New York delivery workers, “up in the air” in the face of new salary rules

The New Yorkers They make about 100 million orders meal per year through a very simple process: they press a few buttons on an application and have it in their hands in about 30 minutes.

For delivery drivers, the process is anything but simple. And it’s only gotten more complicated since the city introduced a new wage standard designed to ensure they make at least $18 an hour. Some of the largest platforms, which opposed the change, responded by limiting their work hours, making it harder for customers to tip or changing how pay is calculated from week to week.

That left workers like Greiber Pineda trying to make sense of the hermetic changes.

Pineda initially earned so much from Uber Eats under the new wage system that when a blizzard hit New York City in January, he had reason to work 11 and a half hours straight, carrying 37 deliveries on his moped. “under rain, under snow, under cold, whatever there is”, said. A few days later, the platform changed its payment system and sent him $200 instead of the $300 he expected.

“But then when we get paid we are left in the air. Like, ‘What happened here?’”Pineda, who lives in Brooklyn, said in Spanish.

Frustrated, Pineda now dedicates more time to other secondary jobs. On a recent weekday morning, he sold coffee and arepas to other delivery drivers from Venezuela and Colombia outside a Chick-fil-A across the street from Brooklyn’s Barclays Center. Nearby, two Guinean workers changed the oil on a scooter while other workers from Latin America, China and Turkmenistan made deliveries for services such as Uber Eats, Grubhub and DoorDash. The city estimates that, like Pineda, the 39% of the delivery drivers speak Spanish “less than good.”

A few months ago, none of those workers earned an hourly wage. Like most delivery drivers in the United States, they logged into the apps whenever they wanted and earned money for each delivery. Some jobs were profitable. Others didn’t even cover the cost of fuel, but many said “Yeah” everything possible to have priority access to premium orders and other advantages in the platforms’ reward system.

That is no longer the case in New York, which on December 4 became the first large city to establish a minimum wage for food delivery drivers on digital platforms. Seattle followed suit in January with a similar law affecting all app-mediated jobs.

Before the change, the city surveyed its roughly 122,000 delivery drivers and found they earned an average of $14 an hour. Half of that came from tips and about $2 went to equipment and maintenance, especially for electric bikes and mopeds.

Exposed to deadly traffic and violent attacks, they did dangerous work, but they did not earn even the city’s minimum wage, which rose this year from $15 to $16.

“This is one of the ways, one of the few ways that the immigrant can use, at least in this city that is expensive”Pineda said.

Although some workers say they earn less under the new rules, labor organizers and companies say average earnings have increased. But platforms continue to cut costs and have the advantage of seeing their workers’ data as they determine how to do it.

“Delivery companies continue to undermine or attempt to undermine the minimum wage victory, being less transparent”said Ligia Gullalpa, executive director of the Workers Justice Project.

None of the large platforms operating in New York City responded to a request to provide detailed payment statistics. They defended reducing workers’ hours as key to reducing downtime, in line with the law’s incentives.

“Seattle and New York City did not think about the negative effects of their actions,” Uber Eats spokesperson Josh Gold said in an email, in which he said he believed there were better options to protect worker flexibility, such as a California law that classified people who work for these platforms as independent contractors.

DoorDash spokesperson Eli Scheinholtz called the two cities’ laws “extreme” and added in a statement that “The end result has been the same: higher rates for consumers, fewer orders for suppliers and less work for (deliverers).”

When the law went into effect in New York, those two services announced that customers in the city could no longer add a tip during the purchasing process, and instead the option would only be available after a delivery driver had been assigned to the service. order, in the case of DoorDash, or after delivery, on Uber Eats. The platforms also added additional fees to customers in New York starting at US$2. Fees to restaurants are limited to 23% of the order price.

The norm in New York allows companies to pay about US$30 an hour on average for the “active time” workers spend delivering orders, or $18 per hour on average for all the time they are online, which includes “passive time” waiting for an order. Platforms do not have to pay workers who do not make any deliveries. Firms can also decide retroactively which of the two calculations to use, so workers never know exactly how much they will be paid until a week later.

It was likely that change that left Pineda with less money after the January storm, according to notices and payment stubs shared with The Associated Press by him and other delivery drivers.

Seattle’s system only counts active time, which is paid at a minimum of 44 cents per minute, plus 74 cents per mile. In New York there is no payment for distance traveled.

“People depend on you, that you bring them their food”said Daniel Mendoza, who bought coffee and breakfast from Pineda and is also from Venezuela. “We make magic.”

Mendoza noted in February that the new system has been more profitable for him. But on March 4, Doordash made the same change as Uber Eats that had so angered Pineda. It’s impossible to know whether Mendoza’s income will go up or down, but it will be less predictable now.

In a statement, Doordash said the payment method it had used since December was unsustainable and that workers like Mendoza “They may also be eligible for additional weekly payment adjustments.”

GrubHub spokesperson Najy Kamal said in a statement that in total, delivery drivers earn more in both New York and Seattle and that the company is committed to complying with new payment rules.

Meanwhile, Pineda continues to make money the old-fashioned way. While he was serving delivery drivers outside Chick-fil-A recently, an employee of the fast-food chain stuck his head in the door and asked what kind of arepas he was carrying. Veal, Pineda’s girlfriend shouted back. “I’ll take two”he said while waiting for him to take them, in exchange for cash.