Gig workers regain some dignity in Washington State
In Seattle and Washington, workers are getting some basic labor protections back more than a decade after technology companies stripped them away.
Since the advent of the gig economy, we’ve debated whether gig workers like Uber drivers should be classified as employees or independent contractors. This question has been and continues to be debated around the world—the European Parliament, for instance, is actively weighing a proposal that would reclassify up to 4.1 million gig and platform workers as employees rather than contractors—but it is particularly resonant in the U.S., where having a job is fundamentally tied to other basic human rights, like health care and paid family leave.
I had a great conversation about all of this recently with Edward Ongweso Jr., a technology writer and reporter in residence at the Omidyar Network and author of
on Substack. I’ll be publishing that soon as a podcast episode for paid subscribers, but in the meantime I want to talk about gig worker classification and dignity in context of two recent developments in Washington State.The first happened in Seattle, which in late March became the first city in the U.S. to require paid sick leave for certain app-based gig workers. The Seattle City Council unanimously approved the rules, which made permanent protections the city initially extended to gig workers during the pandemic. They include:
Paid sick time for mental or physical illness, for preventative care, and for other health care for the worker or care of a family member
Paid “safe” time if the company has suspended or stopped work for any health or safety reason, if a worker’s family member’s school or place of care has been closed, or for any reason related to domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking
App-based workers eligible for these protections include most food and grocery delivery workers in Seattle. Taxi and ride-hail companies are excluded from the bill’s definition of “network company,” as their pay and benefits are regulated under a separate Washington State law that took effect in January.
Under Seattle’s rules, gig workers will accrue at least one day of paid sick leave and paid safe time for every 30 days worked.1 They can carry over at least nine days of unused leave to the next year, and accrued time off is protected should the company sell or get acquired, change its business model, or shut down. Equally important, an app-based worker who stops working for a platform for various reasons (inactivity, “deactivation”2) retains their accrued time off if they resume working for the platform within 12 months. The new rules take effect on May 1.
While many challenges of the gig economy are global, the decoupling of basic rights like health care from full-time employment is a uniquely cruel, uniquely American phenomenon.
The second development came this week. On Tuesday, the Washington State legislature approved a bill that would make it the first state in the U.S. to require paid family and medical leave and unemployment benefits for Uber and Lyft drivers. The bill, which still needs to be signed by governor Jay Inslee, guarantees ride-hail drivers up to 12 weeks of paid time off for family and medical reasons. It passed the legislature with support from both Uber and Lyft, which helped craft the policies, as well as the Teamsters-affiliated Drivers Union.
Seattle was an early ride-hail market, launched by Uber in 2011. It was also one of the first to push for workers rights. Drivers began meeting as early as 2014 to form a union that could bargain over common issues like the driver rating system, driver bans and deactivations, and other problematic working conditions. Uber was openly hostile to the efforts—this was the Travis Kalanick era, after all—with one spokesperson telling the press in 2014, “If an Uber driver wants to make a change they can talk to us directly. They don’t need a bogus organization like this to do that.”
In December 2015, the Seattle City Council voted to let ride-hail drivers form a union despite their independent-contractor status. It briefly looked like a landmark win for gig labor, but this was David Plouffe’s Uber. The company protested and shortly thereafter the U.S. Chamber of Commerce sued the city, citing breach of federal antitrust laws. While the legal fight played out in court, Uber trained customer service reps on union-busting scripts and produced a podcast designed to deter union activities. In 2019, Seattle announced a new plan to set a wage floor for ride-hail drivers on the heels of a successful similar initiative in New York City. The focus on driver pay standards took the momentum away from union activity, and in 2020 the Chamber of Commerce dropped its lawsuit against the city.
The Seattle and Washington State initiatives together represent the most sweeping labor protections for gig workers in the U.S. They’ve been celebrated by both labor advocates and company reps, suggesting a truce between the two sides and a model for improving the lots of gig workers in a country where being a self-employed contractor too often means job and income precarity and no health benefits or other social safety net. It’s worth repeating: while many of the challenges of the gig economy are global, the decoupling of basic human rights like health care and sick leave from full-time employment is a uniquely cruel, uniquely American phenomenon. I’m a self-employed writer in the UK and have been for the past year. I also get health care through the NHS. In this country, access isn’t gated by traditional employment. Your right to be sick, to be human, exists independent of your job.
The bill Seattle City Council passed late last month seems keenly aware of this. It not only defines protections for gig workers, but makes a case for why they matter. The bill notes that app-based workers are “highly vulnerable to economic insecurity and health or safety risks” because they aren’t protected under traditional labor law. The new rules approved by Seattle, the bill explains, are designed to:
alleviate the economic pressures that compel app-based workers to work when conditions are not safe; reduce the risk of app-based workers working while sick and spreading illness; increase opportunities for app-based workers to stay home and take care of themselves and family members during periods of illness and other health or safety risks; and promote a healthier and more productive workforce with enhanced public health outcomes for app-based workers, their families, network companies, and the community as a whole.
This is both a list of the concrete ways in which gig workers’ lives will improve with access to paid leave, and the indignities they’ve experienced without it. Of course a person who is sick should be able to stay home until they recover; of course they shouldn’t have to work in unsafe conditions; of course they should be able to take the time and resources needed to escape an abusive or dangerous situation. The gig economy prides itself on flexibility, but sometimes flexibility isn’t enough; sometimes you can’t afford to stop working even if life demands that you do.
Gig workers in Seattle and Washington State have thus recovered some basic dignity, but they’ve had to fight for every scrap of it. This is the legacy of the employment classification battle. By continually delaying a decision on employment status, companies like Uber have forced workers to cut their losses and focus instead on where they can make material gains: a pay floor, an unemployment insurance pool, a drivers advocacy group, paid sick and family leave. After a decade of inaction, the wage floors in New York City and Washington State and legislation for paid leave feel like major victories. In reality, nothing has been gained, but gig companies have spent so long setting the bar for labor low that it is now extremely easy to clear.
Washington is just one state, but you can see the roadmap that Uber has laid out there. If similar legislation is crafted in other states, ride-hail drivers and other gig workers will be written into a sort of makeshift third employment category. They’ll still be contractors, but they’ll have a slate of benefits that typically accompany employment in the U.S., like sick leave and a minimum hourly wage. They won’t have as many or as robust protections as they would if they were employees, but they’ll have a lot more than they did. If I were Uber, I’d be betting that’s enough to finally put the employment classification question to bed.
Per the bill, “‘Day worked’ or ‘days worked’ means any calendar day(s) that an app-based worker performs services in furtherance of an offer facilitated or presented by the network company, where the services are performed in whole or part in Seattle.” Always define your terms!
Another definition from the bill: “‘Deactivation’ means the blocking of an app-based worker’s access to the network company’s platform, changing an app-based worker’s status from eligible to provide delivery services to ineligible, or other material restriction in access to the network company’s platform that is effected by a network company.”