Jumaane: Gov’t should help workers in the gig economy — who are often exploited
With some 850,000 people in the state working in the gig economy and related sectors, the government should fight to protect them from exploitation, says the city’s Public Advocate Jumaane Williams.
On May 1, historically known as an annual celebration of workers’ rights, Williams is calling for many low-wage workers classified as “independent contractors” to get paid sick leave, the ability to unionize and more.
“Sometimes, we’ll turn a blind eye to exploitative working conditions,” Williams told the Daily News.
“Right now, you have to choose between working and getting well or helping your family, and you also have to choose between staying home and making people around you sick,” he said of contract workers. “A large portion of the population are dealing with untenable decisions.”
Williams, who is also running as a Democratic candidate for governor, is calling for steps from the city as well as the federal government.
In the Big Apple, lawmakers should extend the Earned Safe and Sick Time Act to low-wage contractors, said the public advocate. The legislation requires most employers to provide paid sick leave, among other measures.
Williams says the state can resolve the main problem for contract workers — being wrongly classified as “independent.” That enables apps like Uber and TaskRabbit to deny workers a range of benefits, adding that Albany should “narrowly tailor” standards determining when a worker is genuinely independent.
As of 2020, the state had about 150,000 people working for apps such as Lyft and Door-Dash and another 700,000 “misclassified” independent contractors working in sectors from construction to nail salons, according to a report from the New School’s Center for New York City Affairs.
Two-thirds of the workers were people of color, the report found. About half of the 850,000 relied on contract work as their primary source of income.
“The general problem with lowwage misclassified workers is that it basically deprives these workers of all labor protections, social insurance programs, access to health and safety programs, paid leave requirements, access to paid family leave programs,” said the New School’s James Parrott.
Apps and other companies know what they’re doing when they classify a large section of their employees as independent contractors, he added.
“The reason they’re able to do that is there have been sort of gray areas in the set of state and federal laws that bear on classification,” said Parrott, the Center for New York City Affairs’ director of economic and fiscal policy. “The legal context is a little muddy, and there’s a need to try and clarify that.”
Williams said the status quo was “designed to concentrate the money in a few folks’ hands on behalf of the labor of a lot of people.
“It’s the same communities that are exploited time and time again.”
Along with seeking a tighter definition of independent contractors at the state level, Williams wants the feds to empower contractors to form unions.
“We have a great opportunity now that we’re coming out of this pandemic,” he said. “We can build out an economy that is equitable and just.”