Seattle to decide whether to let Uber, Lyft drivers unionize

“People are experimenting and Seattle is a leader”. These companies are providing valuable new tools for city residents and innovating at a tremendous pace.

“I said consistently during this debate that I support the right of workers to organize to create a fair and just workplace”, he said.

In fact, no council member voted “no” and the bill passed 8-0. “While it is uncharted territory, Seattle is in really good shape to pass a law that can fend off any kind of challenge”, she says. As this ordinance takes effect, my administration will begin its work to determine what it will take to implement the law. “I firmly believe that this legislation is a great step in that direction”. Murray wrote that the local collective bargaining process needed to be clarified.

The ordinance passed by the council on Monday afternoon allows drivers completing a certain number of rides per month to elect representatives and join a driver representative organization.

Additionally, the cost of regulation will be significant and should be the responsibility of those being regulated and not a general government expense.

However, the city’s mayor is none to happy about it.

Kitschke argued that the lion’s share of all revenue generated goes to the driver partner, and stays local, adding that out of every dollar spent by a rider, at least 75 percent of the fare is kept by the partner.

Currently, regular employees have the right to organize in order to negotiate pay and working conditions. Many traditional taxi drivers are classified as independent contractors as well, and would have new rights under the law.

The National Labor Relations Act already gives employees the right to bargain as a union.

Like a lot of other companies in the so-called gig economy, Uber and Lyft classify their drivers as independent contractors, rather than employees. But plenty of drivers who try to make a full-time living out of it have their grievances.

“There are hundreds of thousands of cars going across the Sydney Harbour Bridge and a whole bunch of congested roads that we’re about to spend tens of billions of dollars in widening or replacing”, he said.

Councilmember O’Brien said in discussion that he thinks the final bill – that was given a thorough review by the city’s law department – will stand up to any court challenges. Many drivers in Seattle are immigrants who depend on full time works but some make less than minimum wage and don’t have basic worker rights such as sick leave or protection and therefore the council wants rights to be provided to the independent contractors. Those same reports say that name-based checks, given the use of aliases and limitations of publicly available information, can miss criminal histories of up to 12 percent of applicants. The Seattle decision appears to be independent of that question.

He said the bigger issue concerns antitrust laws, including whether independent businesses getting together to bargain constitutes an antitrust violation.