Posts tagged Lyft
Déjà Vu All Over Again
April 14, 2025 // Reclassification attempts began with a media narrative, then blue-state legislation. The same thing is happening now with sectoral organizing.
Op-Ed: Question 3 Still a Question: Massachusetts’ Experiment in Sectoral Bargaining for Gig Workers
April 10, 2025 // These impracticalities explain why Question 3 embraces sectoral bargaining. Under this regime, once the drivers form a union, that union will represent all the drivers in the state, no matter what rideshare company they work for. (Rideshare companies can also team up to simplify the negotiations.) This will put the drivers in a vastly superior bargaining position than if they had to incrementally organize smaller units of drivers or even company by company, as is the norm under the NLRA. Under the NLRA, organizers would next have to get the support of 30% of drivers in a bargaining unit before being able to call an election. But how do organizers reach that 30%? For rideshare drivers, there is no workplace where everyone congregates. The closest equivalent is the airport parking lot, where many drivers wait to get a ride request. But to even encounter 30% of drivers there, much less to convince that 30%, could be a prohibitively high bar. Additionally, driver turnover is high. By the time 30% is convinced, those drivers may have moved on, a new cohort taking their place. Part-timers also pose a problem. For these reasons, Question 3 requires that the would-be union collect signatures from only 5% of Active Drivers (defined as those that have completed more than the median number of rides in the last six months). That is a much more plausible bar to clear, given that rideshare drivers are quite literally a moving target, in time and in space.
The Next Wave Commentary: Kim Kavin
March 4, 2025 // In the wave of freelance busting that started with California’s Assembly Bill 5, the method of attack was the reclassification of independent contractors as employees. That method created massive backlash everywhere it was tried, so now, a new method is being tried. That new method is called sectoral organizing. This strategy of freelance busting in multiple states is usually a setup for a nationwide attack against us all. Independent contractors nationwide just learned this the hard way, with California’s Assembly Bill 5 ultimately leading to the introduction of the federal Protecting the Right to Organize Act. The freelance-busting brigade is, once again, doing a test run of its idea in the states, with bigger ambitions on the horizon.
Op-Ed: The Case for Gig Worker Benefits
December 19, 2024 // Independent workers miss out on many fringe benefits associated with regular employment, such as disability insurance, life insurance, or health insurance. They are also ineligible for paid family or medical leave. In 2022, the proportion of self-employed adults lacking health insurance (18 percent) was substantially higher than that among all working-age adults (12 percent). These disparities result to some extent from tax policy. For the best part of a century, businesses have provided health insurance, pensions, and other fringe benefits to employees with pretax dollars—perks that self-employed workers did not enjoy.
A Fresh Look at the Independent Workforce with New BLS Data
November 27, 2024 // New BLS data reveal the size and growth of the independent workforce, preferences for independent work over W-2 employment, and key demographic and industry trends
Commentary: Plan B is Activated
November 19, 2024 // They are now turning to Plan B, which is sectoral organizing. And they notched a big win in the recent election with a ballot proposition in Massachusetts—a win that the mainstream media is heralding as a good thing. In fact, the same pro-union media bias that we saw with reclassification attempts such as Assembly Bill 5 and the PRO Act is simply resetting and restarting anew. Now, it’s being used to promote this other way of trying to limit self-employment.
Mass. election results: Question 3, authorizing Uber and Lyft driver union, passes
November 7, 2024 // The campaign was backed by the Service Employees International Union, one of the nation’s largest labor organizations. The union contributed most of the roughly $6 million raised in support of the measure through mid-October, state records showed.
Massachusetts Ballot Measure Would Shove Rideshare Workers Into the Arms of Unions
October 12, 2024 // Even as independent contractors, however, unions still threaten drivers’ flexibility. Unions might negotiate standardized rates, mandatory breaks, or limits on working hours, which, while beneficial in some industries, could restrict a driver’s ability to capitalize on peak demand periods or adjust their work hours to fit personal schedule. The risk of such changes only magnifies when one considers that the Ballot Measure only requires a 25% vote from drivers to form a union that would represent them as a whole. This means that the 30% of drivers working full-time, who would benefit most from being treated like employees, might be able to dictate policy for all rideshare drivers.
Interview: Independent Contractors and Union Reforms, How @VinnieVernuccio Champions Worker Choice
September 12, 2024 // Unions are stuck in this turn of the last century industrial revolution, a one-size-fits-all adversarial business model that most workers today don't want. I do see a place for unions if they embrace a voluntary business model and become like professional service organizations. Unfortunately, they're not there. If you're under a union contract, you're stuck with the wages, the benefits, the vacations, [and] the hours they negotiate for you. It's actually impossible for the employer to unilaterally say, “you're doing a great job, I'm going to give you a raise,” or “I'm going to give you a bonus,” or, “hey, you want more vacation for a little less money?”
Trump and Harris, with starkly different records on labor issues, are both courting union voters
September 5, 2024 // By comparison, two days after taking office in 2021, Biden issued an executive order that established masking guidelines, and his administration made health and safety protocols on the job during the rest of the COVID-19 pandemic a high priority. Compared with the inaction by the Trump administration during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Biden administration has been more active in proposing health and safety measures. For example, in July 2024 it proposed rules designed to protect some 36 million workers from health risks associated with extreme heat. After a period for written comments, public hearings will be held on the bill. When Trump tried cutting OSHA funding for 2018 by approximately US$10 million, Congress blocked his efforts. The Biden administration is seeking a 3.7% increase in OSHA’s budget for the 2025 fiscal year.