Last fall, the upstart group of food delivery workers known as Los Deliveristas Unidos was celebrating its finest moment, just two years after its launch in the depths of the pandemic.
Those workers secured a proposed minimum pay standard, the first of its kind for delivery workers in the nation, as mandated by a 2021 law they persuaded the City Council to pass. Other bills passed at the same time tackled some of workers’ biggest concerns on the job, notably guaranteeing access to restaurant bathrooms, and regulating the distances of each delivery trip.
In an ebike-fast span of time, the workers — many of them Indigenous Mexican and Guatemalan immigrants — had rocketed into political influence. They had delivery app giants such as Uber and DoorDash facing unprecedented regulation to improve pay and conditions.
“We had no idea what we were getting into. We went from being seen, as one of my compañeros said, as insects or misfits to, at this point, achieving something much bigger,” Sergio Ajche, a delivery worker who co-founded Los Deliveristas Unidos, told THE CITY when a $24-an-hour pay proposal surfaced in November, adding that the reforms would “drastically” change the industry for the better.
Instead, what followed was a tumultuous winter for the organization and the Workers Justice Project, the nonprofit workers center at its helm.
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