DoorDash to Pay $131.5 Million in New York Delivery Worker Settlement

DoorDash will pay $131.5 million to settle a New York investigation into the food delivery company’s compliance with the city’s pay laws for food-delivery workers.

“Simply put, we screwed up,” DoorDash said Tuesday in a statement. “Our mistakes meant some Dashers were underpaid or paid late. While these mistakes weren’t intentional, that doesn’t make them okay.”

Under the agreement with the New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, nearly $115 million will go toward payments to about 264,000 delivery workers, whom the company calls Dashers.

The company will also pay a $16.7 million fine to the city.

The bulk of the settlement—about $83 million—resolves a dispute over how DoorDash calculated pay for what the city calls “on-call time.” That refers to periods when a delivery worker is logged into the app and available to accept orders but is not actively completing a delivery.

Under New York’s pay rules, delivery apps must account for both active delivery time and on-call time when meeting minimum-pay requirements across their workforce. The current minimum rate is $22.13 per hour before tips.

DoorDash said it compensated workers for on-call time through weekly bonus payments but used a different calculation from the one city regulators said was required.

The company maintained that its approach was “fair, practical, and legal.” But going forward, it will adopt the city’s calculation method.

Another portion of the settlement, $12.3 million, will go to workers who were underpaid or paid late.

According to the company, about $6.6 million in payments never reached Dashers, while another $5.7 million arrived days or weeks late.

DoorDash attributed the problems to “technical bugs” and “complicated situations,” including orders that crossed city boundaries, involved multiple pickup or drop-off locations, or were only partially completed or canceled. Some payment problems also resulted from incomplete banking information provided by workers, the company said.

About 209,000 Dashers were affected by missing or delayed payments, according to the company. The average missing payment was $7.70, while 65 percent of affected workers were owed $1 or less.

All affected Dashers will receive at least $10. The median overall payment under the settlement is expected to be about $48.

The settlement comes as New York City intensifies enforcement of its delivery worker laws under Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

In January, the city announced a separate settlement requiring Uber Eats, Fantuan, and HungryPanda to pay more than $5 million in restitution, penalties, and damages over alleged violations affecting nearly 50,000 delivery workers.

Uber also agreed to reinstate workers whom the city said had been improperly deactivated, potentially affecting as many as 10,000 people.