As ICE agents continue to abduct New Yorkers attending routine immigration check-ins at 26 Federal Plaza, the Adams administration continues to erode labor protections for New York’s 80,000 delivery workers, many of whom are immigrants. 

On August 13, Eric Adams vetoed two bills, Int. 1133 and 1135, both of which passed through city council with a veto-proof supermajority . The bills would expand landmark minimum pay laws for food delivery workers to also include those delivering groceries. 

An August 25 report by The City revealed how City Council continues to stall legislation like Int. 20, which was introduced in January, and would require app-based delivery companies to provide training and safety equipment to their workers.

Amid highly publicized mayoral and city council races, delivery workers find themselves caught between intersecting wars on not just labor and immigration, but micromobility.

“What’s happening with this mayoral administration is exceptional,” Sergio Achje, deliverista of 20 years and founding organizer of Los Deliveristas Unidos, told The Indypendent. 

Achje continued: “One day they’re supporting [delivery workers], the next they’re stabbing you in the back. We’re witnessing a mayoral administration that, across all its projects, has a lot of instability, and unfortunately, it’s affecting us as deliveristas.”

In April, the NYPD announced that traffic violations (like running stop signs or red lights) would be upgraded from tickets to summonses to criminal court, leading to a 4000% surge in summonses.

The policy change applied not to cars, but bikes and E-bikes.

These criminalizations arrived alongside the department’s new “Quality of Life Division,” which deploys NYPD officers to field what are typically considered 311 complaints (including, ironically, illegal parking), and which expanded across Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and the Bronx early August.

“The fear that this new law generates is frustrating for so many people…To say ‘I’m going to court and I don’t know what’s going to happen to me,’ just for the simple fact of using an E-bike and trying to sustain their families—that’s a sad thing,” Achje said.

 The Adams administration says it is cracking down on cyclists to increase public safety at the same time it is ripping up bike lanes and abandoning other street safety redesigns. 

According to police commissioner Jessica Tisch, the law aims to increase public safety by curbing “out-of-control e-bikes and scooters.” 

Yet since April, the mayor has ripped up the Bedford Avenue bike lane and abandoned other street safety redesigns, like the one on McGuiness Boulevard, where his chief adviser has been indicted for taking bribes to block a “crucial life-saving project,” per an indictment from Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg on August 21.

The spike in criminalizations and attempts to erase labor protections and bike lanes alike begs the question, Who exactly is supposed to be getting safer here?

Car and truck drivers were responsible for 99.96% of reported pedestrian injuries in the first quarter of 2025, according to Streetsblog. 

Meanwhile, cyclist fatalities continue to increase, according to NYC nonprofit Transportation Alternatives, and 85% of cyclist fatalities occur on streets without bike lanes.  

A 2024 report by Workers Justice Project, the organization behind Los Deliveristas Unidos, showed how food delivery has outpaced construction as the most dangerous occupation in New York City.

Many delivery workers don’t have access to health insurance or paid sick or injury leave, meaning that injured workers often go weeks or months without pay.

Deliveristas also lack access to bathrooms and E-Bike charging stations while on the job, and must attempt to complete as many deliveries as possible before being forced to return home.

These aren’t the only factors leading delivery workers to rush.

Fired by the Algorithm

“Extreme algorithm management systems exercise an enormous amount of pressure for workers to be online, every minute, delivering as fast as possible, risking their safety,” said Ligia Guallpa, director of Workers Justice Project, in an interview.

If deliveristas don’t appear to be working quickly enough, apps threaten to deactivate their accounts. 

“Apps are using deactivation and blackouts as a form of retaliation, a form of penalizing workers for being unable to meet their unrealistic timeframes or not accepting every order,” Guallpa explained. 

Companies don’t offer clear justifications for a worker’s deactivation or a ready appeal process. 

“When a company deactivates a worker, that equates to firing them…[companies] are forcing workers to choose between prioritizing their safety or risk losing their jobs,” Guallpa stated.

In 2021, Los Deliveristas Unidos and Workers Justice Project won a landmark minimum wage for delivery workers, which has been adjusted for inflation to $21.44 per hour.

In response to the new law, companies began hiding tipping options and threatening workers with deactivation, incentivizing workers to rush to complete more orders.

On July 14, council member Justin Brannan introduced Int 1132, which would require companies to provide just cause for deactivating workers. 

Los Deliveristas Unidos also rallied at City Hall on July 14 in support of Int 1133 and 1135—the bills expanding minimum pay to grocery deliverers—as well as three bills requiring companies to provide transparent pay calculation and tipping options. 

Since then, Instacart has run print ads, digital ads, and ads on the sides of box trucks pressuring city council to stop Int 1133 and 1135. Instacart also threatened to sue if they pass.

Prior to the minimum pay law, deliveristas earned, on average, after expenses, $11.12 per hour with tips and $4.03 per hour without tips, according to a 2022 report from The Department of Consumer and Worker Protection.

For many workers, deliveries are their only source of income.

“The 2023 minimum pay law has been transformational for restaurant delivery workers, boosting incomes and economic security while customer demand, deliveries, and record profits have continued to rise – proving that these companies can afford to pay workers fairly and provide affordable value to customers,” read an August 13 press release by Workers Justice Project. 

On August 14, Adams vetoed Int 1133 and 1135. The pay and tip transparency bills were signed into law.

“We call on the New York City Council to override this veto…because solidarity in the face of corporate greed is the key to ensuring that no one goes hungry in New York City, including those who deliver food to our tables,” WJP said. 

City Council is expected to override the vetoes in September. 

Workers Justice Project is still waiting on the Committee on Consumer and Worker Protection to review Int 1132, the deactivation protection bill, so that it can be voted on by city council.

In June, The City revealed that council speaker Adrienne Adams received $150,000 from Doordash for her mayoral primary campaign. (Andrew Cuomo received $1 million.) 

The PAC Uber NYC spent at least $100,000 promoting Maya Kornberg, who dropped out of the city council race after losing to Hanif in the June Democratic primary. 

In addition to co-sponsoring Int 0276, a different deactivation protection bill, Hanif was lead sponsor on a bill seeking to expand paid sick leave to some independent contractors. 

City Council members Mercedes Narcisse and Darlene Mealy of Brooklyn, Carmen De La Rosa and Julie Menin of Manhattan, and Eric Dinowitz of The Bronx have also received donations from Uber NYC, according to The City. 

“It’s very concerning how much money Uber and Doordash are investing in keeping City Council completely silent,” Guallpa said. “The community is being invisibilized.” 

Guallpa emphasized the need for a comprehensive “community-labor approach” in collaboration with transport groups, labor groups, [and] community groups to improve working conditions and traffic safety for deliveristas.

I spoke with Alexa Sledge, communications director for Transportation Alternatives, who compared delivery work to the taxi industry. 

In 2017, a state assembly bill added rideshare drivers to taxi drivers in the list of victims for whom assault is considered a felony. In 2024, Uber and Lyft reached a settlement with NY Attorney General Letitia James that provided drivers with 56 hours of paid sick leave.

“There’s a precedent for this kind of [protective] regulation, but we need to take it seriously and then get that legislation through,” Sledge said. 

Instead of turning towards criminalization, which exposes workers potentially to deportation, Sledge, Guallpa, and Achje stressed the need for improved infrastructure and education.

“In the construction sector you see this active effort to dedicate hours of health and safety training to construction workers…in order to build a culture of safety in the industry,” Guallpa explained, referencing OSHA Training Institute Education centers and the 30-hours of safety training construction workers are required to complete. 

In the delivery industry, workers are only expected to know traffic signals, “but that’s not really a level of education [appropriate] for a community where, often, a lot of [workers] are entering the industry for the first time, and often, for the first time, navigating the streets of New York on an e-bike,” Guallpa said.

Sledge highlighted the need to expand cycling infrastructure, noting that “E-bikes only came to the streets of New York legally in 2020, and the streets weren’t ready for that.” 

Expanding Cycling Infrastructure

“There needs to be serious redesign, serious reallocation of space…a built-in network so that no matter where you’re going, it’s safe from end to end,” Sledge continued. 

This, advocates say, includes adding (not removing!) protected bike lanes, as well as streetlights and physical daylighting, or blocking off spaces at dangerous intersections to allow cars wider sightlines. It also means diverting car traffic and major truck routes away from popular bike paths.

“So much of our street space is dedicated towards the movement and storage of private vehicles and we give such small amounts of New York City space to pedestrians and cyclists. That leads to constant conflict… a false scarcity of resources,” Sledge stated.

While New Yorkers try to reduce the dangers unleashed by the delivery apps, the companies continue raking in hefty profits. In the second quarter of 2025, UberEats reported $4.102 billion in revenue. Doordash reported $3.3 billion, and Instacart $914 million. 

Sledge, Achje, and Guallpa all expressed optimism for a new mayor and city council, who “will not stay silent,” but instead, in Guallpa’s words, will “deliver what they promised for working class people and working class New Yorkers, and prioritize the safety and dignity of delivery workers.” 

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