Help Us Fight Back Against Efforts to Roll Back Gender Justice
Extremist judges will not stop endangering the lives of pregnant people or people who may become pregnant—overturning Roe v. Wade, attacking medication abortion, threatening the future of IVF, and this week at SCOTUS, emergency abortion care.
Our lawyers are waging strategic fights that make clear what is at stake for people who can become pregnant and seek to bolster our fundamental rights to control our lives, futures, and destinies.
Make a donation to the National Women’s Law Center to power the fight for accessible health care and a better future for all. Every donation is 100% tax-deductible.
NWLC Files Amicus Brief to Tell Gig Companies They Can’t Rewrite Law to Deny Their Workers Employment Protections
Victory: On June 14, 2022, the MA Supreme Judicial Court released their decision, stating unequivocally that the petitions failed to meet the requirements of the MA constitution, and would be blocked from being placed on the ballot. We are thrilled by this win and grateful to the working people of Massachusetts who fought so hard for this result.
What’s at stake? Whether or not these gig companies will be allowed to permanently classify their drivers as independent contractors through a November 2022 ballot initiative. Currently, under Massachusetts state law, drivers are supposed to be classified as employees, with all the benefits employees are entitled to—like protection from discrimination and unequal pay, access to paid leave and unemployment insurance, and more. However, gig companies are purposefully misclassifying their drivers as independent contractors, and independent contractors aren’t given the same state or federal employment protections as employees. This is wrong, and the drivers who will suffer the most are women drivers, including women of color.
Notably, women driving for gig companies because of the pandemic are more likely to be doing so because of other lost income, rather than because of an affirmative desire to work for gig companies. For instance, in February 2021 Lyft reported that women are more likely than men to drive on Lyft as a result of income loss. Similarly, Uber surveyed its drivers in July 2020 and found that more than a quarter of female UberEats drivers were working for UberEats because they lost their jobs or had hours cut, compared to only 15 percent of male respondents.
The economic precarity that resulted in women turning to app-based driving during the pandemic will be made worse if gig companies are allowed to cut their drivers off from the critical and expansive protections provided for employees by Massachusetts law. We can’t let corporations and big tech rewrite workers’ rights laws for their own benefit. Gig company drivers deserve the same benefits and protections of other employees under the law.