The People’s Parity Project opposes Uber & Lyft’s latest attempt to write their own labor laws, this time in New York State. Last week, Bloomberg reported about a possible deal that the app-based companies are negotiating behind closed doors to undercut recent gains by New York’s gig workers, who won major victories last year over access to unemployment insurance and minimum wage protections.  A draft version of the bill circulated over the weekend and has already been criticized by many workers’ rights advocates as being even worse than Proposition 22, the Uber-funded ballot initiative that passed in California last year rolling back gig workers’ rights. The secrecy surrounding the bill has outraged workers and advocates in New York, who have been attempting to pass an ABC-style employment test for years. 

Uber and Lyft are (misleadingly) marketing the bill as a pro-worker “sectoral bargaining” proposal—when in reality, the bill would provide gig workers with fewer rights than other New York workers. Read our explainer below to learn why this bill isn’t truly “sectoral bargaining”—but instead co-opts potentially pro-worker language to further dismantle workers’ rights and labor standards across the country. Any new legislation regulating the “gig economy” must guarantee workers the full benefits and protections they are entitled to as employees in New York. 

We need your help to make sure that this small group of legislators and labor leaders doesn’t trade workers’ rights for a quick deal with powerful companies. Stay tuned for upcoming PPP Action Alerts and phone zaps to make sure this bill doesn’t pass.

For responses to other aspects of the bill, see the following statements:

LOCKED_ A Bad Deal for Workers One-Pager