I’m pretty sure that whatever DoorDash is doing is illegal in my state, and they are dodging enforcement by claiming the drivers are contractors. Screw them.
The claim that drivers are looking for more of their pay to come from tips seems false. Tips and pay are independent, and saying that drivers want to be paid less by the company seems false on its face.
A more accurate framing seems to be that the companies are using the presence of tips to lower the wage for the position to save money.
The issue is that variable base rates are directly using customer tips to fund wage obligations. If the company indicates they are giving 100% of a tip to the worker, but then offsets the pay by exactly that amount, they aren't actually giving that tip to the worker like they claimed.
So a fixed base rate plus protection against downside risk like you proposed is not the same as the variable base rate these companies are implementing.
So you change your model to be less base pay and more tips. In door dash’s case, their base pay is $1.
But now you have to worry about the person that stiffs the tip and leaves nothing. Can you feel comfortable paying the driver a dollar for that trip?
Well.. no. So you say you’ll guarantee a minimum per order. If anything the people in the room making this thought they were doing an extra nice thing by adding this guarantee.
The thing is, drivers asked for more of their pay to come from tipping. Most nonapp delivery drivers are paid on a heavy tipping model. If it was messaged drivers get $1 plus tips would people be ok with that?
I used to work in this industry but not these companies. Actual comp doesn’t change on much average through most of these schemes, though there are outliers. Which is to say, they’re all underpaid, even at the “better” ones, as is your dominoes driver.