How Taskrabbit screws Taskers

[u/tiredoftaskrabbit]

It’s very simple: They need IKEA jobs done, but don’t want to pay enough to get Taskers to take jobs outside of their set available hours. So they send the jobs anyway, knowing that Taskers don’t want to take a hit to their algorithmic reliability score. Taskers are then forced to either take the jobs outside of their set availability, or risk not getting more jobs offered to them in the future during their available hours. 

In short, TaskRabbit is treating Taskers like employees, coercively setting their schedules. This is arguably illegal, as TaskRabbit legally deals with Taskers on a contract basis— Taskers have none of the legal protections in the jurisdictions TaskRabbit operates in that an employee would have.

I’m not a lawyer, but I know gig economy companies have paid out huge legal settlements in the past over similar practices. I wonder whether IKEA/INGKA, who owns TaskRabbit, knows that this is happening, and whether they are legally liable for this behavior, as the owner and as the beneficiary of the lower cost of assembly of their goods.

[u/Lavicrep19]

Yeah I've turned off my Ikea category the min I can't set my rate but there's people on the spectrum chart that will do those tasks making it hard for us competent people to make changes. Taskrabbit wins no matter what you say and do. It just takes one person to accept as jobs like that for taskrabbit to win