According to our spies, John Oliver is set to discuss food delivery app giants Uber Eats, DoorDash and Grubhub on this week’s episode of Last Week Tonight.
For those lowest on the socioeconomic ladder, delivery jobs for these apps are often the easiest to get, but they can also be dangerous, especially in a city like New York, where delivery workers face deadly traffic and violent attacks.
Adding insult to injury, these workers often earn less than minimum wage. To try to combat this problem, both New York City and Seattle recently mandated wage floors for food app workers–but (as one imagines Oliver will cover tonight) they’ve faced stiff opposition from the app companies, who unsuccessfully sued the city of New York when it first sought to raise the hourly rate for delivery workers from an hourly average of $7.09 to $17.96.
Since the new wage floor went into effect earlier this year, the companies have responded by limiting the number of hours per worker, making it more difficult for customers to tip, and changing how pay is calculated from week to week. The end result, for many workers, is said to have been a net loss.
If this doesn’t sound like a story tailor-made for Last Week Tonight, it’s hard to imagine what is. We’re told that yesterday’s taping was delayed by over an hour due to a last minute legal review.
Last Week Tonight airs tonight at 11:11 p.m. ET on HBO, and streams on Max.
