$131.5 million. That is the price DoorDash agreed to pay New York City after the city’s consumer and worker protection agency found the company had underpaid or paid late more than 260,000 delivery workers. The settlement was announced on September 22, 2026.
“Simply put, we screwed up,” DoorDash said, according to the BBC. “Our mistakes meant some Dashers were underpaid or paid late.” The company added that the errors were not intentional, “that doesn’t make them okay.”
Where the money goes
Of the total, the city said more than $115 million goes straight to workers and more than $16 million covers civil penalties and costs. Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s office called it the largest worker settlement in New York City history and the largest involving food delivery workers anywhere in the United States.
The biggest piece, $83 million according to the BBC, settles a dispute over how DoorDash calculates pay for time workers spend logged in between deliveries. New York’s rules require pay for that waiting time, a point where gig platforms and city officials have clashed for years. The city found that although DoorDash raised hourly pay to the minimum rate in December 2023, it left out several categories of trip time and on-call time when it counted hours.
The rest covers workers who were not paid at all or were paid late. DoorDash told the BBC that systemic errors kept about $6.6m in wages from ever reaching workers and that another $5.7m arrived days or weeks late. Those workers will get roughly 200% of what they were shorted. A worker owed $1,000 who got nothing receives $3,000, the city said; one paid late receives $2,000.
How the city built the case
The investigation began when dozens of workers reported missing or late pay, many with help from the Workers Justice Project. The agency then pulled terabytes of data from DoorDash and went through it. Its analysts identified more than 152 million payment transactions and 110 million working hours tied to the case.
DoorDash’s own account differs on scale and cause. The company blamed complex changes to New York’s minimum wage rules in 2023, technical glitches and multi-stop delivery routes. It said the errors hit roughly 264,000 workers but touched under 1% of its local transactions, that local workers average about $30 per active hour, and that it has patched the bugs.
What changes, and when workers are paid
The deal does more than hand over money. DoorDash must send the city detailed data reports every month for three years. It must change its software so no delivery is offered to a New York worker unless that time is being logged as paid trip or on-call time, and so batched trips stop carrying a lower rate on some legs. An internal compliance monitor must file an annual sworn statement. The Workers Justice Project and the Workers’ Algorithm Observatory will build a tool letting workers share trip and pay screens with the city, and DoorDash may not penalize anyone for using it.
Workers do not have to file claims. In late October a settlement administrator will email each person who was underpaid between April 22, 2022 and June 28, 2026, stating the amount owed. They can take an electronic payment or a check; anyone who does not choose gets a check by mail. A second, smaller round of payments is planned for early 2027 because DoorDash is still fixing how it calculates compensable time.
“When a worker earns a wage, they deserve to be paid that wage,” Mamdani said, “not tomorrow, not after a lawsuit, but on time and in full.” The minimum pay rate for delivery workers now stands at $22.13 per hour, excluding tips.
Sources
- Mayor Mamdani Wins Record $131.5 Million From DoorDash for Delivery Workers | City of New York
- DoorDash admits it 'screwed up' after underpaying New York workers
