“DoorDash lies when they say we’re earning $27/hour. My earnings in March were just under $1,230. With my total costs of $671, I brought home less than $600.”
Ma Hernandez, DoorDash worker, Seattle
I work for DoorDash and I support the PayUp policy. I started working on DoorDash in July 2019. My husband had been laid off, and we had a hard time finding work because of the pandemic, so we both started doing gig work.
The flexibility is important to me because we have two girls we need to pick up and take home from school, and I was also taking classes in community college, so I needed time off on Tuesdays and Thursdays. My mother needs support for her doctor’s appointments, and my husband translates for her. If we had Monday-Friday jobs, they wouldn’t give us the type of flexibility we need to take care of our families.
But the pay is impossible to live on. DoorDash says we’re earning $27/hour, but this is a lie. My earnings for the month of March were just under $1,230.
And with my total costs of $671, I brought home less than $600 for the whole month.
We have to work many hours under heavy stress and face the risk of getting into accidents. I got into an accident doing a delivery, and had to buy a new car because it was more expensive to fix the car than buy a new one. I got a loan last year to get the car — the loan was $13,000 and now I’m down to $12,000.
I was diagnosed with breast cancer last year and had to stop working because I was doing chemotherapy. It affected me financially tremendously. I was not able to help with the bills we share, and I was worried about monthly payments for my car.
We urgently need to be paid 73 cents per mile because the cost we pay for mileage is 58 cents and we drive extra miles between orders. The price of gas goes up every day, and I have to fill the tank just to keep working.
I'd like to invite the lobbyists and spokespeople opposing PayUp to join me on my daily shift so they can see everything we do. The people sitting in their offices, on their couches — they have no idea what we have to go through at work. We are the ones shopping for dog food, waiting at restaurants for a dinner order to take it to customers.
We’re the ones shopping and delivering, circling the block two or three times to find parking, putting in time and mileage that DoorDash is not paying for, that has to come out of our pockets.
I’d like to see those lobbyists experience our monthly costs and low pay, and endure the frustrations of seeing money disappear to pay doctors, rent, phone, and monthly car payments.
We are not earning what the apps say. Uber and Lyft drivers won a pay policy — we are workers too, and we need a pay floor too. This is a job, no matter how many hours we work it. We need PayUp now! We cannot wait.