Food delivery apps are booming, but workers often struggle
Working conditions, pay among issues.
NEWYORK— When the pandemiclockdownled theManhattan restaurant where Natanael Evangelista was an employee to close for good, he quickly shifted to working for food delivery apps. He had few options. Hewas undocumented, did not speakmuch English and needed money badly. He owed months’worth of rent, and his family in Mexico needed help.
But he was worried. Two of his cousinswere alsodeliveryworkers — one had contracted the coronavirus and fallen into a coma, while the otherhadbeenassaultedand had his bike stolen.
With hundreds of thousands of NewYorkers out of work and the city’s unemployment rate at 13.2%, many desperate people have turned to working for food delivery apps like DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub, which have seen huge demand from customers whoareworking fromhome.
Whiledeliverydrivershave beenessential to feedingNew Yorkers and keeping them safe, their working conditions, already precarious before the pandemic, have gotten worse.
The recent surge in cases means greater risk of exposure traveling from restaurants to homes. Rising crime inNewYork City has also led to instances of assault and bicycle theft.
“Deliverywork is a dangerous business,” Evangelista, 27, said. “It’s veryworrying.”
Some workers also complain that many restaurants deny them the use of their bathroom out of health concerns, forcing them to carry plastic bottles.
Even as the food delivery companies have seen sales surge, the workers’ pay has remained erratic. Because the drivers are independent workers, they are not entitled to a minimum wage, overtime or any other benefits, likehealth insurance. Undocumented immigrants, who are not eligible for unemployment or federal coronavirus assistance, make up the bulk of theworkforce in New York.
The added competition fromthe surge in newworkers has compounded the financial challenges. While there are no precise figures, advocacy groups estimate that there were roughly 50,000 delivery workers before the pandemic — a number they say has grown exponentially. Uber alone said it had added 36,000 couriers in New York since March.
DoorDash and Uber said they hadprovided extra help to delivery drivers during the pandemic, including offering sick pay to those who had gotten the virus. DoorDash, the nation’s largest fooddelivery app, said it provided masks, gloves, hand sanitizer and wipes to drivers, aswell as access to lowcost telemedicine appointments.
“Since the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, we have taken action to protect and support Dashers who are on the front lines,” Becky Sosnov, a spokeswoman for DoorDash, said.
DoorDash said it had changeditspaymodel, which came under fire last year after it was revealed that tipswere being used to subsidize its payments toworkers. The company recently reached a $2.5 million settlement with prosecutors in Washington, D.C., after being accused of misleading consumers over how it tipped its workers.
At Uber Eats, “delivery people receive 100% of all tips,” Meghan Casserly, a spokeswoman for the company, said. She said Uber Eats has provided 10 million safety supplies— masks, wipes and hand sanitizer — to workers in the United States and Canada.
But workers interviewed for this article who drive for other food delivery apps said they still sometimes do not receive all of their tips.
Some food delivery apps say drivers can earn asmuch as $22 per hour, including tips, though many drivers said they never earned anywhere close to that much.
At a park onManhattan’s LowerEast Side, EdgarUsac, a delivery driver, waswaiting for orders on a recent Saturday. After fourhours, hesaid, he had made $11. Another driver, Elias Pacheco, 35, said: “I have made$32 so far. I started at 10:30 this morning.” It was 5 p.m.
Drivers for food delivery apps are typically paid per delivery depending on the estimated duration and distance of a trip, plus tips. Thework can be convenient for people supplementing a main source of income, but a struggle for thosewho depend on it as a primary job, advocates for theworkers said.
“The pandemic really exacerbated the challenges that these workers are facing and that they regularly face,” said Maria Figueroa, director of labor and policy research for the CornellUniversityWorker Institute. “In addition to getting low pay, they don’t get enoughwork from each of the applications, so they have to work for at least three or four of them, and there are more workers than the market can hold.”
Treating the drivers as essentially freelancers, Figueroa said, has allowed the food delivery apps to offset what have been thin profit margins by not having to pay for health insurance, retirement benefits or workers’ compensation for injuries on the job.
On good days, Evangelista makes roughly $ 100 after working five to six hours, but other days he can make as little as $42. In his old job, working in the kitchen of a restaurant in MidtownManhattan, he made about $15 an hour, he said.
Workers said food delivery appsdonot always givethem all of their tips, or sometimes deduct them fromtheir pay.
“They don’t think about you, your life, your bicycle,” said Otoniel Timoteo, 36, who turned to deliverywork in May after being laid off froma restaurant in Queens where heworked as awaiter. “We cannot make demands, otherwise they will block you. Butwe have no choice. How can we live?”
The New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission two years ago adopted a $17.22 per hour minimum wage for drivers for ride-hailing apps like Uber and Lyft, but it does not apply to delivery workers. Efforts in New York state to provide more rights to gig workers by reclassifyingthemasemployees have stalled in the Legislature.
In California, companies that employ gigworkerswon amajor victory on Election Day when voters approved a ballot referendum that allowed the companies to continuetreatingtheworkers as independent contractors.
Across the nation, the demand for takeout during the pandemic has been a boon for food delivery apps.
“The pandemic has certainly been a nice tailwind for revenue growth, and it has also helped them start to close the gap towards profitability in a speedier fashion,” said Tom White, a senior internet analyst at D.A. Davidson, awealthmanagement firm.
Uber’s delivery service brought in $1.45 billion in sales nationwide between July and September compared with $ 645 million during the same period last year.
DoorDash, which also owns another food delivery app, Caviar, reportedrevenue of $1.92 billion in the nine months through September, compared with $587 million for the same period last year, according to a prospectus filed earlier this year for its planned initial public offering. It recorded 543 million orders through September, compared with 181 million in the same period last year.