Right now, deep-pocketed, app-based delivery and rideshare companies are serially breaking our Commonwealth’s employment and social safety net laws, misclassifying their 100,000s of drivers and delivery workers in MA. This is why they are being sued by Attorney General Campbell, and this is why they tried and failed in 2022 to get a ballot initiative passed which would have made their illegal practices the law of the Commonwealth. Instead of complying with our states’ laws, once again these companies are attempting to exempt themselves. After being soundly rejected by the Supreme Judicial Court last year, these Big Tech companies have returned with a new set of ballot initiatives, offering a virtually identical mix of disparate anti-worker policies, hoping to put the same confusing and misleading concepts before the voters.
The petitions being pushed by Big Tech executives would permanently misclassify all of their workers in the Commonwealth who are currently entitled to the same rights and protections that almost all other workers are entitled to under Massachusetts law. While this ballot initiative would most immediately affect these companies’ drivers and delivery workers, passing any version of these initiatives would jeopardize wage and benefit protections for millions of Massachusetts workers beyond the rideshare and delivery sectors. Further, these petitions would allow the companies to dodge the employment-related taxes, assessments, and contributions that all other Massachusetts employers are required to pay and avoid their many legal obligations, as employers in the Commonwealth, to their workers who make their companies run. This would put both their workers and consumers, who use their services at risk, and requires the Commonwealth, municipalities, and ultimately taxpayers to foot the bill.
The ballot questions certified represent sweeping changes to Massachusetts employment laws and the social safety net so many workers and their families count on. As we did in 2022, we are committed to challenging the certification of these Big Tech ballot questions at the Supreme Judicial Court.
-MA Not For Sale campaign