What Delivery Drivers Need from DC Council

By Isabella Stratta and Katie J. Wells

We spent much of the summer outside the Chinese restaurant Dumplings & Beyond in Glover Park. The restaurant is a hotspot for instant food delivery, sometimes churning out 25 orders in an hour.

Each week, we passed out dozens of flyers and struck up countless conversations with UberEats, Grubhub, and DoorDash drivers in an effort to recruit them for a study at Georgetown University, where Isabella is an undergraduate and Katie is a postdoctoral fellow.

In total, we interviewed and surveyed 40 D.C.-area delivery drivers about their employment histories, delivery strategies, and earnings. What we found is a stark picture of the gig economy. And one that is particularly relevant.

This week the D.C. Council is holding a hearing on permanent legislation (“Fair Meals Delivery Act of 2021”) that could begin to regulate the mostly-unregulated food delivery platform industry.

However, policymakers have little to zero information about the city’s meal delivery workforce. Estimates as simple as the number of gig workers for meal delivery platforms in the D.C.-area remains unknown.

While the full findings of our research will be released in the coming months, we offer today two key take-aways:

First, worker pay is not transparent and earnings are difficult to calculate.

Tens of thousands of D.C. workers who deliver for third-party platforms do not have a clear sense of what they will be paid until after a job has been completed. What this arrangement means is the work is risky and the terms of the work are hard to figure out. In fact, 40% of the drivers in our study were paid less than they were expecting for their work or struggled with pay transparency. In some cases, this meant they were not paid at all for a delivery.

Editor’s note: 730DC interviewed Dr. Wells in 2020, covering numerous aspects of drivers’ numerous costs.

Caleb, a 43-year old disabled firefighter who lost a supplemental job during the pandemic, was paid less than what we had been expecting on numerous occasions. He said, “Depending on how much it is…especially if it’s in the middle of a delivery, it’s not worth it to fight with [the platform companies], which is sad, because… I feel like they realize they can get away with a certain number of glitches.”

Roberta, a 65-yr old grandmother who lost her child care business when the pandemic hit, explained how this issue happens for her: “When the alert comes [on the app], it says this trip is going to pay $5.74, right? And it says under the $5.74, in fine print…‘includes expected tip.’ So the idea is that they’re going to give you this money if the person tips. Well, if the person doesn’t tip, that means you’re not going to get $5.74. So the amount changes… And sometimes you won’t get the $5.74, because you discover that the order is actually $1.59. So that’s what Uber does, which is very frustrating… there is always a discrepancy in the amount that they say.”

Pedro, a 36-year old full-time driver, told us a similar story. He said, “An order came in saying I would get paid $15 for a 3 mile-[trip] but when I completed the order, they only paid me $10. And after sending many complaints to DoorDash, nothing. They basically said ‘We can’t confirm this, sir’ and so I stopped bothering.”

Second, bathroom access is uneven and scarce.

More than half of the workers in our study had difficulties accessing restaurant bathrooms while they were picking up orders, or were denied bathroom access altogether. Because the delivery platforms encourage workers to complete a certain number of orders within a set time frame, and because the delivery platforms constantly track workers’ GPS location, workers often believe they will be penalized if they take a break to find a bathroom.

Alyssa, a 30-year old new mother who works as a security guard and qualified for SNAP last year, said, “Any restaurant I’ve been in, I’ve been told, oh it’s shut down. It’s shut down due to COVID, or they’ve blamed it on the bathroom having a maintenance issue.”

Marcel, a 29-year old manager of a retail store, likes to deliver in NW DC because she believes she is less likely to be declined there when she asks to go to the restroom. She said “it’s just unrealistic that DoorDash expects you to, like, keep going, keep going, keep going, and restaurants won’t even let you use their bathroom.”

Cameron, a 25-year old recent college graduate from Iran, has not been denied access but has seen it happen to other delivery drivers. He believes it is because he looks White.

Given these patterns, it’s good news that the D.C. Council is considering legislation about the meal delivery industry.

As D.C. looks to confront these challenges, they can glean lessons from Seattle and New York City, which recently passed city legislation requiring gig companies to pay their workers minimum wages and mandate bathroom access.

Some jurisdictions have been successful in their attempts to regulate the industry. Seattle recently passed the Pay Up legislation in May of this year, which affords gig workers basic protections such as a minimum wage and transparency in pay. New York City also recently adopted a minimum per trip payment requirement.

The D.C. Council may also face industry pushback. In 2021 alone, gig companies collectively spent $619,102.51 on lobbying D.C. Council, a figure we calculated by compiling public lobbying records from the D.C. Board of Ethics and Government Accountability website. (The actual figure on lobbying spending is even higher as spending on the companies’ internal lobbyists isn’t included in these figures.)

The bill that is up for debate this week, The Fair Meals Delivery Act of 2021, usefully addresses the terms of business relationships among meal delivery platforms, restaurants, and consumers. The Act intervenes in the business relationship between a third-party meal platform and a customer by requiring fee disclosures. The Act also details agreements between restaurants and third-party meal delivery platforms, for instance, by requiring third-parties to not indemnify restaurants. But, in the Act’s current form, the worker is completely left out.

We recommend the D.C. Council corrects this omission and amends The Fair Meals Delivery Act in two ways.

We urge the Council to (a) require third-party meal delivery platforms like UberEats and DoorDash to make job pay transparent for on-demand delivery drivers, and (b) mandate bathroom access in restaurants for this same workforce.

Third-party delivery workers are often stuck between a rock and a hard place when they pick-up orders. They work for an app — — not the restaurant. And so restaurants choose how, or if, to recognize a business relationship with meal delivery workers. The D.C. Council must ensure the dignity of this workforce by regulating this industry. It is the least this city can do.