App-based delivery workers and their advocates who testified at a hearing to increase their minimum wage on Friday said corporate scare tactics were pushing them into accepting less pay than they should be entitled to.
A law passed by the City Council in 2021 and set to start at the beginning of this year guarantees the food couriers for services like DoorDash and GrubHub a minimum hourly pay rate.
Initially, the city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection proposed a rate of $23.82 an hour by 2025.
But the department rewrote its proposal in March and introduced a new, lower rate, starting at $17.96 an hour and rising only to $19.96 by 2025.
Friday’s hearing offered a chance for public comment on the revised proposal yielded vocal pushback from delivery workers and their supporters.
The agency said that the rule redo was needed because many workers get paid by more than one delivery app. But elected officials and other advocates for workers on Friday argued the move was the result of the city bowing to the will of the tech companies.
“I’m angry, first of all, that this appears to be nothing more than the administration capitulating to the corporate lobbying of DoorDash, Grubhub and Uber,” Comptroller Brad Lander said at a news conference just before the public hearing on the law. Lander introduced the pay standards bill when he served on City Council.
More than 200 people signed up to testify. Manny Ramirez, a delivery worker for more than eight years, said the...
The Justice Department has fired back at the Southern Poverty Law Center after it filed an injunction against Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche for saying the group didn’t share information from...