Because the tech business strikes more and more into alignment with the far proper, the difficulty of employee energy has by no means been extra essential. The Chicago marketing campaign presents some key classes.
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Uber, Lyft and DoorDash drivers rally at a staging space close to O’Hare Worldwide Airport throughout a piece strike on February 14, 2024, in Chicago, Illinois.(Scott Olson / Getty Photographs)
Chicago—Final month, a coalition of rideshare drivers, grassroots organizations, and unions introduced an settlement with Uber declaring that the corporate would help Illinois state laws enabling drivers to unionize after which discount round pay and dealing circumstances within the rideshare business. This settlement was a results of Chicago drivers’ organizing for greater than six years—a narrative that reveals each the potential and the challenges of employee organizing within the tech business as that business takes a pointy flip in direction of the far proper.
When Uber and Lyft had been based, drivers and passengers alike had been excited by the know-how and its promise of low costs for passengers and respectable pay and versatile work schedules for drivers. For a time, these benefits overshadowed an business enterprise mannequin that relied on a workforce of unbiased contractors with no employee protections and an organization tradition that prioritized progress in any respect prices. Over the previous decade, it has develop into clear that this early honeymoon interval was solely short-term and had been sponsored by enterprise capital to undercut competitors and nook the market. Starting in 2017, each corporations step by step decreased pay for drivers, who went from making over a greenback a mile in 2015 to $.64 a mile in 2022—whilst the price of automobile possession and upkeep skyrocketed and the fee the businesses charged passengers elevated by 83 p.c from the start of 2018 to the third quarter of 2022. Though at one level Lyft had a popularity as a friendlier, extra socially accountable firm, drivers have constantly skilled broad similarities within the pay and dealing circumstances between the 2 corporations. Immediately, neither firm gives any sort of customary time or distance-based pay fee to drivers in Chicago, and the price of each journey in addition to how a lot of the overall fare the motive force receives are decided in an unpredictable means by a mysterious algorithm. What has develop into clear is that these app corporations depend on employee exploitation and paying employees under the minimal wage so as to be worthwhile.
Drivers in Chicago began organizing in 2017, immediately following Uber’s announcement that employees would now not obtain the majority of their “surge” pay (the upcharge passengers pay when the platforms are busy). Even then, the writing was on the wall, as Uber described itself explicitly as a “know-how” firm quite than a transportation firm—and each corporations have frequently tried to divest from the workforce they begrudgingly depend on till the time they hope to exchange drivers with self-driving automobiles. Driver organizing started by a casual self-organized group after which, beginning in 2019, grew to become a challenge of The Individuals’s Foyer referred to as Chicago Gig Alliance. Drivers lobbied at Metropolis Corridor and held rallies, protests, acts of civil disobedienceand vigils for employees killed on the job. We shared harrowing tales of assaults on the job, arbitrary firings by algorithmand pay charges that left drivers in poverty and even typically homeless.
In 2022, Chicago Gig Alliance labored with allies within the Chicago Metropolis Council to draft and introduce an ordinance to boost pay and enhance working circumstances. Drivers held conferences with their council members to ask them to help this ordinance and held rallies and direct actions to name consideration to the dramatically worsening pay and circumstances within the business— a marketing campaign which earned dozens of media hits that reached tens of millions of Chicagoans.
The Individuals’s Foyer included help for that ordinance as a situation of the group’s 2023 endorsement course of, which led then–gubernatorial candidate Brandon Johnson and a dozen members of the Metropolis Council to decide to supporting the rideshare living-wage ordinance earlier than drivers and different Individuals’s Foyer members knocked 1000’s of doorways to assist them win their elections. In response to ongoing driver organizing in addition to the progressive momentum coming from the 2023 election, Alderman Mike Rodriguez reintroduced the ordinance within the first assembly of the brand new council in Might 2023. Over the subsequent 18 months, drivers and Alderman Rodriguez constructed the cosponsor listing as much as 29 alders.
All through this course of, Chicago drivers had been in fixed communication with drivers in different cities preventing comparable campaigns. PowerSwitch Motion and Motion Middle on Race and the Economic system introduced collectively driver organizations from quite a few states to study from successes and failures and supply analysis and authorized help. Drivers from locations like California, Colorado, and Seattle had been quickly touring to Chicago to take part in rallies for our rideshare living-wage ordinance, and drivers from Chicago marched on Uber’s HQ in San Francisco to ship calls for for honest pay and protected jobs.
Present Concern
Whereas drivers targeted initially on the necessity for a metropolis ordinance to control pay, we additionally acknowledged that organizing a union may empower employees to barter immediately with the businesses whereas additionally leveraging employee energy to push for laws such because the wage ordinance we had been preventing for. Towards that finish, we labored to construct relationships with unions that may be each in supporting the ordinance—and doubtlessly organizing a union of drivers over the long term. In early 2025, Chicago Gig Alliance got here along with the Service Workers Worldwide Union (SEIU) Native 1 and the Worldwide Affiliation of Machinists and Aerospace Staff (IAM) to push the ordinance over the end line after which work collectively to prepare a statewide union of rideshare drivers.
In March 2025, a competing union joined the fray on the alternative facet when Worldwide Union of Working Engineers Native 150 (who had given $1 million to Brandon Johnson’s opponent within the 2023 mayoral runoff, Paul Vallas, and has opposed inexpensive housing and environmental measures over time) introduced a “labor peace” settlement with Uber and promptly started denigrating the wage ordinance as pointless. IUOE is likely one of the largest contributors to Metropolis Council campaigns within the metropolis and had shut sufficient relationships with a key handful of council members who had cosponsored the ordinance that they had been capable of persuade them to reverse course. In the meantime, the businesses threatened to put off 10,000 drivers and lift costs by 50 p.c if the ordinance handed.
As we moved in direction of a summer time deadline for transferring laws earlier than the council shifted its focus to an escalating finances disaster within the fall, drivers and Alderman Rodriguez labored furiously to shore up the votes we wanted. After dozens of drivers, non secular leaders, and different allies packed a four-hour Metropolis Council committee listening to—and some key council members who had beforehand dedicated to help the ordinance continued to waver—it grew to become clear that there have been actual questions on our getting the invoice over the end line. On the identical time, the escalating marketing campaign by Chicago Gig alliance, the SEIU, and IAM represented a credible sufficient risk that Uber fearful we would have the ability to move the ordinance, or no less than that we would have the ability to proceed to do harm to their pursuits in our metropolis and state. In response, the corporate got here to the negotiating desk and agreed to a deal that gives a path to statewide bargaining rights for the greater than 100,000 rideshare drivers throughout our state—however which additionally required dropping town ordinance.
It was a bittersweet second for the drivers—who had been organizing for years whereas working for lower than minimal wage, and who urgently wanted a elevate. As a result of unbiased contractors are legally prohibited from partaking in conventional collective bargaining, state laws is required to allow unionization and bargaining by rideshare drivers round pay and dealing circumstances. That course of may take one to 2 years to get employees the raises which might be lengthy overdue. On the identical time, this course of presents the potential for larger-scale employee energy and transformation of the business.
The query of employee energy within the tech business is very essential because the tech business strikes more and more into alignment with the far proper. Rideshare drivers are on the entrance strains of holding the tech business accountable to prioritizing the wants of employees, group, and democracy quite than maximizing income and fueling the rise of white nationalist authoritarianism. Whereas this Illinois rideshare marketing campaign milestone is bittersweet, it’s a reminder that employee organizing has the potential to rework the industries which might be more and more essential to the present second in our economic system and politics.
Will Tanzman
Will Tanzman serves as government director of The Individuals’s Foyer.
Lori Simmons
Lori Simmons has been a rideshare driver since 2014, was one of many founding members of Chicago Rideshare Advocates in 2017, and has been an organizer with The Individuals’s Foyer and Chicago Gig Alliance since 2020.
