Bad news if you're income-boosting, or god forbid trying to make a living, as an Uber Eats delivery career because the robots are coming.
On Wednesday Uber announced a deal with Alphabet's Waymo to use the latter's self-driving fleet as delivery vehicles in Phoenix, serving up residents of Tempe, Mesa, and Chandler in Arizona's capital with meals from select restaurants without the need for any physical human interaction from the buyer.
"The addition of food delivery to Uber’s ongoing partnership with Waymo reflects both companies’ mission to encourage zero-emission trips and unlock greater innovation for consumers and merchants," Uber enthused.
Placing an order on the Eats app automatically opts you into using a driver-free delivery, if one's available, although there is an opt-out option at checkout. From the screenshots Uber posted the app will also remind buyers that any tips will be removed from the cost of the delivery.
That does, however, mean you have to pick up your food yourself, using your phone to unlock the car and allow the retrieval of the tasty (or not) morsels. You also have to hope nothing spilled during the ride and is now decorating the floor of the high-tech transport.
Uber Eats already has robot delivery of a sort in a few locations using Serve robots - motorized coolers that can use the sidewalks in some urban environments. Some at least; trundle one of those through Skid Row in Los Angeles and it'd be cracked open before you could say turkey dinner.
But cars are a different proposition and much more efficient (incendiary attacks in San Francisco aside,) so Uber's move is an entirely logical one. Phoenix is an automated driving center and if Waymo has got cars free why not use them? Plus it's a move towards finally solving Uber's Layer Eight problem.
For context, just this past Valentine's Day, Uber and Lyft drivers went on strike in 44 cities across the US asking for better wages for their work.
It was only a two-hour stoppage but is a sign that gig workers, or "independent contractors," are getting fed up with being nickeled and dimed, as they see it. Uber, Lyft and others say that they pay above minimum wage - well above in some US states.
Nevertheless, the money is coming in for operators. Last year a study from the UCLA Labor Center into New York City ridesharing showed that passenger fares had increased 50 percent between February 2019 to April 2022, while driver pay rose just 31 percent. All of this at a time when drivers were risking infection daily during the pandemic.
More worrying for Uber, Lyft, and others, is the US Department of Labor's January announcement that the agency is reconsidering the legal status of using independent contractors as what are essentially paid employees, just without the benefits. Any ruling would almost certainly be challenged all the way to the Supreme Court, a process that could take years.
Similar moves are already afoot in Europe, with the EU planning proposals to allow so-called self-employed staff better legal rights and protections. And in the UK, the birthplace of the modern labor movement, gig drivers already have the right to join the massive GMB union.
So, the takeaway? Automating humans out of the whole process makes perfect sense for Uber. It can concentrate on refining algorithms, sorting out the cut it takes from providers, and forget about dealing with human resource problems. It's so 21st Century, in both a good and a bad way. ®
Source: The register