Drivers and arranged labor leaders will as soon as once more ask the state’s highest court docket to spike a well-funded, industry-led marketing campaign seeking to reshape the connection between firms like Uber and Lyft and their app-based workforce.
For the second straight election cycle, opponents filed a grievance alleging the sequence of proposed poll questions sought by the businesses are unconstitutional. They contend the proposal to outline drivers as impartial contractors and create some new advantages mixes too many discrete subjects.
The state Constitution requires initiative petitions to focus solely on associated or mutually dependent points, and the plaintiffs — which embody particular person app-based drivers in addition to public figures comparable to Mass. Building Trades Union President Frank Callahan — contend that the 5 variations of the query attain throughout too many elements of state legislation.
“The Petitions represent precisely what the framers of [the Constitution’s article 48] feared: an effort by deep-pocketed special interests to circumvent the usual legislative process and convince voters to adopt a lengthy industry wish-list of policies, relying on multiple versions, densely worded legalese and illusory promises to confuse voters and gain success at the ballot box,” they wrote of their grievance. “The framers of art. 48 sought to protect against such an effort by adopting the relatedness requirement.”
Two years in the past, the Supreme Judicial Court blocked an earlier model of the impartial contractor measure from showing earlier than voters, ruling {that a} part of that model improperly mixed adjustments to the connection between firms and drivers with provisions governing the businesses’ legal responsibility when somebody is injured by certainly one of their staff.
Plaintiffs additionally alleged of their new grievance that Attorney General Andrea Campbell’s workplace fell in need of its accountability to provide correct summaries of every initiative petition, arguing that the paperwork fail to assist voters distinguish between the 5 variations of the poll query that stay in play.
Leaders of the Flexibility and Benefits for Massachusetts Drivers marketing campaign pushing the poll questions have argued that they redrafted their proposal to keep away from the identical pitfall that sunk their effort in 2022.
“Special interests are determined to keep us off the ballot because they cannot match the enthusiastic support we’re already seeing from voters, drivers, community leaders, and small business owners,” stated Conor Yunits, a spokesperson for the marketing campaign. “Our ballot language has been thoughtfully tailored to incorporate feedback from the SJC; the Attorney General certified all of our petitions; and the Legislature is now considering our question. We are confident this cynical legal attempt to block the question will fail and that Massachusetts voters will make their voices heard.”
Adding to an already-complicated panorama, Uber and Lyft this spring are scheduled to go to trial in a years-long lawsuit that former Attorney General Maura Healey filed claiming their present enterprise practices violate state labor legal guidelines. Other organized labor teams together with 32BJ SEIU and the International Association of Machinists are pursuing their very own poll query that might give drivers on these platforms the flexibility to unionize.
— Chris Lisinski / State House News Service
Source: www.bostonherald.com”