Tech Won't Save Us - Solidarity in Canada’s Gig Economy w/ Jennifer Scott & Brice Sopher

Episode Date: October 14, 2021

Paris Marx is joined by Jennifer Scott and Brice Sopher to discuss the campaign to unionize Foodora and the fight for gig workers’ rights in Canada.Jennifer Scott is a gig worker and president of Gig Workers United. Brice Sopher is also a gig worker and vice president of Gig Workers United. Follow Jennifer on Twitter at @PalimpsestJenn, Brice at @this_is_walmer, and Gig Workers United at @GigWorkersUnite.🚨 T-shirts are now available!Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.Also mentioned in this episode:If you’re in Canada, sign the Gig Workers’ Bill of Rights.Paris wrote about why Uber’s Flexible Work+ would be a disaster in Canada.In February 2020, the Ontario Labour Board ruled that Foodora workers could unionize. The company soon after announced plans to leave Canada, but workers voted 88.8% in favor of unionization. In August, they negotiated a $3.46 million settlement with the company.Sara Mojtehedzadeh (episode 79) made a podcast series about the Foodora campaign called Hustled.Canada’s Conservative Party presented a gig work plan written by an Uber lobbyist.Ontario has a committee looking at the future of work that gig workers fear will pave the way for Flexible Work+.Find out more about Gig Workers United (CUPW) and Uber Drivers United (UFCW).Support the show

Working-class people who were told that their work isn't real work, that they do not count, had the audacity to unite together and to say, fuck it, we are going to unionize our company. Hello and welcome to Zach Won't Save Us. I'm your host, Paris Marks, and today my guests are Jennifer Scott and Brice Sofer. Jennifer and Brice are both gig workers who work in Toronto, and they are respectively the president and vice president of Gig Workers United. As part of this month's series on gig work around the world, I'm speaking to Jennifer and Brees to get an idea of what's been going on in the gig economy in Canada and specifically in the greater Toronto

area where they are based and where they do their work. Jennifer and Brees are on the front lines of this work. They're gig workers themselves and, you know, they're organizers who are working with their fellow workers to demand that the companies respect their rights, but also that governments in Canada pass laws that guarantee them their rights now and in the future. We have a really fantastic conversation and talk about a lot of important issues in the Canadian context and also spend some time talking about the Foodora campaign, which I think a lot of people outside of Canada might not be familiar with. But that was when Foodsters United, which is kind of the precursor to Gig Workers United, took on Foodora and got a ruling at the Ontario Labour Board that allowed them to unionize.

And soon after, Foodora left the country instead of recognizing that union. But as Jennifer and Breece described, whether Foodora actually left because of the union recognition, or just because their business was going so incredibly poorly in Canada, you know, it's kind of unknown what was actually the factor that led to them to pull the trigger. This is a great conversation. I think you're really going to like it. And I also want to let you know, but one more thing before we get into the conversation. There is a gig workers bill of rights for Canada that was developed in part by Gig Workers United. And if you want to support these workers and you're in Canada, I've included a link in

the show notes where you can add your name to the bill of rights to show that you support it and that you support these workers. Now, with that said, Tech Won't Save Us is part of the Harbinger Media Network, a group of left wing podcasts that are made in Canada. And you can find out more about that at harbingermedianetwork.com. If you like the show, make sure to leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. And you can share it on social media or with any friends or colleagues who you think would learn from it. And this episode, like every episode of this series and of Tech Won't Save Us more generally, is free for everybody.

Because listeners like you support the work that goes into making the show every single week. If you like the show and you feel like you learned from it, you can join patrons like Will Schmid from Houston and Ashvudha from Chennai, India by going to patreon.com slash tech won't save us and becoming a supporter. Thanks so much and enjoy this week's conversation. Jennifer, welcome to Tech Won't Save Us. Hi, thank you so much for having me. And Brees, it's great to speak with you as well. Yes, thanks so much for having me, Paris. I'm so happy to speak to both of you to learn a bit more about what's been happening with

Gig Workers United and the organizing that you're doing in Ontario around the Toronto area. And so I wanted to start it by getting a bit of an overview because the people who listen to this podcast, there'll be a lot of Canadians among them, but also people from other parts of the world who might not have as much of an understanding of what's been going on in Canada. So I was wondering if you could give us a bit of an overview of what the gig economy looks like either either in Ontario, where you're based, or around Canada more broadly, and what kind of the state of gig worker organizing in the country looks like

in your perspective? I think gig work defines a lot of work, and there are a lot of folks who relate to that term. But for us, gig work is work where we work on an app, and we are misclassified. So we have no rights and protections as workers. Here in the GTA, that means that we work on apps like Uber, Eats and Instacart and Corner Shop and Skip the Dishes and Amazon Flex. And there's this huge big list of companies that we work for who do not acknowledge us as workers. And so we organize together because the consequence of working in the way that we do and within this industry is that the way that we work and the way

that impacts our lives makes us very precarious. Precarious work leads to precarious housing, precarious access to food, to medical services, to a lot of things. And this turns into a life that is nowhere near the quality of life that it ought to be for people who work very hard, a lot of hours for themselves, as far as the law says, as far as they are responsible for the cost of running this job. And it's hard. It's really hard. And so we organize together. We stand together, unite together in this bid to have a better future, both for ourselves, but also for the people who come after us. Yeah, 100%. The big innovation that these tech companies try to sell of the convenience of the app, the technology,

it's a smokescreen to cover their real innovation, which is misclassification, which is, you know, a serious attack on workers' rights, which is probably the most serious attack in workers' rights of, you know, in a generation of, you know, we come last in this industry. We are basically working at the whims of customers. We're working at the whims of the apps. We're separated. We're atomized. So it's a very lonely experience. It's dehumanizing. You know, it can be pretty sad. And, you know, the importance of organizing when we did it through Foodora, the importance of organizing, which we're currently doing through gig workers united it's incredible because like otherwise there's really no way for people to feel connection to feel hope um so this is you know this is a way for workers to feel that way um it's a really horrible uh precedent set by the gig economy

the misclassification of workers is one of the most dangerous things to the labor movement. And if we don't fix it, if we don't fight this fight, and if we don't hold the line, if we don't win this fight, then it's going to spread throughout the entire labor world. And the risk is that people will not have access to the things that they took for granted in the past, or possibly create as you know, we'll probably go into later in Ontario and around the world, a two tier level of worker and a two tier level of citizen that will tend to include the younger people, the older people, people at the margins, people that are new arrivals, people of color.

And it's a really horrifying future if it's not tackled. So that's why, for me, this fight is important for I think a lot of workers, the fight is important. Because if we don't, yeah, if we don't hold the line now, future is going to be really bleak. Yeah, absolutely. Unfortunately, I completely agree. You know, and I think that really forces people to recognize why it's such an important thing that, you know, this model needs to be opposed. But also the work that you're doing with Gig Workers United is so important, right, in bringing gig workers together, you know, in doing this work to kind of push the governments and to try to force want to get to that in just a second. But I'm wondering, do you have an idea of how many people are relying on gig work today? And have you noticed that increase during the pandemic as so much of the labor market and work and so much of daily life, I guess, has been kind of thrown off what we're used to? I mean, there's that StatsCan statistic from a few years

ago, one in 10 and one in three Canadians and Ontarians respectively have worked in gig work. And, you know, I mean, we know that's a few years old. In a pandemic in Toronto in the GTA, we saw just huge, huge numbers of new workers come to this work because folks lost their jobs during the pandemic. And, you know, like with many things, as much as we expect the economy to be recovering, and we expect there to be jobs for people to go back to, when we do gig work, we find that we don't intend to stay for four years, which is how long I've been a gig worker, did not intend to be a gig worker for four years, but I am. It've been a gig worker. I did not intend to be a gig worker for four years, but I am. It is hard to get out of this industry. It is hard to move on to something

else, both for internal and external factors. And so I am skeptical that there are, you know, like your listeners, for example, I am skeptical that your listeners do not know somebody who does gig work. And that person may not be proud of that gig work and they may not talk about it a lot, but I'm certain that you know a gig worker and that is the reality. I know just from being out on the streets that I see more and more people all the time. And I definitely saw more in the pandemic. The scary thing about this type of work is these companies, because they only pay when you're on an order, it's in their interest to flood with the maximum amount of workers possible, because it doesn't cost them anything to have a surplus of workers out there.

They just don't pay us if there's no orders. So it's actually perfect for them. The way that this works, to kind of continue from what Jennifer said, this type of work is kind of designed to build a dependency. You're kind of trained to be addicted to this kind of work. And you would see that in things where, you know, you say, oh, I'm going to try to find another line of work. I'm trying to get out of it. And then they up your pay. It's like they can tell. They have like the ability to see that you're starting to slow down and do it less. And then they'll up the amount that they pay you. They'll offer you bonuses. And a lot of people get pulled back in

because you think, oh, well, maybe it is like gambling addiction. It's really fun. Like you think, oh, I'll go in. Look, it's looking good. I'm up now. You know, it's starting to work out. Then you start, you know, making sacrifices. You start giving more time.

And then all of a sudden it goes back down again. But then you're stuck with nothing else. So you're stuck doing it. I mean, I've done this for six years. I was a DJ before the pandemic. Now it's kind of starting again. But I used to think that this was dependable work when I didn't have to rely on it. But having to rely on it, I've seen how precarious it is. And I'm just looking forward to gigging again as a DJ, even though like I've got to hustle for it because at least I knew what I would make in a night. Whereas this, you never know. It's really hard to plan your life. Yeah. You know, I think you're explaining really well, like, you know, why it's so important to be paying attention to what's going on in the

sector. You know, I feel like one of the examples we always turn to of, you know, gig workers kind of pushing for something different for some kind of change is, you know, in California, when we saw the AB5 law came in, that was supposed to reclassify workers. And then you saw Prop 22 kind of push back against this, right. But in Canada, there was a really important campaign that I feel like not enough people know about, which was against Foodora by, you know, the precursor, I guess, to Gig Workers United, which was Foodsters United, to try to win more rights for gig workers. Can you talk a bit about the campaign against Foodora and what the goal was there? And I guess its significance to gig worker organizing in Canada. I think there are four aspects to what happened

with Foodsters United that are really important for people to know. And the first one being that working class people and working class people who were told that their work isn't real work, that they are not real workers, that they do not count. United Together had, and I mean this like with love, the audacity to unite together and to say, fuck it, we are going to unionize our company. There were so many times with that campaign where I spent my time sitting on curbs in the dark talking to somebody who I didn't know about really intense, heavy, upsetting things, leading to why we are doing this, why we are taking on the risk, the risk of Fedora leaving, the risk of losing, the risk of wasting our time when we are working in this industry where, you know, we have so little, right? And I think the first really important thing about that is that workers

organized and organized from the ground, from a worker-driven, worker-determined viewpoint. I'm not the most worldly person, but in my life, I have not seen many, many examples of working class people uniting together that rival the strength and the audacity and the vision of what I saw in that campaign. I think the next really important thing to know is that we had really amazing allies organizing with us. Ryan White was our lawyer, who I'm sure your listeners would benefit from hearing from, he listened to gig workers and ensured that the legal case and the decisions that were made to pursue that case were driven by the needs and the safety of workers. I think that's really important,

and I think it's something that working-class people do not always get from the folks who represent them. We had incredible solidarity from the postal workers and from Cup W. I was asked a question a few weeks ago when I was part of that campaign, how did I know how or what the postal workers thought of me and thought of my work? And I had a memory that I've long forgotten that like popped into my head, which was that there was that postering campaign where Toronto was filled with all of these pink posters that said vote now. And when that happened, I would go to work and I would deliver and I would get stopped by postal workers who'd be like, yes, I'm with you. I stand with you. And the first time it happened, I was like, this is so cool.

And I like I made a note of it in my phone because I was like, this is a good thing. Like when I have a bad day, I'm going to come back to this. And then it started to happen again and again. And the more it happened, the more times I made notes. And eventually I stopped counting how many times it happened because it happened so many times. When Fedora left Canada during the pandemic, you know, a lot of folks thought that was because of the union and we really can't know. But what I think is really important to look at there is not necessarily how close our win of winning our union came to Fedora leaving. We wanted to organize and we wanted to unionize because we saw unfair things happening, like working for four or five or six years and seeing your pay go down and down instead of going up based on your experience. We saw a company that was struggling and that that struggle showed in the way that workers

were treated. And so we took an action to improve workers' treatment and rights and protections, which then leads, if everyone participates, to a healthier business and a more successful business. When Foodora left, as much as it was a surprise, it also kind of made sense to all of us because we saw the company be less busy, pay go down. We saw the guarantee pay in the outer zones go down and down, right? And I think what's important about that is, again, the solidarity of workers. Gig workers engaged in massive mutual aid. FoodShare Toronto engaged in massive mutual aid supported by members of the community

who are not gig workers. And postal workers engaged in massive mutual aid, donating their own money to the Gig Workers Hardship Fund. And I say all of that to say again, what I think is the most important thing about the Foodor case is how many working class people were involved in organizing together. How many working class people were able to see that this situation of the gig economy is not good for workers and is not a good future and rally together in all of the different ways that we can to fight for something better. And I think that's more important even than the win, the win of we are not independent contractors, we are dependent contractors. Because of what Brees and

I were talking about earlier, that the gig economy is an intentional push to roll back workers' rights to something that has not existed in most of our lifetimes. And that fighting that and preventing that from happening is something that will take a lot of us. And it can't just be gig workers. That burden can't just be ours. And I think the Foodora case shows a really good example of what is possible. After Foodora left, gig workers who were part of Foodsters United negotiated, like our lawyers negotiated, with Delivery Hero for settlement. I've never heard of a company calling up the workers uncertified union and saying, hey, we will give you millions of dollars. I've never heard of that. And it's not a settlement where we had to go to court. It's not a settlement where workers had

to negotiate. It was quick and dirty and easy, and we got money within a few months. And that settlement wasn't only for workers in Toronto and Mississauga, the workers who voted yes or no for the union. It was for anyone who had been working and met the qualifications around work in Canada. It was like, what, like $3.7 million? It was a lot. It was a lot of money. And again, that comes from the organizing power of people standing together. And so like the technical wins are super important. Forever, people will be able to use the precedent of the Fudor case against misclassification. And that's amazing. But in regards to fighting the gig economy and preventing that malevolent intent from changing all of our lives in the immediate future, the big lesson to take from that is what happens when working class people stand with each other and unite with each other. I think Jennifer put it great. I can only speak as someone who was organized. I guess I remember

starting to work for Foodora and, you know, I was an independent contractor and I thought, oh, wow, I love this. You know, I can kind of set my own hours, the promise of the gig economy, if you will. And then as I did it more and more, you know, getting micromanaged messages from the dispatch being like, why are you going down this street? Why are you doing this? And I started being like, I thought I was an independent contractor. Why am I being told what to do? I thought that they shouldn't care about how the sausage is made. I deliver the food, it gets to the person, that's it. That's the start and the end of it. But it just got worse and worse. And they were asking me why I was going so

slow. Why I was doing this, why I was doing that. And when I first was approached by someone that was involved in the Food Service campaign, you know, a campaign, yes, that was definitely, that was started by workers, you know, Cup W gave great support, but it was started by workers before they were there. No one should forget that. I was like, finally, I have hope now. That was the most amazing thing. And I think that that's, you know, I've gone out, not in the Foodsters campaign, but, you know, as Gig Workers United and talk to workers, the same type of work that they were doing under the Foodsters campaign. And when you give people hope, it is incredible to see their face change. Because this job makes you feel so low sometimes, that to have that possibility

that things could get better is amazing. And for all the people that were involved in that Foodsters campaign, that was a big thing. And it it opened up doors it opened up the mental picture of what what can be done you know as far as them leaving yeah as a worker i can tell you from experience yeah definitely i started working ubereats at the same time as i was doing foodora at the end you could make no money from foodora it was a terribly managed company they left at the beginning of a pandemic when they had also an exclusive deal with the LCBO, the state liquor stores in Ontario, in a pandemic when ordering would be, you know, the best time to be a company that did deliveries and they couldn't make their business

work. So, you know, I think that that speaks volumes as to what was responsible or not for them leaving. Even if they did leave because of us unionizing, what does that say about them? And what does that say about the union? We're still here. We're still fighting. It's a different organization, but it's the same kind of movement. And they left. They left workers without anything. They got to be kind of forced to give a settlement, but they would have left

us with nothing. So it unlocked the power of what's possible when workers work together. And we will do everything we can to see more of that in the future. Yeah, you know, I think what you've both described there is really powerful, right? You know, Jennifer, on your side, you know, where you're talking about what it was like organizing, bringing all these workers together, you know, seeing, you know, the mutual aid, seeing the work that went into that in getting this kind of organization. And Brees, you know, on your side, being a worker who kind of interacted with this, and having the kind of ideas of what was possible kind of opened through that experience. You know, I think it's really powerful what you're both talking about there.

Breece, you were talking about what it was like doing this kind of work. And naturally, you know, I think a lot of people and the services that gig workers are providing, you know, to people who were trying to stay home and social distance and what have you. So what was it like being a gig worker during this pandemic? And do you feel like people's ideas of gig work, and I guess their support for gig workers, and I guess the kind of campaigns that you're running through Gig Workers United has increased during that period? It was really tough working during the pandemic. We had no access to bathrooms. I think as many people know, for me as a white male, like, I mean, that's a challenge already, but there's people that are not white men. It's even more of a

challenge to go to the bathroom in the middle of the winter. There was no requirement to wear masks from customers. So people would just meet us maskless. We had to wear masks. We had to scan our face. Still, we have to do it to show that we're wearing a mask. And customers had no requirement. It really radicalized, I think, a lot of workers to see the talk of being an essential worker, the words that we would hear versus the way that we were treated, which was the exact opposite. Our pay was cut as a worker for Uber Eats. Our base pay was cut by 50% over the pandemic. They profiteered. They were like, oh,

God forbid that they make more money, that they get paid for risking their lives, that they get paid properly. No, orders are going to go up. So let's cut the pay so that they don't make more money. And they rely more on tips. So in fact, they risk making significantly less money. You know, the pay that I make in a shift for working the same hours, doing the same amount of orders, that can vary by 50%. So there's no predictability. If anything, a pandemic threw our lives more into chaos. I say it again, like, you know, we were called essential, but we were treated as expendable workers. Despite the fact that action didn't really match words, especially on the part of the companies, there was a growing awareness because of the talk of essential workers.

I've definitely noticed when I'm speaking to people that are allies in the labor movement or people that are, you know, more on the, are more sympathetic to our cause, there is a greater understanding of the urgency. And, you know, when I tend to explain the things that I've just said to people, they really are shocked. They cannot believe that this is the case. They're like, I can't believe that that's what you dealt with. So it's, yeah, I think that it's opened up a door. And you've seen with political parties, you know, this last election in Canada, all of the three major contender parties had gig work in their platform. Some of them were, you know, like the cough, cough,

the conservatives might have had stuff directly written by like, basically, Uber was holding the pen while they were writing it. But you know, the other two parties had stuff that was good. But you know, to go back, like if the question was, how was it working in the pandemic, it was it was terrible. It really brought to light what happens when you have a workplace where workers have absolutely no rights, have nothing. The company can just do what they want. Every week at least, these companies change the terms of our work, whether it's moving a button in the app, whether it's just not including certain information that they used

to include. It happens all the time. They're constantly trying to push the envelope. And the pandemic, definitely, they pushed it further than they ever did before. And they continue to do it. I think what I would say about gig work in the pandemic, so I remember really vividly the day that the province announced the first lockdown in 2020. And as an aside, if folks don't know this, as gig workers, we don't have a shared workplace. We don't have a lunchroom to like hang and chill out. And it's a really difficult job that requires you to be like scheming almost about like how to make money, comparing the rates and stuff like that. So we really can't get through this job without having connections with each other. And so like group chats, like WhatsApp or Facebook groups,

and a group chat that accompanies the group are really common. And so that day that the first lockdown was announced, I was in and out like all day long of this one group chat. And one of the things that I noticed really clearly, because I felt it as well, was that the vast majority of what we were talking about in that group chat was not like, oh my goodness, there's a worldwide pandemic and nobody knows what's going to happen and we might die. It wasn't that. That was just gone. That was not part of the conversation. We were talking about the fact that the government said that we'd be able to keep working. And that meant that the vast majority of us were not going to get evicted. That's what we were talking about. And, you know, I think really well of gig workers. I think that we are amazing, creative, audacious, and strong people, capable

people. And to see these people whom I know to be incredible individuals at the very beginning of what is the most frightening and traumatic, you and traumatic health crisis of our lifetime, talking about, at least I will still be able to work so that I can pay my rent. Instead of, how will I be safe? How will I care for my family? How will I check on my health? None of those were things that we talked about because in that moment, that's not what mattered. And that's the consequence of precarity and like what Brees was describing. And I think what the pandemic has done for people who are not gig workers is made it easier to see the precarity, to see how poorly we are treated and how much, how very desperately we need to make improvements. And I'm glad. I'm glad that folks can see that. But at the same time, I don't think that it should take the biggest medical crisis in living history for folks to see that these really amazing, really incredible people

who have been talking about massive changes they need to see happen for years, organizing for years to get on side with them. And I think it is important for us socially to sit with that and maybe reconcile with that. How much does it actually need to take for us to listen to and support working class people as they organize? I thank you both for sharing those experiences and those thoughts on what it was like during the pandemic and the consequences of seeing how people responded and how it took such a terrible event

to actually force people to pay attention to the precarity that gig workers are subject to constantly and how that can be fixed, but there just hasn't really been the will to do so. And I guess, you know, we'll talk about if there is the will now. During the pandemic, Uber also put out its proposal for what it thinks the future of work should look like in Canada, a proposal called Uber Flexible Work Plus. And Gig Workers United and other groups that support gig workers in Canada

responded with an alternative gig workers bill of rights that sets out a very different vision for what this kind of work should look like. Can you talk a little bit about those two proposals and in particular, I guess, the bill of rights and what you would like to see for gig workers going forward? Fina Duval, who I know was on your show a little bit ago, talked with me about FlexPlus very early on after Uber began lobbying for it. And right away, she was like, oh, it's so easy to talk about this and explain this. FlexPlus is worker minus. End of sentence.

That's it. For me, I think it's simple, too. Employment rights, employment law is written to protect workers. That's it. For me, I think it's simple too. Employment rights, employment law is written to protect workers. That's it. It's not written by employers to protect employers. And when we see that happening, we have to respond collectively that that is not what these laws are for. I mean, Ubers Flex Plus is basically enshrining misclassification into currently Ontario labour law. I'm not sure if your listeners maybe know this,

but so like each province has to make changes to their labour laws independently of each other. And so Ontario is where we see the biggest push right now, though we are aware of other provinces where Uber is lobbying with the same amount of enthusiasm. But Uber's Flex Plus, I mean, that's what it is. If you take a look at what it proposes, it's literally just an attempt to remove all of the tools that the labor board would use to determine in a unionization campaign if workers are independent contractors or dependent contractors or employees. That's it. It's very easy to pull back that veil and see the truth of what the intention is. And I think, you know, the big thing we've talked about this already is that, you know, a change to the labour

law in Ontario is not going to say, hey, we're only creating a third classification of worker for people who work for Uber. It's not going to say that. It's going to be for everybody whose employer chooses to classify people in that way, which is why we get into this conversation around the ABC test, like what the folks brought in in California a few years ago. The idea that to prevent misclassification and also to relieve the burden that is on working class people currently. So instead of me being like, hey, I'm a gig worker, and it's really shitty when I work for this person, because I'm an employee, but they don't treat me like one. It's the employer's job to say, hey, I'm going to treat them shitty as an independent contractor, I'm going to make them an

employee upfront before they hire me. I think that's a very basic, very reasonable ask from working class people to have a clear upfront test of worker status so that workers are not in the position that we currently are, which is taking on the burden to organize, to organize while working in a workplace where we are experiencing violences that we have no paths to reconcile. And if we try to use paths that are set up for workers, we hit walls and walls and walls because, oh, you're misclassified, you're misclassified, right? That burden can easily be removed for all misclassified workers by employing something like the ABC test in the Employment Standards Act instead of codifying misclassification the way that Uber wants to with FlexPlus.

I think anyone who pretends that Flexible Work Plus is somehow something that's good for workers is deluding themselves or just completely untruthful. Why would Uber be proposing this? Why would a corporation be proposing this change? It's to benefit themselves. They have no care about workers. They can say whatever they want, but to go back to actions versus words, I've experienced as we just talked about over the pandemic,

what Uber does to workers, how they treat their workers. No protections, no provisions for anything. So this is obviously something that's purely for the benefit of Uber and not for the benefit of workers at all. Why is it being endorsed by the Doug Ford, a right-wing, very corrupt government that we currently have in Ontario? It's because it benefits their buddies at Uber. They're probably in the pocket of Uber. Let's not even pretend. Let's just say it straight up. There's already benefits like, you know, employment insurance, which we don't have access to currently as workers that exists already. And it's a portable benefit. You know, they propose portable benefits. Employment insurance is portable. You get it whether

you work at one company or another. It stays with you. Workers' safety, workers' compensation, that's portable as well. There's already an infrastructure that exists. So what they're proposing is scary not only in that it won't give you the same amount of benefits. What workers would stand to receive is much less than what they would under these already existing benefits. But what it also creates, you know, as Jennifer kind of hinted at, is that this option being there now of a third category of worker, a lot of companies will be tempted. Why wouldn't you? This is great for if you're a corporation, you're like, wow, I can like skirt labor law and

I can, you know, treat my employees like shit. Great. That's what I've always wanted to do. So they will convert their employees to this. And if they convert their employees to like this third classification of worker, then they will also be putting them onto this alternate, shittier version of the welfare state. And as more workers are switched to that shittier benefits regime, the risk is that that will become the new standard. And so there's implications far beyond just the immediate threat to us as gig workers. It's a threat to all working people. Why are right-wing governments so intent on supporting Uber in this? Because this is what they want.

This allows them to gut the welfare state. This sets in motion that possibility. So there's something that both of them gain here. So, you know, if people want to know why it's so imperative that they stand with gig workers in fighting this law, this change. It's because this will come for them eventually. This will affect everyone. This will change the course of work in this province and in this country and potentially around the world. I mean, Prop 22 in California was to set a precedent. It was an opening shot. It was, you know, part of a plan to spread this around the world. Uber is doing this in other countries as

well. They published a kind of similar Flexible Work Plus thing for Europe. So this is not just in Ontario. This is not just in Canada. This is a worldwide push to erode labor law and allow them to exploit workers to the maximum extent. When I go out and I talk to workers on the street, they don't say, oh, you know what I'd really like is a portable benefits plan that allows me. They're not saying that. Most of them don't know about what Flexible Work Plus is. To tell you how much workers want it, they don't even know what it is. What they want is they want better pay. They want coverage. They want what's in the gig workers' bill of rights. They just want to have a better life. They want to be more comfortable. They don't want to face

precarity. That's the things that they want. And notably, if you look at Flexible Work Plus, it doesn't address any of those things. It will not solve any of those problems. All it does is give you a shittier benefits and doesn't stop Uber from just walking all over workers and doesn't prevent them from taking that away possibly later on as well, or for changing the terms of it. It's very loose. What happens if one of these companies goes bankrupt? What happens to like those benefits? It's just one of the worst things that could happen. And there is a very strong risk that it will go through because, you know, in a parliamentary democracy that we like we have in Ontario, in Canada, for people around the world who might not know it, a party with the

majority of seats can push through any law they want. So the conservatives here have a majority of seats. So, you know, let's see what happens. Brice and I are like in it. We're in the gig economy, right? For folks who aren't, I think the thing I want to ask of you is like, critically look at the gig economy as a whole and pull back the veil of the narrative that app employers use to see what's really going on. What are the intentions, right? You know, like Uber was founded in 2009 on the tail end of the first economic crisis of my lifetime which is a terrifying thing to say um and it you know it was this job with low barriers where you can make some money and it's flexible around your other job and you know the vast

majority of people at the time don't have enough money so it seems like this big saving grace like it's going to work for you right but as workers as workers start working in it, they see like, oh, this doesn't work for us. Right. When Uber came to Canada through Brideshare in 2016, Uber had to do the same thing they're doing now, which is lobby provincial governments and some municipal governments to make changes to the current taxi laws so that they could operate in the way they wanted to, which was in a way where they paid less money to the government and they could be unregulated. And when they were sort of making their case, the language that they used was, but the people who do this job aren't real workers, they're gig workers. So it doesn't

matter if they're not regulated in this way or they don't have access to this right or this protection doesn't matter because they're not real workers. And so when we see Uber coming in now on the tail end of this huge crisis of COVID, we hear Uber saying those real workers don't want real rights and protections. They want something new, and that's called flexibility. Flexibility isn't new, and piecework isn't new, and taxi work isn't new, and delivery work isn't new. There is nothing new about what is happening. What we see is that collectively, the app employers who make up the gig economy come in at a time when people are socially precarious with an intention that has long-term consequences that makes folks more precarious on an individual

financial level. And through using veiled language and really snazzy sounding language and very expensive marketing techniques, they have done that successfully. And the only thing that has stood in their way over the past year is the only thing that has prevented them from winning easily, as easily as they did in 2016, is organized workers. And it's organized workers in the gig economy who understand how it works, who are raising that red flag and saying, no, no, no, pull back that veil. The legislative changes that apps are bringing forward internationally and here in Canada are not about ride share. They're not about food delivery. They're not. They are about rolling back rights and protections for working class people so that massive corporations can profit. And

misclassification for profit, again, is not new. And so the changes that gig workers are calling for here in Ontario are not new changes that workers are calling for. They are fairly basic things. It feels like a dark future if the apps win. And at the same time, the reason apps have not won yet is because working class people organized, because allies stand in solidarity, take action in solidarity. You know, Brees is right that if the provincial government attempts to pass legislation that is in line with what the apps are asking for, that the government has an easier way to get that through than they might if they had a minority government. That's a valid assessment. But I never lose faith in what can happen when people rally together. Gig workers, these amazing, incredible, capable people

are holding the line for workers' rights for every worker in this country while trying to make a living in the most difficult conditions they have ever worked in. And allies all over the province and the country, people who are your listeners or people who your listeners may become after hearing us are people who stand with that fight. And at the end of the day, members of government, they answer to us when we make them. knowledge and enough facts to demand and successfully win these necessary changes and necessary access to regulated programs like EI or CPP or necessary access to correct classification. And achieving that is all about pulling back the veil and not being duped by the very well-thought-out language that apps use to try and convince you not to act with us. So being critical of what they are doing and what the messaging is,

is the most powerful thing that you can do today. And tomorrow, you stand with us and tell the government that no, our future will not be a future where working class people do not have basic rights and protections at work. And for me, all of that sounds very easy, very simple and incredibly achievable and attainable. It's a handful of companies that are playing this narrative, you know, that, oh, it's just a bunch of people moonlighting and doing this on the side and they're all happy and, you know, this is what they need. But politicians and governments need to listen to the thousands of workers, millions of workers around the world. So who's right? What makes sense to you? And I think if governments are pretending that there's an equivalency in those voices, then it's because they're on the side of these companies.

But yeah, people forget the strength of people power. Every time I go out and talk to workers, it feels so good because it's realizing that we have that power and that there's more of us and that we're going to make it work. You know, in general, as a society, we kind of have been convinced of a dark future, that the possibility of the future is no longer that it will be better, but that it will be worse. But I think that's just a trick that governments and tech companies and capitalism in general has pulled to make us give up and to accept a shittier future. People rallying together can change the future. If we just believe that the future can be better, then we can make it better. But we need to believe it and we need to resist

the lies that we are being told. You know, it makes absolutely no sense that I'm working in a company and making less money every year than I did before. I'm being told, oh, well, it's flexibility. Oh, it's a new technology. So it makes sense for you to get paid less every year for some reason. It's like, that doesn't make any sense at all. How are those two things related? Flexibility doesn't exist. I can't work whenever I want. I can work at certain times of the day when the app pays more, when I'm incited to work by Uber. They can say, oh yeah, I can work whenever I want, but Uber themselves changed their rates to match anticipated demand and to encourage workers to come out and work at certain times. If I go out at 2 a.m. and try to

get some orders, I'll be making $3 per order. I'll be making way less than minimum wage. And because of that precarity, like, you know, on top of that, not knowing because of the increased reliance on tips, because of not knowing what you're going to make, I don't have the flexibility to spend more time with my partner or with my family because I can't predict what I'm going to make, I'm stuck going out at sometimes Sunday nights before the cutoff of the week's pay at 4am, you know, trying to make that goal. Like, so I actually have to cancel plans. I have to actually give up on things that I'd rather be doing or that, you know, would give me a better quality of life.

There's no flexibility there. It's a flexibility for the company. But again, we can fight this. We don't have to accept it. All we have to do is reject the propositions that they make, reject the dichotomy of flexibility and rights. There is no reason for those to be at odds with each other. It is purely something invented by these companies. It's just there to gaslight workers into accepting shittier working conditions. You know, I think you've both really hit the nail on the head there and given listeners, you know, a lot of things to think about in regards to gig work, you know, maybe that they hadn't considered before. But I think also important insight into what has been going on in Canada, what work you have been doing as part of Gig

Workers United, and also what your experience has been, you know, as gig workers yourselves. I'm wondering if there's anything else that you think that people should know about Gig Workers United or about, you know, gig worker organizing in Ontario or Canada. So, I mean, we've talked a lot today about the work that we're doing and what that looks like from our point of view. But I always like to come back to taking action. So, you know, the province of Ontario commissioned the ORAC committee to something about like the future of work exiting the pandemic. And the ORAC committee published three pillars of what it was investigating.

And the second and the third pillar in particular are just different words to describe FlexPlus. And so what we see and what we can learn from that is that some version of Uber's lobbying is going to appear in legislature in Ontario. And we don't know exactly what that will look like, though of course we know it will be bad. And we don't know what the fight will look like to prevent that from happening. But we do know that we need all of us to participate in that fight. So we've talked about the Gig Workers Bill of Rights earlier, and I just want to jump into that for a minute. The Gig Workers Bill of Rights is a bill of rights written by gig workers, by gig workers who do all kinds of delivery, who are part of Gig Workers

United, by gig workers who are part of the Uber union campaign with UFCW. And in collaboration together, these are the, and they are very basic, rights and protections that workers must have to be able to have a good life and good working conditions. And they, again, are things that all workers should have at work. So as someone who is a gig worker, the most powerful action you can take is to unite with your co-workers and organize and fight back. And so maybe that's Gig Workers United or maybe it's the Hooper Drivers at UFCW and maybe it's something else that you're working on. I love all of the options. But if you are a gig worker, connect with other gig workers, stand with other gig workers. And if you are not, then you can sign and endorse the Bill of Rights. I'm sure that Paris will share a link with you.

Add your name to it. Have your organization or your business add their endorsement to it. Share it with people that you know and talk to the gig workers in your life because I'm certain that you know someone about what you and they can do to hold this line with the people who are already holding it. Whatever happens, however long this fight is, and I hope it is not very long. Gig workers will win their rights. We will win as gig workers have been doing all over the world for the past few years. And it's only a matter of time. But your action now is important.

And your action, your solidarity, your participation today is what will affect how long it will take. And that is something that we all desperately need from you, your solidarity, not just in words, but in action and support. Yeah. Resist the dehumanization of workers by these apps and talk and sympathize with workers, stand with us. We all stand together. I think it's the bigger movement of fighting back against neoliberal capitalism and the kind of agenda that's been pushed for the last few decades. It's time we push back. Don't disassociate yourself from this fight. This is a fight for you as well. But listen to workers and let them stand at the front. Absolutely. I think great points. And I'll definitely put the link to the Gig Workers

Bill of Rights in the show notes so people can find it. You know, I thank you both for taking the time today for filling us in on what's been going on with Gig Workers United and Gig Worker Organizing in Ontario. Thank you both so much. Thank you so much. I look forward to this being the first of many conversations. I appreciate it. Definitely. It was a wonderful experience. Jennifer Scott and Brice Sofer are gig workers and the president and vice president of Gig Workers United. You can sign on to the Gig Workers Bill of Rights by finding the link in the show notes. You can follow Jennifer on Twitter at at PalimpsestGen. You can follow Brice at at this underscore is underscore Walmart. And you can follow Gig Workers United at at Gig Workers Unite. You can follow me at at Paris Marks. And you can

follow the show at at Tech Won't Save Us. Tech Won't Save Us is part of the Harbinger Media Network. And you can find out more about that at harbingermedianetwork.com. If you want to support the work that goes into making the show every week, you can go to patreon.com slash tech won't save us and become a supporter. Thanks for listening. Thank you.