As part of his agenda to make New York a city everyone can afford, Mayor-elect Mamdani has called for continuing the city’s leadership in protecting app-based workers, like the Uber drivers and DoorDash delivery workers that help make the city run. But the City Council doesn’t need to wait for the new mayor to take office. Two bills are pending in the council now that would safeguard the rights of hundreds of thousands of the city’s most important—and most precarious—workers.
Int. 276 and Int.1332 would address the critical problem of unfair and arbitrary firings (or “deactivations”) for the city’s 84,000 ridehail drivers and 65,000 app-based delivery workers, respectively. These workers are the lifeblood of the city today—ferrying New Yorkers around at all hours and delivering the food so many of us depend on. Thanks to previous action by the City Council, they are now entitled to minimum hourly earnings through the city’s nation-leading minimum pay standards.
Int. 276 and Int.1332 would address the critical problem of unfair and arbitrary firings (or “deactivations”) for the city’s 84,000 ridehail drivers and 65,000 app-based delivery workers, respectively.
But these jobs continue to be dangerous and difficult, and workers are routinely deactivated without fair reason, without advance notice, and without the right to an appeal process that is not controlled by the companies. A survey of deactivated Uber and Lyft drivers in New York over the summer found that over 70 percent of those deactivated had no prior notice. In another survey, nearly two-thirds reported that they received no explanation or only vague reasons for their deactivation. One driver testified last year before the council that Lyft refused to tell him the date and time of his alleged driving offense, denying him the opportunity to use his dashcam footage to challenge the company’s account.
And as I laid out in my testimony before the council earlier this year, the deck is currently stacked against app-based workers. In both ridehail and delivery, companies have every incentive to flood the streets with as many workers as possible to maximize the available labor supply and pay workers less. If one worker declines a lowball offer, another nearby is likely to take it.
So when the algorithm detects “irregular behavior,” or when a worker receives even one isolated complaint, the companies’ default response is: deactivate now, investigate later. For multi-billion-dollar companies with tens of thousands of workers to choose from, the cost of losing a few incorrectly is negligible. But for workers stripped of their main source of income (and for 95 percent of surveyed New York City drivers, Uber & Lyft is the main source of income for them and their families), the cost is devastating. Facing on average over $1,000 of monthly vehicle expenses, like car loans and lease payments, on top of rent and the sky-high cost of living, workers don’t have many options.
Market concentration makes the impact of these abrupt firings especially acute. Drivers deactivated by Uber, for example, have essentially only one other employer they can turn to for work—Lyft. And new research suggests that, for many drivers, deactivation by one company automatically triggers deactivation by the other.
So what would these bills actually do? Both Int. 276 for ridehail drivers and Int. 1332 for delivery workers simply extend the “just cause” protections the city already enacted for fast food workers in 2021, requiring the corporations to adhere to a fair and transparent process for deactivations.
App-based companies would first need to lay out deactivation and progressive discipline policies. Second, they would be required to provide fourteen days’ upfront notice of an impending deactivation, except in cases of egregious misconduct (like reckless driving or sexual harassment). Third, companies need to offer deactivated workers a written explanation of the precise reasons for deactivation.
These basic protections would then be enforced by the Department of Consumer & Worker Protection, an excellent and effective city agency with a proven track record of fairly implementing the city’s labor standards—including for app-based workers.
The City Council must take action. These workers are just the canary in the coalmine. In an era of digital labor, where workers are increasingly managed by AI-powered algorithms only loosely overseen by humans, unfair and arbitrary algorithmic firings may become the new norm. New York City needs to get ahead of the problem, maintain its status as national leader in the regulation of the “gig” economy, and ensure that no worker loses their livelihood at the whims of an unaccountable robot boss.
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