With Intro 1135 now in effect, a look back at how delivery workers and their allies secured the two-thirds majority needed to override the mayor’s veto.
The New York City Council voted 36-14 on September 10, 2025, to override Mayor Eric Adams’ veto of Intro 1135, establishing a minimum wage of more than $20 per hour for grocery delivery workers. The vote achieved the narrow two-thirds majority required for an override, which AMNY described as “barely eked out.”
The legislation closes what advocates call the “Instacart loophole,” a four-year gap created when the City Council passed minimum wage protections for food delivery workers in September 2021 but explicitly excluded grocery and package delivery workers. Intro 1135 applies to all contracted delivery workers, including those who deliver food, groceries, and other goods.
Mayor Adams vetoed the bills in August 2025 following an internal advocacy campaign led by top aide Randy Mastro, according to sources who spoke with the New York Daily News. The veto came despite support for the legislation from the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection commissioner.
“City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams announced Thursday her Democratic majority will vote to override Mayor Adams’ vetoes of bills they passed that would increase salaries for grocery delivery workers and decriminalize unlicensed street vending,” the New York Daily News reported on August 14. “In a press conference at City Hall, the speaker said the mayor’s latest vetoes, issued in the past couple weeks, are ‘anti-working class.'”
The legislation affects approximately 65,000 app-based delivery workers in New York City, many of whom are immigrants. Amazon Fresh and Instacart lobbied against the bills, the New York Daily News reported.
Los Deliveristas Unidos, an immigrant-led worker advocacy organization concentrated in Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx, mobilized delivery workers to support the legislation. AMNY documented Council Member Sandy Nurse speaking “on the steps of City Hall during a rally with Los Deliveristas Unidos in support of the Grocery Delivery Worker legislative package, joined by Council Members Shaun Abreu and Jennifer Gutiérrez.”
United Food and Commercial Workers released a statement on August 14, 2025, condemning the mayor’s veto. “UFCW Leaders Condemn NYC Mayor Adams’ Failure to Close ‘Instacart Loophole,'” read the subject line of the press release, which criticized corporate lobbying by Amazon Fresh and Instacart.
The City Council legislation was designed to “improve the pay and working conditions of grocery store delivery workers citywide, in an expansion of a groundbreaking set of laws passed in 2021.” The 2021 law established protections for food delivery workers on platforms like DoorDash, Grubhub, and Uber Eats, but did not cover grocery and package delivery workers.
Worker’s Justice Project, a Brooklyn-based nonprofit led by Ligia Guallpa, has been organizing immigrant delivery workers and other low-wage laborers on wage theft and labor conditions, BK Reader reported in June 2024.
Featured Image from NYC Public Advocate Instagram for Bushwick Daily
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