This week, the Mamdani administration announced a landmark $131 million settlement with DoorDash that systematically underpaid 260,000 delivery workers out of their wages.
More than 27,000 workers will get more than $1,000 while over 4,000 will receive more than $5,000. Several hundred could see more than $10.000.
Last year, DoorDash reportedly made over a billion dollars in profits.
“Simply put, we screwed up,” DoorDash said in a statement. “Our mistakes meant some Dashers were underpaid or paid late. While these mistakes weren’t intentional, that doesn’t make them okay. We pride ourselves on operational excellence at DoorDash – and this was not excellent, nor was it acceptable. Dashers should be paid in full, on time, every time. We are sorry to the Dashers we let down.”
While the settlement amount is eye popping, what’s transformative is that for three years the city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) will monitor how DoorDash complies with the settlement and that workers will be themselves collecting the workplace data that determines what they get paid.
“For the first time, workers will have the power to crowdsource data and investigate the black box algorithms that dictate their schedules and pay,” Mayor Mamdani said. “DoorDash cannot prevent or penalize a worker for using this tool. And if DoorDash tries, we will fast-track any retaliation case to get that worker reinstated.”
Mamdani took Tony Xu, the CEO of DoorDash, to task for advice he gave recently to business owners.
“A CEO, he said, has to ‘take the greedy algorithm’ and keep going all the way to see if there is more. In computer science, a greedy algorithm is one that makes the most optimized, best short-term outcome choice at every step and never weighs the consequences.”
Mayor Mamdani continued. “New York City and the tens of thousands of delivery workers who call our city home have reckoned with greed as a business model for far too long. Every day, in heat, in snow and in rain, delivery workers carry goods and food to every corner of the city.”
“Thousands of them deliver for DoorDash, and thousands of them have felt the human cost of the greedy algorithm,” Mamdani said. “For years, DoorDash failed to count every hour worked by delivery workers. This was not a rounding error or an accidental mistake. In 2023, when the city began enforcing a minimum pay rate for delivery workers, DoorDash left time out of the count. Time on canceled trips and trips that crossed city limits.”
“For the first time, the city's settlement gives workers an active role in enforcing their rights, an approach that we are taking across the administration,” said Julie Su, Deputy Mayor for Economic Justice. “Workers themselves, in partnership with the Workers Justice Project and the Workers Algorithm Observatory, will share their trip and pay data directly with the DCWP on an ongoing basis.”
Su continued. “The city will not rely solely on DoorDash's account of whether deliveristas are being paid properly for all their work. Workers' own voices, their own data will guide our oversight of compliance and ensure that workers receive every cent they're owed.”
DoorDash’s predatory practices were unmasked by investigators with the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection who combed through terabytes of DoorDash's own data analyzing 152 million payments and 110 million hours of work and discovered DoorDash had underpaid more than 260,000 delivery workers across New York City between April 2022 and June 2026.
Samuel Levine, Commissioner of the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection credited workers for having the courage to organize.
“But as grand as that figure sounds, this case has really humble origins,” Levine said. “It began when ordinary delivery workers, some on the stage, came to our department concerned that DoorDash was paying them late or not paying them at all.”
Levine continued. “They stepped forward despite the risks to themselves, despite the constant threat of deactivation, and despite the cynicism so many people understandably feel about whether the government can actually deliver for them.”Ligia Guallpa, the executive director of the Workers Justice Project, home of the Los Deliveristas Unidos, said workers took bold action despite the Trump administration’s draconian mass deportation campaign.
“And then to the organizers who are agitating in the street, to all the workers saying you also need to come forward: Antonio, Alejo, William, Jose, Abu Bakar, Selu, Riaj, Maria and also Amadou and the entire team who work every day to build that bridge of trust between workers and their city government,” Guallpa said. “And we know that's not easy. It takes enormous courage from a deliverista, a leader and a worker, to look in the eyes of another worker and say the following: Let's trust our city government when the federal government has abandoned them. Let's organize and protest against greedy corporations like DoorDash when ICE is targeting them in their own streets. Let us speak up about corporate abuse, even when their own apps are threatening to retaliate and fire them.”
