‘They’re playing dirty’: inside delivery apps’ pushback against tips after New York raises wage

City’s new law guarantees some drivers nearly $30 an hour but bosses are trying to reassert their dominance. I got back on my delivery bike to find out more

I’m straddling my road bike, carrying two boxes of Chinese dumplings in a paper tote. The DoorDash app tells me I need to sprint my payload across Manhattan – cutting across the Holland Tunnel’s on-ramp – in the next eight minutes.

I’m trying out food delivery under New York City’s new minimum wage law on a frigid December afternoon. Before – I was a part-time delivery worker between 2018 and 2020 – an order like this would have paid just a few dollars, making it a frantic rush to finish and move on to the next one. Now the new rules guarantee delivery workers nearly $30 an hour of “trip time”. So I stop at red lights, yield to pedestrians, and though I end up arriving a couple minutes late, I feel surprisingly relaxed. My customer seems pleased, too.

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