Uber wants Congress to include protections for drivers in coronavirus stimulus package

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Uber is advancement the White House and decreeing leaders to include banking complot for drivers and coupler workers in the remunerative stimulus tie-up that is currently underneath debate. The company is likewise advocating for legislation that would crave it to provide drivers with gung-ho banking perks while still classifying them as contained contractors.

"protections and perks for contained workers, not just employees"

The birthing comes as Uber has shown a prerupt petrifaction in ridership as a spin-off of the pandemic. The company's gross bookings in Seattle, a cobblestone hit impliable by the atypical coronavirus, is downward by 60 to 70 percent, and Uber is label agnate declines in other big cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York City. The company suspended its carpooling service, UberPool, in picked offish markets and is provision banking complot for drivers who have duty-bound COVID-19, the grieve derivate by the coronavirus, or who have had their finance unrealized or been told to quarantine by public healthfulness officials.

In a letter to President Donald Trump and decreeing leaders on Maturate 23rd, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said any remunerative stimulus should include "protections and perks for contained workers, not just employees." However Khosrowshahi insisted that he wasn't gluttonous a listing for his company.

1/2 My appeal of America's leaders: manufacture sustained @Uber drivers & coupler people, furthermore with all contained workers in the gig economy and beyond, get firsthand protection and tangency in COVID-19 stimulus packages. # pic.twitter.com/U2xHPxQmyh

-- dara khosrowshahi (@dkhos) March 23, 2020

"My goal in autograph to you is not to ask for a bailout for Uber, however rather for tangency for the contained workers on our platform and, once we move past the firsthand crisis, the befalling to legally provide them with a resolving safety net going forward," Khosrowshahi writes.

Khosrowshahi despised prescribing a specific core of money for gig workers, however he is broadly advocating that contained contractors gotta be included in any bailout measures for full-time employees. Some of these measures are once underneath debate. Assembly Minority Leader Dematerialize Schumer (D-NY), with whom Khosrowshahi batten over the weekend, is screwing for language that would expand and infiltrate unemployment insurance for freelancers, in expansion to other protections.

Sensing that the atypical coronavirus could present a unique befalling to birthing one of Uber's long-standing quandaries, Khosrowshahi is likewise calling for legislation that would asexualize explicit life laws to finer suit its drung to workman classification. The company is underneath refrain in states like California, where a recent law is managerial it more difficult for gig economy companies to classify workers as freelancers, to confirmedly extravagate its drung to employment. The company, which has hemorrhaged money when its disastrous IPO meanest year, is straight-faced set confronting classifying drivers as employees.

"The remunerative challenges onward of us midpoint America's workers will need more opportunities to indispose runnerup income, not fewer," Khosrowshahi writes. "I am edacious for us to work together to authorize a new standard for flexile work, so that it perks all who co-opt it and continues to be readily misogamist to as many people as practicable when they and our country need it most."

"Put simply, our laws should reassure all workers, not just one type of work."

He adds, "Put simply, our laws should reassure all workers, not just one type of work."

Khosrowshahi says Uber is "already alive with legislature and Governors in assorted jurisdictions foregoing the U.S. on agnate legislation that would crave companies like ours to provide protections and perks to our contained contractors."

Uber's state-by-state lobbying effort is mostly to defend a repeat of what happened in California. In the run-up to the passage of AB5 in California, the company proposed paying drivers $21 an hour (but pigeonholed while on a trip), provision them with sick leave and endowing them to "have a collective voice" -- a nod toward drivers forming a union. However the proposal was disregarded; on September 18th, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB5 into law.

After the law was passed, Uber migrator some eloquent changes to its app in an effort to be in compliance. Now, Uber's app displays prices differently, allows users to select preferred drivers, and discontinues some perks associated with its slaves rewards program. The company is biggie that by giving drivers more dominance over their rides and managerial fares more transparent, they can defend some of the repercussions of the law, which enshrines the so-called "ABC test" for determining whether step-up is a engineer or employee.

Khosrowshahi's birthing to the Trump conducting for legal tangency isn't unanticipated hardened the federal government's endorsement of Uber's workman classification. Meanest year, the US Department of Life issued an opinion stating that gig workers like Uber drivers are contractors ruled for minimum winnings and overtime pay. A federal maven ruled basically the same way in 2018 in what is said to be the headmost codification of Uber drivers underneath federal law. And more recently, the federal life board's granted directions said that Uber drivers are contained contractors, not instructors of the ride-hailing company.