Worker's Justice Project

I will use the funding to build up the organizing capacity of food delivery workers, which will strengthen and expand the power and voices of app-based delivery workers in New York City. 

By increasing their organizing capacity, we will be able to create opportunities for workers to share their  experiences, guide app-based food delivery workers to appropriate legal channels, articulate the essential role of delivery workers, and develop with them a framework of legal standards for the industry. In the next year or two, we hope build  legislative campaigns that will give workers the right to hazard pay, paid sick times, access to restrooms and protection from discrimination, and right to a safe workplace. This is an important step to creating standards in the industry and pathway for workers to form its own independent union or organization.

I am a migrant woman and decade long labor rights organizer that has been leading important organizing campaigns to win essential labor protections, while building new models of worker representation such as worker-owned cooperatives, workplace committees or new worker organization models like Los Deliveristas Unidos and Day Laborer Centers.

My vision is to build a city where everyone's labor is dignified and protected. The goal is to ensure migrant workers like food delivery workers, house cleaners and construction workers have representation and are able to win fair pay, safer working conditions and a respectful workplace free from retaliation. 

As more immigrant workers become victims of ruthless exploitation that puts their lives at risk, there are many more willing to take other kinds of risks to change that. That is exactly what food delivery workers are doing in the streets of NYC. We are organizing to refine the future of gig workers and defend their rights and, by extension, protect all workers from the unsafe working conditions and exploitative practices of the delivery apps and the restaurants and stores that use them.

Worker's Justice Project (WJP) is a New York-based worker center that has been playing a crucial role in building important movements to defend the humanity and our dignity of day laborers, domestic workers and now food delivery workers. 

WJP is democratically governed worker center that has been leading important worker-led organizing campaigns to win essential labor protections, while building new models of worker representation such as women-led worker cooperatives, health & safety committees or new worker organization models like Los Deliveristas Unidos and Day Laborer Centers.

WJP recently began to organize app-based food delivery workers who are fighting for fair pay, safer working conditions and for representation.

On October 15, 2020, app-based food delivery workers began to self-organize as “Los Deliveristas Unidos” and put forward their first set of demands to Relay, Uber, Doordash, GrubHub and other digital platforms who are operating the fastest growing industry in the city. These demands are: 1) Access to restrooms 2) Protective equipment 3) Respect the right to refuse unsafe work: No punishment for refusing an order that a worker feels is unsafe 4) Paid sick time 5) Hazard pay 6) The right to organize and be protected from unfair termination.

WJP is disrupting the power of gig economy tech companies that have been making billions in profits and capitalization during the pandemic.

We are building a ground breaking organizing campaign that is led by app-based food delivery workers who are fighting for fair pay and better treatment for all gig economy workers. 

Los Deliveristas Unidos is organizing an effort that is poised to transform one of the fastest growing industries in the city, where it’s estimated that 80,000 workers are delivering food and groceries. Most of this workforce is immigrant, undocumented and indigenous people who have been struggling to get by without economic relief, and struggling to access benefits when there has been no work, or when they get sick.

Worker's Justice Project is aimed to lift up the voices of food delivery workers that are working in an invisible and unprotected industry. We believe people directly impacted by injustice, especially migrant workers are ideally situated to have the knowledge and capacity to create sustaining and equitable change.

We believe that it is possible to  win justice and dignity for app-based food delivery workers but can only be done when they lead their fight. We envision the worker-led movement that takes full control of their destiny and their lives.  

We're building a ground breaking organizing campaign that defines the future of the gig economy and sets nationwide labor standards on the app-based food delivery industry. NYC's food delivery workers are fighting to win worker protections, that specifies the right to have the proper personal protective equipment, right to work with safety, living wage, hazard pay, paid sick time and right to organize.

WJP's campaign will be an example for the rest of the nation and will completely transform the gig economy, guaranteeing basic labor protections.