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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Since the start of a pandemic, as we all know the demand for food delivery has skyrocketed and delivery drivers have faced the consequences of a largely unregulated market, low wages, hazardous streets, and the threat of robbery or assault to bring people takeout. Now as a result of media exposure and organizing, New York City's Council has passed a nation-leading bill that aims to address working conditions for the city's approximately 80,000 food delivery workers.

The bill was passed last week and among other things, it sets a minimum wage for workers, requires apps to disclose their tipping policies, allows drivers to set parameters on trips, and requires restaurants to make their bathrooms available. With me now to talk about what's in the bill and whether it goes far enough and to take your calls are Hildalyn Colón Hernández, Director of Policy and Strategic Partnerships for Los Deliveristas, and Ligia Guallpa, Executive Director of the Workers Justice Project. Hildalyn, welcome to WNYC. Ligia welcome back.

Ligia Guallpa: Thank you.

Hildalyn Colón Hernández: Thank you.

Brian: I want to open up the phones right away for any food delivery drivers listening, what do you think about the city council bill that has passed? 646-435-7280. What do you want listeners who are not delivery drivers to know about your life and your working conditions? 646-435-7280. Will this bill change your work in ways that will make it at least possible to use a bathroom and a restaurant or get paid a minimum wage or set your own parameters, geographical parameters for delivery to some degree? How big are these changes and what else still needs to change in your opinion?

Delivery drivers, if some of you happen to be listening, you'll get first priority right now at 646-435-7280. If you deliver for Grubhub, Seamless DoorDash, you know who you are, your thoughts or questions on the new legislation if you're still getting familiar with what you may now be entitled to. 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280. Hildalyn, we've been talking about conditions for deliveristas for years on this show, and before the pandemic, how did the city council get to where it got just last week?

Hildalyn: Well, it's been an effort for delivery workers that I always been essential workers that got organized and that raised this concern and demanded that New York City Council took some action. It actually did that a year ago, they present a series of basic bills that actually they're just trying to provide a basic framework for them to work and through their effort, through their effort of collaborating with some of the city council members that were the sponsors, that was able to be achieved last week in a historic landmark legislation that it was passed.

Brian: One thing that I see, Ligia, in the legislation is that it prevents the food delivery apps and courier services from charging workers fees to receive their pay. Now I think many people hear that and think, "What? That doesn't make any sense. You have to pay something just to receive your pay?" What's that about and how have delivery workers been charged to receive pay?

Ligia: I think it's important to recognize that the gig economy has completely transformed and changed the rules of how workers do this job. One of them, it's not only how they do their job, but it's also how they get paid. Some of these apps in order to make transactions to their bank accounts have been charging fees if they wanted it a fast pay or a quick pay. Each fee can be can variate depending on which app they're used.

This is just example of how the apps have been operating in putting all the cost-- The responsibility and the operating costs on the workers while preventing them from having basic protections. What we did last week was trying to rewrite the rules of the gig work in an economy that it's unregulated where workers have no protections and have been left out without basic right in the middle of a pandemic.

Brian: Right. Let me get into some of the specifics. The bill, for example, Ligia, I'll stay with you on this, allows drivers to set parameters on how far they're willing to go for a delivery. What happens under the current system, what sorts of trips are drivers expected to take?

Ligia: Right now delivery workers have limited control about how far they can travel. It is the app sending these deliveries where workers have some choice of deciding whether they want to take. With some of the apps like Relay, for instance, if you don't take that trip, you can have a poor rating, or you can actually get suspended, deactivated, or sometimes given less hours to work. With other apps, your rating can go down if you consistently deny some of those trips. We're talking about distances from 5 miles, 6 miles sometimes for a $2 tip, which barely even cost your operating cost of that trip.

Brian: Hildalyn, what's in the bill in that respect? Is it a mileage limit or how did they do it?

Hildalyn: Workers will be able to [inaudible 00:06:37] parameter of their distance based on the location. Some of these workers work in every neighborhood in New York City. When they get to that neighborhood, they won't to be able to set up parameter can go 1 mile, 2 miles, 3 miles. The challenge and I think Ligia raised a good point, right now these workers are at the mercy of the apps. Sometimes anyway, we have interfaces, and we show it in the report. We have delivery workers that are actually working right now in Chinatown, and they've been sent to make a delivery in Washington Heights, and they expect to be there in 30 minutes.

That is unsustainable, that have caused so many accidents, and also the loss of so many workers. This bill will empower the workers to say, "I want to be able to travel as much as X amount," and they will be able actually to do that every time that they connect to the app.

Brian: Louis in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Louis. Louis, do we have you?

Louis: Yes, I'm right here.

Brian: Hi, there. You're on the air, you're a delivery worker, right?

Louis: Yes. One thing that I wanted to complain about is that, usually, because I deliver Uber Eats, so many times when I get a request that, for example, last couple of times, I've had money taken off my account saying that the customer complained because the food was late or it was cold, or it was all messy, and they take off money that I was supposed to get paid, even for the food. Whenever we try to get through customer service, there is not a phone number that we can get to or they always send us to the app. They say, "Send a message and we'll get back to you," but they never do. There's no office that we can go to to talk about transactions and stuff like that.

Brian: Hildalyn, does the legislation address that kind of situation at all?

Hildalyn: No, this is a basic step to set the framework. What the gentleman raised is very common. The delivery workers don't have a person that they can go to they depend on customer service to get back to them. I think also one of the things that we've been trying the apps to-- Is be able to notify if the food is late. A lot of the times is not on the delivery workers. The gentleman can tell you sometimes he will be there more than in time, but there's a backup on the restaurant, they're running late, the auditors haven't come out. That's something that we plan to keep addressing as we keep moving forward on better working conditions for these workers. What he said is actually the livelihood of every delivery worker every day.

Brian: Ligia-- go ahead.

Ligia: Can I just--

Brian: Sure.

Ligia: I wanted to add also what he's pointing it out is the lack of transparency in payments, in what fees are being charged and one of the legislations actually talks about transparency, mandating that these apps can fully disclose what fees and in cost the consumer is being charged, the restaurant, and also what the worker is being paid, not only the fee from the app but also the tip. Because what he mentioned is the lack of transparency that these apps have been operating for the past two years and profiting from it as well.

Brian: Here's another deal delivery worker calling in Ariel in Brooklyn you're on WNYC. Hi, Ariel.

Ariel: Hello, Brian, how you doing?

Brian: Good. What you got for us? Yes. Can you hear me?

Ariel: Yes, I can hear you. It's a little bit of delay. I started doing the whole gig thing a couple years ago. I use it as a form of employment for a long time and then I left the business for a short while and I saw all those things going on. They didn't want to pay tip. Tipping was a thing that didn't allow people to get tips. They weren't the long-distance travel. This bill is actually great because like now I still do some work with DoorDash and they'll give me a long-distance trip from [unintelligible 00:11:13] to Eastern [unintelligible 00:11:14] I just came from [unintelligible 00:11:16] I don't want go back to East New York.

I'll have to decline that and they'll say, "Your rating is going to go down," and then they'll ask you these questions like, "Why? Why don't you want to take this trip?" They'll give you all these, A, B, and C answers. It's always the same thing, "Trip is too far." I saw that and I started to say, "You know what? This is a great opportunity because long-distance trips is too much, the pay is not good enough. That's when-- [crosstalk]

Brian: You like the idea of-- Go ahead.

Ariel: Yes, I do like the idea. Also, I was a part of a lawsuit against Postmates and Caviar. There's a couple of people that worked for Postmates in the beginning when they came here to New York City and they were all bike messengers. They created some type of bike messenger gig alliance, and they ended up suing Postmates. There was a lot of people from the east coast and the west coast who were down with that lawsuit and including Caviar. Caviar was also a part of that lawsuit too.

The Postmates one was actually won and they won the settlement. They [unintelligible 00:12:33] whoever got paid the highest was whoever stayed on the road the longest. You did more work, you got paid out from the settlement, and Caviar the same thing. I'm glad that there's a lot of things going on that is helping out people in the gig economy. I know a lot of people who are using this form as unemployment to get employment because of what happened within the last couple years.

Brian: To get by. Ariel, can I ask you one thing, because this makes people who don't know this business crazy when they hear it. Do the restaurants that you deliver for actually deny you the right to use the bathroom if you ask?

Ariel: Some of them do. I only asked a few times. I guess they do, but the restaurants that I've been to they'll say, "Oh, we don't have a restroom," but I think they do. I only asked twice the number years I would leave like two or three times. It's probably been in the city-- If I run around in the city a lot, I used to ask them for the restroom, some people say yes, some people say no.

Brian: Yes. Now it looks like they won't be able to say no as easily. Hildalyn, we just have a minute left there, of course, other specifics we could talk about like the tipping practices, one of the most dismaying things to hear as a consumer in the past years that oftentimes tips that you think are going to the delivery worker through an app don't even go to them, but what's not in this bill? What's the next step? We have 30 seconds.

Hildalyn: This is just the beginning. Last week thousands of delivery workers wake up with new rights. This is incredible to even think about in 2021. These workers didn't have no rights at all. This is just the beginning of many things. We have to keep addressing the issue of safety. That's what we want to address. Also, the issue about accidents. A lot of workers are being hurt. They take months to get back to work. They don't have a workers compensation or insurance for them to fall into. We are looking at those issues to address. I think the rest is going to be that the state--

Brian: They're still independent contractors, which remains controversial too. Hildalyn Colón Hernández, Director of Policy and Strategic Partnerships at Los Deliveristas, Ligia Guallpa executive director of the Workers Justice Project. Thank you both so much.

Ligia: Thank you.

Hildalyn: Thank you.

Brian: The Brian Lehrer Show is produced by Lisa Allison, MaryEileen Croke, Zoe Azulay, Amina Srna, and Carl Boisrond. Zach Gottehrer-Cohen works on our daily podcast, Juliana Fonda at the audio controls.

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