On Tuesday, Massachusetts became the 2nd state this year to take legal action against ride-hail companies Uber and Lyft for treating their motorists as independent professionals rather than employees. State attorney general Maura Healey informed reporters the Covid-19 pandemic encouraged her to ask a state court judge to enforce a 2004 labor law to reclassify the chauffeurs.
” What the Covid pandemic has revealed is just the number of folks are used in the gig economy who, it ends up, lack really basic defenses and advantages,” Healey said.
” Gig companies” like Uber, Lyft, Instacart, and DoorDash say their employees are specialists– essentially, each their own small business owner– and that the business are simply intermediaries in between the workers and riders or shoppers. As an outcome, the business have actually typically not supplied advantages like paid sick leave, time off, or overtime, and do not pay into joblessness insurance programs.
The suit opens up another front in the labor defend Uber and Lyft, which have battled workers over the category for several years. In Might, the state of California and three of its most significant cities took legal action against to classify Uber and Lyft drivers in that state as workers The state’s legislature passed a law aimed at narrowing the meaning of independent contractors last fall.
Massachusetts’ law, which has actually been on the books for 16 years, developed a three-part test to figure out whether an employee is a staff member or a specialist. To be a specialist, a worker needs to do their work without the direction or control of the company; carry out work that is outside the “normal course” of the employer’s company; and perform work that they would provide for other employe
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