From today’s The Villager amNewYork:
New labor protections for the city’s tens of thousands of delivery workers are set to take effect Monday, Jan. 24, and advocates and politicians rallied in Times Square the day before to promote the incoming laws.
The delivery worker collective Los Deliveristas Unidos and the immigrant worker advocacy group Workers Justice Project organized the event that was a mix of celebration and a know-your-rights campaign, praising the new regulations as a move toward fairer conditions in the gig economy.
“[We] have demonstrated that it is possible to rewrite the rules of the delivery app industry and it is possible to guarantee labor protections throughout delivery workers,” said Ligia Guallpa, executive director at the Workers Justice Project. “We will continue to organize and transform this industry.”
The first set of new laws passed by the City Council in September are in effect Monday and will provide protections for delivery workers in New York City transporting food for companies like GrubHub, DoorDash, and Relay.
Los Deliveristas Unidos organized for better conditions on behalf of some 65,000 workers, many of them immigrants from Central America, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said their movement could be a model for future organizing.
“Hard-working people, who just want a better life for themselves and who organized, they are a model for the whole city,” Schumer said. “We want to educate the public about Los Deliveristas, about what is needed, how they can back them up, and how we can support other worker organizations to make our city a fairer and more equitable place.”
Read the complete story here