Since the beginning of the pandemic, food delivery workers on bikes have become even more ubiquitous features of the New York City streetscape, earning low wages and often braving horrendous weather, hazardous streets and the threat of robbery to bring people their takeout orders at all hours of the day.
On Thursday, the city became the first in the nation to take aggressive steps to improve those employees’ working conditions, approving a groundbreaking package of legislation that will set minimum pay and address the plight of couriers employed by app-based food delivery services like Grubhub, DoorDash and Uber Eats.
The legislation, which has the support of Mayor Bill de Blasio, is the latest and most broad example of the city’s efforts to regulate the multibillion dollar industry. While other cities have taken steps to restrict the food delivery apps, no city has gone as far as New York, which is home to the largest and most competitive food delivery market in the country.
The vote comes at a time when the food delivery industry has exploded as restaurants have relied increasingly on delivery services to survive during the pandemic. The number of delivery workers, most of them immigrants, has risen to over 80,000, according to the city, yet their working conditions remain difficult at best and horrendous at worst.
Those conditions captured the city’s attention a few weeks ago when the remnants of Hurricane Ida hit the city, and scenes of food delivery workers traversing flooded streets to deliver meals stirred outrage.
A survey of 500 app food delivery workers by the Worker Institute at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations and the Workers Justice Project found that 42 percent of workers had experienced being underpaid or not paid at all. Nearly half said they had crashed while delivering food and 75 percent of those said they used their own money to pay for their medical care. Fifty-four percent reported being robbed and 30 percent said they were assaulted during the robbery.
Corey Johnson, the City Council speaker, said that the package of legislation would give workers the “rights they deserve” and that he was optimistic it would spark a national movement to improve conditions for app-based delivery workers.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if some of the large, multibillion dollar corporations that are making a lot of money in New York City try to stop this,” Mr. Johnson said at a news conference before the vote. “My hope is that other cities will actually take action and other cities will join New York City in providing protections for delivery workers.”
The legislation prevents the food delivery apps and courier services from charging workers fees to receive their pay; makes the apps disclose their gratuity policies; prohibits the apps from charging delivery workers for insulated food bags, which can…
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