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In another move to rein in the greed of delivery app companies, the City Council is set to pass a slew of new laws today that will improve the pay and working conditions of grocery store delivery workers citywide, in an expansion of a groundbreaking set of laws passed in 2021 for restaurant and food delivery app workers.
This afternoon, the City Council will vote on a package of five bills that would, if passed, close what Streetsblog called the "Instacart loophole" in the 2021 laws. It would establish a minimum wage of $21.44 per hour for the city's roughly 20,000 grocery store deliveristas working for companies like Instacart and Shipt. That's in line with the wage increases that food delivery workers for app companies like UberEats, DoorDash, Grubhub, and Relay (finally) got in April.
"All delivery workers deserve to get paid a living wage for their work, no matter what they deliver or who they work for," Councilmember Sandy Nurse, one of the bills' sponsors, told Hell Gate. "These workers, many of whom are supporting families, are being paid poverty wages simply because they deliver similar items on different apps. We're ending this two-tiered wage system because we will not leave these workers behind."