The Seattle City Council passed a first-in-the-nation minimum wage law for rideshare drivers last year. Now, there is a push to do the same for app-based delivery drivers in Seattle.

Seattle mulls first-of-its-kind minimum wage for app-based delivery drivers

The proposed legislation — known formally as “Pay Up” — would build on a bill passed by the council in 2020, which established a $16.39 an hour minimum wage for rideshare drivers, paying out $0.56 per minute and $1.33 per mile driven while transporting passengers. In practice, the new bill would set a $17.27 an hour minimum wage for app-based delivery and service drivers for companies like DoorDash and Instacart, while helping cover baseline expenses.

Mikey Pullman is a DoorDash driver in Seattle, and is a volunteer with the Pay Up campaign.

“I started DoorDash in Idaho for a little bit, and then I moved here six months before the pandemic, got a job at the census, and then the pandemic kicked off,” Pullman explained. “My partner has a heart condition, so I worked for DoorDash to try to avoid having to work a restaurant job and get everybody sick.”

“We made the labor laws before gig working was this popular,” he noted about the reasoning behind the demand. “So the thing that we’re actually trying to do is we’re trying to just redress the balance.”

He says that right now, app drivers pay “all the cost of the delivery.”

“We’re just trying to get people paid the minimum that we, as a society, have decided people need to...

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