New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced a $131.5 million settlement with DoorDash last month for allegedly "stealing" delivery driver wages, according to an analysis published October 10, 2026, by Reason magazine. The publication argues that while DoorDash did shortchange some workers, the vast majority of the settlement amount came from a disagreement over how to precisely calculate driver pay under the city's minimum wage rule for gig work, not from wage theft. The case originated in 2023—before Mamdani took office—when NYC began investigating DoorDash for alleged underpayment under the city's gig work minimum wage law.
Of the $131.5 million total, only $12.3 million relates to delivery drivers who were actually underpaid or paid late, the report states. The bulk of the settlement—$83 million—stemmed from disagreement over wage calculation methods, particularly whether the city's rules for compensating "idle time" between deliveries applied to drivers who spent part of that time outside city limits, such as in New Jersey. City staffers reviewed 152 million DoorDash transactions during the investigation, which concluded this year. While 700 workers were owed more than $10,000 each, less than 1 percent of all payments to delivery drivers were affected. Sixty-five percent of the affected drivers were underpaid by $1 or less, though DoorDash will pay each impacted driver a minimum of $10. The average underpayment was $7.70, and the median payout to drivers will be $48. Over $16 million from the settlement comes as penalties flowing to the city's coffers, with $4.3 million set aside for a compliance fund supporting the Workers Justice Project and Princeton's Workers' Algorithm Observatory.
DoorDash stated that many underpayments resulted from technical issues within the app or more complex deliveries that crossed city boundaries or were canceled mid-trip, with some cases involving drivers providing incorrect banking information. The company argued its calculation method was "fair, practical, and legal," but chose to settle "rather than spend years fighting over whose method was right." According to the report, Manhattan Institute analyst Santiago Vidal observed that "Mamdani combined the admitted cases of payment failure with the disputed on-call calculation into a broad anti-capitalist narrative—and called it corporate wage theft." The settlement mirrors an earlier agreement with UberEats this year, in which the city itself admitted that Uber Eats had been "mostly compliant" with the law and that underpayments stemmed from canceled orders.
The report argues that Mamdani has repackaged previously-started investigations and legitimate disputes over wage formulas into narratives about cracking down on corporate greed. The analysis notes that NYC's minimum wage law for delivery work has created negative consequences: the number of delivery drivers in the city fell, delivery costs increased, and some 27,000 New Yorkers were locked out of the delivery market entirely as platforms moved toward "arranged scheduling" models. The report concludes that while Mamdani has proven masterful at messaging, New Yorkers should review the fine print before accepting his framing of these settlements as victories against wage theft.