City’s food delivery workers get long-sought minimum wage

The city’s app-based restaurant delivery workers will be earning at least $18 an hour, plus tips, starting next month following the establishment of the nation’s first-of-its-kind minimum pay rate. 

The delivery workers’ hourly wage will get bumped to $17.96, before tips, starting July 12, and $19.96 when the minimum wage is fully phased-in on April 1, 2025. The rate will be adjusted annually for inflation. 

Gustavo Ajche, one of the founders of Los Deliveristas Unidos, said at Sunday’s City Hall announcement that the effort to secure better pay for his colleagues had been an arduous one. 

“Our work has made many of these large corporations millionaires, based on our work, our hard work that we do every day on the streets of the city,” he said in Spanish. 

And while Ajche thanked city residents for their generosity regarding tips, he said it was impossible to make a living on those alone. “This fight began with a vision of bringing dignity and a better life for many workers since they cannot depend only on tips,” Ajche said. “But today that will change since we will have a decent wage and we deserve it because we do essential work to maintain the city.”

City officials said the city’s estimated 60,000 restaurant delivery workers now earn just over $7 an hour, without including tips and twice that with tips, according to a November report by the  Department of Consumer and Worker Protection. But their expenses — for their bikes, cars, cellphones and related items — total $3.06, reducing their take-home pay to about $11. 

The rule gives the app companies two ways to pay the delivery workers: per trip or per hour. They can also develop their own formulas, as long as their workers make the minimum pay rate of $19.96, on average. 

Council-enacted protections

The delivery workers, organized under the organization Los Deliveristas Unidos, have been campaigning for a minimum wage and increased recognition for several years. A massive organizing effort eventually led the City Council to pass a flurry of protections for the delivery workers in September 2021, also said to be among the first such safeguards in the nation. 

The regulations, which went into effect in April 2022, made the tipping mechanism more transparent, in part by better informing workers as well as customers how gratuities contribute to overall pay. Among the other bills, one gave deliveristas better access to restaurant bathrooms during their shifts while another gave the workers the option to take only those delivery trips they think are “safe and worthwhile,” and to set the parameters they are willing to travel. 

The commissioner of the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, Vilda Vera Mayuga, said the department will keep working with advocates and worker groups to educate the worker about the new rule and also ensure that the apps, among them Uber Eats, DoorDash and Grubhub, are complying, in part by having the apps submit detailed reports. 

“Ensuring these workers earn a dignified pay is an issue of equity. Like all workers, delivery workers deserve fair pay for their labor and to be able to support themselves and their loved ones,” she said at City Hall Sunday. 

Ligia Guallpa, the executive director of the Workers Justice Project, which helped organize Los Deliveristas Unidos in 2020, said the minimum wage rule represented “a historic moment” in the city’s history. 

But she cautioned that the app companies would find the rate “too extreme.”

“But what they won't tell you is that they force deliveristas, or delivery workers, to spend hundreds of dollars a month just so they can do this work,” Guallpa said at the announcement. 

At least two of the app-delivery companies, DoorDash, are pushing back on the new rule, calling it unsound at best and one suggesting it could face a court challenge. 

“Today’s deeply misguided decision by the DCWP ignores the unintended consequences it will cause and sadly will undermine the very delivery workers it seeks to support,” a company spokesperson said in a statement. “Given the broken process that resulted in such an extreme final minimum pay rule, we will continue to explore all paths forward — including litigation — to ensure we continue to best support Dashers and protect the flexibility that so many delivery workers like them depend on.”

The company, however, says it is not opposed to the establishment of what it calls minimum earning standards. 

A spokesperson with Uber said the city’s rule will ultimately cost the workers. 

"The city is lying to delivery workers — they want apps to fund this increase by eliminating jobs & reducing tipping while forcing the remaining workers to deliver orders faster," the spokesperson, Josh Gold, said in an email.

The Department of Consumer and Worker Protection last year proposed a minimum wage of $23.82 by 2025, but revised the figure downward, by about 16 percent, after finding that about 18 percent of the time delivery workers are “multi-apping,” meaning they take orders from multiple apps as a way to increase deliveries and their earnings. 

Mayor Eric Adams noted that app technology had reshaped the city’s food delivery landscape and its restaurant industry, with the delivery workers at the nexus. He alluded to the delivery workers’ status as independent contractors, who as a result are not afforded the protections and benefits of traditional employees and must also pay for their equipment, such as their bicycles, and their medical bills if they get hurt.

“Just as we fought for raises and will continue to do so for our union members, we are fighting for raises for this union organizing body that is here,” the mayor said. “The rise of delivery apps and services has created a new kind of workforce, and a new kind of workforce needs new policies and protections from our city government. Supporting them is a core part of our working people's agenda.”

richardk@thechiefleader.com