DoorDash, Grubhub and Uber sue New York City over minimum wage law

I am new to NYC. Come 6pm, Hells Kitchen turns into the greatest thoroughfare of ebike riding delivery drivers I've ever seen.

They cycle the wrong way on the street, they clog up the pavement, and they appear overwhelmingly to be foreign workers (like me, but without the cushy tech job). I understand logically that this must be a good option for them given their circumstances, or they would do something else, but I will not be gaslighted into thinking they are treated well by the delivery companies.

There should be dedicated parking (take away some of the car spots), there should be driver friendly sanitary facilities, there should be ways for them to secure their bikes, and yes there probably should be a minimum wage because they are in an extremely exploitable position and guess who's making money from their exploitation?

I do not come from a country with a class structure, so seeing the emergence of an 'app-class' / zero hours contract approach that OVERWHELMINGLY targets the poor rubs me the wrong way.

I don't care about GrubHub's profit margins and neither should you.

The argument that a law "would help workers more than help them" is a political argument not a legal argument. The legislature has the right to pass dumb laws so long as those laws are within their constitutional powers and do not infringe or abridge any constitutional rights. Judges have no business legislating on political questions.

I take no position on whether or not the law is actually dumb but the delivery apps need to find a better legal argument if they want to argue this law is unconstitutional. This argument that "the law is unconstitutional because it is dumb" is basically just asking judges to legislate from the bench which is exactly what everybody who pays attention to Supreme Court confirmation hearings knows judges aren't supposed to do.

> The DoorDash and Grubhub lawsuit claims the New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection’s analysis of the regulation would add an average of $5.18 per order.

I'd rather have them charge the $5 than be guilted into paying the $5 dollars as a 'tip'. Just makes the costs of these purchases more apparent.

These companies are so reliant on a zero-interest-rate market and the increasing prices are bringing this reality home in a big way.

On Friday, I went to UberEats to do basic takeout for 2 in a reasonable cost of living area, and it was $50 total for basic takeout, nothing fancy.

In that situation, the company then expects us to tip knowing that we’re already at the upper limit of what’s considered appropriate pricing for this service. Of course the drivers are gonna get shafted.

The system was intentionally designed to make them as powerless as possible, as evidenced by the fact that these same companies had the gall to garnish tips from the drivers and then pretend like it was some misunderstanding. Anyone who’s written commercial software knows that this is BS.

"The DoorDash and Grubhub lawsuit alleges that the new regulation is legally flawed because it targets only meal-delivery services and not grocery-delivery services. It also argues the regulation is legally flawed because it would compel the companies to pay workers for hours that they are available to take orders while logged into the delivery apps, even if they don’t actually make any deliveries."

Ah... welcome to the world of managing FTEs. I managed an army of people with TC of $150-$200K with sr. management breathing down my neck to make sure they're delivering value. Wouldn't it be nice if I could pay them based on product shipped and revenue generated :-/

How does this minimum wage work, specifically? One of the selling points as far as I can tell of these delivery apps is that the workers effectively bid per order -- they're not hourly workers, they can choose or refuse which orders they want to take. Workers are not on the clock, obligated to work certain hours, they don't even have hours.

It would be interesting to see an even more market-based delivery app ecosystem -- each contract is auctioned separately, with spot prices for each hour and route of delivery going to the lowest bidder. It would never happen, since it would ruffle to many political feathers, but it's an interesting thought experiment. It would also require much more transparency than the apps currently allow or would ever willingly give up.

If this really does add $5 to the cost of every delivery it will dramatically reduce demand for deliveries.

This will cause huge demand for delivery jobs, with insufficient supply of jobs. Normally this is rectified with price (wage) adjustments, but not here.

It'll be like rent controlled apartments: A privileged few get high wages (low rent), and no jobs for the rest (high rent in my analogy).

The requirement to pay even when there are no jobs will make it even worse - the companies will require drivers to accept every job or be kicked out, and/or reduce the number of people they accept as drivers. This will make service worse for everyone.

Not smart NY, not smart.

> All three companies sued the city, maintaining that the law would hurt delivery workers more than help them.

Assuming that is really the premise of the lawsuit, could it be thrown out because the drivers aren't employees, and therefore the companies aren't the ones being harmed? Can they sue on the driver's behalf when the drivers are contractors?

7 dollars an hour, plus 3 dollars per delivery is sad, especially in a place like NYC. 17 dollars an hour is still low in today's economy but fine, the minimum wage is only 15.

I hope this gets laughed out of court. Doordash should be ashamed of themselves for thinking their drivers deserve less.

i saw Tiktok sued a state government too. It is something amazing that only happens in countries like America. In most of other countries, including China, sueing govementment by citizens or private companies is unthinkable and will be faced with severe consequences and in some cases , deaths. This kind of power check is great.

All this means is that the legal costs are less than their expected loss if the legislation goes into effect.

> All three companies sued the city, maintaining that the law would hurt delivery workers more than help them.

This means that shareholders and execs are going to take a minor loss. How dare the city get in the way of their 13th mansion purchase?

I’m just so jaded with capitalism in its current form. Its become too perverse, too immoral, too untethered from society.

The market rallying every time there is bad economic data, collapsing when unemployment goes down is just the clearest indication that something has gone terribly wrong with “market forces”.