Inside the fight to pay food delivery workers $ 23 an hour

NEW YORK>> William Medina, a delivery worker in Queens, waits for orders to trickle in from Doordash and Grubhub. Thirty minutes can go by without a single order. Sometimes an hour.

He gets paid by the order, so no order, no money.

“I’m always ready,” said Medina, 38, an immigrant from Colombia, who makes an average of $ 150 to $ 200, mostly in tips, for up to 12 hours of work.

Medina is one of more than 60,000 app- based food delivery workers who race across the city to serve hungry New Yorkers. Many put in long hours, while braving nasty storms, flooding, speeding drivers and thieves.

The workers banded together in the summer of 2020 as Los Deliveristas Unidos. Medina, who is an outspoken member, and his colleagues are demanding better pay and working conditions, arguing that they are part of a booming industry. Since delivery workers are independent contractors, they are not covered by minimum wage laws and basic employee protections such as workers’ compensation insurance.

Now, as a result of their efforts, Uber Eats, Grubhub, Doordash and other app services may soon have to pay workers such as Medina significantly more, as the city moves to regulate pay practices in the largest food delivery market in the country.

Under a proposal by the city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, the app services would be required to pay an average hourly rate of at least $ 23.82, not including tips, to delivery workers by 2025. The agency, which will hold a Dec. 16 hearing on the proposal, is expected to implement it early next year.

The minimum hourly rate would apply to a worker’s total “trip time” each week, which would be calculated from the moment a worker accepts an order to when the delivery is completed. It would include the time it takes to go to a restaurant and wait for the order, as well as any traffic delays. The rate would be phased in over two years, starting at $ 17.87 per hour next year.

The app services would also have to pay the minimum hourly rate on the total amount of “on- call time” that all the delivery workers collectively spend waiting for orders each week. However, the proposal currently leaves it up to each company to decide exactly how these payments would be made.

The city’s proposal has drawn criticism from the app companies, which warn that it would increase their labor and delivery costs, and could result in higher prices for customers and fewer orders for restaurants. They also say it would undermine a delivery system that allows workers to plan f lexible schedules.

Josh Gold, a spokesperson for Uber Eats, said the service would be forced to “aggressively manage supply and demand” to reduce waiting times for workers. He said that could mean limiting the number of people who could sign up for peak hours in popular neighborhoods.

“It’s going to create a different set of problems,” Gold said. “These workers are going to be pitted against each other to get the best time and location.”

New York’s pay proposal is part of a growing movement across the nation to address the plight of appbased workers, including Uber drivers and grocery delivery people.

In May, the Seattle City Council passed a “Pay Up” bill that requires app companies to pay per- minute and per- mile rates to delivery drivers, starting in 2023. The city previously mandated temporary pandemic “premium pay” of at least $ 2.50 per delivery.

In New York, the City Council approved a minimum pay standard for delivery workers last year as part of a groundbreaking package of bills that included a measure to allow workers to use bathrooms in restaurants and required app services to disclose their gratuity policies, while preventing them from charging workers fees to get their pay.

It was the second time the council had sided with the city’s growing numbers of app- based gig workers. In 2018, it passed a similar bill to establish a minimum pay standard for ridehail drivers. Since then, the city’s Taxi & Limousine Commission has significantly raised wages for Uber and Lyft drivers.

Currently, app- based food delivery workers earn an average of $ 14.18 an hour, split between tips and payments from the apps, according to a city report. But after accounting for their substantial work expenses, those earnings can drop to $ 11.12 per hour — or as little as $ 4.03 an hour without tips.