Up to 70% of Instacart couriers in the US and Canada could walk off the job this weekend, demanding at least a 10% default tip, commissions, and pay by order
Tara Deschamps / Canadian Press :
Context & Ripple Effects
This weekend's walkoff threat is the second time Instacart's courier base has organized at national scale: workers threatened a nationwide strike in March 2020 over hazard pay and protections, and in 2016 a strike threat forced the company to scrap its plan to eliminate tips. The demands now — a 10% default tip, commissions, and pay by order — reach back further still, to the 50% commission cut and drop-off fee reductions of early 2016 that reset courier earnings.
The timing matters because Instacart is not a distressed company: it just reported Q2 revenue of $1.04B on GTV of $10.35B, both up 14% year over year, and forecast third-quarter GTV and core profit above analyst estimates. A labor action touching up to 70% of US and Canadian couriers lands against a company guiding upward.
First-order effects
- If even part of the 70% walks this weekend, order fulfillment capacity contracts sharply during a peak-demand period, hitting Instacart's Q3 GTV trajectory right after management guided above estimates.
- Instacart faces direct pressure to change its default tip setting and restore commission-based or per-order pay structures — concessions it has made before under strike threat, as with the 2016 tip reversal.
Second-order effects
- Competing delivery platforms become the immediate fallback for striking couriers, giving rivals a recruiting window for experienced shoppers without acquisition cost.
- Retail partners whose shelves Instacart fulfills face weekend fulfillment gaps, strengthening their argument for diversified fulfillment options beyond a single gig platform.
Third-order effects
- A repeatable pattern is forming where gig-platform labor actions target algorithmic pay settings — default tips, per-order rates, commissions — rather than wages, pushing platforms toward more transparent and negotiable pay formulas.
- If courier actions keep recurring at scale while the company posts double-digit growth, regulators scrutinizing gig work classification gain concrete evidence that platform pay structures are contested by the workforce itself.
The trend: Gig delivery labor is shifting from one-off protest strikes toward sustained bargaining over the pay algorithms themselves — tips, commissions, per-order rates — as platforms' growth makes them harder to dismiss.