Why some gig workers are struggling to access their COVID sick pay

Sick pay — and workers’ ability to access it — has never been a more pressing issue. But an entire demographic of contributors is being left out of the conversation.

In March 2020, food delivery service DoorDash launched its COVID-19 Financial Assistance Program, offering DoorDash drivers retroactive sick pay if they can provide a positive COVID test result. But some couriers have struggled to secure their compensation due to the lengthy test-validation process, as recently reported by Reuters. It’s a problem emblematic of the challenges gig workers nationwide have faced throughout the pandemic.

“Dashers are no different than any other gig worker,” says Matt Spoke, CEO of Moves Financial, a platform and app that provides gig workers with financial guidance and benefits. “Accessing their money is critically important. People live day to day or week to week, and having to wait three weeks to get a payment is unforgivable.”

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Spokes says that his team has also heard from some Dashers, who have reported delayed assistance payments and have even had their drivers’ accounts suspended. That can put even more of a financial strain on the gig workers that lack employee benefits, and can drive them to make decisions that put them and the public at risk.

“What's missing from this story to me is the number of Dashers that didn't stay at home when they should have because they had COVID, but they didn't want to take the risk of losing their pay,” Spoke says. “If they know they're going to go days or weeks without money, they might get out of bed and still get into their car sick because they can't afford that.”

The program itself, Spoke notes, is a step in the right direction. But if companies are going to try and generate solutions for gig workers, they have to be prepared to follow through with them.

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In an effort to bring additional support to drivers, Moves Financial provides up to $1,000 in interest-free cash advances, a provision that came long before the pandemic but has proved useful for workers suffering from a lack of sick pay. But that’s not a sustainable long-term solution, and companies will have to continue to dedicate time and resources to ensure that policies like DoorDash’s succeed to address the problem at hand.

“If you promise money but it takes four weeks to get it, you may as well have not promised the money — it's irrelevant,” Spoke says. “We were on our way to a viable solution [with the COVID-19 Financial Assistance Program] but it's making sure that the policies you put forward do for gig workers what they’re supposed to.”