For Jason Schaal, 43, working in Minnesota as a personal shopper for grocery delivery company Instacart in 2019 was, at first, attractive. The freedom to work on his own schedule, hours that could accommodate his personal health issues and caregiving responsibilities as a single father, combined with a decent wage made the gig work solid. But soon, Schaal’s pay from Instacart fell – and fast. Once mostly working for Instacart, Schaal has had to work more hours across multiple apps, spending less time with his kids and having to work with his health problems. “Instacart slowly started becoming the worse and worse option,” he said. Now Schaal, along with thousands of other workers – known as “Instacart shoppers” – across the US are asking for customers to delete the Instacart app, a grocery delivery service that boomed during the coronavirus pandemic. Using the hashtag #DeleteInstacart, Instacart gig workers, organizing as the Gig Worker Collective, cite falling pay rates and unsafe working conditions. As one of the collective’s more drastic actions after five years of organizing, the call to delete is an attempt to bring attention to labor issues ahead of Instacart’s rumored IPO on the stock market. “At the end of the day, all those [past] efforts, while they have moved the needle one way or the other, hasn’t been enough to address all the issues [as] a deterioration of the working conditions continues. So, we felt like there was no other choice but to ask customers to delete the app itself,” said Willy Solis, 42, an Instacart shopper since 2019 and lead organizer with the Gig Worker Collective. The group’s demands are mostly requests for a restoration of features the app had previously: a reinstatement of Instacart’s commission pay model, paying its shoppers per order versus bundling them, a 10% default tip on the app, transparency about how orders are assigned, and a rating system that doesn’t hurt shoppers for issues outside their control. Shoppers have also asked for occupational death benefits, citing the increasing dangers shoppers face on the job. Gig Worker Collective is also organizing a walk-off protest on 16 October. “Instacart has had plenty, ample opportunities to fix some of these things. Instead, they’ve gone a roundabout way of making things worse,” said Karyn Johnson-Dorsey, 57, an Instacart shopper since 2019. Instacart’s pay structure, the source of at least two class-action lawsuits since 2017, has been an issue for shoppers. In 2019, after receiving national outrage for using shoppers’ tips to fulfill the company’s $10 minimum pay, Instacart changed its payment system, promising to calculate base pay separately from tips and institute a $7 to $10 minimum for supermarket delivery orders along with a public apology from the then CEO, Apoorva Mehta. But, according to shoppers, Instacart’s pay has remained staggered. While shoppers could earn up to $10 on orders (called “batches” among shoppers), batches often bundled multiple individual orders together, forcing workers to shop for multiple orders at different addresses but only be compensated for the labor of one. Alongside a lowered minimum payment and the bundling system, Instacart also discontinued commissions on items, meaning a shopper couldn’t earn extra for completing larger orders or orders that had heavier objects. As Instacart’s workforce ballooned, adding more than 300,000 shoppers during the early months of the pandemic, and as demand fell, longtime workers saw their pay slashed, often by double digits, with new workers also suffering a low pay rate, according to Schaal. “From the beginning to six months in, I quickly saw at least a 10-15% drop in pay and since then, from when I first started to now, I’ve seen a 40-50% [drop],” said Solis. Tips, which make up the bulk of pay for Instacart shoppers, have also dropped. While tip amounts have oscillated with the pandemic, Instacart also has a default tip of only 5% (it was once 10%). Instacart also still provides customers with the option of editing their tip amount a full 24 hours after a completed order, reduced from a previously allotted 72 hours to discourage customers from “tip baiting”, the practice of luring shoppers with inflated tips that are later reduced. “I’ve never sat in a restaurant where I saw the suggested tip being 10% or 5%. Have you? It’s normally 15%,” said Johnson-Dorsey. Instacart’s inability to handle unfair ratings from customers – ratings motivated by supply issues and other elements outside a shopper’s control – are also hurting workers. While Instacart maintains that their rating system is determined by a shopper’s last 100 deliveries with automatic forgiveness for the lowest rating, shoppers reported how the harsh rating system can substantially affect a worker’s earning potential, limiting their first pick on more lucrative orders. The pandemic, for many shoppers, highlighted other safety concerns for workers, inspiring a call for Instacart to institute occupational death benefits. While initially dubbed as “heroes” given their essential worker status, Instacart shoppers had trouble acquiring personal protective equipment such as masks and hand sanitizer from the company, with the initial equipment being poorly made, and have not been given a reimbursement option for buying supplies, said Johnson-Dorsey. Shoppers also staged a walk off to demand sick leave for workers who tested positive for Covid. Since then, amid declining tips and worsening customer attitudes, workers say that delivery conditions have become increasingly dangerous with a rise in carjacking, assaults and murders that target gig workers. When gig workers are killed on the job, like Lynn Murray, who was killed during a mass shooting in a Colorado grocery store while shopping for Instacart, families are often left relying on crowdfunding to cover associated costs versus standard death benefits, said Solis. Instacart shoppers say their demands for occupational death benefits are necessary, especially given the majority of Instacart shoppers are women, many of whom are single mothers, yet ignored by the company. “When situations like that happen – an accident, an injury, or even a death – it’s very difficult to address those things from an organizing perspective, but more importantly, the company only responds when pressure is applied,” said Solis. In a comment to the Guardian, Instacart said that the company remains committed to “creating the best possible experience for our shopper community”. “We take shopper feedback very seriously and remain committed to listening to and using that feedback to improve their experience,” said Instacart. But workers say their demands have been ignored. While Instacart’s recently tenured CEO, Fidji Simo, published an open letter asking for shopper feedback and is sometimes in communication with shoppers on online forums, organizers say real change has been minimal and that workers are ready to take this and other escalating actions. “It’s almost like your back is up against the wall, desperate people take desperate measures. I’m not saying that we’re desperate. We’re just saying we’re tired of being stepped on,” said Johnson-Dorsey.