2.5 hours of CLE credit for General (Topical content, skills training, law practice management) through the State Bar of CA (a certificate will be emailed after completion)
Sponsored by the NLG Labor and Employment Committee
Millions of people across the globe are working in what is now known as the “gig economy,” which has been advertised as a new type of employment model that provides workers the “freedom” to work when and how they want. However, this new “freedom” is reserved for corporations like Uber and Lyft to deny the people who work for them fundamental worker protections, such as the right to a minimum wage, protections from discrimination, overtime compensation, workers’ compensation in the event of workplace injury, the right to engage in collective action and form unions with coworkers, and more.
In recent years, “gig” companies like Uber and Lyft have dumped hundreds of millions of dollars into litigation fighting employee misclassification lawsuits, political lobbying, and notably in California (and soon to be in Massachusetts), ballot initiatives seeking to legislatively enshrine their precarious worker business model into law. At each turn, organizers, workers, labor unions, community groups, and lawyers have organized and fought against the attempted “gigification” of the economy and workplace. Nationally, labor unions and their allies have been pushing Congress to pass the Protecting the Right to Organize (or “PRO”) Act, which would make it much more difficult for companies like Uber and Lyft to misclassify their employees and deny them the right to organize unions.
The CLE will explore moves that gig companies are making worldwide to make the lives of working-class people unstable, and more importantly, the organizing and legal strategies that workers, communities and lawyers are leading to resist these attacks. First, we’ll hear from organizers and policy experts on the organizing and campaign efforts challenging the precarious gig economy. Then, we’ll hear from lawyers who will discuss legal challenges in places like California, Massachusetts, and New York, as well as why Congress must act now to pass the PRO Act.
Moderators:
M.S.M. Ramirez is a Co-Chair of NLG’s Labor and Employment Committee. Since undergraduate school, she has been passionate about workers’ rights and labor unions in both public and private sectors. She joined the National Lawyers Guild as a law student at the University of the District of Columbia School of Law. Prior to law school, she was a U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer in Senegal, where she focused efforts on environmental education and gender equality/women’s empowerment. As a Pinay-American, she hopes to channel the legacy of Larry Itliong in her everyday work.
Sarah David Heydemann is a Co-Chair of NLG’s Labor and Employment Committee. She is a long-time advocate for workers’ rights and currently works at the National Women’s Law Center as Senior Counsel, working to ensure that all people can enjoy full security, equality and dignity at work. Previously she worked at a law firm representing labor unions, and before law school was a union and workers’ center organizer. As a queer Jew in the labor movement, she draws on the lessons of Rose Schneiderman as a guiding influence.
Panelists:
Caitlin Vega began as an AFL-CIO union organizer at 18. She became a labor lawyer, worked for SEIU and Teamsters locals, and spent 16 years at the California Labor Federation, where she served as Legislative Director. In 2020, she founded Union Made, a union-side lobbying and policy shop. She now works with international, statewide and local unions in legislative, political and contract campaigns to build worker power. In all her work, she is guided by the memory of her dad who raised her in this movement, taught her to fight and told her to never give up hope.
Mark Gaston Pearce is a visiting professor and executive director of the Georgetown University Law Center, Workers’ Rights Institute. Formerly a two term Board Member and twice designated Chairman of the National Labor Relations Board, Mr. Pearce is a graduate of Cornell University and University at Buffalo Law School. He has taught at Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations and currently teaches at Georgetown’s Law School. With decades of practice with the NLRB and with a labor law firm that he co-founded; Mr. Pearce continued to serve the public as a Board Member on the New York State Industrial Board of Appeals. He has advised and testified before Congress regarding the need for labor law reform and been appointed by President Biden to the Federal Service Impasse Panel of the Federal Labor Relations Authority.
Mike Firestone is an attorney, labor policy advisor, and political strategist with a background in campaigns and government service. He is the Director of the Coalition to Protect Workers' Rights, an organization formed to oppose the Uber/Big Tech-funded Proposition 22-copycat ballot measure in Massachusetts, and Interim Managing Director of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School. Previously, Mike led voter protection efforts for the Biden-Harris campaign in Michigan and served as an assistant attorney general and Chief of Staff to Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, overseeing a broad range of legal and policy matters, including the rulemaking and implementation of the Massachusetts paid sick time law. In 2014, Mike managed Attorney General Healey's campaign, for which he was named Campaign Manager of the Year by the American Association of Political Consultants. He previously served as the field director for U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) in 2012 and U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) in 2008. Mike is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School. He lives with his wife and two young children in Somerville, Mass.
Nicole (Nikki) Horberg Decter currently serves as Counsel to the Massachusetts-based Coalition to Protect Workers’ Rights. She is a partner at Segal Roitman, LLP, which has exclusively represented, unions, workers, and jointly trusteed health and benefit funds for over 50 years and is principally committed to securing equity and dignity for all workers. Nikki joined Segal Roitman in 2007 and represents union clients in collective bargaining, litigation, and legislative and regulatory advocacy. Her union clients hail from a diverse array of public and private sector industries and include skilled trades, service, municipal government, transportation, public education, and utility unions. Nikki also represents individual and groups of employees in wage and hour and anti-discrimination litigation. She lives with her family in Brookline, Massachusetts.
Nicole Moore is a Los Angeles based, part-time driver and one of the founding members of Rideshare Drivers United - a driver run organization fighting for improved working conditions, a real voice for drivers in the industry, and basic labor rights for all app-based workers. Rideshare Drivers United has 20,000 driver members in California.
Zubin Soleimany is an attorney at the New York Taxi Workers Alliance ("NYTWA"). The NYTWA is a union of professional New York City drivers who work in the yellow taxi, black car, and green cab industries that fights for fair working conditions for drivers in all sectors of New York's taxi and for-hire vehicle industries by challenging employee misclassification, and fighting for the creation and enforcement of livable income standards for drivers through City regulation.
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