He works while others shelter in place during the coronavirus outbreak because, 'I don’t have the slightest safety net.'
Edan Alva was hard at work on Tuesday, while millions across the San Francisco Bay Area are supposed to stay indoors under strict orders to go out only for food, medicine and essentials in order to slow the coronavirus’s spread.
The Alameda resident makes between $35,000 and $45,000 a year, living in a studio apartment in a costly real-estate market with no sick days, no vacation days and a health-insurance plan that comes with a $100 co-pay and an $8,000 deductible. He also drives kids to and from school and does occasional security work. Both income sources have dried up for now because schools are closed and events are canceled.
Tipping seems to have dropped off, too, Alva said. “When people are miserable they just don’t tip. They just don’t think of it.” Alva noted that he’s had to buy his own cleaning supplies, and he’s around halfway through his Lysol spray RB, +2.70%. Alva visited a Lyft LYFT, -2.40% hub in Oakland on Friday and asked for more supplies. The people there told him they didn’t have any to offer. He was already angry he had to foot the bill on supplies. “Now I’m double pissed off because I simply can’t get them,” he said.
Alva is an activist with Gig Workers Rising, an advocacy organization pushing for more pay and benefits from companies like Lyft and Uber UBER, -6.80%. California is implementing a new law that makes it tougher for companies to deem someone an independent contractor instead of an employee entitled to benefits like minimum hourly wages and worker’s compensation.
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