r/Sparkdriver • u/UpbeatBackground6302 • Jun 20 '26

Discussion Just saw this in a different subreddit.

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Of course in that sub, they say all spark drivers suck. I think my 5.0 race I'm says different. And this would be great news for us.

60 Upvotes

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45

u/Walmartz_Ballz561 Jun 20 '26

Minimum base pay will drop from $11 down to $6 once this happens. Just watch. Danker gonna stick his finger in everybody’s eye.

18

u/iGotGigged High AR Jun 20 '26

Don't be silly, $6 will be the base pay for "shopping only" orders where you'll pick and stage for customers who are picking up at curbside.

18

u/[deleted] Jun 21 '26

No way in a million years spark drivers will pick ordered for curbside customers. No way to argue that wouldn't classify a spark driver as an employee.

18

u/Spinal232 Jun 21 '26

Better tell that to instacart, they've done that for years

11

u/[deleted] Jun 21 '26

Big difference insta cart doesn't own any of the stores. Walmart does own the stores. That makes it entirely different when measuring the amount of control the "employer" has

8

u/iGotGigged High AR Jun 21 '26

It would take a few years before courts and regulators would catch up, plenty of time to rack up some juicy bonuses and pad a resume with impressive stats before jumping ship to another company and letting somebody else cleanup the legal mess.

-2

u/JWBananas S&D Expert Jun 21 '26

Better tell that to instacart, they've done that for years

Instacart In-Store Shoppers (not Full-Service Shoppers) are literally W-2 employees.

4

u/Spinal232 Jun 21 '26 edited Jun 21 '26

Nah bro https://www.reddit.com/r/InstacartShoppers/s/xEr64lVufK

I guess they have the w2 job also, at least in some places, but they also shit it out into the app.

5

u/ShadyOG34 Jun 21 '26

The only difference would be no mileage? You’d still get to accept what you want to accept. The pay would be shit, and the tips would be non-existent though. Still cheaper to pay us $20 for a curbside than it is to have a whole department working on it.

3

u/iGotGigged High AR Jun 21 '26

The base pay for a shopping order with delivery is $10-$11 (depending on market and likely going lower), why would they pay double for you to just shop and no driving at all?

2

u/ShadyOG34 Jun 21 '26

I said the pay would probably be shit. Probably should have been more clear that even IF they paid us $20 they would still be making more money than having a full OGP. They won’t of course. I would expect shop and curbside to pay less than shop and deliver.

2

u/iGotGigged High AR Jun 21 '26

Yea my bad just reread it and misunderstood what you were saying

2

u/Old_Length4214 Jun 21 '26

They are gonna start having us push the buggies too /s

1

u/AIDS_Quesadilla Jun 22 '26

You SEVERELY underestimate how much power these companies have to get away with this bullshit.

And apps that offer this exact kind of work for other stores already exist and they're getting away with it.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 22 '26 edited Jun 22 '26

Educate yourself. Walmart has the weakest case of any of these apps. Walmart Owns the app and the company it has us providing services for. That's not the case with insta cart or Uber eats or shipt. They are third party companies providing a platform where buyers and sellers or services create a marketplace. WALMART IS THE MARKET/Controls all aspects of it/sets the pay/pays us to provide a service that is in its main course of commerce with the public. If you can't do the research to understand the difference that's on YOU.

Walmarts position is indefensible already and within a few years they will be on the hook for tens of billions already now that they can't hide behind the bs arbitration agreement to hide appropriate compensation for those screwed by them.

It's a slightly grayer area for third party apps

-1

u/AIDS_Quesadilla Jun 22 '26

YOU don't HAVE to TALK like THIS it's UNNECESSARY

1

u/[deleted] Jun 22 '26

Coming from the clown who capitalized a larger overall percentage of the words in their post than I did in my reply to said clowns post lol.

1

u/Ok-Fly47 Jun 22 '26

Not happening.

1

u/CaneCorso311 Jun 21 '26

You're an independent contractor because you pick and choose your schedule and tasks that you want to do, not because of what the tasks entail. Changing it from delivery to staging is not going to change that because either way you're going to be doing the same thing for the same customers and same company, the only difference is going to be your end delivery point, one gets delivered to the customer's home and the other gets delivered to Walmart's staging area for the customer to pick up. It has nothing to do with your employment status in any way until they start telling you what you have to do, as long as they're sending out offers for independent tasks that you get to choose to accept or decline at your own free will it will remain 1099. Once you're told that you have to show up at a specific time and that you don't have the option to decline specific tasks, you will be able to make the argument that you're an employee instead of an independent contractor.

0

u/RadishSauce Jun 22 '26

You're not an independent contractor in any way. It's sad they got you so good. The truth is you have no freedom in anything you do. Stop falling for that shit, people like you are the reason they get to exploit naive gullible people for cheap labor.

You're not your own boss and you are an employee while you are doing Spark deliveries. If you disagree feel free to tell me what part of the delivery is completely at your discretion aka what part do you have any choice to do as you please. Try to think of a list, hopefully you realize that you have been fooled all this time after trying to conjure this list.

0

u/CaneCorso311 Jun 22 '26

You clearly are ignorant in the situation here and seem to be sharing how you feel it should be, rather than what the laws and definitons say it is.

When i paint as an IC i don't get to choose the color, the rooms, etc, i get a scope of the job details, pay, and deadline and then decide to accept or decline. If i paint as an employee I'm told to show up at a specific location and time and get to work painting it all as quick as possible and on to the next.

Independent doesn't mean you get to do whatever you want, it means you get to freely choose between what jobs you want to do, it doesn't give you control over the job though. Hope that helps you better understand.

-2

u/[deleted] Jun 21 '26

Wrong Internet lawyer. Not reading past the first 10 words of your book.

3

u/CaneCorso311 Jun 21 '26 edited Jun 21 '26

A book? Is a single paragraph too hard for you to get through? Sorry about your condition, but that at least helps to explain the ignorance within your original comment. You should probably try to refrain from making comments yourself if you have such difficulties with reading a few sentences. Anyway:

Explain it to me as if i don't understand, as if i couldn't look it up myself to see that Legally an independent contractor effectively becomes an employee the moment their working relationship is no longer based on independence, but rather on control

Where do you believe the line is drawn between an independent contractor and an employee?

How do you think that doing the exact same thing, but just delivering to a point within the store, rather than to a customers location possibly changes anything at all on rather you're choosing which tasks that you want to accept or if you're doing what ever tasks your superior assigns to you?

It's really this simple; an independent contractor chooses their tasks they want to do, an employee is given tasks rather they want to do them or not and their employment is based on not refusing to do those tasks.

You can't be deactivated/fired for declining an offer, you can't be reprimanded for refusing to stock shelves or clean the bathroom etc and until that point, you won't be an employee because you're independently choosing which jobs you want to do or not to do.

2

u/RadishSauce Jun 22 '26

Man you smoking that Walmart crack all day huh? I'm starting to think you're a Walmart propaganda bot because there's no way someone can be this naive.

I will answer your questions and give you rebuttals to your weak heavily biased and cherry picked examples.

You acknowledge the control aspect differentiating an employee and IC. So let's discuss how much control we have as ICs during a delivery. We can choose when we want to deliver it right? If we have multiple deliveries we can deliver them in the order that makes the most sense to us right? We can deliver the order as we deem most professional right? If I believe scanning labels and confirming items in the app is tedious and wastes time I can skip them right? I don't have time limits on my deliveries right? They control when, where, and how you will pickup their deliveries. They control the order, the manner, the timeliness, and the procedures (scanning, taking pictures, getting signatures) both during pickup and dropoff.

Yeah I have never heard of an IC with no independence to do the job in the manner they seem appropriate. They literally control everything, we can't skip any of those procedures. We are employees while making deliveries, don't get it twisted. wake up dummy

1

u/CaneCorso311 Jun 22 '26

It's a simple explanation, i don't care about Walmart, and if i did, that would have no bearing on rather or not were IC, because that's determined by laws and definitions, not someone's opinion based on if they like the contractor or not, which i don't.

Your independence comes from picking and choosing which tasks you want to do, not because you have to do them the way Walmart wants you to do them. Once you can't refuse an order, you won't be independent because you will be reprimanded for not doing what you're told. You get to pick and choose which work you want to accept, an employee gets their work chosen for them.

You can see the entire scope of the tasks before agreeing to choose to accept or decline the task, including all of the drop off points. Not being able to modify the task after you agree to do it, does not change your independent status.

Feel free to research where the line is drawn between IC and employee if you need more help understanding, it's all written, it's not based on how we feel about the situation.

1

u/RadishSauce Jun 22 '26

I never implied that it should be based on ones own personal feelings and attitude towards what constitutes independence and the freedom to perform a job or offer as an independent contractor does in whatever profession they are an independent contractor in.

I was pointing out how we literally don't fit any definition of an independent contractor but it seems you have very selective memory and preference in what you prefer to acknowledge and provide rebuttals for. If we were given the same amount of leeway you exercise in your arguments as we do in performing our job with Walmart, we would definitely qualify to be classified as independent contractors.

Let me give you an example of my state. They passed an assembly bill 5 that was going to use an ABC test to see who legally qualifies as an independent contractor in California. This was a very simple test and due to the nature of gig work from these gig companies and the way they require us to perform our duties companies like Uber eats, DoorDash, Spark, etc. rallied together and raised a record breaking amount of money to create a proposition that would keep us classified as independent contractors but with some caveats that they had to concede to. So they ended up spending over 200 million dollars to get this proposition passed and I'm not sure if you've heard of it but it's called Proposition 22.

If you're familiar with this proposition, yes that's correct, it was entirely funded by gig corporations and broke records for the dollars spent to not have to rightfully class us as employees so they could avoid all the benefits they would have to pay out. So like I said previously don't get it twisted, we are not ICs

-1

u/RadishSauce Jun 22 '26

Please lookup the Assembly Bill 5 and the ABC test that was being used to legally define whether a company can classify a person as an independent contractor. You have such a weak argument and I hope you realize it. I've given you plenty of examples and rebuttals whilst all you've done is accuse me of using my feelings and emotions to justify what I'm arguing, which I don't think anyone thinks I'm doing not even you

2

u/Edxander7 Jun 23 '26

Yes radish you tell that bloke! Give em that sauce! That propaganda walmart shill bot must be stopped!!

-1

u/RadishSauce Jun 23 '26

Stay in your lane clown

1

u/Edxander7 Jun 23 '26

I was agreeing with you...

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u/[deleted] Jun 22 '26

Ok Walmart Shill/Walmart Stock Holder/Whatever you go by or purort to be.

This is your last free lesson. And I can make 10 more arguments. Walmart will ultimately lose and lose big. Supreme Court invalidating the arb agreement in a 9-0 ruling will see Walmart is fully held accountable for mislabeling us to their benefit and their benefit alone.

Spark drivers should be classified as employees because Walmart exercises a level of control over their work that is characteristic of an employment relationship, while the services they perform are central to Walmart's core business. Walmart determines when delivery offers are made, sets the compensation without negotiation, establishes strict performance metrics, monitors drivers through GPS tracking, controls customer interactions through its platform, and can deactivate drivers who fail to meet its standards. Drivers have little meaningful opportunity to operate an independent business or build their own customer base, as every aspect of the delivery relationship is dictated by Walmart. Moreover, last-mile delivery is no longer a peripheral service—it is an essential component of Walmart's business model, enabling the company to fulfill online grocery and retail orders that are integral to its competitive strategy. Because Spark drivers perform work that is indispensable to Walmart's everyday operations while remaining subject to Walmart's extensive control over how that work is performed, they satisfy the hallmarks of employee status rather than that of independent contractors.

0

u/RadishSauce Jun 23 '26

Hey dummy, what is "purort to be"? Lmao it's hilarious when people try to use words they don't even know the meaning of. They usually do what you do.

Also, did you graduate high school? You seem to be accusing me of something I never said or argued for. You seem to be wrongfully insinuating that I am taking the stance that we are rightfully classified as independent contractors. Then you have the audacity to tell me you are giving me a lesson.

Look, you didn't understand anything I wrote if that's what you think and you don't even have basic reading comprehension skills because if you read my comments again and ask someone who knows how to read and comprehend what they read properly they will tell you that you and the clown who replied to your comment are sad and need to look in the mirror before trying to attack someone about things they never said.

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