"Essential but Unprotected: App-based Food Couriers in New York City," Sept. 2021

This report examines the working conditions of delivery workers engaged by digital platforms such as UberEATS and DoorDash to deliver food from restaurants and fast-food outlets to consumers in New York City. The goals of this research are to raise awareness among stakeholders about the pressing issues that app-based delivery workers face in the largely unregulated platform economy, and to help inform policy and organizational solutions to such issues.

The experience of app-based couriers in New York City illustrates the challenges that workers, advocates, and government officials confront for achieving labor protections in the digital platform economy. Like all workers in the gig economy, platform workers fall in gray areas or outright gaps of existing legal frameworks, such that their employment status and relationship with the platforms remain unregulated.