What Next: Best of 2021 | The Plight of the Delivery Worker

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Slate Podcasts

News, News Commentary, Politics

4.6 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 21 December 2021

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In the last few years, New York City’s delivery workers have become a key part of the food industry’s infrastructure, allowing restaurants to do business with customers who are too stressed to leave their desks, or too cautious to leave their homes. But a spate of violent attacks and bike thefts has shown that the people delivering your Grubhub and Seamless orders are deeply vulnerable. Why are these essential workers being exploited by apps and abandoned by the police, forced to band together just to get by? Guest: Josh Dzieza, an investigations editor and feature writer at The Verge covering technology, business, and climate change. We’re re-running some of our favorite episodes from the past year. This episode originally aired in September of 2021. If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Dear Prudence—and you’ll be supporting the work we do here on What Next. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to help support our work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, everyone.
0:02.4	Today's show was supposed to be about Omicron.
0:05.3	We were going to talk about what makes this wave different, Biden's upcoming speech about
0:09.5	it, and what you can do to keep yourself healthy.
0:12.5	But then the wave hit us.
0:15.8	We are all fine, but there's a lot of PCR testing going on where we are.
0:20.4	And since we were already scheduled to take a little bit of a break over the holiday,
0:24.6	we decided to take that break one day early.
0:27.9	What means today's show is a rerun about some of the folks who've helped us the most during
0:32.4	the pandemic, delivery workers.
0:35.6	This episode aired right after massive summer storms revealed just how dedicated these folks
0:41.1	are, unperturbed by gale force winds or flash flooding.
0:45.9	Listening now, it's impossible not to think about how privileged our team is to be able
0:50.5	to take our little break, especially to take it a little earlier than expected.
0:55.6	So if I've got one holiday wish, it's that all of you listening can give and receive
1:02.0	that kind of gift to yourselves and the people around you.
1:06.9	One more thing.
1:08.3	Make sure you stay tuned till the end of the show.
1:10.6	We'll have an update on how the fight for delivery worker rights turned out.
1:20.2	When Hurricane Ida made landfall in New York, there was this one image I just had.
1:25.6	It was just couldn't get out of my head.
1:27.6	It was video of a delivery guy.
	...

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