Doordash Customer Tips are on top of the Minimum Hourly Earnings Guarantee

With the Prop 22 victory in November of 2020, Dashers in California are guaranteed to earn hourly earnings of 120 percent of minimum wage for their active time. Beginning January 1, 2021, the minimum wage in most of California will be $14. The 120 percent rule guarantees that Doordash drivers will earn at least $16.80 per hour for active time. Dashers will also receive 30 cents per mile and all of the customer tips which will add to their overall earnings.

Dashers will keep 100 percent of customer tips

Do not let the tip factor confuse you in how your Dorodash earnings will be calculated under the new Proposition 22 rules. I have read a few places where it was stated that customer tips will be included in the minimum guaranteed hourly earnings. This is absolutely not true. It would make no sense if this were the case, and I'm sure a lot of people that voted yes on Prop 22 probably would have voted no if this were the case. It certainly would have made the Prop 22 voting much closer than what it was.

Part of the Prop 22 proposal was that drivers would be guaranteed 120 percent of minimum wage for active time (excluding tips) and 30 cents per mile. This means that customer tips have nothing to do with a Dashers minimum hourly earnings. Customer tips are on top of whatever a Dasher's base pay is plus their mileage reimbursement

Does this mean that Dashers will earn more with the Prop 22 rules?

I do believe that the majority of Dashers will overall earn more than what they did before. I make this statement from personal experience and from speaking to other Dashers. Just about every Dasher has had the unfortunate experience of sitting around with no calls coming in. A whole hour will go by with no call which means wasted time and no money earned. This is never a good thing, but fortunately for all of us, this does not happen very often.

I would say that 99 percent of the time Doordash keeps its drivers busy. Call after call will come in. The problem is that a lot of these calls will not pay very well and Dashers will decline these calls. By taking these cheap paying calls, a Dasher might only make $10 or less per hour.

If a Dasher takes two calls during an hour span, and each call pays $5, the Dasher will only earn $10. The Dasher will not receive any mileage reimbursement for the let's say 4 miles they drove, and the customer's tips were included in those $5 calls. Each of those calls paid $3 each and the customers tipped $2 each. When it's all said and done, the Dasher probably earned $8 for the hour after we figure out that it probably cost $2 of gas to make those deliveries.

Now, let's have the same scenario for a driver with the Prop 22 rules in place. Again, the Dasher makes two deliveries with each call paying $5. Let's change that to $3 each call though since we said that $2 of each call was from the customer tips. So the Doordash driver makes $6 for the hour. Doordash will then adjust this $6 into $16.80 because they have to guarantee their Dasher will earn 120 percent of minimum wage for their active time. The Dasher will also be reimbursed for their mileage. So 30 cents per mile for 5 miles driven is an extra $1.50 on top of the $16.80 which brings us to $18.30. The last thing we have to add in here is the customer's tips. Each customer tipped $2 so that is $4 of tips on top of everything else which makes the total earnings for the hour at $22.30.

As you can see, $22.30 of earnings is much better than $8. Remember that the guaranteed minimum is by no means a cap on what a Dasher can earn. It is just the minimum guarantee, and Dashers that know how to hustle will many times earn more than the guarantee. For example, if a Dasher completes two deliveries during his one hour of active time, and each call pays $10; he will have earned $20. Doordash will not have to adjust his pay as he earned more than the $16.80 minimum. Let's say he drove 6 miles. That would be $1.80 more for a total of $21.80 so far. Lastly, let's add his tips of let's say $6 and $4 for a total of $10 of tips. That gives a grand total of $31.80 for the active hour.