The Seattle City Council voted 8-0 in support of the legislation, but it is likely that the affected companies will appeal.
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This ordinance is a bad deal for Seattle drivers and for Seattle taxpayers, who will ultimately bear the cost of defending the ordinance against the inevitable legal challenges it will generate. The companies strongly oppose it, and several council members acknowledged there would be legal challenges ahead but said it was worth doing.
Reaction has been mixed after the Seattle City Council voted to give drivers for ride-hailing companies, taxis and for-hire transportation companies the right to unionize over pay and working conditions.
Brought forward by Councilmember Mike O’Brien and passed out of the Finance and Culture committee in October, the ordinance would be yet another precedent in the city that was the first in the nation to enact a $15 minimum wage for workers.
From here, it won’t be a straight shot to organization: First, drivers will have to vote on whether they even want to seek representation as a group; if they do, they’ll have to select what group they want to be represented by.
Seattle’s city council is considering a proposal to allow taxi drivers to join labor unions.
Uber has consistently resisted that effort, underscoring the “flexibility” its service affords those who drive for the company.
When classified as an independent contractor “employees may not receive important workplace protections such as the minimum wage, overtime compensation, unemployment insurance, and workers’ compensation”, a memo from the US Labor Department states.
At least, they would if the law ever goes into effect.
“Since my concerns were not adequately addressed in this legislation, I will not sign this bill”, he said.
However, Uber, Lyft and others argue that federal labour law prohibits cities from regulating collective bargaining.
A spokesman from Uber did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
I also reached out to Uber regarding the news, but they essentially sent back a non-statement rehashing their own self-published survey data from last week.
If the labor law argument doesn’t hold, the industry could still fight the legislation with antitrust law. “I’m so happy for myself and for other drivers”. Murray wrote that the local collective bargaining process needed to be clarified. The drivers also provide their own cars and pay their own expenses. In a statement, Uber told CBS that its company is about letting drivers be independent with flexible hours, and that half of its drivers are on the road less than 10 hours a week. We are the majority of people who do it for a living. Yes, Uber drivers love driving for Uber.
But both companies have said that requiring fingerprint checks, because of the cost and inconvenience of getting fingerprints taken, would discourage people from applying to be drivers and undercut their business model of having ample drivers on the road most of the time.
Uber, a company valued this month at $62.5 billion after a new investment according to the Times, relies on 400,000 drivers nationwide.
How much should they be paid and what sort of working conditions should they have?
Samuel Estreicher, a law professor at New York University, said to the AP that if the drivers aren’t employees per federal labor law, that pre-empts any contradicting city ordinance.
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City officials, citing Federal Bureau of Investigation reports and other studies, say that fingerprint-based checks are more than 99 percent effective in linking potential drivers with an accurate accounting of their criminal history.
