NY Daily News: Override Eric Adams’ Vetoes on Deliveries

Mayor Adams just vetoed two City Council bills that would have guaranteed grocery delivery workers the city’s minimum wage. Unless the City Council overrides the mayor’s veto, his decision will keep thousands of essential workers earning poverty wages.

The bills, passed overwhelmingly by the Council last month, were the product of years of worker organizing to extend the city’s successful restaurant delivery worker minimum pay standard to include delivery workers for companies like Instacart, GoPuff, and Amazon.

Yet Adams sided with an Instacart-funded lobbying campaign to block both Int. 1133 and Int. 1135, claiming that the bills would worsen food insecurity for New Yorkers with lower incomes.

Why does Mayor Adams believe grocery delivery workers should shoulder the cost of cheaper groceries through subminimum pay? Does he also think cashiers, deli clerks, grocery store janitors, warehouse staff, and farmworkers should be paid less than the city’s legal minimum?

Food insecurity in New York City is indeed a crisis, but the price of grocery delivery — largely a convenience service that is already 30% to 50% more expensive than in-store shopping — isn’t a major driver. Low wages are.

By calling delivery workers independent contractors and exploiting loopholes in the law, Instacart is likely paying its workers well below the city’s $16.50 minimum wage. Restaurant delivery workers were earning about $11.12 with tips, and just $4.03 without, before the city’s 2023 pay standard, and there’s no reason to think grocery delivery worker pay is any better.

Since that standard took effect, the average cost of a DoorDash or Uber Eats order increased from $38.55 to $40.44, essentially in line with inflation, while delivery workers now earn at least the minimum wage. Nor have restaurant delivery orders plummeted as the industry had predicted.

In fact, the total volume of delivery orders increased each quarter in 2024, proving that fairer wages for delivery workers do not come at the expense of consumer demand. Research from economist James Parrott shows that one of the only measurable effects on industry economics has simply been to shrink the share of each order siphoned off by the delivery companies.

On the other side of the ledger, the results of the pay standard are clear: the city’s delivery workers — a workforce that is more than 90% Black and Brown — now earn at least the minimum wage. It’s a demonstrated success of public policy that makes it easier, not harder, for workers from some of the city’s marginalized communities to feed themselves and their families.

So why does the mayor believe grocery delivery workers, doing almost identical work to DoorDash and UberEats couriers, should shoulder the cost of cheaper groceries through subminimum pay? Does he also think cashiers, deli clerks, grocery store janitors, warehouse staff, and farmworkers should be paid less than the city’s legal minimum?

The push for the veto came from a brand-new “advocacy group” called New Yorkers for Affordable Groceries, which purports to “represent a coalition of app-based delivery workers, concerned New Yorkers and advocates” but in reality is funded entirely by Instacart. The campaign included well-placed op-eds from the likes of the Rev. Al Sharpton, who claimed the bills would “push vulnerable New Yorkers into hunger.”

But Sharpton surely knows that Instacart isn’t doing this to protect New Yorkers who receive food stamps. It’s following the lead of Uber, DoorDash, and Airbnb — throwing millions of dollars at city political fights to buy off legislators, stymie regulators, and protect its bottom line.

The mayor certainly understands that. His own Department of Consumer & Worker Protection (DCWP) led the successful effort to raise restaurant delivery worker pay to a minimum of $21.44 per hour (broadly equivalent to the city’s minimum wage after accounting for expenses and the value of some employment benefits).

He then called for expanding the delivery worker minimum pay standard as a signature initiative for DCWP in his Blueprint for Economic Recovery, and his agency leaders testified enthusiastically in support of the proposal in the City Council — until Instacart lobbied the mayor and he reversed course.

Blocking fair pay won’t make groceries more affordable for struggling families. But it will ensure thousands of delivery workers remain stuck with poverty wages. New Yorkers need both affordable food and fair wages for those who deliver it, and the City Council has an opportunity to bring us closer to that reality by overriding these vetoes.

Ocampo is a staff attorney at the National Employment Law Project.

###

This commentary was originally published at nydailynews.com.