EARNCon Session: Worker rights in the gig economy: State policy battles and organizing breakthroughs

Confirmed Speakers (More to Come!)

• Maya Pinto, National Employment Law Project (NELP)
• Jennifer Sherer, Economic Policy Institute (EPI)
• Chrissy Lynch, Massachusetts AFL-CIO
• Cherri Murphy, Gig Workers Rising
• Jennifer Sherer, Economic Policy Institute (EPI)
• Lori Simmons, Chicago Rideshare Advocates

Session Description

This session will provide an overview of how app-based companies’ well-funded attempts to erode state and local employment and labor laws pose threats to basic worker rights across the country. It will lift up examples of how workers and allies are organizing to build new organizations with the power to protect or expand labor and employment rights. It will also acknowledge the challenge of state and local political fights characterized by huge imbalances of power and corporate efforts to divide allies against one another and/or to use cynical appeals to shared values such as diversity, flexibility, or benefits access (while eroding rights and creating second-class status for precarious low-wage workers who are disproportionately Black, Brown, and/or immigrants). Finally, it will present case studies of local policy options developed and implemented by and with organizing workers.