{"id":87,"date":"2026-05-26T20:39:29","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T20:39:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/frontierhousingreport.com\/?p=87"},"modified":"2026-05-26T20:39:29","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T20:39:29","slug":"in-massachusetts-today-uber-and-lyft-drivers-went-union","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/frontierhousingreport.com\/?p=87","title":{"rendered":"In Massachusetts Today, Uber and Lyft Drivers Went Union"},"content":{"rendered":"
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For years, both Uber and Lyft have insisted that their drivers are not their employees, but rather, independent contractors who therefore don\u2019t qualify for minimum-wage and other such laws, and who cannot unionize under the terms of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).<\/p>\n

Read more The Mechanic vs. the Billionaire with Dan Osborn<\/a><\/p>\n

Their hard-fought position\u2014roughly speaking, if it quacks like a duck, that still doesn\u2019t make it a duck\u2014immunized them from the normal duties of an employer (providing benefits, adhering to minimum-wage laws, and the like).<\/p>\n

Until today.<\/p>\n

More from Harold Meyerson<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Today, in Massachusetts, Uber and Lyft drivers succeeded in establishing a union with which Uber and Lyft must bargain or face binding arbitration\u2014precisely because their drivers decided to agree<\/em> with the companies\u2019 claims that they\u2019re independent contractors. Since independent contractors are excluded from coverage under the NLRA, a federal law, that means that individual states can enact laws concerning the rights of those contractors. Massachusetts voters did just that by passing a 2024 ballot measure, Question 3, which extended collective-bargaining rights to gig drivers, and enabled them to unionize once 25 percent of such drivers in the state had formed a union. By last week, the number of those drivers who\u2019d joined reached roughly 32,000 out of the 70,000 rideshare drivers in the state\u201446 percent. And today, the App Drivers Union (ADU) officially formed, in a ceremony attended by Gov. Maura Healey and the presidents of the two unions that had worked to organize the drivers, the Machinists and SEIU.<\/p>\n

Uber and Lyft are now required to bargain with the new union, and have expressed a willingness to do so. If they balk, or if the bargaining fails to yield a first contract within six months, the state will appoint an arbitrator who, following consultations with both sides, will impose a contract. (So weak is the NLRA when it comes to guaranteeing a first contract that, on average, it takes more than a year for the parties to agree on one, and many companies simply refuse to sign one or even show up for bargaining\u2014an avoidance for which the NLRA imposes no significant penalties. Nor is mandatory arbitration even an option under the NLRA. The workers at Amazon\u2019s Staten Island warehouse, for instance, voted to go union four years ago, but Jeff Bezos\u2019s company has yet to sit down with them even once.)<\/p>\n

For years, union leaders and activists, as well as academics and law professors, have debated whether unions should try to organize such gig workers under the NLRA (since the National Labor Relations Board during Democratic administrations might reclassify such workers as employees) or accede to the companies\u2019 position that they\u2019re just independent contractors\u2014a kind of halfway house in the views of the NLRA-or-bust advocates. It turns out, however, that state-created independent contractor collective bargaining put Uber and Lyft in a bind. They\u2019ve argued for decades that their drivers are indies, not employees, and hence, can\u2019t go union under federal law. Indeed, in 2022, the two companies spent upwards of $200 million to persuade California voters\u2014successfully\u2014that their drivers were indeed independent contractors, and not subject to a recently enacted state law that treated them as employees.<\/p>\n

Today, their Massachusetts drivers, following 2024\u2019s Massachusetts voters, told the companies that they\u2019ve been right all along: Their drivers aren\u2019t employees and can\u2019t organize under federal law. But precisely because federal labor law claims no jurisdiction over independent contractors, they sure as hell can organize under state law.<\/p>\n

Read more Will Congress Pass the Housing Bill?<\/a><\/p>\n

So today, the leaders of the fledgling ADU, joined by SEIU President April Verrett, Machinists President Brian Bryant, and Gov. Healey, celebrated what they termed the largest unionization of private-sector workers (counting all 70,000 who\u2019ll be covered by the yet-to-be-negotiated contracts) since Ford went union in 1941. As Verrett told the Prospect<\/em>, the 1941 union victory epitomized labor\u2019s success in organizing workers in an economy dominated by manufacturing, with clear employer-employee relations. Today\u2019s success is an organizing breakthrough in an economy dominated by the service sectors, where low-wage jobs abound and gig work is increasingly common. (What remains constant, from Ford through Uber, is the centrality of cars to American life.)<\/p>\n

For much of the past decade, the Machinists were the only major union that focused, initially in New York, on efforts to organize gig workers in their status as independent contractors. Joined by SEIU, they\u2019ve now had a huge breakthrough in Massachusetts that may tee up other such victories in trifecta Democratic states. Both Verrett and Machinist President Bryant told me that Illinois is considering a similar law to Massachusetts\u2019s; the two largest blue states\u2014California and New York\u2014are now in play; and Bryant also expressed optimism about unionizing Lyft and Uber drivers in New Jersey and throughout New England.<\/p>\n

For decades, unions have tried and failed to restore some teeth to the NLRA, whose mandates American employers have routinely flouted for the past half-century. Every time the Democrats have controlled the White House and both houses of Congress, going as far back as the Truman administration, Democrats have tried to restore the powers that the act had for its first decade in existence\u20141935 to 1945, when the rate of unionization rose from single digits to more than one-third of the workforce. Every time, they\u2019ve failed to overcome the supermajority cloture requirement in the Senate. So today, the rate of private-sector unionization has descended to a bare 6 percent, even though polls show that unions\u2019 approval ratings today stand at more than ten times that 6 percent.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s victory, then, marks labor\u2019s first success, not at amending the NLRA, but at going around it entirely. It is not a panacea for American workers generally, most of whom are still employees and still saddled with a dysfunctional NLRA. But, as Bryant told me, \u201cToday\u2019s victory goes further than rideshare drivers; there are plenty of other gig workers.\u201d To which Verrett added, \u201cWe have to figure out a way to throw open the doors of the labor movement to new groups of workers, to shift the nation\u2019s power dynamics from corporations to workers.\u201d Whatever its future may hold, today\u2019s victory certainly opens that door wider.<\/p>\n

Read more Stephen Miller\u2019s Impossible America<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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