Cuomo seeks federal unemployment relief for gig workers
Gov. Andrew Cuomo has asked the federal government to provide unemployment assistance to New York’s gig-economy workers, many of whom remain ineligible for those benefits at the state level.
“While we continue to pursue long-term statewide reforms that will ensure all gig-economy workers receive the protections they deserve while maintaining the job flexibility they enjoy, it is clear the coronavirus epidemic will have a real impact on these New Yorkers — and they deserve protections now,” said Cuomo spokesperson Jack Sterne, in a statement provided to POLITICO.
The state’s formal request for disaster unemployment assistance was submitted to the White House March 16. If approved, it would benefit independent contractors, self-employed New Yorkers, gig-economy workers — including drivers for Uber and Lyft — and farmers, among others, Sterne said. The request remains pending. A spokesperson for the White House had no immediate comment.
New York State’s independent contractors and gig-economy workers remain profoundly vulnerable to the coronavirus-driven cessation of nearly all economic activity. Employers who define their workers as independent contractors don’t pay into the state’s unemployment insurance fund. That means those workers are largely ineligible for unemployment benefits that max out at $504 a week for traditional employees. New York State has been reluctant to force the companies’ hand.
A state labor review made what seemed like a precedential decision in 2018, when it determined that three Uber drivers and those “similarly situated” to them were employees for the purposes of unemployment insurance.
But the state hasn’t made the process of attaining unemployment insurance for such drivers much easier. For those few equipped with the stomach and legal advice to overcome the bureaucratic hurdles, the process takes months, rather than as little as a week for regularly classified employees.
At the same time, hope for imminent, California-style legislation that would redefine many such independent contractors as employees appear to be further dimmingin the face of coronavirus.
With little to no work coming in these days, it’s not clear how long such workers can wait for relief.
“We’re not rich people who have stacks of money all over the place,” said Henry Rolands, a 56-year-old Lyft driver, last week. Rolands said he could sustain himself without income for maybe two weeks.
It’s unclear how much this assistance would cost the federal government. A recent report estimatedthere are roughly 150,000 app-based independent contractors in New York, and more than 850,000 “low-paid” independent contractors.
State workers have benefited from such assistance before — notably, after September 11 and Hurricane Sandy, according to Maurice Emsellem, a program director with the National Employment Law Project. But not that many people took advantage of the program, he said, citing the administrative challenges inherent to applying. Roughly 2,800 New Yorkers received disaster unemployment assistance worth $13.7 million after the World Trade Center attacks, Emsellem said.
Even so, he considers it an essential program.
“It’s basically the equivalent of an unemployment check,” he said. “But what’s really important is that it helps people who are self-employed, if you don’t qualify for regular unemployment insurance. So potentially that’s a lot of people.”
Bhairavi Desai, the executive director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, said the state’s action could help many drivers, but she faulted the state for not taking action to collect unemployment insurance from the gig economy companies themselves.
“So the state wants the federal government to [subsidize] Uber and other gig economies whose workers the state has already found to be employees for [unemployment insurance] purposes?” she asked.