Delivery in progress (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)
By Mark Chiusano
New York City’s gig economy is staggeringly influential by almost every measure. Delivery bikers make close to 3 million takeout dropoffs a week. Ubers and Lyfts dwarf the 14,000 green and yellow taxis on city streets. Roughly 6% of all workers in the five boroughs rely on gig work as their main income, a number that is likely a significant undercount. Their labors have changed consumption patterns and powered restaurants, small businesses, and new-immigrant communities that rely heavily on this low-barrier-to-entry work.
These are just some of the reasons that the gig economy is poised to be an area of key concern for Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, whose general election victory speech in November opened with a paean to “palms calloused from delivery bike handlebars.”
Mamdani has already come out in favor of stricter regulation of app companies and more support for their workers, such as standardized payment and protection against being deactivated from the apps. His transition team leadership includes Lina Khan, the former Federal Trade Commission chair with a history of crusading against Big Tech, who reportedly wants to skewer high prices at local hospitals or even sports stadiums.
But the gig economy presents the next mayor with a rare opportunity to combine his advocacy for workers and consumers with his other less-debated ideas to boost small business — all while reshaping the streetscape to accommodate the new ways New Yorkers shop, work, and move.
CityLand asked app workers, local officials, and policy experts for fresh proposals on the gig economy. Here are three gig-related ideas that the new mayor could take up after being sworn into office in January.
Plan Ahead on Automation
This year, Mayor Eric Adams and his self-described “tech-friendly” administration welcomed autonomous vehicle testing to New York City, extending the probationary period to run through the end of 2025.
The testing permits only eight Waymo vehicles in Manhattan and Downtown Brooklyn, and driverless cabs are still blocked in New York by a few layers of bureaucracy, including state law and lack of city rules. But Waymo and its peers are lobbying hard for change, and the testing has been widely seen as a first step towards the kinds of robotaxis that are already operating–and sometimes competing–in cities like Las Vegas and San Francisco. Their deployment would be a significant shift in New York City, which is home to 180,000 licensed taxi and for-hire vehicle drivers.
The prospect of mass unemployment for those New Yorkers has led to some intriguing alliances. It is not particularly surprising that Bhairavi Desai, executive director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, would like to see a “moratorium and a study” on autonomous vehicle testing and use in the city, with the city-conducted review being “longterm” and covering the social and ecological impact of automation for the drivers she represents. But in a noteworthy twist, some rideshare titans seem to be having similar thoughts.
“We need to be thoughtful about a transition,” said Josh Gold, senior director of public policy and communications at Uber, which currently relies on plenty of human independent contractors for its on-road business–a drastic difference from the likes of Waymo or Tesla. Gold pointed to the potential safety benefits of automation, as well as the needs of the tens of thousands of Uber drivers in New York City. “Slowing down and figuring the right path is important,” he said, adding that Desai’s moratorium and study idea has “a lot of merit.”
Planning ahead for looming technology could take many forms. Desai and Gold both spoke at a recent panel on the gig economy convened at New York Law School, where Gold speculated about finding a way for a “dignified retirement” or “dignified transition” for drivers. Desai later discussed being open to “modernization that could be worked on for the vehicle” to improve safety. She also pointed to wheelchair-accessible vehicles, which are an important part of the city’s transportation system and are far from being able to ditch their human attendants – another quandary that will need to be addressed if or when automation spreads.
Turning App Work Into Stability
An enduring problem of app work is that earnings can be feast or famine. There are seasonal, weather-related, and demand-based peaks and valleys regarding where and how much app workers can log on to deliver, drive, or perform household tasks. City pay standards for delivery and for-hire vehicle work have helped stabilize earnings for many, but app workers still often find themselves at the mercy of a faceless algorithm. No matter how many hotspots they chase on certain days and at certain times, at times the work doesn’t flow.
To top off the uncertainty, workers are often in danger of being “deactivated,” or kicked off their app — sometimes for opaque reasons. Pending city legislation strives to address these kinds of firings. But without support, workers may find themselves abruptly out of a job, with serious expenses for their bikes or cars or gear, and with little recourse to log back on.
This is the nature of gig work, and it can function for those willing and able to surf and master the apps and sometimes live with irregular income. For others who need steadier labor, there can be few easy exits from the apps.
One such exit, currently being nurtured by city government, is an initiative run through Workforce1 career centers that has connected around 250 former delivery workers with e-micro-mobility firms.
“They’re able to move from jobs, say, working for a delivery app with less security, less
clarity about their access to the apps and to income, into full-time jobs in the transportation logistics industry,” said Dynishal Gross, the city’s Small Business Services commissioner, in opening remarks at the gig economy event.
These workers are using skills learned from food delivery, and they aren’t entirely out of the app economy–many are delivering Amazon packages through the company’s delivery service partner program, which has its own ebbs and flows of work and often relies on Amazon technological and logistical infrastructure, including an app. But Gross noted that the city can “work with their employers to upskill them,” connecting workers to training or commercial driver’s licenses–a potential model for future efforts by City Hall.
In the meantime, the app-work veterans can enjoy more of a safety net. Rudy Cazares, president and founder of Cazar Logistics LLC, an Amazon delivery service partner that has hired former e-bikers, said that salaries for his workers start at $20 an hour for bikers, who get paid time off and workers comp. Full-time Cazar workers can also access health and retirement benefits.
E-bike Parking – and Beyond
Delivery workers for DoorDash, Uber Eats, and the rest are constantly concerned about the safety and security of their bikes. It’s all too easy to cut through a lock, or even a seat, to take the bike or the $500 battery. Some batteries aren’t safe to charge inside, and the bikes can be difficult to carry up flights of stairs. Yet the quick and cheap transfer of thousands of orders of pad thai wouldn’t be possible without these unwieldy two-wheelers.
In response, the city could create a full network of secure parking units, enclosed for protection from thieves and the elements, including the ability to charge batteries outdoors. The city took a first step in early December, announcing a vendor to launch 500 locations beginning next year.
Left to Mamdani will be the difficult work of implementing and deepening this network. It could be supercharged and turned into a real boon for delivery workers who may be squeezing into shared rooms and searching for safe places to protect their pricey investments, says Jackson Chabot, director of advocacy and organizing for the nonprofit Open Plans.
“Any space that the city can allocate towards that is really warranted,” says Chabot, who suggests particular focus in neighborhoods like Bensonhurst or Northern Manhattan where many delivery workers live.
Among the big questions are the storage locker designs and locations. Charging capabilities would be a major boon to workers who often lug around spare batteries to complete a shift. The pods could also be placed strategically to serve multiple purposes: on street corners, they could help provide “daylighting,” taking the place of large parked cars which make it more difficult for pedestrians and drivers to see each other in the crosswalk — itself a growing concern for safety advocates and one that is under contentious debate in the Council.
In crowded business districts, the parking units could also solve a problem that has bedeviled walkers and small business owners alike: the congestion that comes from workers holding onto their bikes while waiting for another order to arrive.
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Mark Chiusano is a journalist and senior fellow at New York Law School, and the author of the forthcoming book, Gigging Alone.