USA Today
New York City has recently passed strict rules and regulations that aim to protect the city’s food delivery workers. In the open wave of Hurricane Ida that blanketed over New York City with rain, we saw some pictures where food delivery agents were navigating their way to make deliveries amid the flooded streets of New York. The images went viral on social media, calling for strict regulations to protect these hard workers.
Food delivery services such as DoorDash and Grubhub have grown extensively during the last couple of months i.e., during the core pandemic and NYC regulators are now looking to protect this industry by leaps and bounds. As mentioned in a report by Bloomberg and noted by Engadget, the newly formed legislations cover almost every aspect of food delivery, ranging from bathroom facilities to tips per order.
The new regulations rule that food delivery services must announce their gratuity policies to workers, agencies must ensure that every delivery agent gets his/her fair share of tips. These workers should be paid at least once a week which includes payment options that don’t necessarily require them to create bank accounts. The report further mentions another clause to ensure that each food delivery worker gets adequate bathroom breaks. The regulators pressed a little on this point that restaurants must have bathroom facilities for food delivery agents.
DoorDash and Grubhub, the city’s major food delivery services have said to support the legislation with complete measures. DoorDash representative states that the company will continue to look out for its delivery workers and will work with stakeholders and the city council to identify ways by which they can support all delivery workers in New York City.
According to reports, food delivery agents have a limitation over food delivery routes and this can become a major concern with the New York City regulators. Grubhub and DoorDash are contenting the said concern over with the regulatory bodies as this policy is something that could hurt customers living in underserved regions.
Well, these bills are nothing that could surprise us, these are more like basic human rights that they are now giving to food delivery workers. Food delivery is an easy task on paper but in reality, there is so much more to it. Food delivery is one job that underpays you for the amount of hard work and sweat you put in. Just look at the recent viral trending images of food delivery workers navigating through heavy rains amid a Hurricane, just to deliver their order in time.
Anyhow, this is the right thing to do and every other food delivery service in the world must take an example from these new regulations by New York City.