Instacart grocery shopping and delivery workers are striking Monday to call for better pay and sick leave benefits based on their increased exposure to the coronavirus.
Instacart shoppers and an activist organization called the Gig Workers Collective that is helping organize the workers have called for the company to provide workers with protective supplies, such as hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes, additional hazard pay and an expansion of pay for those affected by the coronavirus.
In a statement posted Friday on Medium, the Gig Workers Collective said that Instacart portrays itself as a "hero" to families who are quarantined or sheltering in place, but that it did not provide "essential protections" to workers who grocery shop for customers and are more exposed to the public.
On Sunday, San Francisco-based Instacart said it would provide workers with hand sanitizer and would change the customer tip setting so it would default to the percentage the customer last used _ or if the customer last tipped less than 5%, it would default to 5%. The company also said it would remove the option for no tips, which it said would make it "less likely" that customers would decide not to tip since they would have to make the decision to type zero.
These concessions came after Instacart said earlier this month that part-time shoppers would be able to accrue sick pay and that workers could get up to 14 days of sick pay if they tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, or were placed into mandatory quarantine or isolation by a government health agency. The 14 days of sick pay are available until next week.
"Our goal is to offer a safe and flexible earnings opportunity to shoppers, while also proactively taking the appropriate precautionary measures to operate safely," Instacart said in a statement Monday.
The Gig Workers Collective called for the benefits to be extended beyond next week and that the additional sick pay should also be available to workers who had a doctor's note saying they had a preexisting condition that could make them more susceptible to the coronavirus.
"Instacart knows it's virtually impossible to meet their qualifications and is ignoring (workers') pleas for more substantial and preventative help," the group said.
