Council Member Hanif calls for engaging delivery workers in safety conversation
Hanif says any micromobility safety conversation must engage the 70,000 deliveristas, and blames political choices and inaction for the crisis, not the workers.
As we go into this hearing featuring nearly two dozen bills and resolutions, I want to be crystal clear.
Any conversation about micromobility must...
Micromobility safety must meaningfully engage the more than 70,000 deliveristas who rely on these devices to make a living.
Our city has created a crisis on our streets by meeting a ballooning on-demand delivery economy with infrastructure that has failed to keep pace with this new reality.
The very real safety concerns we hear from constituents are also the result of political choices and years of inaction.
That is why the onus of e-bike reforms cannot fall solely at the feet of a precarious workforce whose working conditions, schedules, and routes are largely determined by powerful tech companies.
53% of deliveristas surveyed by CUNY and Workers'Justice Project reported a workplace-related injury.
When your risk of injury on the job is about the same as a coin flip, that is not simply a cost of doing business.
Tech CEOs and oligarchs have built a business model around algorithms that present deliveristas with an impossible choice, speed your way there or risk.
deactivation.
The current state of play is untenable.
Every time we order in, an algorithm pressures this vulnerable workforce to literally hurl themselves into traffic in the name of shareholder value, and it has to stop.