Mayor Mamdani Announces $5 Million Settlement for Wrongfully Deactivated Food Delivery Workers

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Mayor Mamdani Announces $5 Million Settlement, Reinstatement of as Many as 10,000 Wrongfully Deactivated Food Delivery Workers Uber Eats, Fantuan, and HungryPanda will pay more than $5 million for violations affecting nearly 50,000 workers NEW YORK, NY – Today, Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) Commissioner Sam Levine announced more than $5 million in worker restitution and penalties secured from three major restaurant delivery app companies. Uber Eats, Fantuan, and HungryPanda will pay a combined $5,195,000 in restitution, civil penalties, and damages to more than 49,000 food delivery workers to resolve violations of the City’s Minimum Pay Rate for delivery workers. Uber has also agreed to reinstate workers who were wrongfully deactivated between December 2023 and September 2024, which may impact as many as 10,000 people. Uber Eats will pay $3,150,000 in restitution to more than 48,000 workers citywide and $350,000 in civil penalties and fees. DCWP’s investigation found that Uber Eats failed to pay workers the minimum pay rate between December 2023 and September 2024 for time spent on canceled trips. Fantuan will pay more than $468,000 in restitution to 285 workers citywide and more than $52,000 in civil penalties and fees. DCWP’s investigation found that Fantuan failed to pay workers the minimum pay rate between December 2023 and February 2024. HungryPanda will pay $1,068,672 in restitution to more than 1,000 workers citywide and more than $106,327 in civil penalties and fees. DCWP’s investigation found that HungryPanda failed to pay workers the minimum pay rate between December 2023 and January 2024. These cases demonstrate the success of DCWP’s innovative compliance monitoring systems, which allow the agency to identify and stop violations quickly. By pairing the apps’ monthly reporting obligations with direct and targeted engagement with workers, DCWP is able to quickly identify and correct violations of law. Through enforcement, DCWP ensures that affected workers receive the money apps owe them, plus an additional amount to compensate for the violations. This announcement comes as the Mamdani administration ramps up efforts to crack down on predatory delivery apps, reverse worker losses through aggressive enforcement of the Delivery Worker Laws, and hold companies and individuals accountable for ripping off the hardworking, majority-immigrant deliveristas of this city. Earlier this month, Commissioner Levine announced a lawsuit against Motoclick and sent compliance warnings to over 60 companies including Instacart, DoorDash, Grubhub, Uber, and other app companies, warning them to adhere to expanded delivery worker protection laws that recently went into effect. This includes Local Law 113, which increases delivery worker pay transparency; Local Laws 123 and 124, which expand the minimum pay rate to cover third-party grocery delivery workers, give timely and weekly payment rights to more contracted delivery workers, and improve bathroom access for contracted delivery workers; and Local Laws 107 and 108, which require restaurant and grocery apps to offer a tipping option at checkout. As a report DCWP released earlier this month revealed, DoorDash and Uber engineered design tricks in their interfaces that lowered workers’ tip earnings by $550 million. Those tricks are now illegal. The City's pioneering Minimum Pay Rate rule, established by Local Law 115 of 2021, dramatically increased average hourly earnings for app-based delivery workers without reducing deliveries. The MPR will increase to $22.13 for the first pay period on or after April 1, 2026. The $22.13 rate reflects a 3.2% adjustment for inflation between December 2024 and December 2025. LIC Food Hall: 27-17 42nd Long Island City, NY 11101 January 30, 2026