Food delivery drivers through applications and street vendors in New York celebrate this Friday what they consider a victory after the City Council, in its last session of the year, approved bills that they had long demanded.
One of the approved projects, pending the signature of Mayor Eric Adams, will prevent “deliveristas”, as the delivery people are known, from being “deactivated” by Uber, Lyft, DoorDash or Grubhub, that is, fired without cause, evidence or the opportunity to be heard, with traffic fines that must be dealt with in criminal court, which exposes these workers, mostly immigrants, to being detained and deported.
“This law means that delivery drivers can slow down, work safely and assert their rights without fear that an algorithm will suddenly cut off their livelihood,” the organizations Workers Justice Project and Los Deliveristas Unidos said in a joint statement.
They highlighted that “the victory” is the result of the years “of organization, courage and perseverance” of the workers, who have shared their stories, refusing to accept injustice as the price of survival and demanding changes.
They recalled that after being deactivated by the applications, they denounced it, transforming “fear into power and power into law.”
You may be interested in: The collapse of protections for delivery workers: a story of two labor models
It is estimated that in New York there are about 80,000 food delivery workers, and 80% are immigrants.
Another project that was approved by the Council on Thursday benefits thousands of street vendors, a large number of whom are also immigrants, and for the first time since the 1970s the permits they need to sell their goods were increased.
The project will increase permits from 853, with years-long waiting lists, to 10,500 by 2027. These workers have been exposed to fines of up to $1,000 and confiscation of merchandise for not having a license.
It is estimated that in New York there are 23,000 street vendors and that about 20,500 sell food, according to data from the NGO Street Vendor Project, which brings together more than 2,500 of these workers.
The main countries of origin of these workers are Mexico (30%), Ecuador (24%), Egypt (20%), Senegal (7%) and the United States (4%).
Thousands of immigrants who arrived in the wave of the last two years have chosen to be vendors or “deliveristas,” as food delivery people are called in the city, and live in fear of immigration raids.
With information from EFE.
Follow information about the world in our international section