Yesterday, we joined the Mayor’s Office and the Office of Labor Standards (OLS) in celebrating a milestone in our fight for working people against corporate greed.
Thanks to nonstop worker organizing, UberEats will be paying back nearly $4.4 MILLION to over 14,000 delivery drivers. This is a victory for working people who now know that the City of Seattle stands behind us in enforcing our rights.
Mayor Katie B. Wilson announced this victory, saying, “This is how we make Seattle an affordable city.” She continued, “I am committed to continuing to work with OLS, with workers across the city, with Working Washington, and with community leaders to support these struggles and to make our city more affordable for all.”
About the settlement:
OLS alleged Uber Eats failed to consistently provide minimum payments for cancelled orders when required, including when workers went to a pick-up location and reported to Uber Eats that an order needed to be cancelled for cause.
OLS also claimed that in some instances Uber Eats did not provide workers with the required minimum payments for the time they worked.
Uber Eats agreed to settle the claims for a total of $4,386,682.28 in back pay, interest, liquidated damages, and civil penalties to 14,421 affected workers and $5,982.90 in fines to the City of Seattle.
“Unfortunately, it’s taking some corporations in the delivery game some time to realize that the rules have changed,” reflected Working Washington Executive Director Danielle Alvarado. “Uber Eats has racked up nearly $20/$25M in fines for violating gig workers' rights, just in the past year. They might have been betting that they’d be able to get away with it. Unfortunately, that’s what a lot of low-road companies assume. But this settlement shows how wrong they are in Seattle—because we have incredibly tenacious advocates at OLS, and more than a decade of partnerships between workers, community organizations, and government.”
This win comes out of a worker-led organizing effort
At the Mayor’s Office event, Humberto Souza shared, “I’ve been a gig worker for years. This settlement is important for gig workers because it tells the story of what is really going on.”
Workers like Humberto started organizing together with Working Washington in 2018. At the time, gig delivery platforms like Uber Eats got to do whatever they wanted. It was almost inconceivable that they would be reigned in, or that the workers in this industry would be treated to the basic rights everyone else has. And now here we are, about 8 years later, with the most robust worker protections in the nation—minimum pay, transparency protections, and of course deactivation so you can’t be fired by a bot.
Workers made the difference in getting us from here to there. It was workers who determined the biggest problems they were facing - the solutions to which ended up becoming the PayUp campaign that won the App-Based Worker Minimum Payment Ordinance.
Now, thousands of us are getting the money we’re owed, and Seattle workers have shown the rest of the nation that organized workers WIN.
Today’s takeaway? Get organized, get paid.
Become a member of Working Washington to grow worker power and win more fights like this.