NEW YORK — New Yorkers place more than 100 million food delivery orders each year using a simple process: They press a few buttons on an app and have it in their hands in about 30 minutes.
For delivery drivers, the process is not easy at all. And it has become more complex since the city instituted a new wage formula designed to ensure they make at least $18 an hour.
Some of the largest app platforms, which opposed the change, responded by limiting workers’ hours, making it harder for customers to tip and changing how pay is calculated from week to week.
That has left workers like Greiber Pineda struggling to navigate opaque changes.
Pineda initially earned so much from Uber Eats under the new wage system that when a snowstorm hit New York City in January, he was motivated to work 11 and a half hours straight, transporting 37 meals on his moped “through the cold.” , the snow, everything.” A few days later, the app changed its payment system: it sent him around $200 instead of the $300 he expected.
“When they paid us we were in the air, like ‘What happened here?’” Pineda, of Brooklyn, said in Spanish.
Frustrated, Pineda now spends more time on secondary activities. On a recent weekday morning, he sold coffee and arepas to fellow delivery drivers from Venezuela and Colombia outside a Chick-fil-A across from Brooklyn’s Barclays Center stadium. Nearby, two workers from Guinea changed the oil on a scooter, while others from Latin America, China and Turkmenistan picked up orders from apps such as Uber Eats, Grubhub and DoorDash. The city estimates that, like Pineda, 39% of delivery drivers do not speak English very well.
A few months ago, none of these workers earned an hourly wage. Like most food delivery drivers in America, they logged into apps whenever they wanted and made money by taking individual delivery jobs. Some jobs made financial sense. Others may not even cover the cost of gas, but many workers said “yes” as often as possible to get priority access to premium orders or other in-app benefits.
That’s no longer the case in New York, which became the first major city to institute a minimum wage for app-based food delivery workers on December 4. Seattle followed in January with a similar law that extends to almost all app-mediated work.
WHY DID NEW YORK MAKE THE CHANGE?
Before the change, New York City surveyed its roughly 122,000 delivery workers and found they earned $14 an hour on average. Half of that came from tips and about $2 went toward equipment and maintenance, mostly for electric bikes and mopeds.
Exposed to deadly traffic and violent attacks, they worked dangerous work, but they didn’t even earn the city’s minimum wage, which increased from $15 to $16 this year.
“This is one of the few ways an immigrant can get ahead, at least in this city, which is expensive,” Pineda said.
While some workers say they earn less under the new rules, labor organizers and app companies say average earnings have increased. But apps continue to cut costs and have the advantage of seeing their workers’ data while they figure out how to do it.
“Delivery companies continue to undermine or attempt to undermine the minimum wage victory by being less transparent,” said Ligia Gullalpa, executive director of the Labor Justice Project.
COMPANY REACTIONS
None of the major app companies operating in New York City responded to a request for detailed salary 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 impacts of their actions,” Uber Eats spokesman Josh Gold said in an email, adding that he believes there are better options to protect workers’ flexibility, such as a California law that recategorized freelancers as independent contractors.
DoorDash spokesman Eli Scheinholtz in a statement called the laws in both cities “extreme,” adding that “the end result has been the same: higher fees for consumers, fewer orders for merchants and less work for customers.” Dashers.”
HOW DO APP CHANGES WORK?
When the law went into effect in New York, both apps announced that customers in the city could no longer add a tip during the checkout process, instead making it available only after a driver had been assigned in the case of DoorDash. , or after the food was delivered for Uber Eats.
The apps also added additional fees for New York City customers, starting at around $2. Restaurant fees are capped at 23% of the purchase price.
The New York City rule allows apps to pay about $30 per hour on average for the “uptime” workers spend delivering orders, or $18 per hour on average for all the time they stay online, including “passive time” spent waiting for a work call. Apps don’t have to pay workers who don’t make deliveries. Companies can also retroactively decide which of the two calculations they will use, so delivery drivers never know exactly what they are being paid for until a week later.
This change is likely why Pineda ended up with a lower salary after the January storm, according to pay stubs and notices shared with The Associated Press by him and others.
Seattle’s system only counts active time, paid at a minimum of 44 cents per minute, plus 74 cents per mile. In New York City, miles are not paid.
“People depend on you to bring them food,” said Daniel Mendoza, a delivery driver who receives coffee and breakfast from Pineda, and is also from Venezuela. “We make magic.”
Mendoza said in February that the new system had been more lucrative for him.
But on March 4, Doordash made the same change that Uber Eats made that infuriated Pineda. It’s impossible to say whether Mendoza’s salary will increase or decrease, but it will be less predictable.
In a statement, Doordash said the payment method it had used since December was unsustainable and that workers like Mendoza “may also qualify for additional weekly wage adjustments.”
GrubHub spokesperson Najy Kamal said in a statement that delivery drivers are earning more overall in both New York and Seattle, and that the company is committed to meeting the new wage standards.
Meanwhile, Pineda continues to make money the old-fashioned way. While he was serving delivery drivers near Chick-fil-A recently, a worker from the fast-food chain stuck his head in the door and shouted, asking what kind of arepas he had. Beef, Pineda’s girlfriend shouted.
“I’ll take two,” he said, waiting for her to give them to him, in exchange for bills.
2024-03-06 20:32:02
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