Shipt, a delivery service owned by Target, has been sued by the Attorney General of Washington DC for allegedly unlawfully misclassifying employees as independent contractors to avoid paying for worker benefits.
The civil lawsuit [PDF], filed in a Washington DC Superior Court, alleges Shipt deliberately mislabels workers, thereby denying basic employment rights, shifting costs to those workers, and subverting the law.
Shipt calls these workers "shoppers" because they buy stuff on behalf of others and deliver it for a fee. Users go into the Shipt app, place an order for stuff they'd like to be picked up – such as groceries from a store – and pay for it. A Shipt shopper logs in too, sees the available order in the app, agrees to take it on, goes to the store, gets the required items, pays for it using a Shipt visa card, and then delivers it to the user. Shipt and the shopper take a cut of the cost.
"Through this unlawful scheme, Shipt reduces its labor costs by evading basic employment requirements for its core workers," the complaint says. "Through misclassification, Shipt denies shoppers their right to minimum wage, overtime pay, and paid sick leave. And Shipt evades its obligations to pay what it owes to District [of Columbia] programs, including paid family leave and workers' compensation."
"Increasingly, we’re seeing companies abuse hard-working District residents by fraudulently calling them independent contractors and, as a result, denying them wages and benefits they...
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