DoorDash to pay drivers $131 million in landmark settlement: ‘We screwed up’

DoorDash will pay $131.5 million to resolve claims that it shortchanged its delivery workers across New York City, Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced on Tuesday.Described by city officials as the single largest labor settlement in municipal history, the agreement also mandates that the gig-economy company submit to a new oversight monitoring system to guarantee compliance with local delivery worker wage regulations.Admitting to operational errors in an official statement, DoorDash said, "Simply put, we screwed up.""While these mistakes weren’t intentional, that doesn’t make them okay. We pride ourselves on operational excellence at DoorDash – and this was not excellent, nor was it acceptable. Dashers should be paid in full, on time, every time. We are sorry to the Dashers we let down," the company said.City Hall confirmed that the bulk of the financial settlement will go back to more than 260,000 workers who were underpaid, left unpaid, or paid late for deliveries. Furthermore, the firm will pay about $16 million in civil penalties and other administrative costs to the city government."When a worker earns a wage, they deserve to be paid that wage – not tomorrow, not after a lawsuit, but on time and in full," Mamdani said in a statement. "DoorDash underpaid more than 260,000 workers, and today we are getting that money back."(AFP/Getty)DoorDash stated that a large portion of the financial discrepancies stemmed from "technical bugs or happened in complicated situations," including orders that crossed city boundaries, orders with multiple pickup or drop-off spots, or trips that were cancelled or only partially finished.Last year, the business agreed to pay almost $17 million to resolve separate claims that customer tips were unfairly used to subsidize base pay for delivery workers in New York, instead of letting drivers keep the tips on top of guaranteed earnings.