I don't think so. Door dash is complaining that this will result in a $33/hour pay rate for trip time. The law seems to be that you may pay however you like, but it must average out to $18/hour (overall? per person??). So even if you're paying for trip time only, if 10 people are active and doing no trips it would imply the average pay rate for the one guy doing trips must rise to accommodate the non-workers.
So the scheme above doesn't work too well for those folks but the economics for door dash remain the same. It also kind of implies you can create surge pricing for workers by having an overabundance of supply, which is a nightmare scenario for them.
The problem is that you cannot easily define people on call. If $33/hr is the average comp for trip time when just one person is working at $18 overall, then they're saying an average worker works 55% of the time. If you add another person who just idles on call for the whole hour, you must now pay the one worker guy $66/hr for his working time.
why is the company allowing someone to sit idly on the app and jack up prices? they're able to determine surge pricing based on demand, surely they can just use that exact same algorithm to determine the number of workers they need and will allow to deliver orders?
simple checks like "did this person do >X number of deliveries in Y amount of time?" should let the company know who to "send home" the exact same as food service and retail currently works. the companies are not forced to allow anyone onto the app, just as businesses are not forced to allow any employee who shows up unscheduled to sit around and collect an hourly wage.
If you allow the company to "send people home" when there is no work then that is the same thing as allowing them to be waiting for work without getting paid. Because uber is not requiring them to be anywhere or do anything while waiting.
being on call and not working are not the same thing. if my boss tells me i need to be on call for our datacenter from 8pm-4am all week, i expect to get paid during that time regardless of if there's a critical incident or not. it means i have to be tied to my phone, cannot make plans with friends or family, and cannot stray too far from my home in case i need to dial in. same deal here.
So the scheme above doesn't work too well for those folks but the economics for door dash remain the same. It also kind of implies you can create surge pricing for workers by having an overabundance of supply, which is a nightmare scenario for them.