A federal judge ordered New York state to quickly pay unemployment benefits to four Uber and Lyft drivers who have been waiting for payments since March or April. The New York Taxi Workers Alliance, which filed a lawsuit over the issue in May, says the ruling could finally help thousands of drivers in similar situations.
Uber and Lyft have long argued that their drivers are independent contractors, not employees. That stance has come under increasing pressure. Since 2016, the New York Department of Labor has argued that car travel drivers were employed for unemployment insurance purposes. But Uber and Lyft have crawled, without providing salary data that allows the agency to calculate unemployment payments for each worker.
As a result, when Uber and Lyft drivers forced out of work by the pandemic applied for unemployment benefits, some were told they were ineligible because state data showed them with zero income. Workers were denied benefits even after filing 1,099 tax forms showing their earnings.
One of the plaintiffs who worked at Subway in 2019 received a weekly benefit of $ 155, reflecting his earnings from Subway but not his earnings as a Uber and Lyft driver.
In her ruling Tuesday, Judge LaShann DeArcy Hall sided with the drivers. She acknowledged that Uber and Lyft were partly to blame for failing to provide the state with the necessary data. But she said the state still had an obligation to pay benefits immediately, using data provided by the workers themselves if necessary.
To ensure that benefits are paid promptly in the future, Hall directed the New York Department of Labor to create a 35-member task force to expedite requests from transportation drivers who have languished in the appeal process of the agency. She instructed the agency to clear its reservation of transportation driver requests within 45 days and then process any new requests within 14 days.
The ruling comes at a time of uncertainty and stress for the unemployment system. Unemployment offices have faced an unprecedented increase in jobless claims from people who lost their jobs due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Some state unemployment offices have been quick to find COBOL programmers to help them update their old unemployment systems.
Under the CARES Act, passed in March, many unemployed workers are entitled to an additional $ 600 in weekly benefits. But those benefits expire at the end of the month. It is unclear whether Congress will pass legislation that extends the enhanced benefits beyond July.
