![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Push-polling
I got a phone call the other day on the land line (which fairly reliably means spam) that purported to be a public-opinion poll. I wasn't doing anything else urgent, just suffering through a COVID-induced headache and upset stomach, so I decided to answer it. After a few of the standard questions about political affiliation and the cost of living, the questions got weirdly specific, all about a bill before the City Council that would extend NYC's existing minimum-wage law to grocery-delivery workers, who evidently are currently exempt. I had never heard of this bill, and had no particular opinion on it -- which I guess is the point of push-polling, to feed people an opinion about something they previously didn't care about.
A bit of background, for those of you not living in NYC: even before COVID, it was possible in many parts of NYC to walk to the grocery store, pick out your groceries, pay for them, walk home, and have a spry teenager from the grocery store deliver them to your door half an hour later. This is valuable for sick, elderly, and physically-handicapped people living alone, particularly in walk-up apartments. And there are lots of such people in NYC.
The argument of the "poll" appeared to be that if grocery-delivery workers are paid the same minimum wage as fast-food delivery workers, then the sick, elderly, and physically-handicapped will have to pay more for the basic necessities of life. Which is plausible, particularly since many of the grocery stores in NYC are independent or regional-chain rather than national-chain, and perhaps less able to absorb an increase in labor costs. (There's a Stop-N-Shop a mile and a half away, but the three nearer groceries that I use more often are all names you wouldn't recognize unless you're from NYC.) The bill's opponents offer a "more moderate" alternative that applies the minimum wage only to time that the workers are directly shopping or transporting groceries, not when they're using the app to get their next assignment. (I have no idea how difficult that would be to implement, or how much price difference it would make; I assume it's just the usual divide-and-conquer tactic intended to prevent either bill from getting majority support.) Mention of "the app" suggests that they're really talking about national-chain delivery services like FreshDirect, since the independent corner grocery probably doesn't have its own app.
So: was this really a push-poll intended to get me to oppose the bill? Was it a push-poll intended to get me to react negatively and support the bill? And what about Naomi?
A bit of background, for those of you not living in NYC: even before COVID, it was possible in many parts of NYC to walk to the grocery store, pick out your groceries, pay for them, walk home, and have a spry teenager from the grocery store deliver them to your door half an hour later. This is valuable for sick, elderly, and physically-handicapped people living alone, particularly in walk-up apartments. And there are lots of such people in NYC.
The argument of the "poll" appeared to be that if grocery-delivery workers are paid the same minimum wage as fast-food delivery workers, then the sick, elderly, and physically-handicapped will have to pay more for the basic necessities of life. Which is plausible, particularly since many of the grocery stores in NYC are independent or regional-chain rather than national-chain, and perhaps less able to absorb an increase in labor costs. (There's a Stop-N-Shop a mile and a half away, but the three nearer groceries that I use more often are all names you wouldn't recognize unless you're from NYC.) The bill's opponents offer a "more moderate" alternative that applies the minimum wage only to time that the workers are directly shopping or transporting groceries, not when they're using the app to get their next assignment. (I have no idea how difficult that would be to implement, or how much price difference it would make; I assume it's just the usual divide-and-conquer tactic intended to prevent either bill from getting majority support.) Mention of "the app" suggests that they're really talking about national-chain delivery services like FreshDirect, since the independent corner grocery probably doesn't have its own app.
So: was this really a push-poll intended to get me to oppose the bill? Was it a push-poll intended to get me to react negatively and support the bill? And what about Naomi?
no subject