan on rejecting, they sometimes alert the others to put their shift on ‘pause’ so the exploitative offer doesn’t come to them next.
There’s a sense of solidarity among the veterans. Hoath says many of them suspect the app is programmed to favour newer drivers as a way to try and retain them.
“We refer to them as orange baggers because they’re getting all the orders for being relatively new to the company,” he said, explaining that it’s easy to spot the noobs by colour of their delivery bag.
It’s annoying to Hoath how the app won’t let him also work 60 kilometres away in Kelowna because he doesn’t reside there, but expects him to make trips greater than 40 kilometres around the South Okanagan.
He often waits at McDonalds because it’s a common pickup point, and said some nights he notices the same orange baggers making multiple trips while he sits around without getting any orders. He said other veterans with relatively high acceptance rates also make the same observations.
“It’s frustrating we have to sit there and watch this happen and just wait til things get busier.”
It’s common for Skip The Dishes drivers in Penticton to get paid less than the minimum wage of $15.20, he said, and on many shifts he averages less than one delivery per hour.
Another option for app-based delivery work in Penticton is DoorDash, and Hoath feels like its compensation is even less competitive. NinjaNow also serves the Penticton area but only has five restaurant options.
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Chelsea Piper used to work full-time hours for Skip The Dishes but said the pay was too unpredictable so she found a steady full-time job. She still does delivery part-time.
“Skip has saturated our market with drivers so much that sometimes you will sit for 45 minutes to an hour without getting an order,” she said in an online exchange.
The jury is still out on whether or not it is legal to pay workers less than minimum wage in B.C. despite how broadly it’s happening.
“Minimum wage applies regardless of how employees are paid – hourly, salary, commission or on an incentive basis,” according to the Ministry of Labour’s definition of minimum wage. “If an employee's wage is below minimum wage for the hours they worked, the employer must top up their payment so that it's equal to minimum wage.”
But companies like DoorDash and Skip The Dishes consider their drivers to be independent contractors who are not subject to minimum wage laws.
MLA Adam Walker, Parliamentary Secretary for the New Economy, said there should not be two tiers of workers where some are guaranteed a minimum wage and others are not. And although app-based delivery businesses have been getting away with paying their drivers less than minimum wage on a broad scale, he doesn’t believe that conforms with the law.
“Just because a company considers its workers to be self-employed or employees ... doesn’t make that the case,” he said
Whether or not delivery-app workers deserve minimum wage for their time is up to the Employment Standards Branch, Walker said.
“They will be the adjudicator.”
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Walker encourages any delivery drivers who feel minimum wage laws are being obstructed to fill out an application with the Employment Standards Branch.
But in a phone call to the Employment Standards Branch, an agent said app-based delivery drivers are not considered employees in the Employment Standards Act.
Why not?
“They’re just not,” the agent said.
An email to the Employment Standards Branch with detailed questions was not returned.
After Skip The Dishes was contacted and made aware that its workers are going public to complain about the business model, a representative from the company said it could be five days before they formally respond.
In an email to DoorDash, when asked why it’s OK for workers to be paid less than minimum wage during some of the hours they work, the company responded with a link that was irrelevant to the question.
A follow-up email to DoorDash that reframed the question was ignored.
BRODO Kitchen in Penticton is an option for anybody ordering Skip The Dishes in Penticton. Owner and chef Paul Cecconi was initially reluctant to sign up for the app, which was showing interest in his restaurant as soon as it entered the market.
“Just because of the commission they charge, at the end of the day it never made sense from a cost standpoint,” he said. “And I didn’t want to stray from managing the restaurant to be wasting our time on laptops and iPads.”
But when pandemic-related restrictions limited the number of orders he could take, Cecconi decided to embrace the change.
“With COVID you’re a little more patient with hearing what they have to say.”
After coming around, a helpful salesman made it “seamless” to get the equipment installed, he said.
The commission charged by Skip The Dishes is palatable for Cecconi and he plans to continue his relationship with the company.
But not every restaurateur in the Okanagan is a fan of app-delivery services.
Karyn Mackenzie, who owns the chain of DunnEnzies Pizza in Kelowna, has publicly asked her supporters to stop using companies like Skip the dish and DoorDash. She feels like they are not offering fair deals.
“My issue is with any company who calls themselves a ‘partner’ but knowingly takes the entire profit margin from its partners,’” she told iNFOnews.ca in February 2020.
“The 30-35% taken off the top will cripple most small businesses over time. They will only negotiate that rate with the big national chains again leaving small business at a disadvantage.”
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