Instacart is reportedly firing nearly 2,000 shoppers, including all employees who voted to unionize last February, a historic first for the grocery delivery platform.
As noted by Motherboard, Instacart buried news of the upcoming layoffs in one blog post on Tuesday outlining broader changes in the way the company does business with grocers. As Instacart has grown its business rapidly amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, major supermarket chains are increasingly turning to using their own employees, unlike Instacart’s shoppers, to fulfill orders placed through Instacart’s online platform. Now, Instacart says, among other changes, it is scaling up its roadside pick-up service to help collaborative grocers handle orders internally, and several are switching exclusively to this so-called “Partner Pick” model.
“As a result of some grocers moving to a Partner Pick model, we will phase out our in-store operations at selected retail locations in the coming months,” said Instacart. “We know this is an incredibly challenging time for many as we move through the COVID-19 crisis, and we are committed to supporting shoppers in this transition.”
Last year, a group of Instacart employees at a Mariano’s grocery store in Skokie, Illinois, decided to unionize in a vote of 10 to 4, per motherboard. The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, a working group representing, among others, Instacart’s union workers, said Thursday that Instacart had informed the chapter that it was firing about 366 Instacart employees Kroger-owned stores across the country, including those in the Skokie Mariano store.
Instacart is firing approximately 1,800 of its 10,000 US shoppers and offering only $ 250 in severance pay, by mail the UFCW shared by an employment attorney representing Instacart.
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The company’s decision to fire its only union workers and a slew of frontline workers amid an international pandemic is “just plain wrong,” UFCW President Marc Perrone said in a statement.
As the union for Instacart grocery workers in the Chicago area and grocery workers across the country, UFCW calls on Instacart to immediately stop these plans and put the health of their customers first through the jobs of these brave essential workers. at a time when our communities need them most, ”he said.
Considering that union workers are already a rarity in the gig economy, this step is likely discourage employees include major players such as DoorDash, Uber and the like who may have been looking for their own unions. Instacart’s only in-store shoppers in Skokie were still negotiating their first contract with the company when news of the layoffs hit.
“These layoffs are totally disheartening for all gig workers who are trying to do anything to improve these jobs,” one of those workers told Motherboard under the condition of anonymity.
According to a company spokesman, Instacart for its part claims that the choice of its employees to join a union did not affect the decisions to dismiss. That’s hard to believe for obvious reason, especially since the company was reportedly caught campaign to break unions shortly before last February’s vote. Several senior Instacart executives handed out anti-union material to workers listing propaganda about the consequences of unionizing, according to Motherboard.
Now, less than a year later, those same employees have failed listen to those impending memos out of work amid a global health crisis. You do the math.