{"id":200165,"date":"2021-06-21T19:06:00","date_gmt":"2021-06-22T00:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2021\/06\/21\/how-convenient-18\/"},"modified":"2021-06-21T19:06:00","modified_gmt":"2021-06-22T00:06:00","slug":"how-convenient-18","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2021\/06\/21\/how-convenient-18\/","title":{"rendered":"How Convenient"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It turns out that Uber and Lyft were <a href=\"https:\/\/themarkup.org\/news\/2021\/06\/17\/uber-and-lyft-donated-to-community-groups-who-then-pushed-the-companies-agenda\">paying community groups to act as AstroTurf in favor of the Gypsy cab companies<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Hoocoodanote? <\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: #2b00fe;\">At the end of February, an impassioned op-ed appeared in The Chicago Crusader, a well-established Black newspaper in the city. Titled \u201cWhy Independent Workers Want to Stay Independent,\u201d the <a href=\"https:\/\/chicagocrusader.com\/op-ed-why-independent-workers-want-to-stay-independent\/\">op-ed<\/a> argued that gig economy companies like Uber and Lyft are a \u201clifeline\u201d to communities of color by providing \u201ca flexible way to work.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>One week later the exact same <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eldianews.net\/por-que-los-trabajadores-independientes-merecen-independencia-why-independent-workers-deserve-independence\/\">op-ed<\/a> was published in the bilingual El Dia Newspaper. Two months later, a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.chicagobusiness.com\/opinion\/why-pro-act-would-harm-gig-economy-workers\">version<\/a> of it appeared again in Crain\u2019s Chicago Business newspaper. <\/p>\n<p>Similar articles and op-eds riffing on the theme of \u201cprotecting\u201d independent work have popped up in local publications all over the country, from Colorado to Massachusetts to New Jersey to New York.  <\/p>\n<p>In some of these states the articles have a common thread: Their authors represent organizations that serve communities of color and have received recent donations from Lyft, and in some cases Uber or DoorDash. <\/p>\n<p>The op-eds are one facet of a multimillion-dollar lobbying campaign aimed at fighting regulations that would require the companies to treat drivers and delivery workers as full-fledged employees. Over the past several months, news outlets have <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vice.com\/en\/article\/m7avyp\/gig-companies-spend-millions-on-anti-labor-pacs-in-illinois-and-new-york\">detailed political action committees<\/a> set up by Uber and Lyft in <a href=\"https:\/\/public-accountability.org\/report\/how-uber-and-lyft-are-preparing-to-block-labor-rights-for-gig-economy-workers-in-new-york-and-around-the-country\/\">New York<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/chi.streetsblog.org\/2020\/11\/13\/lyft-launched-a-new-super-pac-to-prevent-illinois-gig-workers-from-getting-employee-benefits\/\">Illinois<\/a>. The Markup found that the practice was even wider spread, occurring in other states and often involving alliances with local community groups.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It&#8217;s not an alliance, it&#8217;s prostitution. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It turns out that Uber and Lyft were paying community groups to act as AstroTurf in favor of the Gypsy cab companies. Hoocoodanote? At the end of February, an impassioned op-ed appeared in The Chicago Crusader, a well-established Black newspaper in the city. Titled \u201cWhy Independent Workers Want to Stay Independent,\u201d the op-ed argued that &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[970,969,1284,974,1051,1035],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-200165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corruption","category-evil","category-gig-economy","category-hack-journalism","category-hypocrisy","category-transportation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200165"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200165\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}