12.06.2021 12:18 PM
For a new service in Manhattan, the couriers will cross paths with the company's traditional gig worker contractors, who generally aren't eligible for benefits.
DoorDash said Monday it’s doing something different in New York City: It’s hiring about 60 delivery people as employees, rather than independent contractors. The couriers will travel by electric bicycle to make quick deliveries—within 10 to 15 minutes—in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. The service marks DoorDash’s first foray into a new category of “instant” app-enabled delivery. A handful of competing companies, including European-backed startups Gorillas, Buyk, and Jokr, have been operating in New York since late summer, and have also hired couriers as employees to fulfill their fast deliveries.
DoorDash, like other “gig economy” companies that emerged in the 2010s, usually relies on an army of gig workers to make deliveries. Drivers or cyclists sign in to the app to work when they want, and sign off when they want, a flexibility that DoorDash says is attractive to most of its couriers. Ninety percent of these “Dashers” work fewer than 10 hours per week, according to Max Rettig, the company’s vice president of global policy. But they get few of the traditional protections of employment: health insurance, workers’ compensation, paid time off, or eligibility for unemployment benefits....
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