The gig economy’s future in New York

Even as poll workers continue counting votes across New York, many Albany lawmakers have already refocused their attention from the campaign trail to the daunting challenges facing our state. Most would agree that New York’s likely $59 billion budget shortfall through 2022 and rising regional and national COVID cases are the most imminent and consequential issues requiring immediate attention and swift legislative solutions.

But many other critical issues must be faced as well, and lawmakers should absorb lessons learned from Tuesday’s elections in other states in order to draft the most effective public policy solutions for New York. A perfect example is the issue of employee classification, which New York has previously grappled with, and which California resolved on Tuesday.

This week, Californians overwhelmingly rejected the worker classification law known as AB5, a flawed attempt to give nontraditional workers access to benefits by forcing them into traditional employer-employee relationships. This eliminated flexibility these workers value even though it did provide some app-based workers the benefits they deserve.

Voters instead widely approved

Proposition 22, a ballot measure giving appbased drivers and delivery workers access to a slew of benefits while allowing them to maintain their independence.

In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, ensuring app-based drivers have protections is more important than ever. Prop. 22 has proved to be the consensus-solution even in a large deep blue state like California. New York lawmakers should waste no time in prioritizing a similar solution on the very first day of Albany’s next session.

Our current labor system, based on laws created over a century ago that do not reflect how Americans live and work today, is broken. We must chart a new path forward, but overly broad legislation that places strict limits on worker flexibility is bad policy and counterproductive to the critical mission of protecting workers and meeting them where many of them want to be.

Prop. 22, on the other hand, is a “third way” that gives workers needed support and improves on the current system that leaves so many people behind, while avoiding the overly restrictive policies in blanket legislation that ends up hurting workers.

Many of the rideshare and delivery apps these workers use, some of whom the nonprofit I run, Tech:NYC, represent, support this third way, and advocated for Prop. 22 strongly in California. The restrictive policies laid out in AB5 were forcing some to consider ending operations in California. Their business models recognize that flexible work is and will continue to be a key element of our modern economy, and AB5 threatened their ability to capture this growing trend. But Prop 22 charts the course to a solution that will allow them to continue serving riders and delivery customers at a time when these services are desperately needed.

Even more importantly, a third way is what many drivers want. According to an independent survey conducted by The Rideshare Guy, 79% of drivers across the country want to remain independent contractors. As lawmakers seek to enact protections aimed at helping drivers, it is paramount that their number one audience is those who are directly impacted — and drivers are clear that they want to maintain their flexibility.

In addition to being popular with drivers, the wide margin by which Prop. 22 passed in California — with the Yes vote at 58.4% at the time of this writing (not all votes have been counted in California) — shows that allowing workers to maintain their flexibility while giving them benefits is overwhelmingly popular.

What Albany does next year on this issue could have positive collateral consequences on multiple levels. It is crucially important for app-based workers, who have continued to keep New York City moving throughout this crisis, have protections. Giving them these protections while ensuring they have the flexibility to make their own hours so they can care for family members if needed is a solution that accurately reflects the modern-day economy and challenges we face.

We have the rare opportunity to achieve something significant in an uncertain political climate, and we should move forward as quickly as possible. Worker classification has proven to be a challenging issue for New York in the past. But if our lawmakers look to Prop. 22 as a model to follow, we can finally provide the increased protections we all agree drivers deserve, while maintaining their flexibility.

We have faith in both the ideas enshrined in California’s Prop. 22 and in our state’s political leadership. During next year’s legislative session, there is a clear path forward. All we have to do is drive down it.

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After the fiasco that these elections turned out to be, Trump is hellbent on stopping vote-counting where outstanding ballots are in opposition areas but wants to keep counting where there are ballots left in his favor. As I expected, this oversized liar and con man will go to any lengths to pervert, distort and, if necessary, destroy the American democratic process when his only aim, by hook or by crook, is to win. What he succeeded in doing, though, is making sure that henceforth the United States no longer has the moral high ground and the right to condemn elections from other countries as fraudulent, not free and fair, etc.

Jean Michel Bouvier