June 5, 2020

Here’s What Gig Companies Say They’ll Do If You Get Arrested for Delivering Past Curfew

A video of a Caviar delivery person being arrested for violating curfew, as the man yelled that he is an essential worker, prompted a swift backlash on Thursday night. Even Mayor Bill DeBlasio, who has seemed ready to lick the boot of the cops kettling, beating, and harassing protestors, called out the arrest.

Afterward, Caviar told the Verge it was “prepared to provide support.” But what does that actually mean?

As Buzzfeed News reported, delivery workers for gig companies are deemed essential workers, able to operate past curfews imposed by local authorities, on a city by city basis. The apps are coordinating to figure out how to handle that in each case says Buzzfeed. But across the board—as I’ve written about many times before—gig companies don’t consider drivers to be employees, and that means they take little responsibility for protecting them.

So, I asked Grubhub, Doordash (which owns Caviar), and Uber what their policies are for those working past curfew. 

Doordash sent the template response about “support” that I mentioned above. On followup, I asked specifically: Are you offering hazard pay for delivering during curfew? Are you going to pay for legal fees if someone is detained? And, generally, what is the “support” that would be given?

“At this time, we’ve reached out to the individual to learn more about what transpired and what we can do to help,” a spokesperson said. “I will keep you updated as I learn more.”

Uber said the company had called the New York police and DeBlasio’s office “to ask that all police officers be reminded that delivering food has been deemed an essential service and that all Uber Eats delivery workers are exempt from the curfew.” It also said that the company would “offer legal support to Eats delivery people if they are wrongly arrested for violating the curfew while delivering on the app and aggressively petition City Hall and the NYPD on their behalf.” The company has a hotline for drivers to call and has been updating workers through the app they can use it to report problems. But, no mention of hazard pay.

Grubhub did not respond to a request to comment.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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