City’s historic floods put food delivery workers at risk
Chen Xianghai parked his moped on the side of Roosevelt Avenue, one of the busiest streets of downtown Flushing. He met up with a group of men, all wearing a turquoise jacket and taking a break between delivery orders.
On Friday, most of them had no choice but to work under the rain. Chen Xianghai, 35, has been working as a food courrier for a year, since he arrived in the United States from China. He could not afford taking a day off during heavy floods and worked for 11 hours on that day. “It is dangerous,” he said. “I tried to keep it slow to prevent falling over, but I was worried about exceeding the time for the delivery too.”
While most New Yorkers were asked to stay home when the state of emergency was declared in New York City amid rainfall, delivery workers had to secure food and drink delivery. At the risk of their own safety.
David Demas, called amigo by his fellow food couriers, works seven days a week for the asian-food delivery app, Fantuan. He got through Flushing and the surrounding neighborhoods for 10 hours straight in the rain last Friday. No pause, no break for lunch. “The rain, the snow, same price, there is no extra for the weather,” said the 39 years-old Mexican man. “It was more orders, people kept calling me.”
Delivery workers in New York City are exposed to frequent accidents, making their way between crowded bike lanes and cars. In a recent study, nearly half of food courrier have suffered a traffic accident or a crash during their work. Injuries can prevent them from working for several days, with no compensation. Most of the delivery workers have no insurance and pay medical services from their own pocket.
Andrew B. Wolf, professor at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, explained that delivery workers take the responsibility for all the risks, and that also during floods. “It has gotten worse in the last few years, the effects of climate change have become real for the city,” he said. “Huge health and safety risks, traffic accidents, all that just magnifies when there’s some kind of weather event.”
The 65,000 delivery workers in New York City are mostly young and immigrants of color, said Andrew Wolf. They are from Latin America, West Africa, South Asia, and China, and most of them are part of marginalized groups within their own community. In Flushing, they work for major delivery platforms, such as Uber or GrubHub, and for Fantuan and Hungry Panda, specialized in Asian food.
Di Zheng, 19, works at Vivi Bubble Tea, in Flushing’s main street. She remembers having many online orders during the rainfall last week. “When it is raining people order especially on Hungry Panda and the apps,” she said. She noted that the asian apps are more popular, the neighborhood being mainly South and East Asian.
But some delivery workers have to deal with multiple apps at the same time to generate enough income. Hong He, 48, divides his time between two companies. The unit delivery price is too low on Fantuan, and he needs to work for Uber as well.
New York City’s regulators are trying to implement a minimum wage for delivery workers. Starting October, platforms would have to pay food couriers $18 an hour.
In the meantime, delivery workers such as Hong He are forced to work during floods . “It is better on the rainy days,” he said. “No one is around, I just make more money at the end of the day.”
