(Washington, DC) – Today, Chase Copridge, a gig worker based in California and organizer with Gig Workers Rising will give comment at a briefing with the United States Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. This briefing is being held in advance of the “The Dignity of Work” hearing scheduled for Thursday, April 29. Unionized and non union workers across industries have been invited to discuss the current conditions they face on the job—with a specific focus on the impact of Silicon Valley on the deterioration of labor protections for the American worker.
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We applaud the Committee for giving workers the opportunity to share their real experiences as workers. Too often, corporate lobbyists and CEOs speak on behalf of their corporations to obscure the reality of what it is like to work for some of the wealthiest corporations in the world. Nowhere has this been clearer than during and following the Prop 22 campaign where Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and Instacart spent over $200 million to write and pass their own law in order to protect their profits at the expense of workers in California.
Prop 22 is now in effect and is a dangerous harbinger of what is to come if corporations continue to go unchecked and nothing is done to protect workers on the job. It is vital to hear directly from gig workers as corporations—particularly in the gig economy— are quick to make and break promises to workers whenever they need to bolster their public image. Recently this was evident in Uber’s rollback of the “fare multiplier”, which had allowed workers to set their own rates, with restrictions. This was a publicity stunt by the company in an attempt to frame workers as “independent” during the Prop 22 campaign and the Attorney General's lawsuit. Now that Prop 22 has passed, Uber has quickly ended the fare multiplier without warning or recourse for workers.
Senator Sherrod Brown’s office invited Chase Copridge to share his experience on the job as a gig worker. Sen. Brown is the current Chairman of the Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, and Chase Copridge has worked in the gig economy for several years. Currently Chase lives in his van in the Bay Area, even after working for multiple billion dollar tech corporations including, Instacart, DoorDash, and Amazon Flex. He now earns as little as $150 a day, down from $400 in 2016 when he started.
“Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and Instacart don’t want this. They don’t want a driver like me who sleeps in his car telling Senators what working for these billion dollar gig corporations is really like. Gig corporations want to erase my labor so that you think it’s a magical app that drops off your food and appears outside your house. There’s nothing magic about me working around the clock to barely survive, and to do so without any benefits from the corporations I work for. We deserve better.” said Chase Copridge, a gig worker and member of Gig Workers Rising.
The briefing will be livestreamed for the public and workers with Communications Workers of America, United for Respect, the Poor People’s Campaign and United Food and Commercial Workers Union will also be sharing their experiences.
About the Author
Gig Workers Rising is a campaign supporting and educating app and platform workers who are organizing for better wages, working conditions, and respect. @GigWorkersRise
