The popular delivery apps Uber, DoorDash and GrubHub on Thursday lost their bid to block New York City’s minimum wage mandate for app-based delivery workers.
Acting state Supreme Court Justice Nicholas Moyne ruled against the companies after they sued the city in July, when the rule was to go into effect. The decision will now make way for the minimum pay rate, which is scheduled to eventually reach $19.96 per hour, to be implemented for some 65,000 of the city’s delivery workers.
“Multi-billion dollar companies cannot profit off the backs of immigrant workers while paying them pennies in New York City and get away with it,” Ligia Guallpa, the director of the New York-based Workers Justice Project, which helped lead the advocacy efforts for a minimum wage, said in a statement. “The judge’s ruling is another reminder that workers will always win.”
Josh Gold, an Uber spokesman, said the mandate would harm couriers.
“The city continues to lie to workers and the public,” Gold said in a statement. “This law will put thousands of New Yorkers out of work and force the remaining couriers to compete against each other to deliver orders faster.”
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