The official COVID emergency period may have ended, but for gig workers, this change is a crisis of its own. We’re facing extreme financial instability, and even with hazard pay we’ve found ourselves unable to pay our bills. For many of us, losing hazard pay means having to put in 70-80 hours of work a week, facing homelessness, or going without essential medical care. Workers fought hard to win a permanent pay standard that will go into effect at the end of 2023. But the reality is that until it’s implemented, ending hazard pay means a huge pay cut with no accountability for gig companies.

This fall, we’re excited to endorse the following 9 candidates for elected office across WA.

The worker-driven PayUp policy championed by Councilmember Lisa Herbold and set for a full Council vote today will create the most extensive labor standards for gig workers in the nation, ensuring gig workers on apps like DoorDash, Instacart, Gopuff, Handy, and Amazon Flex are paid at least minimum wage after expenses with tips on top, flexibility protections, and meaningful transparency.

Instacart just emailed customers a bunch of vague threats predicting the end times if Seattle passes a minimum wage for gig workers.

If DoorDash needs to pay workers $15/hour more to get to the minimum wage of $17.27/hour, it means that right now, DoorDash is only paying workers $2.27/hour. Time for these companies #payup

“Nobody should be asked to pay back one cent of this in the first place…It was really upsetting and surprising.”

The 2022 WA legislative session is over, and let’s be real: legislators failed to take bold action this year to protect our rights, invest in an equitable recovery, and build towards economic and racial justice.

The legislature simply didn’t show up for workers with the urgency this crisis requires. For that, we give them just 2 out of 5 stars. Here’s our recap of what went down, and where we go from here.

On Wednesday, February 16th, a delegation of gig workers from apps like DoorDash, Instacart, GrubHub, and UberEats made a special delivery to Seattle City Hall on Wednesday: 400 to-go bags, each labeled with a receipt showing what an actual delivery job paid out after accounting for basic expenses.

The message? It’s time for City leaders to deliver for workers by passing the PayUp policy.

Drive Forward is an Uber-funded business organization whose board is controlled by Uber corporate executives. Drive Forward receives funds from Uber to advance Uber’s goals and priorities, including lobbying elected officials in support of Uber’s positions, and speaking to reporters to advance Uber’s public relations agenda.

Just three weeks into the legislative session, state leaders have scrambled with extraordinary speed and waived standard procedure in order to give out immediate unemployment tax breaks to businesses, while failing to address the needs of hundreds of thousands of unemployed workers who have struggled with devastating delays, unfair denials, and overpayment collections.