This Labor Day week, the future of work meets the future of worker power...
If the gig economy is the future of work, then gig workers are launching the future of workers rights next week, with protests, speak-outs and other Pay Up campaign events in Seattle, Bellevue, and across the country to mark the week of Labor Day.
Workers with the Pay Up campaign have recently exposed gig apps for swiping customer tips, paying less than $8/hour, and failing to give workers the information they need to know why they're getting paid what they're getting paid. The multi-billion-dollar app companies can get away with it by exploiting a sneaky legal loophole: the gig workers are currently excluded from minimum wage and other basic labor rights because the companies classify them as independent contractors.
So next week people who do delivery work for DoorDash, Postmates, Instacart and other gig platforms are coming together, speaking out, and taking action to demand three basic labor standards for gig workers and other independent contractors: 1) $15/hour + expenses for all time worked; 2) Tips on top; 3) Transparent, detailed breakdown of pay.
Tuesday 9/3/2019:
Seattle City Council — Gig Workers Lunch & Learn
Who: Gig workers from multiple food delivery apps, joined by experts on workers’ rights in the gig economy
What: Speak to City Councilmembers about the realities of their work, the issues they face, and what elected officials can do to raise standards
When: 12pm TUESDAY, September 3, 2019
Where: Seattle City Council Chambers
Thursday 9/5/2019:
Postmates Engineering Office in Bellevue
Who: Drivers with Postmates, Instacart, DoorDash, and other apps
What: Rally outside the Postmates engineering office and deliver messages from gig workers across the country about low pay, a lack of transparency, and other issues.
When: 11am THURSDAY, September 5, 2019
Where: Gather at Bellevue Downtown Park (10201 NE 4th St, Bellevue, WA 98004), then head to nearby Postmates engineering office, (Workers will hold similar actions Thursday afternoon in San Francisco at the corporate headquarters of DoorDash, Instacart, and Postmates.)
Our days of action continue Friday — when gig workers will hold an online speak-out with elected officials from Washington and across the country — and Saturday — with outreach to consumers at store & restaurant locations across the country.
About the Pay Up campaign
The Pay Up campaign is a national effort uniting more than 10,000 workers on Instacart, DoorDash, Postmates, and other platforms to reboot the gig economy with new laws and policies that make these multi-billion-dollar companies pay up. Pay Up was sparked by Instacart workers who organized to take back their tips & push back against pay cuts, and has been established as a project of Working Washington. Since launching earlier this year, the Pay Up campaign has changed the conversation about the gig economy, organized worker actions, and successfully moved DoorDash, Instacart, and Amazon Flex to change their pay models to stop swiping workers' tips. More information at payup.wtf
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Contact: Sage Wilson, Working Washington: sage@workingwa.org
Working Washington is the voice for workers in our state. Working Washington fast food strikers sparked the fight that won Seattle’s first-in-the-nation $15 minimum wage. Working Washington baristas and fast food workers led the successful campaign for secure scheduling in Seattle, and our members across the state helped drive forward Initiative 1433 to raise the minimum wage and provide paid sick days. We successfully drove Amazon to sever ties with the right-wing lobby group ALEC and improve conditions in their sweatshop warehouses, and got Starbucks to address inequities in their corporate parental leave policy. And we continue to make history by organizing for the landmark statewide paid family leave law in 2017, and winning the groundbreaking Seattle Domestic Workers Bill of Rights last summer. For more information, including our press kit, visit workingWA.org.