Several delivery men at the doors of a restaurant, this Thursday in New York. SPENCER PLATT (Getty Images via AFP)
A judge in Manhattan this Friday blocked the implementation of a landmark law in the United States that sets a minimum wage for grocery delivery drivers. The ruling comes in response to a lawsuit filed the previous day by four distribution platforms against the City of New York, which alleges that the salary increase would result in higher costs for the restaurants and therefore for the customer. The new wage standard, passed last month thanks to the council’s impulse, would force the platforms DoorDash, Grubhub, Uber and Relay – the latter locally – to pay food delivery people $17.96 an hour and increase to that amount in 2025 raise $20. According to municipal estimates, delivery drivers currently make about $11 an hour. The four companies, working through apps, cover almost all grocery deliveries in the city.
There are around 65,000 delivery men, or deliveristas as they’re called in Spanglish, in New York, as most are Hispanic. They are the weakest link in the labor market: they do not give up work even under extreme circumstances, as shown by their non-stop activity during the pandemic, in the middle of the snow or with water at handlebar height in the periodic floods that hit the city. In October 2021, they received initial confirmation from the City Council, which set a minimum safety package for their jobs, including being able to use the restroom in the restaurants they serve. A year and a half later, on June 12, a minimum wage was introduced for workers connected to platforms and receiving jobs directly from the apps. They are the majority of those operating in the city. Currently, most of them also rely on the arbitrary tips of tips to round off wages.
Grocery delivery services filed for an injunction in the Manhattan Supreme Court on Thursday to prevent the changes from taking effect on July 12. “The entire law in the city is based on the false assumption that restaurants don’t make money from deliveries – this needs to stop. [su aplicación] before it harms the restaurants, consumers and couriers it’s supposed to protect,” Uber spokesman Josh Gold said in a statement Thursday. Distribution giants DoorDash and Grubhub filed a joint lawsuit. Uber presented its own, as well as Relay Delivery, the only local delivery. Regardless of this, the spokesmen for the first three platforms expressed their satisfaction with the verdict on Friday.
Five days after the law, which marked a step forward in the country, went into effect, Justice Nicholas Moyne of the Manhattan Supreme Court temporarily stayed its application for an unknown amount of time. The injunction reinforces the apps’ demands, according to the Los Deliveristas Unidos union. “It is clear that these multi-million dollar companies will do everything in their power to stop the 65,000+ couriers from doing so [dependientes] Platform workers earn a salary that allows them to live in New York. This legal maneuver to evolve their business model comes at the expense of workers who are struggling to live in a city facing an affordability crisis,” the union said in a statement, a day before court support for the demands was revealed. New York is the most expensive city in the USA and one of the three most expensive in the world.
“I think they will continue to do everything they can to pay the workers as little as possible, or at least to further delay the process,” said Ligia Guallpa of the NGO Proyecto Justicia Laboral, which promoted the municipal law. The City Council’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection has not been sparing in its criticism, both of the platforms’ claims and of the phrase, “By siding with Uber, Moyne’s order temporarily overturns the June 12 rule,” issued by the city Authority, her manager Vera Mayuga, said in a statement. “These apps currently pay workers well below minimum wage, and this wage increase would help lift thousands of hard-working New Yorkers and their families — mostly immigrants — out of poverty.
Gustavo Ajche, perhaps New York’s most well-known delivery man – who documents the harsh conditions of his trade on his social networks with photographs – has described the verdict as disappointing and sad. “These companies have the ability to pay the minimum wage proposed by the city, but they will continue to bend because they have the money and the power to do so,” explains Ajche, founder of Los Deliveristas Unidos. Record temperatures reached this week, with a thermometer exceeding 30 degrees Celsius and humidity exceeding 60%, add to the workers’ frustration. As Ajche recalled in a previous interview with that newspaper, the pandemic has pulled delivery men out of the shadows, who were then considered an essential workforce and are now being neglected and “doubly marginalized” by Judge Moyne’s decision. “We risk our health on the streets every day to serve New Yorkers,” he says.
It is no small battle, not even a repetition of David’s eternal struggle against Goliath. No matter how long the judicial deadlock lasts, the deliverists, as they are called, are a fundamental part of a productive process in which technology is shaping new economic realities, “a debate about the value and reward of work, a new scenario , that…” isn’t done with the drawing yet,” Hildaly Colón of the supply union recalled recently. It’s about the precarious working conditions in the so-called gig economy.
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