Say No to Uber and Lyft’s Power Grab

Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Chair Friedman, Chair Peisch, and Members of the Special Joint Committee on Initiative Petitions:

My name is Jonathan Cohn, and I am the policy director at Progressive Massachusetts. We are a statewide, multi-issue, grassroots membership organization focused on fighting for policy that would make our Commonwealth more equitable, just, sustainable, and democratic. 

We would like to submit testimony to go on record in opposition to

  • Initiative Petition No. 23-25, H4256, An Act defining and regulating the relationship between network companies and app-based drivers for purposes of the General and Special Laws,
  • Initiative Petition No. 23-29, H4257, An Act establishing that app-based drivers are not employees, and network companies are not employers, for certain purposes of the General Laws,
  • Initiative Petition No. 23-30, H4258, An Act defining and regulating the relationship between network companies and app-based drivers for certain purposes of the General Laws,
  • Initiative Petition No. 23-31, H4259, An Act establishing that app-based drivers are not employees, and network companies are not employers, for certain purposes of the General Laws,
  • Initiative Petition No. 23-32, H4260 An Act Establishing that App-Based Drivers Are Not Employees, and Network Companies Are Not Employers, for Certain Purposes of the General Laws.

Massachusetts has very clear standards for determining independent contractor standards (the “ABC test”), and Big Tech companies like Uber and Lyft have been in flagrant violation of them.

As a reminder, those three parts are (1) that the work is done without the direction and control of the employer, (2) that the work is performed outside the usual course of the employer’s business, and (3) that the work is done by someone who has their own, independent business or trade doing that kind of work. None of these apply to gig economy work. For example, there would be no Uber and Lyft without their drivers; the claim that their companies are merely an app is a clear fallacy intended to evade the law.

Knowing that they are in violation of the law, these companies want to change it, rather than adhere to it. They are planning to spend possibly hundreds of millions of dollars to ensure that the law does not apply to them and that they, themselves, can rewrite it in order to bolster their own profits and power over workers. Indeed, they have already spent $6.6 million, most of that on signature collection for the five different versions they are putting forth. They apparently have the money to go all-out for this question but not, as they would have you believe, enough to do right by their workers.

These measures would deny app-based gig workers a living wage, benefits, legal rights, and anti-discrimination protections. The impact of these laws extends beyond just the gig economy sector itself. The ability to define away terms like “employee” and “independent contractor” sets a dangerous precedent, enabling companies across sectors to gut labor rights. Will we see restaurants claiming that the “restaurant” is only the physical building and physical infrastructure, relegating all employees to independent contractor status? Or hospitals claiming that the “hospital” is just the brick-and-mortar building, rather than the doctors, nurses, aides, and other health care workers that make it run? The list goes on.

That is not the future we want to live in, and we hope it is not one you want to live in either.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Cohn

Policy Director

Progressive Massachusetts

LTE: High rents have young people putting Boston in the rearview mirror

Jonathan Cohn, “High rents have young people putting Boston in the rearview mirror” (letter), Boston Globe, March 15, 2024.

Last year, the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce said that Massachusetts needed to cut taxes on businesses and the rich because otherwise people would flee the state. They won a generous tax package, but cutting the tax on the estates of multimillionaires and the tax on day traders and speculators won’t change the minds of young people about where to live.

Indeed, the chamber’s own new study (“ ‘Alarming’: 1 in 4 young people eye leaving Boston,” Business, March 13) shows that one of the main reasons young people consider moving away is that rent is far too high. It’s the fourth-highest in the country.

Zoning reforms that the chamber supports can make a small dent, but we also need to invest more money in affordable housing and to strengthen tenant protections. Boston has proposals to do both, with home rule petitions to create a real estate transfer fee to fund affordable housing and stabilize rents. Other municipalities do so as well, and the governor’s housing bond bill has language around the former. I’d welcome the chamber’s support for such clear solutions to an urgent problem facing the region.

Jonathan Cohn

Policy director

Progressive Massachusetts

Happy Sunshine Week! (Don’t Mind the Clouds…)

Happy Sunshine Week!

Sunshine Week is an annual collaboration among groups in the journalism, civic, government, and private sectors that shines a light on the importance of public records and open government. We could use some of that sunshine in Massachusetts.

We are supporting two bills this session that would advance such a vision of open government:

  • H.3040 / S.2024: An Act to Modernize Participation in Public Meetings, which would phase in a requirement for hybrid meeting access for state and local public meetings and provide grants to municipalities to boost technical capacity
  • S.1963: An Act to provide sunlight to state government, which would promote transparency in state government by removing the Governor’s exemption from public records law and requiring committee votes and legislative testimony (with appropriate redactions) to be public

Find out if your legislators are currently on board with these bills, and then write to them to urge them to support such basic measures to expand civic participation and promote good government.

Email your legislators
 
Sunshine Week Statistic: Roll Call Votes This Session

Has the legislative session felt somewhat slow to you? Well, one statistic that stands out is the sharp decline in roll call votes (i.e., formal yea / nay votes during a debate): in the MA House, state representatives have taken only about half the number of recorded votes this session as in recent ones.

So much of the legislative process occurs behind closed doors, and recorded votes are a critical opportunity for legislators to show the public where they stand. When the House refuses to bring up votes until they are unanimous and when legislators withdraw their amendments without discussion or debate, we lose out on opportunities to make progress on the many critical challenges facing the commonwealth.


Total Number of Roll Call Votes by Session

Line Item Veto Override: a vote taken by the Legislature to reject the Governor’s veto of a specific budget appropriation. Since veto overrides require a 2/3 vote, this recorded votes are mandatory; the Legislature cannot take a voice vote (i.e., call of yea’s and nay’s).

Quorum call: a vote that is simply a call of the roll for attendance reasons and to ascertain if sufficient legislators are present
 

“Cutting Through the Noise” | The Grassroots Connector

Jonathan Cohn, “Cutting Through the Noise,” Grassroots Connector, March 13, 2024.

Let me tell you a secret about your state legislature (and I’m certain it’s true of any). Your legislators don’t hear from constituents all that often. Yes, they’ll get calls about constituent services requests, and if you live in especially active districts, their inboxes may get flooded some days. But most legislators do not hear about policy from their constituents on a regular basis.

If we want better and bolder policy, we need to change that. And that’s one of many reasons we’ve been hosting phone banks at the relaunched Activist Afternoons in Cambridge on the first and third Sundays of the month.

We have been calling constituents in key legislative districts to ask them to call their legislators about important issues (and we can patch them through to an office immediately if they’re interested!) This year, we have been making calls about the Real Estate Transfer Fee, a proposal to enable cities and towns to levy a small fee on high-end real estate transactions in order to raise much-needed revenue for affordable housing. We are also backing the Gas Moratorium bill, which would put a pause on gas infrastructure expansion so that we aren’t entrenching unsustainable fossil fuels.

Odds are, you get too many emails with different action alerts (and too many fundraising emails), so it’s easy for things to get lost in the mix. That’s why these calls help. Many times, the voters we call are aware of the issues and eager to take action. But sometimes they aren’t aware but happy to learn of how they can make a difference. And too many people assume that their legislators are doing good work off in the distance when, in fact, they need to hear from constituents regularly. Calls from constituents urge them to pay attention to things they may have overlooked and give them positive reinforcement when they are doing good work. Phone bankers cut through the noise and make taking action easier for the people they call.

What is also exciting about these phone banks is that every time we train a new phone banker, or build the skill and comfort level of a returning phone banker, we are helping future campaigns, especially critical ones in the fall. Since we are calling a favorable list (our own list from Progressive Mass), people can have their first phone banking experiences with friendly voters, get used to the rhythm of phone banking, and relieve initial fears about talking to people they don’t know.

With Activist Afternoons, we also recognize that activism is always more fun when it’s social. We get to share our experiences on calls—celebrating wins, laughing at bizarre calls or answering machines, and enjoying each other’s company. And with our every-other Sunday regularity, people know that they can drop in when their schedule frees up. We’ll be there waiting — you just need to come with a good attitude, a phone, and a laptop.

Have a Local Newspaper? Make Your Voice Heard.

Massachusetts faces a growing affordable housing crisis, and we can see it everywhere in the Commonwealth.

The only way to tackle that housing crisis is with a multi-pronged approach of protecting tenants from displacement, increasing housing production, and investing more in affordable housing.

We need bold action from the Legislature this session.

Governor Healey’s housing bond bill (the Affordable Homes Act) offers a strong foundation. But it can be improved in key ways so that it can do more to deliver on a vision of affordability for all.

Here’s one way you can help.

If there’s a local paper in your community (Don’t know? check here.), you can write a letter to the editor or an editorial to talk about why you care about bold housing action this session and what that looks like.

Never written one before? Don’t worry — we can provide a template for you to use with key talking points that you can customize for your community.

Whether you’re a first-time writer or a pro, let us know if you’re able to write one, and we’ll follow up with more information.

Write an LTE in your community

Urge Your State Senator to Vote YES on the EARLY ED Act!

Last week, the MA Senate released the EARLY ED Act, a bill that provides a comprehensive framework for making high-quality early education and care accessible and affordable in Massachusetts! This bill would:

  • Make the state’s Commonwealth Cares for Children (C3) operational grant program permanent, providing a stable source of funding for child care providers
  • Expand eligibility for child care financial assistance to many Massachusetts families
  • Boost compensation for early educators by creating a career ladder and providing scholarships and loan forgiveness
  • Take numerous other steps to make high-quality early education and child care more affordable and accessible to Massachusetts families

This bill is an important step towards achieving the full Common Start Vision of high-quality, accessible, and affordable early education and care for all families in Massachusetts.

Write to your state senator in support of the bill.

Activist Afternoons is continuing this weekend!

Join us at 4 pm at St. James Church in Porter Square!

We’ll be making calls about key progressive legislation at the State House, like raising the minimum wage to $20 and enabling cities and towns to pass real estate transfer fees in order to raise dedicated funding for affordable housing.

Bring a laptop, a headset (if you want), and a smile!

RSVP for Activist Afternoons

Let’s Leave Subminimum Wages in the Past

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Chair Friedman, Chair Peisch, and Members of the Committee:  

My name is Jonathan Cohn, and I am the policy director at Progressive Massachusetts. We are a statewide, multi-issue, grassroots membership organization focused on fighting for policy that would make our Commonwealth more equitable, just, sustainable, and democratic. 

We strongly support the elimination of subminimum wages, and passing ballot initiative NO. 23-12, An Act to require the full minimum wage for tipped workers with tips on top, would accomplish that.

We are appreciative of recent efforts by the Legislature to improve living standards for working people across the Commonwealth, but tipped workers have not been able to benefit fully from recent minimum wage increases. The tipped minimum wage in MA rose to $6.75 per hour last year as a result of the last increase. $6.75 per hour. A living wage in Massachusetts, according to the MIT Living Wage Calculator, is $27.89—just for a single, childless adult. That means a tipped worker would need to collect three times their wage in tips just to achieve a living wage.

Although employers are supposed to guarantee that workers get the full minimum wage with tips, this has never been common practice, and wage theft is rampant in the industry. The tiered wage system allows this to happen.

Moreover, sexual harassment remains widespread in the restaurant industry. As our country continues to grapple with the problem of sexual harassment and sexual assault across industries, we must face up to the fact that unequal wage systems create the breeding ground for such inappropriate and predatory behaviors.

The tiered wage system has its roots in the legacy of slavery and persists because of the way society views certain occupations – particularly those disproportionately held by women, people of color, and immigrants – as less deserving of good pay and benefits than others. Alaska, California, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington all already pay the full minimum wage. Massachusetts should join them.

Thank you for your work on this committee, and we urge you to do right by workers and advance this.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Cohn

Policy Director

Progressive Massachusetts

PM in the News: State lawmakers holding fewer recorded votes

Christian Wade, “State lawmakers holding fewer recorded votes,” The Eagle-Tribune. March 12, 2024.

The number of roll call votes by the state House of Representatives has plummeted in recent years, prompting concerns from open government groups about a lack of transparency in Beacon Hill’s often secretive legislative process.

In the current legislative session, which got underway in January 2023, the House has held 81 roll calls that recorded how each lawmaker voted on specific bills, according to voting records from the House clerk’s office.

But the number of recorded votes has been declining for years, with 105 roll calls held during the preceding two-year session in 2021 and 2022, according to the data. In the 2017-18 session, the House held 313 roll call votes.

There has also been a decline of recorded votes in the state Senate, where 135 recorded votes were held during the 2021-22 session, according to the Senate clerk’s office. That’s compared to 186 roll call votes in the 2020-21 session.

….

Jonathan Cohn, policy director of the group Progressive Massachusetts, said the lack of recorded votes deprives people of “opportunities to make progress on the many critical challenges” facing the state.

“So much of the legislative process occurs behind closed doors, and recorded votes are a critical opportunity for legislators to show the public where they stand,” he said in a statement.

News Roundup – March 4, 2024

Andrew Brinker, “‘It’s an invasion.’ In towns across Eastern Mass., resistance grows against ambitious state housing law.,” Boston Globe, March 3, 2024.

“If we don’t have enough thoughtful people who understand what’s really going on here, [a zoning proposal] will be defeated, because there will be people who just don’t want any change at all,” said Shaw, who says Rockport needs more housing to maintain its economic vitality. “It is pretty easy to imagine a group getting 30 or 40 people to go to Town Meeting and vote, and kill this zoning.”

Shannon Larson, “These 10 homes were among the most expensive sold in Massachusetts in 2023,” Boston Globe, March 1, 2024.

Imagine the revenue that could be raised for affordable housing if these communities were allowed to pass a real estate transfer fee.

Jennifer Smith, “AG Campbell sues Milton over MBTA Communities law,” Commonwealth Beacon, February 27, 2024.

“The housing affordability crisis affects all of us: families who face impossible choices between food on the table or a roof over their heads, young people who want to live here but are driven away by the cost, and a growing workforce we cannot house,” Campbell said in a statement. “The MBTA Communities Law was enacted to address our region-wide need for housing, and compliance with it is mandatory.”

Matthew Ferreira, “It’s official: New Bedford stands against MCAS as a graduation requirement. Here’s why.,” The Standard Times, February 21, 2024.

“I knew a lot of students that were dropping out after they failed the MCAS in 10th grade because they were like, I’m not going to graduate anyways,” said first-year New Bedford High geometry teacher and 2019 graduate Taryn Padilla. “Now teaching geometry, I see everyday how the constraints and pressure of this test are not only hindering student engagement in classes but hindering teachers’ ability to actually create engaging lessons….”

C.J. Polychroniou, “To Democratize Finance, We Must Take the Banks Away From the Bankers,” Truth-Out, February 17, 2024.

“One possible way to accomplish this dual feat is by creating an alternative banking system that democratizes finance. In fact, the movement for public banking — a system where banks are owned by the people rather than the wealthy elite — is gaining momentum in many parts of the country.”

Samantha Gross, “Two years after pay structure revamp, Mass. Senate to boost pay for staffers,” Boston Globe, February 14, 2024.

“Senate staff pay was a central tenet of a nascent unionization effort among staff, who announced their intent to form a union in 2022. Spilka, however, has not recognized the union. While Massachusetts has a long pro-labor tradition, state law carves out legislative staff from the definition of public employees who may collectively bargain.”

Taylor Dolven, “The T is on track to be broke soon. There’s no long-term fix.,” Boston Globe, February 12, 2024.

“The answer is straightforward, there are clear funding solutions out there,” said Yonah Freemark, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute and author of a recent report about how states can increase public transit funding. “The agency is being tasked with waiting another few years to solve problems that were caused by previous administrations.”

Senator Joanne Comerford, “Taking on the free community college critics,” Commonwealth Beacon, February 11, 2024.

“Community college students deserve the chance to learn and to climb a meaningful career ladder with a well-lit path to economic mobility….Investments made today will be directly linked to their success and to the long-term well-being of public higher education and our state — for generations to come.”

Ashley Shook, “Amherst supports bill for fully funded public higher education,” WWLP, February 8, 2024.

“Amherst follows the lead of Boston which was the first Massachusetts city to vote in support of the bill to make higher education more accessible in the state. The Cherish Act includes fully funded community colleges and state universities, fair wages, better working conditions, and extra support for students.”

John Keenan, “I visited supervised consumption sites in six cities. Here’s what I found.,” Boston Globe, February 5, 2024.

“What I saw and learned in Montreal, Vancouver, Toronto, Quebec City, Philadelphia, and New York leads me to believe that Massachusetts should allow any community that chooses to host a supervised consumption site to do so as a pilot program, using the experience and data to better inform Massachusetts policy makers and residents of the role such facilities can play in efforts to combat the drug epidemic. They can save money, and they will save lives.”

Testimony in Support of Ending the Use of MCAS as a Graduation Requirement

Monday, March 4, 2024

Chair Friedman, Chair Peisch, and Members of the Committee:  

My name is Jonathan Cohn, and I am the policy director at Progressive Massachusetts. We are a statewide, multi-issue, grassroots membership organization focused on fighting for policy that would make our Commonwealth more equitable, just, sustainable, and democratic. 

I am writing today in support of ending the use of MCAS as a graduation requirement and in favor of NO. 23-36, An Act requiring that districts certify that students have mastered the skills, competencies and knowledge of the state standards as a replacement for the MCAS graduation requirement (House, No. 4252).

Ample education policy research has shown that high-stakes standardized testing, such as the MCAS, does not measure a student’s ability to learn, capacity for effort, creativity, or perseverance, and it is not an accurate predictor of future academic or life success. Instead, test scores are highly correlated with a family’s economic status.

Massachusetts is among only eight states that mandate passage of standardized testing as a requirement to graduate high school. This requirement inaccurately and incompletely assesses students, incentivizes the narrowing of school curricula to focus on test content, and adds undue stress to students’ lives, with impacts especially felt by students with Individualized Education Plans, English Language Learners, and BIPOC students.

Massachusetts’s strong performance in education statistics is not due to a testing graduation requirement, but due to the investments put into our public schools (as well as the comparative affluence of the commonwealth vis-à-vis other states). Indeed, our education out-performance often fades away when data gets disaggregated.

Testing can and should serve a valuable diagnostic purpose—assessing progress, identifying trends, and more. But it should not be a high-stakes phenomenon. We have capable educators and policymakers who can craft a statewide competency-based graduation requirement that would enable students to be properly assessed according to the totality of their work.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Cohn

Policy Director

Progressive Massachusetts

Just In: What’s a Living Wage in Massachusetts?

MIT’s Living Wage Calculator analyzes the hourly rate that an individual must earn to support themselves and/or their family, working full-time, meeting basic needs like food, health care, housing, and transportation. 

They just updated it a few weeks ago, and the living wage for a single adult in Massachusetts now stands at $27.89. In households with children, the number is even higher. It’s clear that we have a cost-of-living crisis.

We can solve that in two ways: by bringing down costs or bringing up wages. And we need to do both. In 2018, Massachusetts set an example for other states and the country by passing a $15 minimum wage.

It’s time to raise the minimum wage again. Legislation filed this session (H.1925/S.1200) would raise the minimum wage to $20 per hour, bringing it much closer to a living wage.

Can you ask your state rep and state senator to co-sponsor and champion legislation to raise the minimum wage to $20?
Find out if your legislators are already co-sponsors here.

Massachusetts workers deserve better. Let’s make sure all workers receive a living wage.