Two years ago, Brad Lander, arguably the second most powerful official in New York City, rode a bike six times around the perimeter of City Hall. Inside, his colleagues were debating a bill to institute a minimum wage for food delivery riders. Lander, now comptroller of New York, had joined a convoy of delivery drivers in support of a protest for basic rights and fair pay.
“They did six times around because there were six pieces of legislation,” Lander says, who as comptroller oversees New York’s mayoral budget. “I thought it should have been seven, because that’s how many times they went around Jericho in the Bible.”
In June, New York became the first US city to establish a permanent minimum hourly wage for food delivery workers. Lander was the lead sponsor of the originating bill, which he first wrote in 2021 as a council member, before he was elected comptroller.
Change has come slowly. The new wage law was supposed to come into effect on 1 January this year, but was delayed for six months – which Lander attributes to gig companies’ lobbying. The proposed rate was also lowered: from $23.82 (£18.40) an hour by 2025, to $19.96 by 2025.
But last Thursday, days before the new wage took effect, four gig work companies – Uber, DoorDash, Grubhub and Relay – sued the city of New York to block the new law. Manhattan supreme court judge Nicholas Moyne temporarily delayed the start of the landmark minimum wage. It is now unclear when it will come into effect.
“You got to know that the gig companies are going to come strong against this,” Lander told the Guardian on the day the lawsuit was announced. Outside, it was hot and muggy. New York had seen a string of 30C days; a few weeks earlier, the city’s delivery riders had worked through heavy smoke and smog. That morning, Lander had found out about the lawsuit through the press. His advice to other legislators or politicians who are trying to regulate the gig economy is “suit up for the backlash”.
“They’re skilled political players,” he says. “They make a lot of campaign contributions. They hire the right lobbyists. They threaten that the service will collapse or they won’t stay in New York City.”
Lander, a progressive who was endorsed in the comptroller race by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, says that even the announced wage was lower than it should be. His office has estimated that the take-home pay for delivery riders will start out at only $12.69 an hour, rather than $19.96. This shortfall is in part due to a two-year “phase-in” period that knocks the hourly rate down by $2 to $17.96 – but also because of a provision that gig workers will be paid $3.60 less an hour if they engage in “multi-apping” – using more than one app at a time to find work.
Lander describes the concept of “multi-apping” as “made up”. “I do struggle to explain why it’s total bullshit,” he says, “because once they make up regulatory words, it sounds like it makes sense. But it’s just total bullshit.
“There’s no time when more than one app is paying a worker. That never happens. When you’re on a trip, one app is paying for you. They used the idea of multi-apping to just cut the hourly rate by three bucks an hour. It’s a fancy way to pay their workers less.”
Vilda Vera Mayuga, the head of New York’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, which determined the $17.96 rate, says she is “extremely disappointed” at the gig companies’ lawsuit. “These apps currently pay workers far below the minimum wage,” she says.
Grubhub says it was “pleased” with the decision to delay the law. An Uber spokesperson says the company wants to “figure out a minimum pay rule that doesn’t have devastating consequences for couriers, consumers and restaurants”.
The political will to improve delivery riders’ lives, Lander says, came largely from the pandemic. At the start of 2020, riders were often not even allowed to use the bathrooms of the restaurants they were delivering from.
Los Deliveristas Unidos, a workers’ rights group for delivery ridersformed during the pandemic, delivered a series of proposed reforms to politicians including Lander, a city council member at the time. Initially, the riders did not imagine a minimum wage was possible. “They had an initial package of legislation to just confront the worst abuses,” Lander says.
But in 2019, New York had already established a minimum wage law for rideshare drivers, in which Lander had been involved. This became a model for the food delivery riders who, in the pandemic, were becoming essential.
Dozens of delivery riders have also been killed at work. They have been hit by cars, stabbed, assaulted and shot. In 2021, Francisco Villalva Vitinio, a 29-year-old migrant from Mexico, was murdered by someone who was trying to steal his e-bike. Villalva Vitinio had moved to the US 10 years earlier, and had worked in a restaurant until he lost his job at the start of the pandemic.
Lander and the future mayor, Eric Adams, attended a funeral service and protest for Villalva Vitinio, and Lander remembers it being a turning point. “There was so much grief in the community,” he says. “Real agony and grief over this loss, but also just anger – we were saying these are essential workers, but just not protecting them from real physical harm and death, and not paying or treating them with dignity.”
Gig companies have claimed that the new law will disrupt the food delivery in New York, and force higher prices on to consumers. A spokesperson for DoorDash, Eli Scheinholtz, says the wage was an “extreme earnings standard” that would have “harmful and lasting impacts … that resulted from a fundamentally broken process”.
Lander says that New York’s minimum wage for rideshare drivers was also delayed by a court challenge, from Lyft. “But it finally got implemented,” he says, “and it’s worked great. Drivers make several thousand more dollars a year, can earn a living wage, and can feed their families.”
The next step, he says, is to roll out minimum wage laws to other cities. Lander is part of a national network of progressive elected officials called Local Progress.
But he admits it can be hard to hold on to regulatory changes in the face of lobbying. In 2019, the California legislature passed a bill classifying rideshare drivers as employees, but it was overturned by ballot measure Proposition 22, a referendum in which Uber, Lyft and other rideshare and food delivery apps such as DoorDash spent about $200m campaigning. “Uber and Lyft bought the referendum,” Lander says. “Even if you do win hearts and minds, these gains can be overturned.”
But in New York, Lander and other politicians are not yet done. There is a bill before the city to grant sick leave to gig workers, written by Lander’s successor on the council, Shahana Hanif.
Lander is also supporting a bill from council member Tiffany Cabán called the Secure Jobs Act, which would protect employees from unfair dismissal. He wants to see similar protections for gig workers, who can often be barred from the apps they use to find work due to poor ratings or factors that he says are opaque and obscure.
Due to the legal action, New York’s minimum wage is still on hold. But even in its current state, Lander says, the law doesn’t go far enough. “It is still, on average, a sub-minimum wage … and even that’s not enough for [the gig companies],” he says. “Having captured the relevant regulatory process, cut workers hourly wages by about four bucks an hour, they’re still suing to overturn it altogether. That’s not surprising. Their whole model is built on exploiting their workforce. That’s what gig work largely is.”
OTTAWA – Canada’s unemployment rate held steady at 6.5 per cent last month as hiring remained weak across the economy.
Statistics Canada’s labour force survey on Friday said employment rose by a modest 15,000 jobs in October.
Business, building and support services saw the largest gain in employment.
Meanwhile, finance, insurance, real estate, rental and leasing experienced the largest decline.
Many economists see weakness in the job market continuing in the short term, before the Bank of Canada’s interest rate cuts spark a rebound in economic growth next year.
Despite ongoing softness in the labour market, however, strong wage growth has raged on in Canada. Average hourly wages in October grew 4.9 per cent from a year ago, reaching $35.76.
Friday’s report also shed some light on the financial health of households.
According to the agency, 28.8 per cent of Canadians aged 15 or older were living in a household that had difficulty meeting financial needs – like food and housing – in the previous four weeks.
That was down from 33.1 per cent in October 2023 and 35.5 per cent in October 2022, but still above the 20.4 per cent figure recorded in October 2020.
People living in a rented home were more likely to report difficulty meeting financial needs, with nearly four in 10 reporting that was the case.
That compares with just under a quarter of those living in an owned home by a household member.
Immigrants were also more likely to report facing financial strain last month, with about four out of 10 immigrants who landed in the last year doing so.
That compares with about three in 10 more established immigrants and one in four of people born in Canada.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
The Canadian Institute for Health Information says health-care spending in Canada is projected to reach a new high in 2024.
The annual report released Thursday says total health spending is expected to hit $372 billion, or $9,054 per Canadian.
CIHI’s national analysis predicts expenditures will rise by 5.7 per cent in 2024, compared to 4.5 per cent in 2023 and 1.7 per cent in 2022.
This year’s health spending is estimated to represent 12.4 per cent of Canada’s gross domestic product. Excluding two years of the pandemic, it would be the highest ratio in the country’s history.
While it’s not unusual for health expenditures to outpace economic growth, the report says this could be the case for the next several years due to Canada’s growing population and its aging demographic.
Canada’s per capita spending on health care in 2022 was among the highest in the world, but still less than countries such as the United States and Sweden.
The report notes that the Canadian dental and pharmacare plans could push health-care spending even further as more people who previously couldn’t afford these services start using them.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
As Canadians wake up to news that Donald Trump will return to the White House, the president-elect’s protectionist stance is casting a spotlight on what effect his second term will have on Canada-U.S. economic ties.
Some Canadian business leaders have expressed worry over Trump’s promise to introduce a universal 10 per cent tariff on all American imports.
A Canadian Chamber of Commerce report released last month suggested those tariffs would shrink the Canadian economy, resulting in around $30 billion per year in economic costs.
More than 77 per cent of Canadian exports go to the U.S.
Canada’s manufacturing sector faces the biggest risk should Trump push forward on imposing broad tariffs, said Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters president and CEO Dennis Darby. He said the sector is the “most trade-exposed” within Canada.
“It’s in the U.S.’s best interest, it’s in our best interest, but most importantly for consumers across North America, that we’re able to trade goods, materials, ingredients, as we have under the trade agreements,” Darby said in an interview.
“It’s a more complex or complicated outcome than it would have been with the Democrats, but we’ve had to deal with this before and we’re going to do our best to deal with it again.”
American economists have also warned Trump’s plan could cause inflation and possibly a recession, which could have ripple effects in Canada.
It’s consumers who will ultimately feel the burden of any inflationary effect caused by broad tariffs, said Darby.
“A tariff tends to raise costs, and it ultimately raises prices, so that’s something that we have to be prepared for,” he said.
“It could tilt production mandates. A tariff makes goods more expensive, but on the same token, it also will make inputs for the U.S. more expensive.”
A report last month by TD economist Marc Ercolao said research shows a full-scale implementation of Trump’s tariff plan could lead to a near-five per cent reduction in Canadian export volumes to the U.S. by early-2027, relative to current baseline forecasts.
Retaliation by Canada would also increase costs for domestic producers, and push import volumes lower in the process.
“Slowing import activity mitigates some of the negative net trade impact on total GDP enough to avoid a technical recession, but still produces a period of extended stagnation through 2025 and 2026,” Ercolao said.
Since the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement came into effect in 2020, trade between Canada and the U.S. has surged by 46 per cent, according to the Toronto Region Board of Trade.
With that deal is up for review in 2026, Canadian Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Candace Laing said the Canadian government “must collaborate effectively with the Trump administration to preserve and strengthen our bilateral economic partnership.”
“With an impressive $3.6 billion in daily trade, Canada and the United States are each other’s closest international partners. The secure and efficient flow of goods and people across our border … remains essential for the economies of both countries,” she said in a statement.
“By resisting tariffs and trade barriers that will only raise prices and hurt consumers in both countries, Canada and the United States can strengthen resilient cross-border supply chains that enhance our shared economic security.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 6, 2024.
