Terri Gerstein Celebrates “Win for Drivers and Democracy”

Terri Gerstein (’95), Director of the State and Local Enforcement Project at the Harvard Law School Labor and Worklife Program, authored an article for The American Prospect praising a Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling rejecting a November ballot initiative on gig driver employee classification for violating the state constitution’s “single subject” rule (“In Massachusetts, a Limit on Gig Companies’ Deceptions,” June 17). “It wasn’t, in the end, a case about whether gig workers should be employees or independent contractors, or about tort liability. It was about the power of well-funded companies to use their bazillions to get their way. In this sense, the broad-based campaign opposing the ballot initiative struck at the crux of the issue when they chose their name: Massachusetts Is Not For Sale. They came together: workers, unions, civil rights and immigrant rights’ organizations, environmentalists, seniors, and more, to make sure that massive out-of-state companies didn’t get to rewrite long-established protective workplace laws. Understood in this framework, Tuesday’s decision is part of an even larger trend: the public’s growing understanding that these seemingly invincible companies aren’t so invincible after all.”

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