Gratuities After Checkout Undercuts Food Delivery Worker Wage Increase
The Brian Lehrer Show
WNYC
4.6 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 12 December 2023
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As a wage increase for delivery workers goes into effect in New York City, Claudia Irizarry Aponte, senior reporter at The City, explains how Uber Eats and DoorDash have dampened the celebratory mood by only allowing customers to tip after checkout.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's the Brian Lara show on WNC. |
| 0:10.0 | It's the Brian Lara Show on WNYC. Good morning again everyone. Just a few months ago, |
| 0:16.2 | food workers in New York City rejoiced at the victory of a nearly $18 minimum wage for people who deliver your take out or your delivery orders. |
| 0:27.0 | Now that that wage has gone into effect, however, some popular apps, UberEats and DoorDash, have dampened the celebration. |
| 0:35.1 | How did they do this? |
| 0:36.1 | Well, if you've ever gotten delivery through one of these apps, you'd know that in the |
| 0:39.3 | past you would be prompted to tip your driver right before submitting your order. |
| 0:45.6 | But now the suggestion to tip your delivery still only comes in after you've already paid. |
| 0:51.5 | The result is a lot of people are forgetting to tip. Why did they make this change? |
| 0:57.0 | Joining us now to discuss these tipping policy changes and how they're affecting delivery workers is Claudia Irizari Aponte, senior reporter at the |
| 1:05.1 | news organization the city. |
| 1:06.6 | Claudia, welcome back to WNYC. Thank you for coming on today. |
| 1:09.3 | Thanks for having me Brian, happy to be here. So I gave just the briefest explanation there of the tipping updates at UberEats and Door Dash. |
| 1:18.0 | Was I correct and what else would you add so people understand what's changed? |
| 1:23.8 | Yeah, that's absolutely been the case over the last week. |
| 1:27.6 | The minimum pay standards for delivery workers mandated by New York City law |
| 1:32.3 | went into effect last Monday, so a week ago yesterday, |
| 1:36.5 | mandating an $18 an hour minimum hourly pay rate for delivery workers. |
| 1:41.8 | This is an amount that takes into account delivery workers cost of |
| 1:45.8 | operating. They are independent contractors so they have to pay for their own bikes, e-bikes, they have to pay for gas, insurance, their own health insurance, and in the case of those who use cars to deliver all the costs associated with their cars. So this is an hourly rate that takes into account those operating costs |
| 2:07.6 | because the companies don't subsidize any of those, any of that overhead. |
| 2:13.2 | And what has happened in the week since is that three of the major food delivery companies, |
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