Here’s an Electrifying Gig: Recharging Scooters for Extra Cash

Gig workers are flocking to Bird and other electric scooter rental companies that pay people to make sure the batteries are recharged daily.

Lime, another company that rents scooters through an app, says since February it has paid more than 10,000 “juicers” to collect the vehicles, charge them overnight, and return them to the streets by morning.

Recharging scooters, for which workers can earn anywhere from $5 to $20 per vehicle, is the latest example of technology creating new gigs. It follows in the path of Uber and Lyft, which let drivers choose when and for how long to work.

Santa Monica, Calif., resident June Caldwell goes “on juicing dates” with her husband to find and power up Lime scooters and earns approximately $60 per week, she told Bloomberg Law.

Both Caldwell and her husband have full-time jobs. She said they go out a few times a week and charge approximately six scooters at a time.

Variety Spices Up Options

Alternative forms of employment add variety to the job market, Quinn Mills, a Harvard Business School professor, told Bloomberg Law.

Many people want the flexibility of gig work, whether it’s an unusual schedule or an abbreviated number of hours, Mills said. Workers also want alternative pay arrangements and atypical types of work.

“As always, there is concern that workers can be exploited, but we have laws and processes to try to prevent or minimize this,” he said.

Some app-based career opportunities have massive earning potential, but they don’t often cater to those living outside of major cities, graduate student Jonathon Self told Bloomberg Law. Self collects and charges scooters in the area of the University of Oklahoma.

“I think it’s a great idea for grad students,” he said. “Our time is not free, but it is flexible.”

Should Benefits Be Mobile, Too?

Gig workers are independent contractors, so they don’t enjoy the protections given to employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act.

One measure that could prevent or minimize worker exploitation is sponsored by Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), who has lobbied for more research on the gig economy.

“New jobs that start to populate the economy seemingly overnight—jobs that did not even exist a year ago, like scooter chargers—are exactly why Senator Warner has advocated for the federal government to collect better data on the gig economy,” Rachel Cohen, a Warner spokesperson, told Bloomberg Law.

Portable benefits models are another way of supporting “the growing number of Americans engaged in alternative work arrangements,” Cohen said in an email.

“Workers, of all kinds, should have access to benefits that move with them from job to job and gig to gig,” she said.

Driver’s License Required

Both Lime and Bird require their scooters to be collected each night, for charging purposes and as a way to clear sidewalks after dark. Workers aren’t obligated to collect a minimum number of scooters, nor are they limited in how many they can bring in. But they must have a driver’s license.

Lime has more than 35,000 vehicles in its squadron, which includes electric scooters and bikes, as well as manual bikes, said Colin McMahon, whose title is head of juicer operations. A Bird spokesperson declined to comment on how many scooters are currently deployed nationally.

Both companies operate in dozens of U.S. cities, but their arrival in some places was somewhat rocky.

San Francisco’s city attorney sent cease-and-desist letters to Bird and Lime in April after the companies started operations there before the city created its pilot program, Bloomberg News reported.