DoorDash, a company now worth nearly $84 billion, reached a settlement with the NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection to make up for payment errors to drivers. According to Mayor Mamdani, the labor settlement is the largest in New York City history.
Approximately 264,000 Dashers will receive a payment, 209,000 of which are for missing or late payments. In a press conference on Sept. 22, Mamdani said that 27,000 workers will be receiving more than $1,000 and more than 4,000 workers will be receiving more than $5,000.
“This is part of a larger commitment to holding these delivery companies accountable,” Mamdani said.
“We screwed up, and our mistakes meant some NYC Dashers were underpaid or paid light,” DoorDash stated in its announcement regarding the settlement. “Dashers should be paid in full, on time, every time. We are sorry to the Dashers we let down.”
DoorDash claims that the average missing payment owed is $7.70 and that 65 percent of those impacted were only underpaid by $1 or less.
Only $12.3 million of the settlement, however, is related to workers going unpaid or being paid late.
The remaining $83 million of the settlement is related to a more complicated issue: how to calculate bonuses paid to Dashers.
In its statement, DoorDash stated that “New York City has the most complex earning standard for delivery workers in the country,” and that they made mistakes attempting to comply with these standards.
According to The New York Times, pay for delivery workers has improved since the 2023 law was passed aiming to improve their compensation for the hours they spent waiting to receive orders. New York City requires that Dashers be paid for that time, and DoorDash claims to have miscalculated those payments in accordance with the requirement.
DoorDash claims to have fixed the issues that caused these errors, and to have strengthened its compliance. For miscalculations, Dashers will be paid a minimum of $10 regardless of the amount they were underpaid.
Mamdani said that these measures are a continuation of the interrogation of the algorithms which shape delivery work.
“We want to make it very clear that it does not matter how profitable your company is, you have to abide by the laws of New York City,” Mamdani said.
