by Elizabeth Henderson

Revisions of zoning codes happen at long intervals, so this is a chance for Rochester to make changes that will govern the city for at least the next decade. The process has been underway for over four years and seems to overwhelm the staff which has not met any of their deadlines. In their revisions, the zoning writers  have responded to some of the requests from the Food Policy Council and Urban Agriculture Working Group, but we have more work to do. The April 2026 Draft turns out to be their final language.  Now it is up to City Council which has the power to make amendments or to accept the draft as is.  If you want to support community gardening, please attend one of these sessions and speak up or send in written comments!

The zoning revisions process bears the title Zoning Alignment Project because the zoning is supposed to align with the City’s Rochester 2034 Comprehensive Plan. The vision for the plan is lovely: ”Rochester is a beautiful, progressive, lively, healthy, and welcoming city. We build from strength – leveraging our assets to grow our population, local business community, and tax base. We celebrate our 200th birthday in 2034 as a resilient and confident community where diverse neighborhoods are engaged and thriving; downtown is the vibrant heart of our region; our unique network of active waterfronts is accessible to all; and innovation, adaptation, and inclusion drive us forward.” – The People of Rochester

In the spirit of this vision, the Food Policy Council prefaced our comments with this reflection: “Community gardens in Rochester are not evenly distributed resources, and they are not evenly burdened by regulation. Taproot Collective’s 2024 – 25 Gardening Together Study – a site survey of 109 Rochester community gardens and qualitative interviews with eight urban growers – documents what planning maps confirm: the gardens that serve Rochester’s most disinvested neighborhoods, often operating on city-permitted vacant lots with no permanent infrastructure, are run predominantly by Black and brown residents with the least margin to absorb bureaucratic cost or legal uncertainty. These are the gardens that a $100 beehive permit fee prices out. These are the gardens that a 144 sq ft greenhouse cap renders non-compliant. And these are the gardeners who have historically been taught to use toxic practices – including tire planters – because those were the cheap materials available to them.

“This is the equity dimension of the ZAP that these comments address. The Rochester Food Policy Council – itself supported by Rochester 2034 Action UAG-1i – urges the City Planning Commission to read its urban agriculture provisions not only as technical land use code, but as environmental justice policy. Rochester 2034 (p. 311) identifies local food and urban agriculture as both climate mitigation and adaptation strategies. The Community Food Systems Plan grounds Goal 3 explicitly in equity and calls for making it “easier for residents to grow food where they live,” with particular attention to neighborhoods facing structural barriers including historical disinvestment. In order to be an equitable and efficient policy, the ZAP must align with both documents.

Here is a guide to commenting based on the FPC comments:

Garden Investment Security:
Rochester 2034 calls for long-term land security in multiple action items: VNT-3a, VNT-4d, and UAG-2a collectively direct the City to create 5 – 10-year permit/lease arrangements and to include long-term garden use provisions in the ZAP rewrite. The ZAP does not implement these actions.

The equity dimension is acute. Annual revocability is not a neutral administrative feature – it is a structural barrier that falls hardest on lower-income gardeners who cannot risk multi-year investment in infrastructure on land that can be taken back at any time.

The newly released Rochester Community Food System Plan (CFSP) reinforces this finding, noting that land tenure insecurity “discourages long-term investment and planning from gardeners” and that gardeners in disinvested neighborhoods have explicitly called for relief from “complicated communication and processes, uncertain land tenure, and perceived lack of support” (CFSP p. 109).

The ZAP should classify gardens as permitted in all residential neighborhoods.

Recommendation:
To align with Rochester 2034, the city should adopt zoning that clusters development more densely along transit corridors. The city can then designate vacant lots that are not on these corridors for use as greenspace and gardens. Each quadrant should get some. Half the city’s 5000 vacant lots are city property which it spends $260 a piece each year to keep “clean and green.” The city saves money when residents take over. When the city permits residents to use its lots for gardens, those lots can be divided into two distinct categories and clearly labeled as reserved for future development or reserved for use as gardens, farms or green space. The ZGEIS recognizes the distinction, stating: “This use is intended to support nearby residents, so allowing them in residential districts makes sense. Lots reserved for community gardens, as the principal use, would not meet the vision for development along the mixed-use corridors.” But does not take the further step to confirm the value of gardens as a principal use in residential districts.

Limitations on Season Extension:
Rochester 2034 (p. 311) identifies local food and urban agriculture as both climate mitigation and adaptation strategies. The Community Food Systems Plan grounds Goal 3 explicitly in equity and calls for making it “easier for residents to grow food where they live,” with particular attention to neighborhoods facing structural barriers including historical disinvestment. In order to be an equitable and efficient policy, the ZAP must align with both documents.

Rochester 2034 Action UAG-3c explicitly directs the City to “explore support for installation of high tunnels, hoop houses, and other season-extending production aids on City-owned and private land.” The ZAP – which Article 1.2.B requires to implement Rochester 2034 – instead caps community garden greenhouses at 144 square feet and applies a 50% lot-area ceiling to all tunnel structures, treating temporary row covers identically to semi-permanent high tunnels.

With climate change, in the Northeast rains are more frequent and come down much harder. Using high tunnels is a way to protect crops from pounding rain, so gardeners or urban farmers might justifiably want to cover as much as 75% of their land in order to have a crop. The April 2026 draft changed the previous limit of 25% to 50%.  That is better, but we can ask for more, especially since gardeners might also want to cover 100% of the garden with row covers for a few nights to protect from frost.

Recommendation:

• Replace the 144 sq ft cap with a lot-coverage percentage, consistent with every peer city reviewed and with UAG-3c.

• Clarify Section 14.1.G application to garden lots without principal structures.

• Establish grandfathering for existing non-compliant structures.

• Create separate standards for high tunnels (permanent/semi-permanent) and low tunnels/row covers (temporary).

• Exempt low tunnels and row covers from area calculations entirely.

Excessive Fee for Keeping Bees – Recommendation:

• Reduce or waive the $100 fee for community garden and urban farm apiaries, particularly those operated by nonprofits or serving low-income populations.

• Retain the Section 14.2.B siting standards as written.

• Affirm NYS requirement for beekeepers to register their hives with the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets (https://agriculture.ny.gov/plant-industry/honey-bee-health).

• Collaborate with community partners to deliver beekeeping education as part of the permitting process for community gardens and urban farms.

Remove Confusion about Garden Beds, Paths and Weeds:

Section 16.2.F – General Landscape Requirement requires all non-structure, non-paved lot area to be landscaped with trees, shrubs, live groundcover, and other plantings. Community garden growing beds, mulched paths, and production areas are functional green infrastructure under Rochester 2034’s own framework (UAG p. 321, Vacant Lands p. 171). The FPC requests explicit clarification that these satisfy Section 16.2.F.

The equity dimension: any ambiguity in this provision creates enforcement exposure for gardens that are least likely to have legal counsel to navigate it. Clear, affirmative language is needed.

Recommendation:

• Add explicit language that growing beds, production areas, mulched paths, and other functional garden features satisfy Section 16.2.F for lots used as community gardens or urban farms.

Definition of Weeds Needed, Section 16.2.E.2 – Maintenance: Definition of “Weeds” – Recommendation:

• Define “weed” in Article 24 to exclude intentionally cultivated native plants, food crops, cover crops, and ecologically functional vegetation.

• Add language to Section 16.2.E.2 clarifying that the standard does not apply to intentional plantings in community gardens serving food production, cultural preservation, pollinator support, or ecological function.

Reduce Toxics in Landscaping:

The ZAP section on landscaping (Section 16 Landscape) offers the opportunity to limit the use of toxic herbicides and pesticides in the city. There is extensive research on the environmental injustice that low-income people are exposed to significantly more toxics in their living environment than wealthier people. Lead paint, dust, contamination from incinerators and factories are located deliberately in neighborhoods where residents have fewer resources to defend themselves.

Section E, on maintenance states: “All landscaping must be maintained free from disease, pests, weeds, and litter.” This is the place to insert – “without the use of carcinogenic or endocrine-disrupting herbicides or pesticides.” The Monroe County Parks including city parks, and the Monroe County Forestry Plan, already have strict limits on the use of toxics only for invasive species or serious diseases. Zoning could hold all landowners to these good practices.

City Council Public Hearings:

Each of the Rochester City Council District representatives – Vice President LaShay D. Harris (South), Michael A. Patterson (Northeast), Mary Lupien (East) and Bridget A. Monroe (Northwest) – will host an initial public, district meeting in the coming weeks regarding the ZAP legislation currently before City Council. 

These meetings will be held in each respective Councilmember’s district, and will offer residents an opportunity to voice their opinion on ZAP. Additional meetings will be scheduled as well. No registration is required to attend any of these hearings regardless of where you live. Specific dates and times for the initial District Meetings are as follows:

Council Member Michael Patterson (Northeast District):

• Sept. 29: Rochester Public Market at 5:30pm
• Sept. 30: Ibero Community Room

Council Member Mary Lupien (East District):

• Oct. 13: Ryan R-Center at 6:00pm

Council Member Bridget Monroe (Northwest District):

• Sept. 28: Edgerton R-Center at 6:00pm
• Oct. 7: Roback Community Center at 6:00pm

Council Member LaShay Harris (South District):

• Oct. 5: New Life Fellowship at 6:00pm
• Oct. 14: Olmstead Lodge in Highland Park at 6:00pm

Following these initial District Meetings, City Council will host official public hearings with the Evans Administration on Oct. 21 and 22 from 5:00pm – 8:00pm in City Council Chambers. These hearings will be open to attendance by the public and available on the City Council YouTube Channel for those who cannot attend in person. 

City residents who are unable to make any of the many public meetings can email Council@CityofRochester.Gov, fax (585) 428-6347 or attend City Council’s regular Speak to Council and Public Hearing session on Nov. 12 at 6:00pm. The work session will be held on Oct. 8 in City Hall Room 208A. 

For more information on the City Council ZAP process, City residents can call the City Council office at (585) 428-7538 or email Council@CityofRochester.Gov.

Save this date: the 2027 Rochester Urban Farming Conference will take place Saturday, March 13 from 9:30am – 4:00pm at East High!

The post Getting Grounded October – Zoning Final Draft Fails Community Gardens and Urban Farms first appeared on Rochester Red Star.

Ilhan Omar raid illustrates “fascist police state,” Mamdani under pressure over NYPD boss Tisch, and more in this edition of “Red All Over,” Democratic Left’s occasional news roundup.

The post Musk, Koch Spend Millions Against Socialism appeared first on Democratic Left.

by Jo Blocton

Unions are the only space in American society where socialist values of solidarity and “us vs. them” are openly spoken and encouraged, outside of DSA. It is about time for us to take back this space to fight for workers’ rights. Detroit DSA’s Jobs Fair on September 19th was as much about education as it was about encouraging folks to consider new job options.

During the fair, about 60 participants heard from five different union members about why going to work within their fields can create legitimate change for the whole working class, while also improving their individual lives. The purpose was to bring socialists to the front line of the workforce, where we can build political power on all fronts for the working class.

These union trades didn’t come to play; The salaries of union workers represented at the fair start at $58,000 a year. The representative from the IBEW (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers) reported hourly wages as high as $57. The UAW has members on the line at more than $40 an hour. Teachers in one Metro Detroit school district are seeing salary increases of $20,000 within the first five years of teaching, with some districts offering programs to allow paraprofessionals and substitutes to earn their teaching certificate completely for free. Workers representing an organizing effort at a major logistics company are fighting to bring their wages on par with UPS’s top hourly rate of $49/hour.

OBTAINABLE JOBS

Joining a union is not all about the money. These careers present a unique opportunity to make real change, while being obtainable for the average joe. This is where joining the union efforts at workplaces with active unionization campaigns comes into play. We are talking about millions of Americans finally having a say in their working conditions, compensation, and benefits. One targeted company employs over 1.5 million people, as of 2025; if they could achieve a union contract, it would improve the lives of millions of families.

Speaking of families, careers in teaching would also improve the lives of millions, not just teachers but parents and students as well. The teachers union speaker reported a fantastic example in sunny Los Angeles. During the most recent LA teacher strike, the teachers union decided not to include only standard strike demands. The union met with parents and students to find out what they really needed as a larger community. The district had no choice but to capitulate because they were facing pressure from both sides: families and educators.

The teachers were able to reform the law enforcement presence in schools, while simultaneously getting a contract that included wage increases and other benefits. Making this effort with the parents not only allowed the teachers to strike for longer; they were able to organize to make sure the kids were still being fed during the strike.

Teachers unions have the power to fight artificial intelligence in the classroom and prevent the cognitive decline of Generation Alpha. Teaching is an opportunity to grow a more equitable and socialist future for all children — what’s not to love?

WEEKS WHEN DECADES HAPPEN

Joining a union provides a space to radicalize your co-workers and “prepare for the weeks when decades happen,” as explained by our IBEW representative. He spoke on how electricians hold the power of the state’s technology. Electricians can work against Flock cameras and data centers because they are the literal gatekeepers of power.

At the end of the day, the most important part of the Jobs Fair was actually getting socialist bodies into these positions. Participants were able to ask their top two union choices about career opportunities and the Labor Working Group is following up with attendees to help get them these jobs.

At the tables, participants spoke on their personal reasons to make the leap into an organized workplace. Some folks spoke about making a switch to diversify the workplace and others cited wanting to finally work somewhere that they could actually have a say. Once you have a union job, it’s difficult to go back to being treated as a grunt.

One of the best parts of the event? Most participants weren’t DSA members. This event served so many purposes and hit each nail square on the head. May all of these folks get positions in unions, and hopefully join DSA. As best said by our UAW representative, “the way change happens is talking with rank-and-file workers on the shop floor — that’s where we test out our politics.”

[Jo Blocton is a member of Metro Detroit DSA and UAW Local 6000.]

[If you’re interested in getting a job with the intent to organize, contact Metro Detroit DSA’s Labor Working Group.]

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Jobs Fair: It’s Time to Get These Socialists to Work was originally published in The Detroit Socialist on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

By: Matt Wolfinger

BOSTON – There’s a loophole in our labor laws spreading across the economy. From delivery drivers to nurses, corporations are classifying workers as independent contractors and using the promise of flexible work to cudgel labor rights. 

Nearly 12 million people in the United States, or seven percent of the workforce, describe independent contractor work as their primary source of income, according to the most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Independent contractors aren’t protected under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), so they can’t unionize, aren’t entitled to benefits, a minimum wage, or overtime and can be fired at will. Companies like Uber, Lyft and Amazon have spent hundreds of millions to keep their workers classified as self-employed independent contractors, allowing them to cut costs and indirectly union-bust.

By blurring the line between employee and contractor, employers save money they’d otherwise be required to spend on unemployment insurance, benefits and employer-paid payroll taxes. Meanwhile, workers lcassified as contractors then pay exorbitantly higher taxation to account for both employee and employer contributions. If corporations can successfully “gigify” their industries, they can circumvent responsibilities and laws that would otherwise prevent them from mistreating their workers. 

Uber, Lyft and the Legacy of Gigification

Delivery and rideshare apps like Doordash, Lyft and Uber are poster children for operating in this gray area. Emerging in the shadow of the Great Recession when jobs were hard to come by, companies like Uber, Lyft and the now-defunct Sidecar pioneered the modern understanding of gig work by taking advantage of the dire economic landscape.

In Massachusetts, most workers are considered employees unless a company can prove their work meets three different criteria. According to Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell’s office, the work must be:

1. Done without the direction and control of the employer
2. Performed outside the usual course of the employer’s business
3. Done by someone who has their own, independent business or trade doing that kind of work

Companies constantly find workarounds. In one landmark case, Massachusetts residents voted in late 2024 to pass a ballot measure affording rideshare drivers the right to unionize. Notably, neither Uber or Lyft spent a cent to oppose it. In contrast, they paid more than $200 million in California to help pass Proposition 22, a bill cementing California gig workers’ misclassification as independent contractors. 

The reason why these companies did not perceive Question 3 as a threat became clear in May, when over 70,000 Lyft and Uber in Massachusetts drivers successfully voted to certify their App Drivers Union (ADU).  

As the first union of its kind in the country, it’s a big deal—but there’s a catch:  The union ceded on classification. Their official stance is that they’ve chosen to remain independent contractors. This limits the union’s ability to advocate for its members, since benefits like healthcare or a minimum wage are off the bargaining table.

As Working Mass’s Editorial Board reported at the time, Question 3 “allowed drivers to vote for a collective bargaining representative, with which Uber and Lyft would then have to negotiate over wages and working conditions… [but only covers] app workers transporting passengers, leaving out take-out and grocery delivery workers.” As a result, “the system as written allows drivers to vote for or against collective bargaining but does not mandate any driver rights within the “union” once it is recognized.”

This has led to credible accusations against the ADU of company unionism. The ADU’s FAQ page on their website states that remaining independent contractors allows members to “keep our flexibility and independence,” since bosses cannot legally dictate when independent contractors work and do not work. The ADU did not respond to requests for comment on how they reached this decision.

The flexibility messaging is reminiscent of a June 2026 report from the Flex Association, a national association for app-based work, that found that nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of the 10,000+ app-based workers they surveyed are doing gig work to supplement W-2 jobs. Flex’s 2024 Economic Impact Report found that “exactly half of driver and delivery partners would rather be able to choose their own hours, than receive a 50% increase in earnings with a fixed schedule.” 

While these studies seem to indicate gig workers would largely rather stay as independent contractors and prefer lower pay, there’s two fundamental flaws underpinning their results. First, drivers could advocate for having flexibility to choose their own hours and an increase in pay. There could also be an industry association for app-based work whose members include Uber, Lyft, Instacart, Doordash and Grubhub, Flex is incentivized to only share positive viewpoints on gig work.

In reality, drivers aren’t a monolith—some have become disillusioned with the promises made to them by rideshare companies once the curtain is pulled back and their exploitation becomes indisputable.

In July, a Massachusetts Uber driver filed a class action lawsuit against the company, alleging misclassification of its drivers as independent contractors. Uber uses this misclassification to avoid covering expenses like gas, insurance, and vehicle maintenance, since they were the responsibility of their “self-employed” contractor. It’s argued that the three qualifications in Massachusetts for independent contractor status aren’t met because:

1. Uber controls the routes and pay of their drivers while requiring them to meet a set of standards dictated by the company, so the work is not done “without direction or control of the employer.”
2. The services provided are not “performed outside the usual course of the employer’s business” (Uber is a company providing transportation to riders, which is fulfilled through the labor of their drivers).
3. Drivers do not have “their own, independent business or trade doing that kind of work” as Uber sets pay rates, can change them at their sole discretion and requires a set of standards its drivers and vehicles must meet (and can change those at will).

Food delivery and rideshare companies want to straddle the fence on employment, controlling every aspect of how drivers work through algorithms like employees, while stifling their ability to fully advocate for the same rights and benefits afforded to employees in Massachusetts. 

In 2024, More Perfect Union and Rideshare Guy put seven rideshare drivers in a room to see what fares they would be offered for identical trips and found that both Uber and Lyft’s algorithms routinely offered different prices to each driver.

Uber’s average wage gap difference was roughly 12 cents. “You know, to the naked eye, it may not be as much,” driver and Senior Contributor to Rideshare Guy Sergio Avedian told More Perfect Union. However, “A penny’s difference on 2.7 billion trips that Uber does every quarter is the idea.”

The Gig Economy Taking Healthcare

Executives in other industries have observed the chokehold platforms like Uber and Lyft have on their workers once they cannot do their job without it. Taking those lessons to heart, industries like healthcare have spent millions building their own.

When nurses at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) with Brigham Nurses United (BNU) went on a one-day strike in July, the hospital locked them out for 4 additional days as retaliation, hiring 1,300 scab nurses to fill in for the 4,700 nurses on strike. Many of the scabs came from out-of-state, sourced from Colorado-based US Nursing (USN) who specialize in hiring nurses to scab during ongoing strikes. Similar to Amazon, they’ve begun outsourcing the labor to third-parties.

Their website hosts a portal where nurses can apply to fill shifts at hospitals where “Potential Strikes” loom. The nurses taking over these positions are paid comparable wages than the nurses they’re replacing, but their lack of hands-on knowledge that comes from working full time at a hospital can place patients at an increased risk of harm.

The job listings on “gig nursing” apps like Ingenovis Health’s often don’t list the facility in question, but anyone can make an account—no proof of credentials needed. Select “Strike Jobs” and set the location to Boston, MA to find nearly 300 USN listings, many of them starting October 11, for 2-week strike coverage at a hospital with a bed count of 846 and 59,715 emergency room visits.

According to the American Hospital Directory, BWH has a bed count of 846, and their ED’s About page says they “care for nearly 60,000 patients each year.” The listing has since changed from an “Active Strike” to “Potential Strike” with a date of “TBA” after the MNA announced the strike’s postponement.

93 percent of the 4,000 workers with BNU recently voted in favor of an open-ended, indefinite strike, originally slated to start October 14. The decision came after their historic strike in July had yet to yield results at the bargaining table, with negotiations between the MNA and MGB leadership at a standstill. 

The strike has since been postponed pending a vote on what MGB calls its “last, best and final offer,” though the MNA has emphasized that MGB refuses to budge on many key issues or engage in more bargaining sessions.

“Nurses continue seeking improvements on several key issues,” said an MNA spokesperson in a statement, including:

… Limits on MGB’s reliance on temporary nurses to support continuity and quality of care; affordable health insurance with meaningful plan choice; a differential for nurses required to float among units; and a meaningful cost-of-living wage increase.

Another strike is still on table if a contract fails to be ratified, even as MGB planned to once again work with USN to hire scabs for the strike. Since USN pays for each scab’s hotel and travel costs, they’re not classified as independent contractors. However, other gig nursing apps like CareRev have come under fire for allegedly misclassifying users as independent contractors.

These platforms allegedly use a form of dynamic pricing to pay each nurse that looks at a listing an algorithmically generated pay rate, a difference of cents or even dollars apart. It’s unclear how these gig nursing algorithms function, but it’s eerily similar to the ones used by Uber and Lyft. The “gigification” of healthcare has earned gig nursing platforms the name “Uber for Nurses.”

Central to the argument for gig nursing is in response to a so-called “nursing shortage.” But as recent data analysis from Time Magazine revealed, “there are substantively more actively licensed nurses than there are nursing jobs.” Framing the issue as a shortage obscures the real culprit—nurses are refusing to tolerate worsening working conditions.

Dr. Katie Wells, a Senior Fellow at the AI Now Institute researching tech in healthcare, spoke to Working Mass:

When I dug into the history of that, and I looked at all the scholars who had been studying labor markets for nurses, it became very clear that the rise of corporate medicine and the for-profit nature of a lot of hospital systems coincided with the degradation of working conditions for healthcare workers.

Dr. Wells is the co-author of a two-part “Uber for Nursing” study detailing the rise of gig work in the healthcare industry.

Although these platforms can be used to supply facilities with scabs, many are hired to account for lower levels of staffing. These platforms pit nurses against each other in a race to the bottom, where the nurse that wins a shift is the one willing to accept the lowest pay rate. Data the platform collects on nurses, such as credit card debt, helps it identify which nurses are more likely to accept lower pay.

A portion of the travel nurses using these apps are classified as independent contractors. They don’t receive health benefits, despite providing others with healthcare themselves.

These gig nursing platforms have been pushing for legislation that would classify the nurses who use their platforms as independent contractors. They’d be defined as different entities than existing healthcare staffing agencies, as AI Now’s study explains:

“These platforms are trying to convince policymakers that their business model is not that of a healthcare staffing agency, and that they instead should be recognized as a ‘healthcare worker platform’ or a ‘healthcare technology platform.’”

The language is similar to arguments made by Uber to Massachusetts legislators in 2024—that they’re closer to a “travel agency” than a transportation company—giving them the right to keep their drivers misclassified (a European court  saw through this argument). That defense was part of a case brought against Uber and Lyft by then-Attorney General Maura Healey, who alleged they were misclassifying their drivers.

The Classification Fight for Worker’s Rights

In exchange for a $175 million settlement with Uber and Lyft, current AG Andrea Joy Campbell dropped the case before the court could rule whether rideshare drivers count as independent contractors.

Campbell’s deal forced Uber and Lyft to abandon a similar ballot initiative to Prop. 22 in Massachusetts and afford drivers a few benefits. One of those benefits, which seemingly required the companies to pay drivers $32.50/hour, falls apart after reading the fine print.

That pay rate only applies to “active hours,” meaning it counts the time when drivers are either on their way to pick up a rider or taking them to their destination, but not the time in-between, referred to as “online working hours.”

“Time spent between trips, waiting for another ride request, or deadheading back from low-demand drop-off areas is neither compensated, nor counts towards the work time thresholds to qualify for sick time, health insurance stipends, and other benefits,” reporting from Forbes explains.

Drivers have attested online that “staying busy the entire hour is impossible due to the oversaturation of drivers.” By comparing active time to online working hours, Forbes calculated the utilization rate (the percentage of time drivers actually get paid for):

For example, if Uber pays $8 for a 12-minute trip, the driver’s pay rate per active hour would be $40 – above the mandated minimum. But if this is the only offer a driver receives and accepts over the next 48 minutes, the driver’s utilization rate would be 12/60= 20% (low!) and the gross pay per working hour would only be $8 (awful!). So, utilization rate is a critical determinant of driver earnings.

This doesn’t include the burden on drivers of paying for gas and insurance, taking another chunk out of their pay. With employee status, drivers could bargain for a contract to cement a firm minimum wage.

To their credit, Campbell’s office has kept their finger on the pulse of independent contractor misclassification. The AGO’s 2026 Labor day report released by its Fair Labor Division shows that in the last year, 1,500 workers across 60 companies were misclassified, leading to more than $2.1 million in penalties and restitution.

“When workers are misclassified as independent contractors instead of employees, they are denied basic workplace rights, including guaranteed minimum wage, overtime pay, timely compensation, accrued sick leave, and more,” Campbell’s office stated in an emailed statement to Working Mass. “Addressing this harmful practice and ensuring that every worker receives the protections they deserve is one of my top priorities.”

But until a firm decision is reached on how to classify rideshare and delivery drivers, a comprehensive answer on gig workers’ rights and the next steps organized labor will need to take will remain in limbo.

There aren’t signs that federal reclassification is on the docket anytime soon, making the state level (for now) the best way forward. Although Campbell’s settlement took a similar bill to Prop. 22 off the ballot, gig work platforms have proven they’ll spend millions to tip the scales in their favor. Gig nursing platforms aren’t introducing legislation in Massachusetts that would reclassify their business like they have in other states, but that could always change.

The conversation surrounding independent contracting finds itself in a sticky spot: many gig-workers prefer the flexibility provided by the work, and use it to supplement their income when their W-2 pay doesn’t cut it. Flexibility is attractive to workers, Dr. Wells explained, due to a lack of stable, guaranteed hours and a set schedule across the labor market. Knowing their schedules ahead of time gives workers more autonomy—scheduling a doctor’s visit or picking a child up from school becomes much easier.

“I think the reality is that there is a problem with existing labor markets in so many of these sectors and, at large, that has real purchase,” said Dr. Wells. “It has so many things at play that it means people are willing to trade all kinds of protections for the allure or the possibility of flexible schedules.”

The national minimum wage has sat at $7.25 since 2009, and the lack of universal healthcare is smothering everyday Americans in medical debt. The leading reported cause of bankruptcy in the U.S. is medical debt, and we’re the only major country without a form of universal healthcare.

A long-term pathway to ending the exploitative nature of gig work and doing away with the independent contractor classification needs to come alongside ensuring workers don’t need to take on extra work to afford basic necessities, and without the threat of medical or student debt held over their heads.

In a world where everyone is guaranteed a living wage and health benefits aren’t up to the whims of your employer, gig workers could stick with their 9 to 5 or even keep driving if that’s what they’d prefer. It may sound like a pipe dream, but the system as it stands puts the working class at a severe disadvantage. Drivers can choose to pick their main job that now pays them a living wage or stay a driver, earning a living wage and receiving the same health benefits that their other job afforded them.

As companies celebrate record profits, the workers who generate that value see none of it reflected in their own paychecks. It’s undeniable that working as an independent contractor provides unmatched levels of autonomy, but that should not come at the cost of the benefits and workplace protections afforded as the bare minimum to every other worker in the country.

“The rise of [gig nursing] is a symptom of really broken labor conditions,” Dr. Wells said.

That’s how I try to think about it. And so when people say, ‘Well, let’s fix gig nursing,’ I think, ‘No, let’s fix the conditions that gave rise to gig nursing.’

Matt Wolfinger is a data journalist and a contributing writer to Working Mass.

The post When Workers, Driving Customers or Saving Lives in the ER, Become Independent Contractors appeared first on Working Mass.

By Dominick C. On Sunday, September 13th, a crowd of a few dozen organizers and tenants living at 150 and 154 Belmont Ave. swelled outside their buildings. Their voices rang […]

By Andrew W. Socialism is for everyone, and education provides power to the people. That’s why every issue of Garden State Socialist features this column, Socialist Stories: a short, educational […]

In the early 1970s, when many student activists were migrating from campus to industrial jobs to promote working class radicalization, no labor film was more influential than Salt of the Earth.

This pioneering docudrama was made two decades earlier by a producer, writer, director, and several actors who were unemployable in Hollywood, due to McCarthy era-blacklisting.

This left-wing creative team recruited a cast of workers and their families from the International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers (IUMMSW) to play themselves in a fictional account of a long strike at the Empire Zinc Company in Grant County, New Mexico. 

Local 890 members knew something about red-baiting too. Shortly before their 1951 fight for better conditions and an end to wage disparities between Anglo and Chicano workers, Mine, Mill was expelled from the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), along with the left-led United Electrical Workers (UE) and west coast longshore union, the ILWU. In 

In real life, and later on screen, the key to the success of this mining community struggle was the militant participation of strikers’ wives, mothers, daughters and sisters after their own mass picketing is enjoined by a local judge.

In Salt of the Earth, this picket-line replacement strategy, which challenged and changed traditional gender roles in a socially conservative company town, is heatedly debated by film’s two lead characters. 

Blacklisted and Deported

Playing the role of Ramon Quintera, Juan Chacon, an actual IUMMSW local president, initially objects to the strike activism of his fictional wife Esperanza, played by Mexican actress Rosaura Revueltas (who was deported for making the film). Other members of an entirely male and largely Latino workforce are similarly conflicted about the emergence of a vocal and empowered women’s auxiliary.

When Esperanza and her fellow female pickets are arrested, she takes her small baby behind bars with her. The resulting boisterous jail house protest—which prefigures southern civil rights and peace movement tactics in the 1960s--forces the sheriff to release them all. The miners’ subsequent defense of the Quintera family--when the company tries to evict them--becomes a turning point in the long strike which ends in a contract settlement.

Berkeley journalist and now first-time novelist Barry Bergman was among the many young radicals much inspired by this now iconic depiction of Mexican-American labor struggle.  Before Bergman relocated to California and began a long career as a newspaper reporter, magazine writer/editor, and communications specialist for UC Berkeley and numerous non-profits, he worked for several years in a copper smelter near Tucson.

That experience as a rank-and-file member of the United Steel Workers (USW)--which gobbled up the IUMMSW, after years of raiding it--led to his writing Proles. (Serving House Books). Bergman’s novel is a funny, moving, and historically accurate account of workplace “colonizing”—or “salting” as it’s called today-- told from the point of view of the author’s fictional alter-ego. 

Via a college course entitled “Celluloid and Social Change,” Simon Bussbaum learns about a film called City of Emeralds. He is captivated by its depiction of “dirt-poor Chicano miners in the Southwest” and their humble but charismatic leader, Naldo Galvin.

Art Imitates Life

Simon does further research and discovers that Galvin—like the real-life Juan Chacon in the 1970s—has become a dissident in the Steel Workers. The former strike organizer—and Salt of the Earth co-star-- is now rallying his co-workers against “a class collaborationist union which muscled its way into zinc and copper mines in the Sun Belt” by marketing itself as a labor-management partner, rather than a class struggle foe.

The bookish film buff from Queens (the author’s hometown as well) leaves anti-war politics behind for a very different blue-collar life in open shop Arizona. Arriving for his first shift at Cobra Copper Company (aka “ThreeCo”) near Turcson, Simon walks into a scene lifted from the film that inspired his turn toward the working class.

“Outside the giant garage doors that opened out from the smelter’s shell, hundreds of men clustered in small groups, coveralls gone or dangling at their waist. Some were standing, others lying on bare ground or using their hardhats for seats. A handful were shirtless, glistening in the sun. It might have been a disorderly line at the Fillmore East, save for the work clothes and industrial boots.” 

A new co-worker, a “hard-looking Chicano with a missing tooth, a Fu Manchu mustache and a cobra tattoo on his right forearm” tells Simon what’s going on.  “It’s a ‘wildcat,’”  explains Snake, who seems happy to follow the crazy "white dudes” who started it all by “waving their arms, walking out, and shouting, ‘Join us!”. 

Other hard hats in the now idle crowd are pissed off about losing a few hours pay. “Anarchists,” one grumbles. “Commies and agitators. They don’t like it here, can’t blame them for that. But you can’t strike till the contract’s up. That’s the law.”

A manager addresses the crowd with a bull-horn and repeats the same message. “This is an unlawful work stoppage. Your local union has not authorized this action, and joins us in ordering you to immediately cease and desist. This is your final warning.”

A Tactical Error?

The “cadre” organization members--who have inducted Simon into their small circle at a local radical bookstore--are among “the twelve people pegged as troublemakers and fired.” After this “tactical error,” Simon attends his first Steelworkers local union meeting. There, he encounters bureaucratic lethargy and business union routine familiar to many rank-and-file activists, then and now.

Only a smattering of members show-up—at a VFW hall with an “American flag on the pole outside the building and another hung on a wall behind the podium.” Much time is spent on the financial report and a reading of minutes from the last meeting. The biggest agenda item is the e-board’s unanimous decision “not to pursue grievance arbitration cases for employees who were terminated.”

As the union treasurer explains, this will result in “a big savings for the local because we could not have prevailed in defending an action that went against the ‘no strike’ clause in our own contract.” (“Good riddance,” blurts out the local’s business manager, “a pudgy man in a short sleeved white shirt,” who gavels the meeting to a close soon thereafter.)

Bergman’s workplace descriptions are equally on target. Some resemble the best passages in The Jungle, Upton Sinclair’s fictional account of job hazards in mid-western meat-packing plants a century ago or in Emperor of Gladness, Ocean Voung’s new novel about low wage work in 21st century New England.

“The smelter, known as ‘Freako,’ was a cavernous, ramshackle Big Top featuring spark-spewing furnaces, splashing cauldrons dangled from the cranes like murderous marionettes, rapids of liquid fire tumbling down in harrowing dayglow ribbons. Danger was everywhere, lurking beneath the dull roar and the rotten eggs stench. Everything black and orange, darkness and firelight, a waking nightmare Halloween that left him in terror of any possible misstep.”

Unfortunately, the hottest shop floor issue is not the threat of being scalded to death or maimed and killed in many other ways.  It’s ThreeCo’s controversial decision to hire its first female laborer, a feisty former high school athlete, who is a half-Latino and a single mother. It’s 1973, after all, and the era of equal opportunity is dawning. 

As the fictional reincarnation of Esperanza, Samantha Tanager is not just showing that she can, in a pinch, take a man’s place on the picket-line; she’s going to join them on the shop floor, in a fire-resistant orange jump suit, aluminum hard-hat, and steel-toed boots. But the sudden arrival of a “fetching copper miner’s daughter,” as a local newspaper describes her, proves to be very triggering for Bullock. 

He’s the big, tobacco-chewing redneck with “a natural talent for cruelty” that Bussbuam is assigned to work with. Already suspicious of Simon’s rather obvious East Coast Jewishness and college boy ways, Bullock views “Tanager’s admission to the sacred sanctum of the smelter as sacrilege, a grievous affront to the Code of the Working Stiff, Nonferrous Division.” 

Besides, he believes that Samantha is a lesbian. (Spoiler alert: much to Simon’s love-struck chagrin, Bullock’s gaydar is right.)

Casual Racism

Simon’s New Left idealism is now further tested amid Freako’s “dark, depraved beauty, which reeked of musty maleness that gave rise to a loose-knit, shambling ‘esprit de corps, wrapped in a kind of casual racism and sexism so expansive, so deeply rooted, it had started to feel—Simon not being of this world, and without standing perhaps to judge his co-workers’ cultural values—like just another flavor of assholism.”

When that “assholism” takes the form of a nasty campaign by Bullock to make Tanager’s life miserable on the job, Simon’s own personal class struggle ends in a parking lot brawl between two “union brothers.” It doesn’t end well for the new hire and little resembles more heroic scuffles, between labor and management, in Salt of The Earth. 

But it does lead Bussbaum to bid blue-collar life adieu and head for the greener pastures of California. (Tanager and her female partner leave for the more tolerant Texas oasis of Austin.)

Proles was definitely not written as a how-too manual for members of the Rank-and-File Project, a present-day effort to “recruit, educate, and support a new generation of activists who will join the fight for working-class power by taking union jobs on the shop floor.” 

But the book should be required reading, in such circles anyway, due to its deft exploration of the nexus between the personal and the political. Any left-wing “salt” trying to befriend un-class conscious (and sometimes weird) co-workers, while dealing with draining night shifts, imperious managers and not much nicer union bosses, will find humorous respite in Barry Bergman’s fictional rendering of his real-life experience with the “salt of the earth” in Arizona fifty years ago.

We, the undersigned DSA chapters of the State of Minnesota, denounce and strongly condemn the escalation of xenophobic rhetoric that the Trump administration is intentionally directing at our communities. The President’s recent othering and dehumanizing of Minnesota's Somali communities encourages violence, both from his supporters and the violent and unaccountable national security state.

Minnesota is stronger because of our Somali and other immigrant communities. Immigrants are our friends, co-workers, teachers, community leaders, and more. As Minnesotans, we know who we are and we won’t fall for dishonest actors spreading disinformation and hateful, divisive rhetoric about our immigrant neighbors. No Minnesotan should feel unsafe or unwelcome because of their faith, heritage, or background. We stand in solidarity with our Somali and immigrant neighbors, and the Minnesota 15 who are facing retaliatory punishment for standing alongside our community. 

This past winter, armed agents of the fascist federal government attempted to tear down our communities by force. But Minnesotans’ depth of organized resistance cannot be dismantled. We have organized by the thousands across race, class, and faith to effectively defend our neighbors and communities. We built a decentralized network based on the collective awareness and shared vision that we all deserve to live, thrive, and be protected in our places of work, worship, and homes. We have shown the world that the vast majority of Americans will not tolerate our communities being turned into high tech laboratories of surveillance and occupation. We have shown the world that we will not accept having our hardworking neighbors terrorized and disappeared out of their homes. 

In response to our show of street power, fascist politicians are once again using lies about immigrants in an attempt to incite fear, violence, and division. They think this tactic will help them win the upcoming midterm elections, but we are united in our vision for justice, liberation, and a better world. They fear our movements because we are powerful, principled, and we are angry. 

As the Minnesota chapters of the Democratic Socialists of America, we encourage our members and our neighbors to keep showing up for one another. Join your neighborhood group, host a community dinner, check in with a friend, get plugged into rapid response, and of course, join DSA and organize your community!

Stay strong. Solidarity and sincerity forever.

SIGNED: Twin Ports DSA, Twin Cities DSA, Brainerd Lakes Area DSA, St. Cloud DSA, Red River Valley DSA, Southeast Minnesota DSA

Policy gains are unlikely so long as Trump holds the presidency — but a historically large socialist bloc in Congress could demand changes to how the House is run that would shape the body’s post-Trump trajectory.

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