Target's Delivery App Workers to Be Paid by a Blackbox Algorithm Nationwide

[demmiblue]

Target's delivery app Shipt claims that the new pay model will compensate its 200,000 delivery workers based on "effort." But in cities where the model has already taken effect, workers claim their wages have fallen by 15-50 percent.

The Target-owned delivery app Shipt will soon determine pay for its 200,000 gig workers nationwide using a blackbox algorithm, according to an internal announcement made on Thursday and obtained by Motherboard.

Shipt claims that the new pay model will compensate delivery workers more equitably. "We highly encourage all of you to try out the new pay model and keep in mind that this pay is based on the effort of the shop," Shipt posted on its private Facebook group for gig workers on Thursday.

But shoppers (Shipt calls its gig workers "shoppers&quot fear that the transition from a transparent, commission-based pay model to an algorithmic one that obscures how pay gets calculated will result in dramatically lower earnings.

Already, in cities such as Birmingham, Alabama; San Antonio, Texas; and Kalamazoo, Michigan, where an algorithmic model went into effect earlier this year, workers say their hourly earnings have dropped by 15 to 50 percent. By the end of September, Shipt says it will roll out the new pay model in more than 230 new cities.

"Shipt says shoppers are now being paid on effort. This is insulting on its face. This implies shoppers were not putting in effort prior to the non-transparent algorithm being forced on us," Willy Solis, a Shipt delivery worker in Dallas, Texas and an organizer for the Gig Workers Collective, told Motherboard.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qj49jv/targets-delivery-app-workers-to-be-paid-by-a-blackbox-algorithm-nationwide

[Karadeniz]

1. More ways to underpay...repulsive.