How ride-sharing apps are trying to spread the gig-worker model far and wide. brycecovert reports
Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images In January 2020, Henry DeGroot, an Uber and Lyft driver and organizer with the Boston Independent Drivers Guild , walked into a room in one of the Brutalist concrete buildings near Boston’s city hall that was about the size of a closet and free of windows — “the depths of bureaucracy,” he said.
The brewing battle in Massachusetts is just one of the consequences of the passage of Proposition 22 in California last November, a ballot measure bankrolled by Uber and Lyft, to the tune of $200 million, to carve out their workers from a law, AB5, that imposes a strict test for determining whether workers can be classified as independent contractors. A California judge ruled in August that Prop 22 is unconstitutional, but the law is still in effect as the companies appeal.
Although many bills are tailored in an attempt to apply narrowly to drivers and delivery people, other gig companies, such as Handy, have tried to pry them wider, and experts warn they will open the door for other employers to contract out their workforces rather than employ people directly. “It’s an incredible danger to all workers,” Chen said. “This is really about all of us.”
The Coalition for Workforce Innovation, which has backed many of the state bills and is fighting for the right to treat workers as independent contractors on the federal level, is made up of household brands such as AT&T, General Motors, Nike, Starbucks, and Walmart. A key advantage of the bill of rights, the organizers say, is that it sidesteps the debate over whether or not drivers are employees and, with it, the internal divisions over the issue between drivers who do and don’t want to be treated like employees. It doesn’t create a new third category either. The rights would apply no matter drivers’ status. That helps unite them on issues such as pay and deactivation and against what Uber and Lyft are trying to sell.
Drivers are gearing up for the fight. BIDG is part of the Coalition to Protect Workers’ Rights alongside unions, lawmakers, and organizations like the ACLU. “One thing we have on our side is time and a multi-organizational and multifaceted movement,” Griffith said. But while sectoral bargaining is seen by many pro-union advocates as a way to give workers in some industries more power, they have warned that this legislation is different. Sectoral bargaining works well where workers are already employees with rights who can bargain from that baseline for more. The New York bill would create a new labor category, “network workers,” who are not employees.
Jerome Gage used to pick the days and times to drive for Uber and Lyft in Los Angeles that worked for him. Now, because the base rates are so “pitiful,” he said, he focuses on chasing bonuses, which requires him to drive to specific places and accept certain rides. He used to avoid rush hour; now he’s constantly stuck in it. “They have an enormous amount of power over drivers the way that an employer normally would,” he said.
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