Amazon’s business depends on deliveries. Deliveries, in turn, require drivers. In 2015, Amazon piloted a new model: paying drivers per gig to use their own vehicles to drop off time-sensitive deliveries like groceries and same-day orders. Amazon offered $18 to $25 per hour and explicitly promised drivers ‘100% of the tips [they] earn’. But Amazon soon started cutting costs. Without telling drivers, it began diverting tips to cover the base pay rate it promised and changed its app to not show drivers’ tip earnings separately. Amazon continued this practice for several years – representing to both customers and drivers that drivers would receive all tips – until it learned that it was under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) …
Consumer Protection for Gig Work?, 136 Harvard Law Review 1628 (April 2023).
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