My name is Daniel Ocampo, and I am a lawyer with the National Employment Law Project (NELP), a New York-based national nonprofit with more than fifty-five years of experience advocating for the labor and employment rights of underpaid workers. NELP works extensively at the federal, state and local levels, and has regularly advised the New York City Council on protecting workers in the city. Relevant for the legislation that the Committee is considering today, NELP works across the country with groups of app-based workers, supporting campaigns at the local, state, and federal levels for policies to protect this exploited workforce. Also relevant, NELP worked with the City Council and the City to enact and defend the city’s 2021 “just cause” law for fast food workers, as well as to enact and implement the app-based delivery worker minimum pay standard.
We are delighted to testify today in strong support of Int. No. 1332, which would address the urgent need to protect app-based delivery workers at companies like DoorDash and Uber Eats against the widespread problems of unfair and arbitrary “deactivations,” which result in extreme hardship for this workforce. Int. 1332 would protect delivery workers by extending some of the same just cause protections that the city has been successfully using since 2021 to protect fast food workers against unfair firings.
The Problem of Unfair & Arbitrary Deactivations
App-based delivery workers increasingly provide critical labor services in New York City—delivering meals, packages, groceries, medications, and more across the city every day. The companies that rely on this labor, however, have avoided paying the minimum wage and complying with basic workplace laws by classifying them as independent contractors.
Worse, these workers are routinely deactivated—which means blocked from the app and therefore unable to get work—without a fair reason, without advance notice, and without the right to an independent appeal process that is not controlled by the companies. Functionally, this is the equivalent of being fired and locked out at your job without any statement of why, without any way to appeal the decision, and without a human to talk to about this.
For the workers affected, the impact of losing your job abruptly can be devastating. It leaves workers and families unable to pay their rent, mortgages, and other bills, leading to extreme hardship. In a 2023 survey, 43% of New York workers reported that, if their paychecks were cut off, they have little savings to fall back on and within one month would be unable to pay their bills. [1]
In many ways, the impact of these abrupt firings is even worse for app-based delivery workers, since the city’s delivery market is almost entirely controlled by three companies. The result is that deactivated workers have limited options for seeking new work in the same field.
Frequently, delivery workers are deactivated based on unverified customer complaints—and the companies don’t give workers a meaningful opportunity to challenge them. While the app corporations operate an internal appeals process that in theory allows delivery workers to try to contest certain deactivations, it’s a discretionary, non-transparent company-run process that doesn’t provide strong protections.
The Solution: Extend the City’s Existing Just Cause Protections to App-Based Delivery Workers
Int. 1332 offers a proven solution: extend New York City’ successful just cause protections, first adopted for fast food workers in 2021, to app-based delivery workers. Doing so would ensure the following fair and straightforward process.
First, delivery companies would need to lay out written deactivation policies and a progressive discipline process. Second, they would be required to provide fourteen days’ upfront notice of an impending deactivation, except in cases of egregious misconduct. Where delivery companies intend to deactivate workers for “bona fide economic reasons” (like a significant reduction in sales volume), they must provide 120 days’ advance notice, and the deactivations must be made in order of economic impact and seniority.
Third, companies need to provide a written explanation of the precise reasons for the deactivation. The delivery company then bears the burden of establishing just cause for the deactivation. If the deactivation dispute is not resolved by an informal resolution process, the case will proceed to a deactivation appeal arbitration.
These common-sense protections would be enforced by the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP)’s Office of Labor Standards Enforcement, an excellent and effective city agency with a proven track record of fairly implementing the city’s labor standards—including for app-based workers. DCWP‘s experience enforcing the city’s existing just cause protections should give the City Council confidence in extending those safeguards to app-based delivery workers.
Conclusion
Expanding the city’s successful just cause law to delivery workers is a practical way to address the serious problem of arbitrary and unfair deactivations and NELP respectfully urges the City Council to pass Int. 1332, and take one step closer to making app-based jobs good jobs in New York.
End Notes
[1] Data for Progress, National Employment Law Project & Make the Road New York, “Fired Without Warning or Reason: Why New Yorkers Need Just Cause Job Protections,” Jan. 2023, available at https://www.nelp.org/app/uploads/2023/01/Fired-Without-Warning-or-Reason-Just-Cause-Report.pdf
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