A Scooter Startup Ditches Its Gig Economy Mechanics

The scooter rental company Bird Rides Inc. has quietly begun abandoning its practice of paying independent contractors a per-vehicle rate to fix its scooters in several cities. In late February, mechanics working in San Diego received an email saying their services would no longer be needed, and that they should repair any vehicles in their possession and return them to the company immediately. This week, mechanics in Phoenix and the Los Angeles area said the feature in Bird’s app they used to find work had been unceremoniously disabled. “In order to better serve the community, we are expanding our in-house repair facilities,” the company explained in its email to mechanics in San Diego.

Over the last several years, many startups have pursued a controversial alternative to using employees to provide the services they’re selling. Instead, they establish short-term, smartphone-based labor marketplaces where workers compete to, say, drive someone across town, or deliver a burrito. Scooter companies have become one of the big new venues for such work, sometimes called the gig economy. As they spread electric scooters out across dozens of cities, companies like Bird and Lime began paying people a piecemeal rate to recharge them and, in Bird’s case, repair them. The company’s recent move illustrates the difficulties of such a decentralized operation, and the suddenness of the pivot also hits home the uncertain economic prospects for people relying on gig economy platforms for income.