Instacart workers say they are planning a nationwide strike from Monday after the company failed to offer protections like hazard pay, sanitizer, and paid leave
workers plan to strike (Update: Instacart responds) Bryan Pietsch / Business Insider : Instacart workers are planning to strike until the company gives them hazard pay and safety gear Christine Fisher / Engadget : Instacart workers will strike over lack of COVID-19 protections Tweets: Michael Arrington / @arrington : If your employer (In this case Instacart) can't give you basic safety tools and you stop working, it's not a strike. It's common sense. https://www.techmeme.com/... Ian Bassin / @ianbassin : Was using @Instacart but will stop unless they treat their workers better. Grocery delivery workers are the hero first responders of the #covid crisis & deserve protections. @Instacart will make a fortune off the crisis bc of these workers. https://medium.com/... Cyrus Farivar / @cfarivar : @hashtagmolotov Earlier this week, @apoorva_mehta announced he was going to hire 300,000 MORE workers to try to keep up with the surging demand. Here's what @hashtagmolotov and the other strike leaders are saying: https://medium.com/... https://twitter.com/... @iww : Gig workers of the world, unite! Strike while the iron is hot. https://www.vice.com/... Astra Taylor / @astradisastra : 110% behind this. https://twitter.com/... Nandini Jammi / @nandoodles : I expect the effects of this strike will soon be felt across the gig economy. Not in the least because @hashtagmolotov is a fearless leader, writing the playbook for fellow gig workers. https://twitter.com/... Goth Ms. Frizzle / @spookperson : I use instacart because I don't have access to a grocery store near me and don't have a car and they pay their employees so little I always tip cash to compensate this absolutely rules and I definitely stand with them https://twitter.com/... Rep. Ro Khanna / @reprokhanna : I've used Instacart, and am absolutely standing with every employee in demanding effective safety measures, fair compensation, and sick leave https://twitter.com/... Christopher Ryan / @thatchrisryan : This is an EXCELLENT time to negotiate for better conditions. Nurses, doctors, home care providers, first responders should all be making serious demands. https://twitter.com/... Jason Koebler / @jason_koebler : SCOOP: Instacart shoppers are planning a massive, nationwide strike on Monday because of the company's terrible response to coronavirus https://www.vice.com/... Rachel Cohen / @rmc031 : Instacart shoppers are planning a nationwide strike on Monday until the company agrees to its safety demands https://www.vice.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
The strike call lands at the peak of pandemic demand: per the related coverage, Instacart had just added 300K shoppers in eight weeks and posted its first-ever monthly profit of $10M in April, so shoppers withholding labor are hitting the service exactly when order volume makes their absence most visible. The demands are specific — hazard pay, sanitizer, and paid leave — rather than a general wage ask.
What came before matters for what follows: Instacart promised safety kits on April 2 but delivery lagged, with the company capping daily kit orders and workers publicly frustrated by the delay (safety-kit delays). That gap between promise and delivery turned a one-week action into a template other essential-workforce strikes would copy within weeks.
First-order effects
- Instacart shoppers stop fulfilling orders starting Monday, directly straining a service riding record pandemic demand and its first profitable month ($10M in April per Bloomberg coverage in the corpus).
- Public-facing customers begin defecting or threatening to — the corpus captures prominent users like Ian Bassin saying they will stop using Instacart unless worker treatment changes, adding reputational cost on top of operational disruption.
Second-order effects
- The action scales beyond one platform: by May 1, workers at Amazon, Whole Foods, FedEx, Target, and Walmart join a coordinated strike over workplace safety (the May 1 cross-company strike), showing Instacart's grievance list becoming a shared playbook for essential retail and logistics workers.
- Instacart is forced into reactive concessions — the April 2 safety-kit pledge and its capped daily distribution — which then becomes its own flashpoint when fulfillment lags, locking the company into a cycle of promise-and-delay that keeps the dispute alive.
Third-order effects
- Gig-platform labor disputes shift from episodic complaints to recurring collective actions with specific, negotiable demands — the pattern holds through 2021, when up to 70% of US and Canada couriers threaten another walkoff over default tips, commissions, and pay structure (the 2021 courier walkoff threat).
- If the pattern holds, pay and safety terms for app-based grocery work get set through repeated public pressure campaigns rather than employer policy alone, making labor relations a standing operating cost for gig platforms rather than an occasional crisis.
The trend: Essential gig and retail workforces are converting pandemic-era safety grievances into coordinated, recurring strike actions that force platforms to negotiate pay and protection terms in public.