DoorDash reaches $131.5 million settlement with NYC over delivery worker pay

DoorDash is paying $131.5 million to resolve an investigation alleging the company underpaid or delayed payment to its New York City workers.

All affected delivery workers will be contacted in the coming weeks. They will be paid a minimum of $10, even if they were underpaid by less, the company said.

The settlement with the city's Department of Consumer and Worker Protection includes $12.3 million for delivery workers who were underpaid or paid late. It also includes $83 million to resolve a disagreement over how to calculate pay for time workers spend on-call between deliveries.

The DCWP will receive $16.7 million in fines as part of the agreement, DoorDash said in a statement.

"We screwed up, and our mistakes meant some NYC Dashers were underpaid or paid late. We're making things right by paying every Dasher what they're owed and fixing what caused this. We want to be up front about what happened, our settlement, and what we're doing," the company said in a statement. 

Most of the settlement revolved around how to calculate bonuses paid for the on-call time. This is when a worker is logged into the app but was not on an active delivery. 

Under the city's rules, workers need to be paid for this time spent online between deliveries. DoorDash said the workers were paid, but they calculated on-call time pay differently. 

DoorDash said they believe the approach was "fair, practical, and legal. But rather than spend years fighting over whose method was right, we chose to pay Dashers sooner and use the city's method going forward."

Errors also resulted from deliveries that crossed city boundaries, had multiple pickup or drop-off locations or were only partially fulfilled or cancelled, according to the company. In some cases, errors stemmed from workers providing incomplete or inaccurate banking information.

DoorDash also said it fixed technical issues that caused the error, according to the statement. 

This is not the city's first legal issue with the company. In 2025, DoorDash agreed to pay almost $17 million to settle claims that it unfairly used tips to subsidize delivery workers' wages in New York, rather than letting drivers keep the tips on top of their pay. 

In 2023, a judge ruled that DoorDash, along with other delivery companies, could not block the city's mandated pay raise.