Deactivated Delivery Workers in New York

If a delivery app deactivated your account and you never got a real reason, you are not alone, and the city agrees with you. In January 2026 New York City’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection announced that Uber Eats, Fantuan and HungryPanda would pay more than $5 million to over 49,000 delivery workers for breaking the city’s minimum pay rules. Uber Eats alone owes more than $3.15 million to over 48,000 workers because it did not pay the minimum pay rate for time spent on cancelled trips.

The part that matters if you were deactivated: the city found Uber Eats used automated rules that cut workers off over cancellations that were not their fault. Uber agreed to reinstate everyone wrongfully deactivated between December 2023 and September 2024, as many as 10,000 people. Those accounts are supposed to come back automatically.

If Uber Eats deactivated you in that window, check the app. Reinstatement was ordered by the city and is meant to happen without you asking. If your account is still off, or you were deactivated outside that window for cancellations, late deliveries or a rating drop you were never allowed to explain, keep every screenshot and message the app sent you and call us. The deactivation itself may not be the whole claim; the pay you lost while you were cut off, and any pay you were shorted before it, often is.

Money owed under the settlement goes to affected workers through the city. You do not have to sue to receive it. What a lawyer is for is everything the settlement did not cover: other apps, other periods, and the pay you can show you were shorted.

A minimum pay rate for every hour you are on the app, whether or not the order goes through: $22.13 an hour before tips since 1 April 2026.
Pay for time on trips the customer cancels.
Weekly, on-time payment, and a clear statement of how your pay was worked out.
A tipping option at checkout on every restaurant and grocery app. The city found the apps’ design tricks cost workers $550 million in tips; those tricks are now illegal.
Bathroom access at the restaurants you pick up from.
Grocery delivery workers are covered too, not only restaurant delivery.

The apps are not allowed to punish you for asserting any of this. If you complained about pay and your account was deactivated soon after, that timing matters.

Pay below the minimum rate. Hours on the app that were paid below $22.13, or below the earlier rate for earlier periods, and cancelled-trip time that was never paid.

Deactivation after you spoke up. If you raised pay with the app or the city and were cut off soon after, we look at the sequence and the record.

Drivers who were called contractors but worked like employees. If you delivered for a company on its schedule, in its van or its route, and were paid a flat day rate or a 1099, that is a different case with more at stake: overtime at time and a half over 40 hours, going back six years under New York law. See our page on delivery driver overtime.

Complaints about the apps can be filed with the city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection. Some claims can also be brought in court. Which route fits depends on what you have and how much is at stake, and that is what the first call is for.

The deactivation notice and every message from the app about it. Your weekly pay statements from the app. Screenshots of your trip history, especially cancelled trips and the hours you were online. Any complaint you sent to the app or to the city, with the date. If you delivered for a company rather than an app, your schedule, route sheets, texts from a dispatcher and anything showing the hours you worked.