Instacart plans to lay off more than 1,800 “purchases” in the store in March, as the delivery service is cutting labor costs. Less clear is who is responsible for firing them.
The 1,877 people are among the relatively few Instacart workers legally classified as employees, rather than contractors. They are paid hourly, are eligible for benefits and work in one store to pick up orders and pack what others are going to deliver. Among them are Instacart’s only union workers: ten buyers, as the workers are called, in a Mariano’s supermarket in Skokie, Illinois, and 366 stores in Kroger stores nationwide. (Mariano’s is also a subsidiary of Kroger.)
An Instacart spokesman said they were firing workers at the request of grocery stores who wanted their own employees to do the work rather than the delivery company. According to this model, called ‘Partner Pick’, employees of a grocery store use the Instacart app to execute customer orders.
“Due to some groceries switching to a Partner Pick model, we will be breaking down our stores at select retailers in the coming months,” Instacart said in a statement.
Kroger, however, denied that it played a role in the dismissals.
“The Kroger family of businesses was not involved in Instacart’s decision to suspend its in-store business model,” a spokesman said in a statement, adding: “For those looking for a career opportunity , we have thousands of retail rolls available at jobs.kroger.com. “
More expensive workers
There are less than 10,000 shopping staff on Instacart’s platform, compared to half a million independent contractors, which the company calls ‘Full-Service Shoppers’. These workers pack groceries in many stores and deliver them to customers in the US
According to a lawyer representing Instacart, since 2018 Instacart has reduced the number of purchases on its platform because they are significantly more expensive. It has reduced staff in stores in Los Angeles, Minneapolis, San Diego, Seattle and parts of Texas.
“Instacart’s current use of [in-store shoppers] is costly per delivery significantly more expensive than using pure [full-service shopper] model, ‘the lawyer wrote in a letter to the United Food and Commercial Workers union, representing the ten Instacart workers in Skokie.
The use of independent contractors to do shopping and delivery offers the benefit of Instacart quickly upscaling or downsizing its call staff depending on business, rather than dealing with scheduled employees.
The fired workers can apply directly to Kroger or other grocery stores and will receive severance packages of $ 250 to $ 750 each, the lawyer said.
“There was some stability”
For Noelle Marian, one of the ten union files fired, she says it appreciates its predictability. Marian has been shopping for Instacart since 2019, she told CBS MoneyWatch. She chose in-store shopping for Instacart over other types of performances because she feels safer working in one place and likes the stability that the job offers.
“It does not pay much, but I can support myself. I can buy groceries, pay for my car, pay my phone bill,” Marian said. “There was some stability, but now it’s all just going away.”
Marian also doubts that Instacart will help her get a new job as she participates in the effort to unite workers. “I do not think Instacart is going to give me a letter of recommendation. I hope that is not the case for the other team members.”
But she worries that more and more shoppers in the store will be fired until Instacart drops them completely. She pointed to the transactions the company made with Aldi and Sprouts last year, in which employees of supermarkets would make deliveries on Instacart’s platform.
“I don’t think they were interested in hiring people to do the actual work,” she said. “I think they used us for data information for their program, and now they have the information; they kind of systematically get rid of us.”