On 23 September 2021, New York City passed the strongest protections yet in the United States for app-based food delivery workers. The legislation prevents the food delivery apps and courier services from charging workers fees to receive their pay, allows delivery workers to use restaurant bathrooms and limit how far they can be asked to deliver, prohibits the apps from charging delivery workers for insulated food bags, and sets minimum payments per trip.

The bills were written with input from Los Deliveristas Unidos (LDU), a collective of mostly immigrant app delivery workers that was born out of the Workers Justice Project. Some worker representatives have said that the package of bills falls short, as delivery workers are still classified as independent contractors who are ineligible for workers’ compensation or unemployment benefits.

Grubhub and DoorDash generally expressed support for the bills, while DoorDash has raised concerns that by allowing workers to set parameters on where and how they will make deliveries, there could be “unintended consequences,” and cause worse service in “underserved areas.”