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Comment by ta1243 | Hacker News Reader

I used to deliver pizza for an independent company as a student back in 2000 in the UK (North West). I didn't get paid a lot, but it was easy work sitting in a car listening to the radio all evening. Inflation adjusted I was paid £4.57 an hour and 27p per mile. Used to get another £3 an hour in tips from people who didn't want change (this was of course back when everyone paid cash and ordered over the phone), did that for about 30 hours a week, racking up about 400 miles.

I was earning money to spend on new computer bits etc, not to pay rent for a family of 4. I valued the flexibility and the easy life.

The problem comes when people think this type of work is suitable for a full time career, not just a way to "top up" an income - either by working one or two nights a week, or doing it as a student, or doing it after retiring to keep the social aspect.

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You probably missed the "don't have the possibility" part of my message. Not everybody has the easy life, with their own car and the parents for safety net, but other commenter already described it much better.

Yeah but what is wrong with saying "this job isn't for them then"? If you are skilled enough to drive a car all day as a job, Amazon will happily hire you to drive a van all day, they pay much better than a local pizza delivery gig(at least here in UK, no idea about where you live obviously).

Or are we really debating whether there is some extremely small subset of people who can only get a job delivering pizzas(somehow) and they can't possibly get any other employment?

Commercial drivers license

What about it? In the UK at least you don't need any kind of special licence to drive for amazon, just a normal B-class licence will do, all of their vans are up to 3.5 tonnes anyway. You only need a C class licence and professional accreditation to drive HGVs.

I’m not sure about the UK but several minutes of frustrated googling only shows offerings for amazons gig delivery program called flex, vaguely ironically.

> The problem comes when people think this type of work is suitable for a full time career, not just a way to "top up" an income

People don't think this work is a full time career, but they often enough don't have another choice. When you have barely (or none at all) language skills, or you're an immigrant whose certifications from their home country aren't recognized, or you're without legal immigration status, there aren't many ways left to make a living - it's either "tech gig work" (deliveries, taxis), construction/trades/restaurant helper or agriculture. The latter options are physically demanding, dangerous options or they don't exist around urban areas, and you often run into issues getting paid or dealing with dangerous/abusive employment - "gig work" options at least pay out reliably and carry less workplace abuse.

Want to fix gig work issues? Offer a decent social safety net so that no one is forced to accept this kind of work just to survive, and the market will (have to) improve on its own.

In the UK companies are crying out for employees on solid reliable wages.

You're right it's a good way to get around immigration law, where someone with a right to work subcontracts the job to someone without and keeps 10/20/50%. That tends to be more the case with things like ubereats rather than traditional pizza-place-employing-driver -- you can't work in dominos without showing right to work, and you can't swap out the employee as people would notice, because you are Alice the driver who's kids have just left home and plays in the local cricket team, not "Driver 24601"

Given that we had no problem getting pizzas, currys etc in 2000 before ubereats I'm not sure I recognise the "without gig work we wouldn't get warm pizza" argument.

> People don't think this work is a full time career, but they often enough don't have another choice.

Then I reckon the solution isn't to add antagonism to the employment relationship they already have, but rather as a community rally around to provide resources to lower their search costs (Note: I assume when you say "don't have another choice" you really mean the finding and switching costs for new opportunities are too high)

> Note: I assume when you say "don't have another choice" you really mean the finding and switching costs for new opportunities are too high

No, I mean that the eligibility is not present.

Getting employment requires hurdles many people cannot pass: you need a registered address to get postal letters (which excludes many homeless), you need valid immigration credentials, you need skill certifications (school or academic degrees, vocational training, ...) for many employments (which foreigners sometimes have a hard time showing (refugees) or getting recognized legally), you need to speak the language, you need to be able to read and write...

For us tech people, a lot of these hurdles don't apply, but the lowest rungs of employment / society have a very difficult time which most of us don't have any experience.

For awhile, I worked in an R&D/policy group that focused on these very issues in the healthcare domain.

I think my point still stands. Community funded programs that helps individuals find their next step, when funded appropriately, are often enormously successful. In the healthcare context, say you want to decrease the number of repeat folks to the ER without decreasing their access -- basically ounce of prevention vs. pound of cure approach. A representative example is person who regularly comes to the ER for insulin issues. In addition to cost pressure, there issues might also source from not have a working fridge or consistent electricity. It is thus cheaper for the social safety net to provide electricity and a basic fridge than to have the person return regularly to the ER for insulin.

Similar workflows and standard of care exist for almost every social ill -- if we have the civic sense to fund it -- to help people take the next step towards bettering their lives.

It seems you and the GP agree, though, that gig work shouldn't be treated full-time employment, which was the topic at hand.

However one say "just eat cake instead" while the other underlines the struggle.

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