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-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

Labor Notes reports:

It's called the Independent Drivers Guild--but the new organization for New York City's estimated 35,000 Uber drivers is "independent" in name only. Co-founded by Uber and the Machinists union, it's not a union, it has no collective bargaining rights, and it receives financial support from Uber. Just how much support, we don't know, since Uber and the Machinists won't release their agreement--not even to drivers.

If the shroud of secrecy isn't enough to raise your eyebrows, consider who's heaping praise on this cozy new partnership. The Mackinac Center--a Koch-backed anti-union mouthpiece that pushed for "right to work" in Michigan--calls it a "model that could bring unionization into the 21st century".

What will it do? The Guild gives drivers a process to appeal their terminations (which Uber calls "deactivations"). Ten union-selected drivers will attend monthly meetings of a "works council."

[...] Bhairavi Desai has a more critical view. She heads the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, a worker center that represents 19,000 drivers in the city, including several thousand who drive for Uber. The Guild is an "immoral, illegal, unconscionable company union", Desai said.

[...] This dodge allows Uber to weasel out of Social Security and Medicare taxes and to cheat drivers of legal guarantees to minimum wage, overtime protections, health insurance, workers' compensation, and the right to organize and bargain collectively.

The truth is, Uber's astronomical valuation of $68 billion shouldn't be chalked up to its innovative app so much as to its success at skirting regulations and employment laws. If its drivers were reclassified as employees, Fortune estimated, the combined costs to Uber would top $4 billion a year.

An army of lobbyists and lawyers makes it all possible. Uber employs one-third more of these influence-peddlers than even Walmart does.

[...] Before all this, the Taxi Workers and the Machinists were planning a joint campaign to organize Uber drivers in New York. "What we didn't know was that, behind the scenes, they were engaging with Uber to sell everyone out", Desai said.

[...] The Guild will never transform Uber's business model. At best, such secret agreements and partnerships with management are doomed strategies. At worst, a defanged union becomes a partner in exploitation.

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