Economy / January 19, 2026
New York City is suing a wage theft delivery app, showing that under Mamdani, gig companies can no longer break the law with impunity.
Zohran Mamdani, Mayor of New York, takes a podium during a press conference in the Brooklyn borough of New York, January 15, 2026.
(Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images) At the offices of the nonprofit Worker’s Justice Project in Brooklyn, Gustavo Ajche pulled up a screenshot on his phone. It showed that the delivery app Motoclick paid him $6.75 for three hours of work in November 2024, a fraction of the city’s minimum hourly rate of $19.56 for delivery workers at the time.
“They make you wait for hours and sometimes you don’t make any money for the work you do,” said Ajche, an immigrant from Guatemala and member of Los Deliveristas Unidos, a delivery group.
Ajche, 41, is one of 20 workers who filed a complaint with the city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP), the agency that enforces labor standards for delivery workers.
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On January 15, the city administration filed a lawsuit against Motoclick and its CEO Juan Pablo Salinas Salek based on these complaints, seeking to completely shut down the company’s operations.
The lawsuit accuses Motoclick, which connects restaurants with delivery workers, of stealing millions from workers through illegal fees and wage violations. The company charged workers $10 penalties for canceled orders and deducted the full cost of refunded meals from their paychecks, claiming in some cases that workers owed the company money.
The action marks one of the first major enforcement actions under Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who took office Jan. 1 after campaigning on worker protections and affordability.
Talk to The NationMamdani said: “The goal here is to ensure that working class New Yorkers see government as an entity that can truly help them in their daily struggles and that will hold those who break the law accountable. »
“Too often for delivery workers, city government has, at best, neglected them. What we want to show is that their well-being is our concern and that the law matters, no matter who breaks it.”
A key part of that, he said, “is using the tools of city government to defend workers wherever they are exploited.”
DCWP Commissioner Samuel Levine, who announced the lawsuit alongside Mamdani, said the city would pursue an aggressive enforcement strategy. “We are looking to shut down this company and other predatory apps should be put on notice,” he said. “Even though the company has no money, we hope to win the lawsuit to get a judgment against the CEO and hopefully recover the assets,” he said.
“New Yorkers who speed in a park are getting tickets illegally. I don’t know why executives should have immunity when they break the law,” he said.
Levine, who previously led the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection during the Biden administration, has wasted no time since taking office. Earlier in the week, his department released a report showing that DoorDash and Uber changed their apps in December 2023 to make it harder for customers to tip, moving the tipping option after payment rather than during the ordering process.
The average tip on Uber and DoorDash is currently 76 cents per delivery, according to the report. On competing apps that continued to tip at checkout, the average tip is $2.17 per delivery. The report estimates that interface changes cost workers $554 million in tips.
Workers like Ajche who complained about Motoclick described violations far more egregious than the denial of tips.
Alejandro Grajales, 36, another plaintiff, claimed the company flouted the city’s minimum wage and distancing rules. “They don’t meet the minimum wage. They don’t respect the distance limits. They pay about four or five dollars for a delivery, and we have to go a long way. The customer doesn’t have the option to tip us and they take 25 cents on each delivery, which is a lot on hundreds of deliveries.”
Antonio Solis, 38, who also worked with Motoclick for two weeks in May 2025, estimated he lost between $100 and $200 in unpaid wages before he stopped using the app. He also discussed unpaid waiting time between deliveries that can sometimes last hours on the app.
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Solis and Grajales are members of Los Deliveristas Unidos, a collective of delivery workers founded in 2020. In its short history, the group has already scored major political victories, like the package of delivery industry reforms they pushed through the city council, which included a minimum base wage and the right to use restaurant bathrooms.
These victories have made New York’s gig economy protection one of the strongest in the country, which may explain why DoorDash invested $1 million to support Cuomo in last year’s Democratic primary.
Today, the Mamdani administration is enforcing these protections and hopes to expand them. Earlier in the week, DCWP Commissioner Levine sent warning letters to dozens of delivery apps, including Instacart, DoorDash, Grubhub and Uber, asking them to comply with new worker protection laws that take effect on January 26. DoorDash and Uber sued to block the tipping law.
During last year’s Democratic primary elections, DoorDash donated $1 million to a super PAC supporting Andrew Cuomo, then the front-runner in the mayor’s race. The company has now objected to the city’s findings, saying in a statement statement published on January 13 that the change to their tipping model was suggested by the DCWP itself in a Study 2022. The company said workers earn more overall, even with lower tips, and customers are choosing to tip less after the minimum wage for delivery workers increased.
In an interview with The NationLevine disputed DoorDash’s claim. “The idea that we told them to do this is absurd,” he said. “The study lays out potential scenarios the agency could face, including the possibility of businesses making it more difficult for consumers to tip… This is not something DCWP wanted. It was something the agency feared.”
“I want these companies to start following the law,” Levine said. “I hope they actually realize they’re in a new era.”
Mamdani echoed that message, saying his administration hopes to show that no one is above the law. “This era of impunity when it comes to profiting from the lives of working New Yorkers will end under our administration,” Mamdani said.
“Companies like Motoclick clearly believe this is still the politics of the past,” he said. “This is yet another time when those who have the least [money and power] also have the least recourse. They are wrong.
The Nation contacted Motoclick for comment but did not receive a response.
Prajwal Bhat Prajwal Bhat is a journalist based in New York.