"‘It’s a sweat factory’: Instacart workers ready to strike for pay and conditions", 15 October 2021

... amid worsening working conditions including plummeting pay, safety concerns, and a punitive rating system, Instacart employees, known as shoppers, will be staging a walkout...and will continue striking until the company meets their demands for better treatment.

...the Gig Workers Collective['s]...asks are mostly for a restoration of features the company has dropped: reinstating Instacart’s commission pay model, paying its shoppers per order rather than bundling them, a 10% default tip instead of the current 5%, transparency about how orders are assigned, and a rating system that doesn’t hurt shoppers for problems outside their control.

Shoppers have also asked for occupational death benefits, noting the increasing dangers shoppers face on the job...

For Willy Solis, Instacart started as a way to make ends meet during a transitional employment period...

But soon, Solis noticed dips in his pay...When Instacart decided to bundle individual orders together (“batches” as shoppers call them), batches began to double and triple in size...while the pay remained the same. Tips...also dropped when Instacart’s default tip was set at a paltry 5%.

In some cases, he was making up to 50% less than average on orders. Soon, Solis was experiencing huge cuts in his pay from when he started...

Instacart’s changing pay structure is the source of at least two class-action lawsuits...

While the company did send out personal protective equipment (PPE) to shoppers after facing public outrage and mounting collective action, Solis says the PPE was of poor quality and he was never compensated for the equipment he bought himself. When Solis did get Covid, he didn’t qualify for Instacart’s pay assistance program....

Changes to Instacart’s support service, now automated, has also left Solis feeling unsafe...During threatening situations...having live Instacart support was important for de-escalation; now...that human resource is gone...

... with Instacart’s dropping pay and losing profitable orders with bots...Jen struggled to find competitive orders.

Jen also struggled with Instacart’s rating system, often described as “punishing” by shoppers...

Jen found herself frequently penalized for false accusations of not delivering items from customers...

...with Instacart’s new pay structure, Pape saw her pay fall by more than a third.

Most of the time Pape spends on the app she is waiting for worthwhile delivery orders, as batches grow increasingly scarce given the more than 200% increase in active Instacart workers in Pape’s area since the time she started...

Pape...has seen her ratings drop even when customers don’t add a rating at all. Pape noted additional challenges: changing store layouts, a national supply shortage and other conditions that remain out of her control...