Sitting astride an e-bike wrapped in purple gaffer tape, Gustavo Ajche grabs the phone from his raincoat pocket and pulls up the Grubhub app as raindrops pool on the screen. It's a gloomy Saturday afternoon in New York City. After a long week working two jobs, Ajche says, ordinarily he might go home; he's done delivery for the apps long enough to know when it's sensible to call it a day. But I'm here to learn the economics of delivery work, so Ajche holds out his phone: This order is offering $13. Should he take it?
Ajche, who is 40, is the most visible spokesperson and organizer for Los Deliveristas Unidos, a campaign started in 2020 by appbased delivery workers to fight for safety protections and wages befitting their status as essential workers of the pandemic. On one level, their complaints are those of gig workers everywhere-a lack of transparency from their Silicon Valley employers, "flexible" jobs better understood as precarious ones. Yet the constraints of working in New York mean that deliveristas in Manhattan have little in common with Uber Eats drivers in Dallas or St. Louis. Unmanageable traffic, narrow roads, and a high premium on convenience have turned New York City delivery workers into the nation's largest two-wheeled workforce. According to a city government estimate, nearly half of the 60,000-plus people working full-time or part-time shepherding takeout for the apps get around on e-bikes, accounting for the lion's share of deliveries. One way to understand their fight for fair jobs is as a critique of a modern American city from behind the handlebars.
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