A lawsuit has been filed by the New York administration against three companies, Uber Eats, Fantuan, and HungryPanda, over allegations of wage theft and unfair deactivations affecting delivery workers, many of whom are migrants.
The administration found that despite the minimum wage regulations, which require delivery workers to be paid for their time even if an order is canceled, the companies failed to comply with these rules.
It also found that Uber Eats used automated systems to deactivate workers from the app, even when cancellations were not their fault. Between December 2023 and September 2024, over 10,000 workers were reportedly subjected to allegedly unfair deactivations.
One delivery worker from Bangladesh said he was deactivated by Uber Eats without being told why. He said he had only been late on a couple of deliveries out of more than a hundred. When he visited the company’s offices seeking an explanation, he said he was not given any information.
Other workers, including individuals from West Africa and Türkiye, reported being deactivated for reasons beyond their control. These included the app’s facial recognition system failing to recognize them after they changed their appearance, low ratings from customers upset about missing items that restaurants had failed to pack, and complaints from restaurants about workers waiting too long for food to be prepared.
Another worker, who delivered for Grubhub, said he was deactivated after a customer changed the delivery address mid-order.
The lawsuit was settled in a $5.2 million settlement with Uber Eats, Fantuan, and HungryPanda for failing to pay workers minimum wage in 2023 and 2024.
In February 2026, the BHRC contacted Grubhub for a response to these allegations, but the company did not reply.