By Gregg McQueen
New York City has enacted a series of new protections for workers who deliver restaurant orders for third-party food delivery apps.
Effective April 22, delivery workers will receive pay on a weekly basis, can choose how far they’ll travel and what routes they’ll take, receive more information about deliveries before accepting them, and be provided with a free insulated delivery bag.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams and Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) Commissioner Vilda Vera Mayuga announced the new laws, the latest milestone in a legislative effort to improve labor conditions for delivery workers.
“As a blue-collar mayor, I am committed to ensuring every worker in this city has fair, equitable, and safe working conditions,” said Adams in a statement. “Delivery workers brave difficult conditions year-round, often for meager pay, simply to do their jobs. These hard-won protections are critically important to advancing worker justice and giving the more than 65,000 delivery workers across this city the dignity they deserve.”
Many food delivery workers — also known in some neighborhoods as “deliveristas” — lost their jobs when restaurants that employed them were forced to shutter at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
To continue earning pay, they turned to app-based delivery services such as GrubHub, UberEats, Seamless, and DoorDash. The city estimates that there are currently more than 65,000 app-based food delivery workers in the five boroughs.
Read more: New protections for food delivery workers | Bronx Free Press
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