CSS Statement on the “Right to Bargain” Act
We understand that elected officials in Albany are expected to introduce a bill imminently that purports to grant collective bargaining rights and workplace benefits to drivers of ride-share apps and delivery workers. However, a close read of the draft bill demonstrates that it is a toxic piece of legislation that would block app-based workers from achieving true wage security and essential workplace protections, further impoverishing an already financially insecure workforce.
We are dismayed to learn that the bill was largely developed without input from the very workers who would be directly affected by it. As an institution with a 175-year history of fighting for the upward mobility of low-wage and vulnerable workers across New York, the Community Service Society strongly opposes this bill as it would harm New Yorkers and set a dangerous precedent for other states to potentially emulate.
Contrary to its name, the “Right to Bargain” bill does not advance workers’ rights to collective bargaining.
This bill would only allow them to enroll in company chosen unions with limited rights. When matters of workplace regulations would be negotiated, the companies would retain complete control over the negotiating process and decertify any union whose members reject the companies’ final offer. If enacted into law, this bill would also provide gig companies a ‘carve out’ for exemptions from the national labor standards, a major setback for workers nationwide as support grows for the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act in Congress. The PRO Act seeks to strengthen labor laws and would make it easier for all workers to organize for collective bargaining purposes.
The bill would worsen wage security, pushing app-based gig workers into poverty and increasing their financial instability.
The bill would undo recent hard-fought victories and preempt City and other local municipalities from enacting labor protections. Among these victories is replacing the current minimum wage of $17.22 per hour for app-based drivers—set by New York City’s Tax and Limousine Commission—to a much lower floor of around $8.70 per hour.[1] Another victory that would be lost is workers’ access to traditional unemployment insurance (for workers of Uber, Lyft, and Postmates).[2] Based on our annual survey of low-income New Yorkers, the Unheard Third, we know that app-based gig work is the primary source of income for a majority of these workers and lowering the wage floor would push millions into poverty, further worsening their potential for upward economic mobility.[3] Most of these workers have little to no savings, making it nearly impossible for them to achieve financial security. While Uber, Lyft and other gig companies will multiply their profits, this legislation would multiply the hardships experienced by these workers and their families.
A majority of app-based drivers and delivery workers are people of color and immigrants. These communities bore the brunt of the devastation from the pandemic and the recession. By lowering the hourly minimum wage, this legislation would further penalize these groups while exacerbating racial inequities that are already prevalent in New York.
The proposed legislation denies app-based gig workers most protections under state and local labor laws.
The bill stops short of recognizing network drivers and delivery workers as employees. As a result, these workers would continue to be exempted from workplace protections under state labor law, disability law, as well as access to paid family leave, paid sick leave, City paid sick leave, and City and State human rights laws. Given the crucial role played by emergency sick leave provisions to slowdown the spread of the pandemic, the city and the state cannot reduce protections for these workers any further. In fact, the pandemic has demonstrated the need to expand these protections, including access to paid leave.
CSS strongly opposes the “Right to Bargain” bill and calls on the legislature to take an inclusive approach to addressing the challenges affecting the gig workforce.
Workers must be part of negotiations, and any legislation should enable them to fully exercise their right to collectively bargain and allow them to access the critical workplace benefits and protections they deserve and desperately need. In voicing our opposition to this bill, we join numerous local, regional, and national labor unions and groups including the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, Los Deliveristas Unidos, 32BJ-SEIU, United Food and Commercial Workers, Workers Justice, United Auto Workers Region 9A, Workers United of NY-NJ, Food Chain Workers Alliance, among others.
[1] Additionally, while the current law pays the workers for their waiting times (when they are seeking passengers), the proposed legislation would only pay workers for the time when they are with a passenger, approximately only 60 percent of all time.
[2] The bill claims to set up a parallel unemployment insurance for the workers but whether a worker who separated from employment who be eligible and receive the unemployment benefits would be completely at the discretion of the employing company. Experts point out that per the current language of the bill, no worker would have qualified for unemployment insurance payments. In other words, it would have excluded the 67,000 app-based drivers who received unemployment insurance.
[3] The Unheard Third is an annual survey of low-income New Yorkers, designed by CSS and fielded in partnership with Lake Research Partners. For additional information on the findings of the survey related to app-based gig workers, please reach out to Emerita Torres, Vice President of Policy Research and Advocacy, at etorres@cssny.org.