Last week, the Seattle City Council refused to hold a vote on a commonsense compromise bill that would have fixed the broken Delivery Pay Ordinance–lowering costs while guaranteeing Dashers would earn nearly $20 an hour before tips and mileage. DoorDash stands ready to remove the current Regulatory Response Fee in Seattle once the reform bill is enacted and operational costs reduced.
City leaders have had months to fix this broken law and every day that passes is another day that businesses and Dashers struggle. To be clear, DoorDash is fully supportive of the compromise bill that would guarantee Dasher earnings of at least Seattle’s minimum wage of $19.97 per active hour, and will remove our $4.99 Regulatory Response Fee if this compromise is enacted. Despite making this clear to city officials, we have been met with inaction and delays.
Under current law, Dashers are required to make $26.40 per active hour, plus additional pay for mileage and tips. While this standard sounds good in theory, it resulted in increased costs for consumers, meaning fewer orders, fewer opportunities to earn for Dashers and less revenue for local businesses. We estimate that merchants in Seattle earned $14 million less than they otherwise would have on the DoorDash Marketplace between February and May of 2024, and there were 590,000 fewer orders for Dashers to deliver in the same time frame.
While Dashers are making more during the time they are on delivery, the steep decline in the number of deliveries available has more than offset any intended improvement in earnings under the pay ordinance. Dashers are spending more time on the app waiting for delivery offers and less time actually on delivery. In fact, in the last 6 weeks, average hourly earnings for all time spent on the app was 13% lower than it had been in the 6 weeks before the pay ordinance went into effect. No one wins under this law, including delivery workers.
We will not sit quietly while bad policy harms our communities. We’re working tirelessly alongside thousands of Seattle Dashers, businesses and consumers to ask the Council to do their jobs and solve this problem. It is imperative that our local leaders listen to the voices of their constituents, not just the special interests they’re closest with.
If you’d like to make your voice heard, contact the Council here.
