Friday, Jan. 30, marked the thirtieth day of Zohran Mamdani’s time period as mayor. New York News is following Mamdani round his first 100 days in workplace as we carefully monitor his progress on fulfilling marketing campaign guarantees, appointing key leaders to authorities posts, and managing the town’s funds. Right here’s a abstract of what the mayor did as we speak.
Three main meals supply corporations agreed to pay greater than $5 million in restitution and penalties after the town discovered they illegally withheld wages from tens of 1000’s of supply staff, Mayor Zohran Mamdani introduced Friday throughout a press convention in Lengthy Island Metropolis.
In accordance with the town’s Division of Client and Employee Safety, Uber Eats, Fantuan and HungryPanda violated New York Metropolis’s minimal pay legislation by failing to compensate supply staff for time spent on journeys that have been later canceled — a observe the town says affected practically 50,000 staff between late 2023 and early 2024.
“This is about companies breaking the law and workers not being paid for time they already worked,” Mamdani stated. “If you make a living as a delivery worker in New York City, your life is relentless — biking through rain, heat and snow — and too often the mistreatment from massive corporations is relentless too.”
“All three companies did the same thing,” Mamdani stated. “When trips were canceled, they didn’t pay workers for time they had already worked, even though the law clearly requires it.”
Affordability: What the deliverista settlement offers staff
Below the settlement, Uber Eats can pay $3.15 million in restitution and $350,000 in civil penalties, whereas Fantuan and HungryPanda will collectively pay simply over $1.6 million. The town stated Uber additionally agreed to reinstate supply staff who have been wrongfully deactivated, a treatment officers described as unprecedented and probably affecting as many as 10,000 individuals.
However Uber disputes that determine. In a press release, Uber spokesperson Josh Gold stated the corporate has reactivated 1,053 staff up to now, not 10,000, and emphasised that the violations have been restricted in scope.
“We’re glad to have this resolved,” Gold stated. “After the City notified us of the issue in August of 2024, we immediately corrected it, agreed to pay more than the amount owed, and appreciate the new administration moving quickly to bring this to a fair conclusion.”
Uber stated the problem concerned canceled journeys and affected 94,096 couriers, although the corporate says not all have been owed extra cash. In accordance with Uber, the typical underpayment in the course of the interval — from Dec. 4, 2023, to Sept. 2, 2024 — was $19.48 per employee.
Requests for remark from Fantuan and HungryPanda weren’t returned on the time of publication.
DCWP Commissioner Sam Levine stated the settlement demonstrates the town’s rising capability to observe app-based corporations via required pay information and employee complaints. He stated the enforcement motion was about greater than recovering misplaced wages.
“For thousands of workers, reinstatement isn’t abstract,” Levine stated. “It means rent gets paid, food is on the table, kids stay in school, and lives are put back on track.”
Levine described the Uber settlement as the primary time the town has secured reinstatement for staff deactivated by an app-based firm as a part of a wage enforcement case.
DCWP Commissioner Sam Levine celebrated a $5 million settlement towards Uber Eats, Fantuan, and HungryPanda can pay a mixed $5,195,000 in restitution, civil penalties, and damages to greater than 49,000 meals supply staff to resolve violations of the Metropolis’s Minimal Pay Price for supply staff.Photograph by Lloyd Mitchell
Employee advocates hailed the settlement as a turning level within the metropolis’s effort to manage the supply app trade, which employs roughly 80,000 individuals in New York, a lot of them immigrants.
“For years, these companies treated the law as optional,” stated Ligia Guallpa, government director of Staff’ Justice Undertaking and co-founder of Los Deliveristas Unidos. “What they call innovation was really a system designed to underpay workers, cancel trips without compensation and deactivate people without explanation. This settlement shows those days are over.”
Supply staff and organizers emphasised that deactivation, usually triggered robotically by app algorithms, can have quick and devastating penalties. For years, the town’s deliveristas have confronted sudden lockouts and unexplained “deactivations” from app platforms that immediately strip them of their capacity to earn a dwelling. Many report waking as much as discover their accounts shut down in a single day — generally after years of constant work — with little or no clarification and few sensible avenues for enchantment, leaving them with out revenue, housing safety, or a method to assist their households.
“Deactivation isn’t just losing access to an app,” stated Aboubacar Ki, a supply employee and organizer. “It’s losing income overnight, losing housing stability and being pushed into crisis.”
The announcement got here amid a broader crackdown by the Mamdani administration on app-based corporations. Over the previous month, DCWP launched a report accusing Uber and DoorDash of utilizing interface “design tricks” that lowered employee tip earnings by greater than $550 million, filed a lawsuit towards a supply platform accused of wage theft, and despatched compliance warnings to dozens of app corporations.
The town’s minimal pay rule for supply staff, enacted in 2021, at present requires apps to pay a minimal hourly charge primarily based on energetic work time. That charge is scheduled to rise to $22.13 per hour in April 2026.
Aboubacar Ki, supply employee and organizer with Los Deliveristas Unidos, speaks concerning the financial hurt of wrongful deactivationsPhoto by Lloyd Mitchell
Uber, in the meantime, maintains it has already mounted the issue cited by the town and says it paid greater than what was legally required as a part of the settlement.
Nonetheless, Mamdani framed the case as emblematic of a broader shift in how Metropolis Corridor plans to cope with highly effective tech platforms.
“For too long, government stood with the companies accumulating the wealth,” he stated. “This administration is standing with the people who generate it.”
“In the first month of this administration, our city has made one thing unmistakably clear: there is zero tolerance for exploiting workers, cutting corners on labor protections, or rigging our economy to serve wealthy corporations at the expense of working people,” stated Mamdani.
This can be a growing story. Verify again for updates.
