The NAACP New Bedford Branch strongly opposes a bill now before the Massachusetts legislature, H.1234, which would re-classify “Big Gig” drivers (Lyft and Uber) as independent contractors and no longer treat them as company employees. For many years the NAACP has regarded legislation of this sort as hostile if not destructive to working people. Real jobs with collective bargaining rights provide not only working wages for working families but the right to democratize workplaces.
The National Employment Law Project has found that Black workers comprise nearly one quarter of all workers in the gig economy. They and all workers deserve the rights and protections of all other employees under the law.
Why we oppose H.1234
In recent years, Massachusetts has strengthened the rights of workers, adding paid sick time, annually increasing the minimum wage (now $13.50) to reach $15 per hour, and, most recently, expanding paid family and medical leave to all. These changes have been particularly important for low-wage workers, raising standards of work across the state. Big Gig’s business model is built on denying workers these and others rights, shifting hundreds of millions of dollars in labor costs onto their workers and government safety nets. For example, gig economy employers refuse to contribute to state and federal unemployment programs. During the pandemic, Congress was forced to step in to cover gig workers, but their benefits were smaller and significantly delayed.
The Uber/Lyft-backed bill would exclude hundreds of thousands of workers from the rights and protections by significantly narrowing who is an “employee” under Massachusetts law (the so-called ABC Test, MGL Ch. 149, § 148B). Current Massachusetts law includes the critical presumption that any individual “performing any service” is an “employee.” Under law “employees” are entitled to rights and protections, including minimum wage, paid sick time, and paid family leave, unemployment insurance and worker’s compensation, the right to join a union, and protections against sexual harassment and racial discrimination at work.
Attorney General Healey is currently suing Uber and Lyft for illegally denying these rights to their employees. Rather than complying, Big Gig now wants to rewrite the long-standing law to exclude their workers entirely, filing language that, for “all essential purposes […] an app-based driver is an independent contractor and not an employee.” AG Healey and her Fair Labor Division won a significant victory in court on March 25. Now is the time to protect and to build on current Mass law, not allow Big Gig to rewrite the law to deny rights and protections to workers.
The two corporation-friendly sponsors of this bill have both received “D’s” on a legislative scorecard that Progressive Mass keeps updated. One of the sponsors of this anti-labor legislation has a long history of wrong-sided votes and abstentions on everything from police reform, expanded voting rights, legislative transparency, tax giveaways for corporations and the rich, informed medical consent, and immigrant rights. At least one has is already receiving Big Gig contributions (see ocpf.us):
The language that would change Gig Workers from company employees to independent contractors can be found in Section 5 (f), toward the end of the bill. The beginning portion of the bill provides rights that the Gig Workers would have anyway as company employees or union workers.
We strongly urge the Legislature to let H.1234 die.
