Gig Workers Deserve Paid Coronavirus Sick Leave, Says Councilman

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK — Just staying home during the coronavirus outbreak isn't much of an option for thousands of gig workers in New York City, argued a letter to the heads of Uber, Lyft, Seamless and other popular rideshare and delivery companies.

Those workers often can't afford to stay home if they or someone in their family is sick, wrote Councilman Brad Lander on Monday.

Not only that, as contract employees they lack certain protections full-time workers enjoy, Lander wrote.

"As a result, they face an increased risk of contracting and spreading the virus," he wrote.

Uber, Lyft, Doordash, GrubHub, Instacart, Postmates, and Handy need to take steps to protect those workers and the wider public, Lander wrote.

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Lander, who represents Park Slope, addressed the letter to those companies' CEOs, urging them to provide paid sick leave.

Uber and other rideshare company drivers in New York City do receive paid leave under a recent driver wage bill, an Uber spokesman said. They receive $0.90 a hour toward paid time off, which in Uber's case comes out to 13 days of PTO or sick leave for a driver who works 2080 hours a year, a spokesperson said.

Naomi Dann, a spokeswoman for Lander, wrote in an email that it's "great" the city law includes a modest amount of money toward time off for drivers.

"That, of course, does not help all the other gig workers and companies discussed in the letter, nor does it apply to all non-driver Uber contractors like those who deliver for UberEats," she wrote.

Dann noted the city's wage law doesn't apply to areas outside the city. She wrote Lander's letter went beyond sick leave and encouraged all the companies to consider a laundry list of steps.

Those include:

• Suspending the practice of penalizing workers for missing scheduled blocks of work,
  ending shifts early or rejecting jobs.
• Paying workers their average weekly income if they are prevented from working because public health authorities recommended a temporary quarantine from coronavirus exposure that happened while working.
• Encouraging workers to leave deliveries at the door, not face-to-face and disabling any ratings systems that penalize workers for doing so.
• Agreeing to let workers collect unemployment benefits if they can't work because of the coronavirus.
• Not permanently deactivating workers who happen to contract coronavirus.

The letter can be read here.