A new bill was recently submitted to the Illinois legislature that would allow ride-share drivers employed by “Transport Network Companies (TNCs)” like Uber and Lyft to unionize under the Illinois Labor Relations Board (ILRB), despite ride-share drivers, like all app-based gig workers, still being federally misclassified as “independent contractors.” This bill is the product of a deal between the Illinois Drivers Alliance (IDA), a ride-share “coalition” headed by SEIU Local 1 and IAM Local 701, affiliates of the AFL-CIO, and ride-share corporations Uber and Lyft to drop IDA’s lobbying of the Chicago City Council for better working conditions in exchange for Uber and Lyft supporting the unionization bill. This bill would require gig workers to “gain” the right of unionization by joining union that is certified by the ILRB and responsible for “collective bargaining” with TNCs through the medium of the ILRB. Ride-share drivers would still be federally misclassified, meaning an ILRB-certified union wouldn’t be protected from federal persecution, other gig workers would be left with no legal recourse for unionization, and no gig worker or gig worker organization would have the right to strike, which is the fundamental and primary weapon of trade-unionism. In other words, even if the bill is passed, gig workers in Illinois would still lack basic employment, if not citizenship, rights. This bill does nothing to materially advance the conditions of hundreds of thousands of app-based workers, or the hundreds of thousands of undocumented and gig domestic workers.

This bill is identical to similar ones passed in California and Massachusetts, also in collaboration with SEIU, Uber and Lyft, and the Democratic Party. Last October, California Gig Workers Union (CGWU), affiliate of SEIU Locals 521, 721, and 1021, struck a deal with Uber and Lyft to give ride-share drivers the “right to unionize” in exchange for workers staying misclassified and Uber and Lyft getting to reduce their state-insurance premiums from $1 million to $300,000 per year. In Massachusetts, App Drivers Union, affiliated with SEIU Local 32BJ and supported by IAM, passed a a similar “unionization” bill for ride-share drivers with Uber and Lyft in exchange for dropping its push for re-classification. These bills contain three major concessions to the ride-share corporations that functionally liquidate the trade union struggle in the AFL-CIO dominated movement:

1. Ride-share unions are given the legal right to represent, bargain, and collect dues only after their certification by state labor boards, rather than these rights being automatically granted on the federal level, despite the fact that these ride-share organizations were operating and collecting dues prior to this legislation.
2. Ride-share drivers, along with gig workers in general, are not given other basic employee rights included in W-2 classification, such as the right to a minimum wage, overtime, worker’s compensation, unemployment insurance, full-time benefits, and are still not given the federal right to unionization. Also excluded from this legislation is the right to strike, the main weapon of trade-unionism, and the only think capable of ensuring workers’ leverage and control over the process of production. Ride-share unions can only be certified on this restricted basis if they agree to forego striking altogether.
3. While criminalizing gig worker strikes, this legislation legalizes company unions, which are employer-controlled organizations for the racketeering of dues and the recruitment of scabs and strike-breakers. Company-unions are federally illegal for corporations to establish if their employees are rightfully classified as W-2. Uber already has its own company-union, the “Independent” Drivers Guild, that it started with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM/IAMAW), an AFL-CIO affiliate and also partly behind the ADU and IDA. This “union” is not even certified, is recognized by state and federal law as a company-union, and yet it is somehow allowed to affiliate with an NLRB-certified like IAM when CGWU, ADU, and IDA can’t even be federally certified and are forced to operate through SEIU and IAM. This glaring contradiction proves the essence of state-unions and company-unions are one and the same, to financially and politically serve employers, corporations, and the ruling class by running the trade union movement into the ground and racketeering workers’ dues.

Re-classification is the most all-encompassing, yet simplistic demand that gig workers can fight for. W-2 vs. 1099 classification are literal slave-brands that determine how many rights and protections different sectors of the working class get. It is the difference between first-class and second-class citizenship, and yet corporations and the capitalist State, at both federal and provincial levels, have equal authority to determine this classification. And so why don’t ADU, IDA, and CGWU go all the way and make it a requirement their members are classified as W-2 in order to be contracted out to a gig corporation?

Because that would threaten the authority and profit of the employers and ruling class, and thus the legitimacy and salaries of the state-union bureaucracy and Democratic Party machinery. Because that would require democratically organizing the rank-and-file to exercise their own collective authority over the employment of their labor, instead of just garnishing workers’ wages in exchange for the illusion of democracy.

Gig workers deserve so much more, we need so much more just to survive, stay fed, stay housed, and reproduce our families, and we can gain what we demand if we do what the state-unions, corporations, and U.S. government won’t: subordinate the interests of profit to the interests of labor. The strike murders profit, just as profit murders labor, so that the threat and consequences of a strike should ensure the demands of a union are met. This requires an absolute disregard for and independence from the economic and political interests of the ruling class, not bowing to the U.S. legal system as the “highest authority” of capitalism, imperialism, and fascism.

This article comes from Edition #1 of The Gig Organizer. Read and download the full edition here.