A Manhattan judge has blocked this Friday the application of a pioneering law in the US that sets a minimum wage for food delivery drivers. The ruling responds to the lawsuit filed the day before against the city of New York by four distribution platforms, considering that the salary increase would result in a higher cost for the restaurants and, consequently, for the client. The new salary standard, approved last month thanks to the impulse of the council, would force the DoorDash, Grubhub, Uber and Relay platforms -the latter, local- to pay food delivery drivers $17.96 per hour and increase that amount to $20 in 2025. Delivery drivers currently earn about $11 an hour, according to municipal estimates. The four companies, which work through apps, cover almost all food deliveries in the city.
In New York there are about 65,000 delivery people, or deliverists, as they are called in Spanglish, since the majority are of Hispanic origin. They are the most vulnerable link in the labor market: they do not stop working even in extreme circumstances, as demonstrated by their incessant activity during the pandemic, in the middle of the snow or with water at handlebar height in the periodic floods that loom over the the city. In October 2021, they received a first endorsement from the City Council, which established a minimum safety package for their work, including being able to use the bathroom in the restaurants they serve. A year and a half later, on June 12, a minimum wage was added for workers attached to platforms, who receive orders directly through the apps. They are the majority of those who operate in the city. Currently, most of them also depend on the arbitrariness of tips to round out the wages.
Food delivery services filed for a temporary restraining order with the Manhattan Supreme Court on Thursday to prevent the changes from taking effect on July 12. “The entire law in the city hinges on the false assumption that restaurants don’t make money from delivery – it must be stopped. [su aplicación] before harming the restaurants, consumers and couriers it purports 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 did Relay Delivery, the only local one. Separately, spokespersons for the first three platforms expressed their satisfaction with the ruling on Friday.
Five days after the entry into force of the law, which was an advance in the country, Judge Nicholas Moyne, of the Manhattan Supreme Court, has temporarily suspended its application, it is unknown for how long. The temporary order reinforces the demands of the apps, according to the Los Deliveristas Unidos union. “It is clear that these multi-million dollar companies will do everything in their power to prevent the more than 65,000 couriers from [dependientes] platform workers earn a salary that allows them to live in New York. This legal maneuver to move forward with their business model comes at the expense of the workers, who can barely live in a city with an affordability crisis,” the union said in a statement, the day before judicial support for the demands was known. New York is the most expensive city in the US and is among the three most expensive in the world.
“I think they will continue to do everything they can to pay workers as little as possible, or at least to continue delaying the process,” said Ligia Guallpa of the NGO Proyecto Justicia Laboral, which sponsored the municipal law. The council’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection has not spared criticism both of the platforms’ demands and of the sentence: “By siding with Uber, Moyne’s order temporarily annuls the rule of June 12” approved by the municipal agency, its manager, Vera Mayuga, said in a statement. “These apps currently pay workers well below the 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 the best-known delivery man in New York -he photographically documents the harsh conditions of his trade through his social networks-, has described the ruling as disappointing and sad. “These companies have the ability to pay the minimum wage that the city proposed, but they will continue to bend their arm because they have the money and the power to do so,” explains Ajche, founder of Los Deliveristas Unidos. The record temperatures reached this week, with the thermometer above 30 degrees Celsius and humidity levels exceeding 60%, add anger to the frustration of the workers. As Ajche recalled in a previous interview with this newspaper, the pandemic brought the delivery men out of the shadows, then considered essential workers and today neglected, “and doubly marginalized”, by Judge Moyne’s decision. “We risk our health on the streets every day to serve New Yorkers,” he stresses.
It is not a minor fight, not even a repetition of the eternal fight of David against Goliath. Regardless of how long the judicial blockade lasts, the deliverists, as they are called, are a fundamental part of a productive process in which technology is shaping new economic realities, “of a debate on the value and consideration of work, a new scenario that has not yet been fully drawn,” he recently recalled Hildaly Colón, from the delivery union. It is sum, about the precariousness of working conditions in the so-called gig economy.
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