WWW.QNS.COM RIDGEWOOD TIMES NOVEMBER 18, 2021 17
treated as they bring food to New Yorkers
compliance with local regulations,
and the opportunity to return to
the warehouse to refresh aft er each
delivery.”
Gorillas riders are also provided
with a company e-bike and gear including
helmets, riding gloves and a
vest, according to their website.
Couriers for JOKR are also employees
with benefi ts, co-founder Tyler
Trerotola told Schneps Media, and
the company has made an eff ort to
be “employee fi rst.”
“We’ve made a conscious decision
that we want these employees to have
benefi ts. We want them to feel part of
the company,” he said. “The nature of
this business is very much a consumer
focused business. It’s very much
about experience.” He added that
having happy employees is not only
benefi cial to those employees; it also
furthers the customer experience.
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 comprised mostly of
immigrant delivery workers who
banded together as they worked long,
diffi cult hours through the pandemic
without the protection or hazard pay
off ered 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 oft en the target of violent theft s.
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
A Gorillas courier rushes out the warehouse in Chinatown to deliver groceries.
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 share 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 diff erent 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 aft er taking part
in wildcat strikes calling for better
treatment, saying workers are oft en
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
has posted photos of broken bicycles
and screenshots that 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 staff er 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
influence companies to adopt the
policies even if they don’t apply, the
staff er 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.”
THE RACE TO DELIVER
/WWW.QNS.COM
