Ben Wray/Gig Economy Project – What Mamdani’s DoorDash wage theft crackdown teaches us

Zohran Mamdani: “DoorDash had underpaid more than 260K delivery workers across New York City. Today, after years of corporate greed and impunity, we are holding DoorDash to account”

Ben Wray is the Coordinator and Researcher at the Gig Economy Project

Cross-posted from the Substack of the Gig Economy Project

Photo: Screen Grab

You may have seen that food delivery platform DoorDash has been forced to pay a whopping $131.5 million in an enforcement action by New York’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP). It is the largest worker settlement ever in New York and the largest ever for food delivery couriers in the US.

The details of the case are very interesting. It began with workers filing individual complaints about not being paid for their work. They were helped by the Worker’s Justice Project, which supports low-waged, migrant workers to organise. This triggered a DCWP investigation where they subpoenaed DoorDash’s data, pouring over 152 million payments and a 110 million hours of delivery labour to uncover what was really going on.

The investigators found that the workers were right, and that more than 260,000 delivery workers had been systematically under-paid by DoorDash. Not only had DoorDash breached New York’s minimum pay laws for delivery riders, they had failed to pay thousands of workers at all for many deliveries, while other workers had not been paid on time. Lifting the bonnet on DoorDash’s algorithm had revealed a system of widespread wage theft.

The compensation that they will receive is calculated at 200% of the amount they were underpaid: so if they were underpaid by $1,000, they will receive $3,000. DoorDash couriers do not have to apply to receive the compensation: the sum each worker is owed has been worked out individually by DCWP, and they will be automatically compensated.

What has been less reported on is that, alongside the compensation, DCWP is also using this investigation as a launch pad to establish “a worker-driven compliance monitoring program designed to help the City identify and address violations quickly”. This compliance software, which has been developed alongside the Worker’s Justice Project and the Workers’ Algorithm Observatory, means that couriers in New York will be able to monitor to see whether platforms are abiding by the law in real time and send any discrepancies direct to DCWP.

Alongside the software, DoorDash is required to submit monthly data reports for three years which will be audited by DCWP, make software updates which prevent the same problems from happening again, and establish an internal compliance monitor that reports to DCWP.

There is a number of things to say about this remarkable story. First, DoorDash has appeared very apologetic in light of the settlement. “Simply put, we screwed up. Our mistakes meant some Dashers were underpaid or paid late,” the company said. But DoorDash does not only operate in New York, it operates across the US and owns the platforms Wolt and Deliveroo, which operate in most of Europe. The company has said nothing about what it will do to verify whether the same ‘mistakes’ made in New York were replicated elsewhere, nor whether riders elsewhere will be compensated if the same violations are found.

Governments beyond New York should not be waiting for DoorDash to self-regulate. Labour inspectorates should now begin investigations, across the US and beyond, into the company. And we know platform wage theft does not stop at DoorDash. Just last year, Seattle’s Office of Labor Standards investigated Uber Eats , finding that the platform sometimes paid riders less than what they were offered before accepting the trip. Workers have themselves uncovered delivery wage theft , with the ‘UberCheats’ app set-up by rider Armin Samii in 2020 finding that 17 per cent of trips were underpaid. Whenever anyone looks under the bonnet of the delivery mafias’ algorithms, they tend to find that they have been robbing their workers.

The DCWP now stands as the gold-standard for what can be done when a labour inspectorate is willing to take labour laws seriously. Although this investigation started with workers lodging complaints, it could not have been done if New York did not have the power to investigate the inner workings of DoorDash’s system and the data scientists capable of doing that. Interestingly, Sam Levine, the commissioner of the DCWP, has said that they are looking to hire “a lot more” data scientists so they can carry out more data-led investigations on more corporations. Data has hitherto been an industrial relations strength for platforms due to the information asymmetry between these companies and their workers, but if authorities are capable of opening up that data to close scrutiny and establish worker-led compliance mechanisms, that strength could become a weakness.

Of course, none of this matters if labour inspectorates do not have the requisite political backing. This year alone, New York’s socialist mayor Zohran Mamdani has placed new requirements on delivery platforms when it comes to the presentation of tipping options on the app which has netted couriers over $100 million in additional earnings, while the increase in the minimum pay rate for couriers increased earnings by $725 million in total. If Mamdani can do these things as mayor, what excuse do labour ministers, prime ministers and presidents have for sitting on their hands?

The crackdown on platform wage theft in New York shows what is possible when platform work organisation at the grassroots combines with competent labour authorities and politicians who are not in the pocket of the platforms. The platform workers’ movement internationally should take inspiration from it.

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