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Instacart lawsuit settlement overview:Â
- Who: Instacart has agreed to pay $45 million to resolve claims brought against it by the city of San Diego.Â
- Why: The city of San Diego claimed Instacart misclassified its delivery workers as independent contractors in order to avoid paying them benefits and legal protections that are afforded to an official employee.Â
- Where: The lawsuit was filed in the Superior Court for the State of California.Â
Instacart has agreed to pay $45 million in a settlement made to resolve claims the company misclassified more than 300,000 of its delivery workers as independent contractors over a period of five years.Â
The lawsuit was brought against Instacart by the city of San Diego, which argued the company had violated California’s labor code by allegedly misclassifying its delivery workers by not giving them employee status.Â
The agreement will cover an estimated 308,000 Instacart delivery workers who made deliveries for the company between September 2015 and December 2020, according to a news release.Â
Restitution funds will be divided up amongst the Instacart delivery workers based on the number of hours they worked during the time period when they were allegedly being misclassified under the state labor code.Â
Instacart denies any wrongdoing while agreeing to settle claims
Instacart has denied any wrongdoing and continues to maintain it has at all times correctly classified its delivery workers, according to the news release.Â
No less than $37 million of the restitution fund will be paid to the allegedly misclassified Instacart delivery workers, while the company will also pay $250,000 in order to cover the initial administration costs.Â
An additional $6 million in civil penalties will be paid to the city attorney’s office, according to the news release.Â
The city of San Diego initiated the complaint against Instacart in 2019, accusing the company of misclassifying its delivery workers as independent contractors so it would not have to provide them with benefits, certain pay and legal protections.Â
Amazon was hit with a class action lawsuit in September 2021 by a warehouse worker claiming the company does not pay proper minimum wage since it allegedly refused to compensate its warehouse workers for time spent doing mandatory security screenings.Â
Have you been misclassified by your employer? Let us know in the comments.Â
The city of San Diego is represented by Mara W. Elliott, Mark Ankcorn and Kevin B. King of the Office of the City Attorney.
The Instacart worker misclassification lawsuit is The People of the State of California v. Maplebear Inc., Case No. 37-2019-00048731, in the Superior Court for the State of California.Â
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18 thoughts onInstacart agrees to settle San Diego lawsuit, pay restitution to contractors
Funny that they’ll settle this for almost $50M, yet more than 3 years later, shoppers remain misclassified.
BTW, if you are currently a shopper you might want to read your TOS. Unless you opted out in writing within 30 days of starting with IC, you are contractually obligated to settle grievances through arbitration. IC is well within their rights to deactivate shoppers who participate in class action suits. I’ve heard of folks who got a settlment check for less than a half a week’s pay, and it was the last dime they ever saw from IC.
That is not true that you’ll be deactivated if you receive settlement funds. I’ve been through 4 to 5 class action lawsuits through the eight years I’ve been with instacart and that rumor has been floating around from people who are upset that they didn’t get a check. That is another whole lawsuit that Instacart doesn’t want and why would they deactivate every shopper?
I’ve already checked with instacart & it’s not true. I just received a $16000.00 check last month from the city of San Francisco settlement & I work closely with corporate. You will not be deactivated. I’m still working as we speak. Instacart has no plans of firing every worker that they have on their workforce. All 5,000 workers who just received our settlement in SF are still active workers. If anyone was deactivated it was because of poor performance. You might want to talk to a labor lawyer if you don’t believe it.
Please contact me in regards to Instacart I have a really good case I’m sure.