New York City gig economy workers just scored a big win as NYC Mayor Eric Adams and the NYC Department of Consumer and Workers (DCWP) Announced on Sunday A new minimum wage of $17.96 an hour, effective July 12, for food delivery workers (via quartz). This wage will increase to $19.96 on April 1, 2025.
The new wage rate for workers is higher than the current minimum wage of $7.09 an hour, and when it reaches its full rate, it will be nearly three times the base wage of the city’s more than 60,000 food delivery workers, with inflation-adjusted annual increases. Lygia Gualpa, executive director of the Labor Justice Project, said in an email to: the edge“We are proud to have secured this historic victory for delivery workers. The more than 65,000 food delivery workers in New York City will finally get the pay raise they deserve, allowing them to better support themselves and their families after being denied a living wage for years.”
“We welcome this wage increase that many of our members have organized, so that this city begins to properly appreciate the work, experiences and risks of delivery workers,” said Kazi Fouzia, organizing director of Desis Rising Up & Moving (DRUM). “And we remain vigilant to ensure that delivery app companies do not maneuver to undermine workers by cutting hours, ordering orders, or exploiting other loopholes.”
The DCWP press release explained how the wage increase would work. Apps can either pay workers per trip, per hour worked, or come up with their own formula, as long as the result is a minimum wage of $17.96 an hour on average (up to $19.96 by April 2025). This works out to 30 cents per minute before tips for hourly workers or, if the app only pays with active flight minutes, roughly 50 cents per minute of flight time.
In April, DoorDash CEO Sasha Owen he said at a hearing On the subject that the new policy means “$33.27 per hour for platforms that select the flight time pay option”.
DoorDash’s director of public affairs, Eli Scheinholtz, reiterated the allegation in an email to the edge, Saying, “The end result of this end rule could result in a rate of $33 per hour during delivery—a rate of pay that far exceeds the standards that apply to nearly every other industry in New York City.” “Given the broken process that led to the maximum final minimum wage rule, we will continue to explore all paths forward — including litigation — to ensure we continue to better support Dashers and protect the resilience that many delivery workers like them depend on,” he said.
DoorDash estimation only works if you don’t account for the time Dashers wait idle, which DCWP found is about 40 percent (PDF) of their workday—in other words, using DoorDash’s figure, someone who puts six hours out of a 10-hour shift on trips will end up making less than $20 an hour. And as Scheinholtz noted, “It’s up to the companies to decide how they pay,” giving them alternatives to paying per minute of flight.
The new minimum wage comes after years of organized efforts by groups like Los Deliveras Unidos and the Workers’ Justice Project to increase their salaries. Originally, it would have been $25 an hour, but that was it Downgraded by DCWP in March to account for delivery workers making trips for multiple applications at once, a justification for the New York City Comptroller’s Office named “unsuitable.”
Deliveristas cite poor and often dangerous working conditions as well as the high cost of operating expenses in petition to raise the minimum wage, adding that the total expenses could be nearly $17,000 a year.
In 2021, Josh Dziza, the edge investigative editor, painted an in-depth picture of what delivery workers face in the city, a picture that shows workers delivering ice cream in a tornado, chasing bike thieves, or being cut down by knife-wielding assailants on the job.
Against the backdrop of regularizing temporary workers, this new regulation is an especially poignant victory. Efforts to improve conditions and pay these workers have gained momentum statewide, but saw some federal interest last year as the Federal Trade Commission said it would investigate the gig. Firms to set wages. New York City has a history of shaping the wage path of gig workers. In 2019, the city began requiring a similar pay increase for shared ride drivers.
In an email, Gustavo Ache, founder of Los Deliveristas Unidos, said: the edge that, regardless of legal action potentially coming from delivery companies, the group “will continue to organize people on the streets as we have done for 3 years” and added that Deliveristas are “committed to working with all agencies to continue to educate workers regarding safety and traffic laws”.
“Beer fan. Travel specialist. Amateur alcohol scholar. Bacon trailblazer. Music fanatic.”