Title: City Council Overrides Mayor's Vetoes

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Brian: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Last Wednesday, and with the Charlie Kirk news and everything else, you probably missed this: the New York City Council overrode three vetoes from Mayor Eric Adams regarding grocery delivery workers and street vendors. City Council passed two bills to give a higher minimum pay rate of $21.44 per hour to grocery delivery workers and extend worker protections for the group. A third bill bars issuing criminal summonses for unlicensed street vending. All three bills go into effect next March now that they've overridden the veto.

Overriding the veto in all three cases is being seen as a strong rebuke of Mayor Adams. The mayor is facing mounting pressure from President Donald Trump's advisors, as you know, to abandon his re-election bid in order to give Andrew Cuomo a greater chance against Zohran Mamdani. We'll also talk in this segment about the breaking news that Michael just mentioned of Governor Kathy Hochul now endorsing Mamdani. Why now? Joining us to break down the latest is Jeffery Mays, New York Times reporter covering politics with a focus on New York City Hall. Hey, Jeffery, welcome back to WNYC.

Jeffery: Hey, Brian, thanks for having me on.

Brian: Can we start with Hochul? Michael read some of the particulars from her New York Times op-ed. Why now, do you think?

Jeffery: I think if you look at the polling, certainly, The New York Times and CNN had a poll that came out last week that showed Mamdani really with a commanding lead in the race. It's becoming clearer and clearer, as we move closer to the November election, that he is in strong control. There's a great likelihood that he could be the next mayor of the city.

I think in her sense, it makes a lot of sense. She waited a little bit to hear out some of the initial concerns and for them to have conversations, but it certainly makes sense for her to come aboard now, the mayor and the governor of New York. There are a lot of things that the city needs from the state in order to provide for residents, and I think that working relationship is really an important one. I think she wants to signal as well that she will be able to have a working relationship with Mamdani should he win.

Brian: She must have been calculating this in political terms. I know you're a city reporter, not an Albany reporter, but if you have anything on what might have been going through her head in terms of her own reelection prospects next year, where she's got pressure from the left, but definitely pressure from the right.

Jeffery: I think part of the hesitation also may have been that, if you remember back in 2022, Nancy Pelosi blamed the governor's poor performance in the election for dragging down Democrats and for them losing control of the House. I think Governor Hochul really wanted to be careful in aligning herself with Mr. Mamdani. He is of the left, and there's been a lot of criticism of him from moderate Democrats as well. I think Hochul, being one of those leading moderate Democrats, wanted to be careful. Immediately after her endorsement, Elise Stefanik, who is the Republican congresswoman who's considering a challenge to Governor Hochul, issued a statement rebuking her with Mamdani, trying to align her with some of Mamdani's left beliefs.

Brian: With Republicans doing better in New York in 2022 and 2024 than they had done previously, I'm sure there's a calculated risk here. Do you think, if you've thought about this yet, and again, I realize you don't cover Congress, you cover New York, but these are New York Democrats who happen to be the Democratic leaders in both the House and the Senate, Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, whether the calculation is different for them as they hope to lead their parties to taking back those Houses of Congress next year than it is for Kathy Hochul at the state level?

Jeffery: I think it's similar in a lot of ways because, like I said, Governor Hochul did face a strong Republican challenge last year. Lee Zeldin came very close to the governor in a Democratic state, the Republican. In similar ways, you have Hakeem Jeffries, who is looking to become Speaker of the House if Democrats are able to take control of the House, and that means that he's going to have to appeal to Democrats across the country on the spectrum, moderate Democrats, as well as conservative Democrats.

I'm sure there is a calculation that's been involved in his decision to so far meet with Mamdani and have discussions with him and hold out and giving a full-throated endorsement. I think what Governor Hochul's endorsement does is it opens the door for other Democrats like Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer to be able to endorse him.

Brian: That's a good point. I even wonder if there might be a coordinated rollout, sequential rollout. I guess we'll find out by somebody's investigative reporting. A lot will depend, I think, if Mamdani is elected, on how he does in year one, because so many Americans are concerned with affordability, which is the single word that he's running on more than anything, and he's got all these proposals to address it. If he can get some of them through and if people seem happy about them, then there's going to be something other that Republicans around the country will have to answer to other than, "Oh, he's a socialist." We'll see if he gets elected, and we'll see if he comes out of the gate with successes.

All right. Let's get to these three vetoes that your article is about: "New York City Council overriding vetoes of Mayor Adams to their concerned grocery delivery workers." That distinction matters here. This is grocery delivery workers, not restaurant delivery workers. What are the new protections in this bill that Adams vetoed, but the Council overrode?

Jeffery: The biggest is the pay protections. They would be required to pay a standard minimum wage, which wasn't the case before. In 2021, the Council passed legislation that extended minimum wage protections to the food delivery workers, restaurant delivery workers, but the 20,000 grocery workers were not really covered under that legislation, and so this legislation extends those minimum wage protections to those 20,000 workers.

There's one bill that expands the class, and then there's another bill that requires the minimum wage protections for those workers. If you look at it, the Council was basically saying that they are also in the food delivery business, so even though they were groceries, they should have the same protections and minimum standard wage as restaurant delivery workers.

Brian: The pay rate will go up to $21.44 an hour. What was it before, and how did they land on that precise a number to the penny?

Jeffery: I think $21.44 is the current minimum wage for restaurant delivery workers. That is a rate that is decided by the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection here in the city. They look at a number of things, including inflation, and they create a standard as to how much the minimum wage should be. Restaurant workers, for example, they previously earned about $7 average on hour without tips. After the new protections, after the new minimum wage came into place, their earnings jumped substantially to more than $22 per hour. In addition, they're still making large numbers of deliveries per week, over 3 million deliveries per week.

I think the protections are really in place to expand the body of delivery workers that are included under the minimum wage. If you talk to workers, they'll tell you they're on a grocery delivery app, not necessarily being paid while they're looking for the work. I think what's happening now is that some of the grocery providers, like Instacart, for example, has said, "Look, we support a minimum wage. The question now remains of when that minimum wage is going to be in effect." That has to be decided through the rules-making process that the city is going to go through right now.

Brian: Why did Mayor Adams veto those bills?

Jeffery: Mayor Adams, his explanation was that it would increase costs for New Yorkers who rely on food delivery services, disabled New Yorkers, and he did not want that to hurt the economy of food delivery in New York City, so he vetted that legislation. The criticism from the Council and Speaker Adrienne Adams was very explicit last week. She thought the mayor was vetoing those bills for his own political gain. Instacart and other providers have spent lots of money lobbying against this legislation. The speaker was very frank in saying the mayor was hoping to curry favor with those individuals and was thinking more about his own political prospects when he vetoed that legislation.

Brian: There's always a balancing act there: people don't make enough money and a lot of jobs to live an affordable life. That argues for raising the wages, but when you raise the wages of people who work in areas that are consumer-facing, then it also raises the prices and puts pressure on affordability that way. It's, I guess, up to the political sector to determine which is more righteous and where the benefits outweigh the risks.

Jeffery: Correct. The other legislation that you mentioned was street vendors, providing them protection from criminal vendor enforcement. The argument from the Council there was that many of the street vendors who happen to be unlicensed are Black or Latino, they're immigrants, they're poor. Almost 80% of criminal vendor enforcement was directed at Black and Latino vendors, according to city Council statistics, and so providing that protection, they believe, will protect undocumented immigrants from deportation, for example, for something like unlicensed vending.

Brian: Listeners, we can take your calls with your thinking or your personal experiences on any of the things that we're talking about. Any grocery delivery workers listening out there, if you do it now or if you've done it in the past, you want to talk about that job. A lot of people who use Instacart or Shipt or other grocery delivery platforms may not think about it very much when somebody drops those packages at your door. Maybe you tip them, maybe you even tip them well, but haven't thought about what wage they're being paid by the employers, and you want to weigh in from a customer standpoint, but definitely, those of you who work in that business, we invite your phone calls with your experiences.

Any street vendors as well. We'll talk about that one a little more, the third bill that the Council overrode a Mayor Adams veto on 212-433-WNYC. For that matter, if you have a brick-and-mortar store that you feel is being unfairly competed against by vendors on the sidewalk near your place, I think that was Mayor Adams' rationale for the veto. We'll get into that. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. To the topic that we touched on briefly at the beginning of the segment with Jeff Mays, Metro political reporter for The New York Times, Kathy Hochul, now, after a gap, pretty long gap since the Democratic primary in June, now endorsing Zohran Mamdani for mayor, the Democratic nominee.

Does Kathy Hochul's endorsement open the door for you in any way if you are on the fence and you're a Democrat, anybody who might have been on the fence between Mamdani and anyone else? Does this give you permission in a way or any other reaction to what Hochul did? 212-433-WNYC, call or text, 212-433-9692 for Jeff Mays. Jeff, was the Mayor's veto of the criminal penalties for licensed street vendors and misdemeanor penalties for unlicensed sellers, eliminating those penalties, was his argument that it's unfair to the brick-and-mortar store owners to have this competition without consequences?

Jeffery: Yes, absolutely. First Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro said last week that it was unfair to both small businesses, many of whom are run by immigrants as well, and also to licensed vendors that you would have unlicensed vending not facing these sort of penalties. I believe the Mayor felt that it would allow unlicensed vending to grow unabated as well. That was their rationale in vetoing that legislation.

There are still penalties that can be handed out, civil penalties, fines. If you are caught unlicensed vending, what the legislation does is eliminate those misdemeanor criminal penalties for which undocumented people can be deported or for which you can be forced to serve jail time or have to answer whether you've been convicted of a crime before. I think that is what the City Council felt was punitive and harming the mostly Black, Latino immigrant people in the city who do unlicensed vending.

Brian: I see. If you commit a violation as a vendor, they don't want you to be put at risk of deportation for it, and they don't want you to be put at risk of imprisonment for it, even though they think you should be fined in some way?

Jeffery: Right. You can still be fined and receive civil penalties for unlicensed vending, but the idea of being potentially jailed or potentially having ICE use that as a reason to start deportation proceedings against you is what the Council was really trying to protect against.

Brian: Here, I think, is a grocery delivery worker calling in. Jane, in Long Island City, you're WNYC. Hi, Jane.

Jane: Hi, Brian. Thanks for taking my call. I work for Uber Eats. I did work for Instacart until they deactivated me. By the way, I cannot get any unemployment after working for them for three and a half years. Since the minimum earnings wage went into effect, I believe it's $19.96 in New York City, for some reason, for us delivery workers. I do shop and delivery and also restaurant. It just seems like I worked this entire week, and not one single person needs a tip anymore, and I think that's because they have added on so many extra charges.

I just wanted to say, I'm not really sure what's happening or why that's happening. My two fun facts were not entitled to any unemployment, and they deactivated me. I now have to pay my rent with my credit card. I cannot get any help from anywhere. I'm working Uber Eats, and they just don't tip anymore. I have another qualm. I'm sorry. I don't know if you wanted to ask a question or anything.

Brian: Go ahead. One more qualm. You get three qualms.

Jane: Okay. I have another qualm. There are plenty of workers that hire Social Security numbers from other people and work with Social Security numbers for other people, and I see this for a fact. I'm only allowed five time slots per week, five. Five, one-hour time slot is all I am allowed, but yet there are people that are working 14-hour shifts, and I don't understand how that whole thing works. How is that fair?

Brian: When you say time slot, do you mean getting paid for waiting time between jobs? What do you mean by time slot?

Jane: No, you have to go on to the planner and you reserve a time slot, which means I can reserve one hour, but I'm only getting five hours per week. That's it. That is what I have to live on right now. There's no way to go up because you don't go up in time slots unless you do 200 deliveries per month, and the only ones that are doing those deliveries are the workers that have been doing this for a while with illegal Social Security numbers. They don't speak English. I see personally, they come in, they don't speak a word of English. They can't even say up and down to the elevator. I have no empathy for people that come to this country and work and do not speak the basics of the language.

Brian: Jane, thank you very much. I don't know what speaking the language has to do with their pecking order with the company. Maybe if they're using fake numbers to pump up their records or something like that, that's another story. Jeff, there were three very particular gripes or qualms that Jane had. What about the first two? Do you think, if you've been reporting on this story, that tips have been going down as the platforms maybe try to put pressure on these workers who've been pressuring City Council to raise their wages up?

Jeffery: I don't have that data in front of me, but certainly with restaurant workers, the data shows that there hasn't been a sort of substantial decrease that restaurant deliveries have continued, while at the same time, workers have received greater pay. I think with the tipping, because we saw the great expansion of delivery during the pandemic, the City Council now is wrestling with a lot of rules around delivery workers. They have legislation, for example, that would require grocery service to offer a tipping option of at least 10%, for example. It would also require them to tip at the same time an order is placed.

The City Council is examining the whole process of delivery. Another bill will require them to pay delivery workers no later than seven days after the end of a pay period and provide statements detailing their compensation. I think right now there is a review going on because of the growth of these delivery services in our city, because New York City is such a massive, lucrative market, and companies like Instacart are actually growing. There's a whole push to regulate some of the issues that this worker was mentioning.

Brian: One listener writes, "Delivery apps have made it difficult for people to add a tip while placing an order. Instead, we have to remind ourselves to add a tip once a delivery person has been assigned to our order." Daniel in Bayside is a delivery worker who wants to talk about his experience. Daniel, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Daniel: Hi. How are you? Thanks for taking my call. I'm currently delivering right now. I work for an app called Roadie, which is they have contracts with BJ's, Home Depot, Best Buy. We're not included in this new legislation, even though we're basically doing the same thing. I've actually tried to contact my councilman, and he wants to write an email about my experience. I am lucky to clear maybe $100 if I work like an eight-hour shift. Couple other things: they sent out a letter since congestion pricing was in effect. They said we will not reimburse for any congestion pricing that you incur during your delivery. If I see it's a delivery to anything below 60th Street, I just won't take it anymore.

Brian: I'm not familiar with Roadie. Who does this generally serve, with what kinds of deliveries?

Daniel: We serve Best Buy, BJ's. There's a subsidiary of UPS, and so Best Buy, BJ's, Delta Air Lines, Southwest Airlines. They have contracts with all those companies.

Brian: My guess is that you get tipped a lot less than people who are delivering food. Is that your experience?

Daniel: Hardly anything ever. It's just like a delivery that Amazon would deliver to you.

Brian: Daniel, thank you for that. It is interesting. I guess that is a whole different category, Jeff, that the City Council did not take up. People do generally, I think, at least think about tipping grocery or restaurant delivery workers, not when you get an Amazon package, and I guess not when you get a package through the kind of service that Daniel's describing.

Jeffery: That's fascinating. I'm not sure. I don't know if the Council's working to expand protections for all delivery workers. Even further, I wouldn't be surprised if they were looking into it. Even with the grocery and delivery workers that I spoke to last week, they talked about just the difficulty of earning a living while working many hours for these apps, waiting to get a call, first of all, and then secondly, the time it takes to go gather the groceries and then bring them to that person.

One delivery worker I spoke to said there are many nights when, after delivering people's groceries all day, he barely has enough money for himself and his family. I think that is a common issue that is happening amongst delivery workers, and it raises questions about the gig economy to begin with, whether people are being exploited or whether these are actually sort of opportunities for people who just want to make more money on the side. It appears that many people are depending on these as their main source of income.

Brian: I'm just going to acknowledge that some people are writing or calling to say they think better of Hochul now because she endorsed Mamdani. Others are writing or calling to say they think worse of Hochul now because she endorsed Mamdani. We'll take that up in more detail in a future segment. It wasn't really what we had planned with Jeff Mays today from The New York Times, who's really reporting on these veto overrides with respect to vendors and delivery workers, but we thought we would throw it in at least to reference, since it's a pretty major endorsement and it's somewhat within his beat.

On the first caller, who said that one of her qualms was about people who are immigrants who don't even speak English competing with her as a delivery worker, listener writes, "That caller was an amazing example of a hard-working person who was getting stiffed by her corporate employers and is blaming other hard-working people who happen to be immigrants for it." One more call on the tips and the minimum wage. Sarah in Hamilton Heights, you're on WNYC. Hi, Sarah.

Sarah: Hi there. I guess I'm just wondering if you can explain how the tipping works vis-à-vis the minimum wage. In other words, does my tip make up any part of the minimum hourly wage? If somebody's paid $20 whatever an hour and they deliver something to me and I give them $10 as a tip, does the company pay them less per hour? How does that work?

Brian: Jeff, do you know?

Jeffery: I don't have the specifics on that. I vaguely remember there being some sort of separation and rules around whether the tips are separate, but I don't have that specific information at the moment.

Brian: Sarah, we'll try to get the answer for you before the end of the show, but I don't know the answer to that either off the top of my head. Before we end the segment, Jeff, would you put these veto overrides by Council of Mayor Adams in any kind of larger context of the relationship between Council and Adams? Like how rare veto overrides of any mayor of New York are in recent history or with this Council and this mayor?

Jeffery: The three vetoes that were issued last week made a total of eight bills that the Council had overridden Mayor Adams on. Of course, Bill de Blasio, I don't believe he vetoed any legislation during his time as mayor, but Mayor Adams has not been afraid to use his veto power. The Council, again, has overwhelmingly rebuked him on many of these vetoes, everything from police rules around stopping people to solitary confinement. The Council has overridden him.

I think last week Adrienne Adams, who is the speaker of the City Council, who ran unsuccessfully in a Democratic primary, made it very clear that she saw herself and the Council as sort of fighting the mayor, who was attempting to enact policies that she felt were hurtful to city residents, to immigrants, to the most vulnerable people in the city. This comes as Mayor Adams is still, at this moment, running for re-election. He is the incumbent, but he is polling in fourth place behind Curtis Sliwa, the Republican nominee.

All this sort of strong rebuke of him comes at a time when he's trying to make a case for his re-election, of course, after his corruption indictment and after that being dropped, and also the sort of scandals in his administration. I think there's just a viewpoint from the Council, especially from Speaker Adams, that she has really been a partner in city government and protecting the most vulnerable people in the city, and that's what she said last week as well.

Brian: Team control room looked up the tips and minimum wage question real quick, and the answer is, you'll be happy to know, Sarah in Hamilton Heights, that the minimum wage does not include the tips. The tips are not deducted from the minimum wage, according to reporting when these bills were passed. Jeff Mays, New York City political reporter for The New York Times. Jeff, thanks as always.

Jeffery: Thanks, Brian.

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