WHAT WAS SHAPING up to be perhaps the buzziest ballot measure of the cycle, with Massachusetts residents barraged with millions of dollars of ad spending by both sides, will not go before voters after all.
After a last-minute $175 million settlement that establishes new rights for Uber and Lyft’s app-based drivers while leaving their labor status an unsettled question, the campaign funded by tech companies to declare the drivers independent contractors entitled to a limited set of benefits said it’s abandoning the ballot effort.
But voters may still be asked to weigh in on a gig-work question, as a labor coalition presses ahead with a separate ballot question that would establish a mechanism for the gig drivers to unionize and collectively bargain, even if they are considered independent contractors.
Under the terms of the settlement struck Thursday between Attorney General Andrea Campbell’s office and Uber and Lyft, the two tech companies cannot fund or support the current ballot measures. Without them, the coalition that also included DoorDash and Instacart opted against moving forward.
In an evening statement following the surprise settlement announcement, tech-backed Flexibility and Benefits for Massachusetts Drivers spokesperson Conor Yunits confirmed the campaign is hanging up its hat.
“Our goal has always been to protect the flexibility that 97 percent of Massachusetts app-based drivers say is important to them,” Yunits said in a statement. “While the campaign is no longer moving forward with a ballot initiative, we believe in the importance of preserving independence for all app-based workers and we will continue to advocate for policies that maintain the flexibility they overwhelmingly value.”
The ride-share companies said they would not be submitting a final round of signatures to the secretary of state’s office for the question to go on the ballot.
The settlement caps a years-long suit started under Gov. Maura Healey when she was attorney general in 2020 – targeting the two dominant ride-share companies for treating their drivers as independent contractors – kicking off two cycles of possible ballot campaigns to cut off the suit at the knees.
In the end, it went the other way.
Campbell’s settlement places the Bay State in the company of states that extract money and benefit agreements from the transportation network companies in exchange for a promise not to try to enforce current state classification laws against them.
It’s a neat trick. Neither side changes its position on whether the drivers are independent contractors or employees entitled to a full suite of benefits, it doesn’t technically create a third category of law applicable only to app-based drivers, and it sets a permanent floor for benefits and rights promised to the drivers of the companies bound by the agreement – here Uber and Lyft but not DoorDash or Instacart.
If the companies’ business practices substantially change, or state lawmakers or voters by ballot measure decide to require more from transportation network companies, the attorney general would still be tasked with enforcing the law. But the office of the state’s top prosecutor made it clear on Thursday that Uber and Lyft are bound to meet at least the standards agreed to in the settlement regardless of future law, guaranteeing more than $32 an hour for drivers and a host of work benefits.
The companies would be allowed to challenge any future laws or participate in future ballot measures, though even a successful independent contractor classification campaign in the future wouldn’t change their settlement obligations.
Within the settlement, the actual terms of work are defined. Hours that accrue toward health benefits and paid time off are limited to the time between when a driver starts driving to a pickup, reaching the destination, and waiting for a pickup, plus the time spent transporting a rider. So the time that drivers are on the road but not active will not count toward those hours, which was a point of some contention during classification debates.
An untouched area of driver rights in the settlement is unionization and all that comes with it, leaving the lane clear for a ballot measure put forward by some labor unions that survived a challenge before the state’s high court on Thursday morning. Without an independent contractor ballot question to pursue, the next question is whether tech company attention will turn to defeating a measure that would let their drivers unionize.
In a statement, the Drivers Demand Justice coalition said they are indeed still planning to go before voters this year while pushing for a legislative guarantee of union rights for app-based drivers.
“Drivers will see improvements thanks to the settlement reached with the rideshare companies today, and we applaud Attorney General Campbell and her team for achieving concessions from the companies,” said Karen Chen, executive director of the Chinese Progressive Association; Roxana Rivera, assistant to the president of 32BJ SEIU; and Mike Vartabedian, assistant directing business representative of District 15 of the International Association of Machinists. “It is essential that drivers have a union to ensure these concessions are protected and improved upon… Rideshare drivers are calling on the Massachusetts Legislature to act swiftly to grant drivers union rights, and in so doing, improve the lives of tens of thousands of families in cities and towns across the Commonwealth.”
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