Gig workers deserve flexibility and a dependable safety net. Senate Bill 949 doesn’t deliver either. | Opinion

I drive for Amazon Flex and DoorDash. While trying to change careers, health issues and caregiving duties landed me in the precarious world of app-based work. The companies I work for say this type of gig work is flexible; it’s anything but. When I start my day, I have no idea how many hours I will have to work to make enough money to survive. Every app worker knows that we are one canceled trip, bad rating, or algorithmic whim away from being deactivated (fired).

One of my colleagues in Philadelphia, Thomas Nock, is a Social Security recipient. He began driving for Uber in 2016 to supplement his income. In February, Uber deactivated Thomas’ account during the yearly background check. There had been no changes to his background, and he was told it would be completed in three to five business days. Two months later, Thomas is still out of work.

Senate Bill 949 is a bill currently being considered in Pennsylvania, written by the Silicon Valley app companies, that claims to give gig workers benefits, but instead guarantees that we can be treated like employees while receiving inferior benefits and taking away our rights.

I believe this bill is a bad idea. Not only does SB 949 exclude any pay guarantees, it doesn’t guarantee benefits at all. The bill establishes an industry-run board to create whatever standards suit the companies’ profits. It allows Silicon Valley companies to control us more than they already do, while simultaneously excusing them from abiding by laws that protect the rights of workers.

Currently, app-based workers are entitled to unemployment when we are unable to work through no fault of our own, following a 2020 ruling by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which said that network companies control our work, and the conditions they claim give us independence — such as being able to log on and off — are not enough to withhold unemployment benefits. But these companies often refuse to cooperate with Pennsylvania’s Department of Labor and Industry, leaving drivers like Thomas in financial hardship. Whose interests does it serve to create a separate, corporate-run unemployment system when so much has recently been spent on updates to the state system of unemployment?

Workers’ rights are only as good as our ability to enforce them. By calling us “independent contractors” — whether or not we are actually allowed to set our own prices or other markers of an independent business owner — the bill removes our right to seek enforcement through the government agencies that any other worker has access to.

Nothing about our work excludes us from existing benefits available to most workers. Many app drivers served on the front lines of the pandemic. It’s absurd that under a dark cloud of violence and murder of transportation workers, any effort preventing us from accessing existing workers’ injury insurance would be considered by our legislators. SB 949 only states that companies must “make available” accident injury insurance. In other words, they can simply make us purchase our own accident insurance as they already do.

“No good can come from codifying these corporations’ right to do as they please.”

The bill claims to guarantee our right to not be discriminated against, but it takes away our right to have formal discrimination complaints investigated through the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. SB 949 also permanently bars us from recouping stolen wages through the state Department of Labor and Industry. Perhaps worst of all, SB 949 excludes us from the National Labor Relations Act, eliminating our right to bargain our contracts or be protected from retaliation.

» READ MORE: I’m a DoorDash delivery driver. I deserve both flexibility and a safety net. | Opinion

For many drivers, the only way to ensure they make ends meet is by opening multiple apps so if one is slow or paying less than expenses, they have the freedom to choose. SB 949 would take away our right to choose between the best offers from multiple apps at once, a common practice in our industry called multi-apping.

The app companies are notoriously opaque and noncommunicative with their own workers as well as state legislators and regulators. No good can come from codifying these corporations’ right to do as they please. Under SB 949, no city or county would be allowed to set their own standards different from what the industry-run board decides. For example, should Philadelphia or Pittsburgh decide to require higher standards for drivers — such as a minimum pay standard found in New York or Seattle — SB 949 would prevent those standards from becoming law.

SB 949 doesn’t deliver anything that drivers want and need to do our dangerous and unpredictable jobs. It rolls out a red carpet for San Francisco tech giants to withhold taxes they owe our state and benefits already owed to their workers. There is nothing stopping companies like DoorDash, Uber, and Amazon from providing benefits now. We should continue to invest in and enforce the existing state benefits system in the interest of all workers, rather than let app companies and venture capitalists dictate freedom-restricting laws to our state.

Patricia Hearons is a Philadelphia driver transitioning into the tech industry after years in neuroscience research and data migration and validation.