15-MINUTE DELIVERY
treated as they bring food to Brooklynites
COURIER LIFE, NOVEMBER 19-25, 2021 35
that employee.”
Dangers on the job
Demand for fair working
conditions and more protections
under the law exploded
last year, driven mostly by
Los Deliveristas Unidos, a collective
of mostly-immigrant
delivery workers who banded
together as they worked long,
diffi cult hours through the
pandemic without the protection
or hazard pay offered to
so many essential workers.
Even outside of working
long hours in the cold, without
the guarantee of an hourly
minimum wage or tips, the
job is dangerous. Many workers
are hit and injured by
cars while riding through the
streets, and their electric bicycles
— which can cost up
to $2,000 – are often the target
of violent thefts. Last month,
51-year-old Sala Uddin Bablu,
who was working for Grubhub,
was murdered while sitting
in a lower Manhattan
park during a shift.
Manny Ramirez, a delivery
worker and organizer with
LDU, helped his fellow workers
fi x their brake pads and
make other repairs on their
bicycles at a vigil and bike
tune-up on Tuesday. He was
assaulted twice this year, he
said, once violently.
He immediately called
LDU’s policy director Hildalyn
Colón Hernández and the
police, he said, who came immediately
to take a report. In
the past – before the Deliveristas
had gained so much attention
— it was hard to be taken
seriously.
“Calling 911 for any emergency,
they never came,” he
said. “If they did come, they
refused to write a report.”
Protections for workers
The biggest accomplishment,
though, has been the
passage of a package of bills
promising more protections in
the city council, including requiring
companies to provide
their delivery workers with
the insulated bags they need
for delivery, mandating that
restaurants allow gig workers
to use their restrooms, allowing
delivery workers to set limits
for how far they are willing
to go to make a delivery, and
providing a clear breakdown
to customers of how their tips
were being distributed.
“There’s gonna be improved
enforcement next year,
but it helps, it helps,” Ramirez
said, of the bills. “Baby steps,
little by little.”
From their inception,
some of the apps have abided
by the rules set by the council
bills, providing gear, paying
at least minimum wage to
their employees, and, in some
cases, providing a breakdown
of tip distribution on the apps.
Given the small delivery radius
of each dark store, riders
have shorter routes back and
forth.
Josh, an organizer and delivery
worker with LDU who
asked not to use his last name,
said he has met some people
who work with quick-commerce
apps. Many of the struggles
are the same, he said, but
“it’s a different job.”
“They get their own bikes,
they get a more stable wage
than we do,” he said. “The
Gorillas bike is supplied by
the company, a lot less likely
to get stolen because they are
tracked.
But just being an employee,
rather than a contractor,
doesn’t guarantee better treatment,
Colón said.
“I think that is a false
promise,” she said. “You’re
part-time, or you’re earning
minimum wage. But the work
that they do, they should be
earning even more. Just the
idea that they are employees
doesn’t mean that they don’t
deal with issues of disqualifi
cations, non-transparency,
tips that get stolen.”
When delivery is slow or
items are damaged, it’s the delivery
worker who takes the
brunt of the customer’s unhappiness,
she said, not the
company.
Gorillas workers in Berlin,
where the company was
founded, were fi red last
month after taking part in
wildcat strikes calling for better
treatment, saying workers
are often underpaid and
are not provided with appropriate
weather gear. German
newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung reported that
many Gorillas workers work
on contracts, not as employees,
and that many are injured
on the job while carrying
heavy deliveries up apartment
staircases.
The Gorillas Workers Collective
have posted photos of
broken bicycles and screenshots
they say show long
hours worked and more than
50 miles covered by bike in a
single day.
It’s unclear whether the
council bills apply to the new
grocery delivery apps, since
they are not third party and
are by and large working with
employees rather than contractors.
“I think they don’t qualify
on those grounds, on not being
a third-party service,” a
Council staffer said. “I think
the language in the bills is individually
portioned food. If
you’re not delivering for something
more like a restaurant
or a deli, even, then those services
may not be covered even
if they were a third party.”
Having the laws on the
books may infl uence companies
to adopt the policies even
if they don’t apply, the staffer
said.
“They may be worried the
public will see those things
as best practices they ought
to be following, they may also
be concerned that legislation
may come down the pipe if we
start having problems with
them, stuff like that.”
Ultimately, Colón said,
“there’s no minimum” for how
delivery workers should be
treated, regardless of the company
they deliver for and the
status of their employment.
The conversation, she said,
has only just started.
“It cannot be a race to the
bottom,” Colón said. “It has to
be a race to the top. It’s about
the people. All of the technologies
you will see doesn’t matter
if you just click a button.
There’s human beings doing
this, it doesn’t just happen.”