The Flaw in Biden’s Pro-Labor Record: Uber Drivers Are Still Waiting for Help

“I was and am concerned about the creep of this idea that if you do it through a platform, that somehow puts magic fairy dust on work and transforms people from employees to independent contractors,” he said.

But Mr. Weil was never able to act on his ideas. Amid opposition from Republicans and business groups, the Senate voted him down this year, 53 to 47, with three Democrats, Joe Manchin II of West Virginia and Mark Kelly and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, voting no. Gig companies also opposed his nomination, with a now-defunct industry group, the App-Based Work Alliance, lobbying against him.

In July, Mr. Biden nominated Ms. Looman, who at the time was acting administrator of the Wage and Hour Division, to fill the position.

There have been other setbacks. The Protecting the Right to Organize Act has little chance of overcoming a Republican filibuster in the Senate, and a federal court in Texas ruled in March that the Biden administration had acted unlawfully when it rolled back the Trump administration’s company-friendly interpretation of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which delineates rights for workers — like a minimum wage — and determines who is eligible for them.

Because the Trump-era interpretation is still in place, lawsuits brought against gig companies by the Labor Department would likely face significant obstacles.

“My sense is that they’re potentially waiting to get a better, more expansive rule on the books and then do enforcement — but then, obviously, they may have run out of time,” said Laura Padin, the director of work structures at the National Employment Law Project, a worker advocacy group.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/02/business/gig-workers-biden.html