Grocery shopping service Instacart reportedly plans to hire 250,000 new gig economy workers after hiring 300,000 workers in the past month to meet the growing demand for home grocery deliveries during the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic.
Business Insider reports that the grocery shopping service Instacart is hiring 250,000 new gig workers after already hiring 300,000 in the past month as demand for online grocery delivery continues to surge.
The new hiring spree was announced in a Medium post by the company. In recent weeks, demand for Instacart services, in which “personal shoppers” deliver groceries to users’ homes, has surged, Instacart President Nilam Ganenthiran described the past few weeks at the company, stating: “This is well beyond Black Friday,” comparing the surge in grocery demand to one of the busiest shopping days of the year. Every day is a new Black Friday for us. He added: “Customers are coming online in droves.”
Breitbart News reported earlier this week that Instacart’s gig workers have yet to receive the safety supplies they were promised as they continue to work during the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic. Instacart orders have surged to an all-time high in recent weeks as its workforce of 350,000 grocery “shoppers” pick up and deliver groceries to American households.
Due to the current pandemic, each of these trips put workers at an increased risk of contracting the Chinese virus, leading some grocery store employees have described their workplace as a “war zone.” Instacart workers staged a nationwide strike in March demanding sick leave, hazard pay, and disinfection supplies. Instacart ignored most of these demands but on April 2 it agreed to provide its shoppers with “health and safety kits” containing a reusable cloth face mask, a bottle of hand sanitizer, and a forehead thermometer.
Two weeks later, Instacart workers say the kits have not arrived. Wired spoke to over a dozen workers who have described a complicated process just to request a kit with little communication from Instacart about the status of their request. The kits must be ordered through Instacart’s online store carrotswag.com but many had issues ordering the kits appearing as “out of stock” or only appearing for “pre-order.”
Worker advocacy groups such as Gig Workers Collective say that Instacart’s efforts aren’t enough. “Even if Instacart manages to get its act together in regards to this promise of PPE, their response is still not enough to properly care for workers,” the group wrote in a blog post. “Some Instacart Shoppers, even under the best of conditions and with PPE, will still contract COVID-19. There is still no meaningful progress in protections for the Shoppers who will fall ill.” The GWC called the move a “pathetic attempt to buy good PR.”
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com
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