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A couple of years ago, after Magaly refused to give her phone number to a passenger she’d picked up outside a Lawrence bar, he unleashed a torrent of profane insults. When they arrived at his destination, he refused to get out at first, lunging at her and grabbing at her bra. He also threatened to report her to the company. When she called to report the incident, she said the company apologized and said they would never match her with that passenger again.
“They should have suspended him,” Magaly said, speaking Spanish through a translator. “Other drivers wouldn’t be safe with this guy.”
The mother of two asked that her full name be withheld because she’s afraid speaking publicly will get her in trouble with the ride-hail companies.
One afternoon in January, Victoria, 45, was attacked by a man because he didn’t like the route she was taking.
“He said so many insulting things to me,” said the slight woman, a widowed mother of three young adults. “Then he was manhandling my arm, shaking my arm so I couldn’t drive. As if hitting me would get me on the right road.”
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She pressed the emergency button on her rideshare app and was told to call 911. When the police arrived, they coaxed her passenger out of her car, but seemed uninterested in pursuing the matter further, she said. Shaken, Victoria drove right home.
“I was such a wreck,” she said. “I felt so humiliated.”
That is not even her worst experience. A couple of years ago, she picked up two drunk men from Back Bay who groped at her breasts and thighs as she tried to drive. She got out of her running car at a red light, leaving the men and her phone inside it. A passerby called 911 and the men fled. She doesn‘t believe police ever pursued the matter. She has never driven at night since, instead working the less well-paying hours from 5 am to 5 p.m., six days a week. She worked as a paralegal before coming here from the Dominican Republic, and would gladly do other work here, but her English is not good enough for most jobs, she said through a translator.
Elizabeth, 33, picked up a customer in Quincy one afternoon who repeatedly asked her how much it would cost to have sex with her.
“I immediately started shaking, and I remember thinking, ‘How am I going to defend myself? The only thing I can do is crash this car,’” she said through a translator. She drove him to his home but he refused to get out, until she threatened to call 911.
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She, too, asked that her full name not be used, because she is afraid her rideshare companies will freeze her access to the apps, even temporarily, as they do sometimes when a customer complains. She thought about calling the police after the incident, but didn’t want to cause trouble.
“They are always telling us how each customer is so important,” she said.
These are the people at the center of the battle over gig workers in Massachusetts. Some unions, including 32BJ SEIU, are pressing legislation that would allow them to organize those workers. Other unions, and legislators including Senator Lydia Edwards, are pushing measures that would go further, classifying drivers as employees, so they qualify for many more protections. As they have in other states, the rideshare companies are pouring millions into combating that reclassification effort, advocating for ballot questions that would keep drivers as independent contractors.
The rideshare companies argue that contractor status allows their drivers to maintain independence and flexibility. It also protects the companies’ bottom lines. Edwards cites numbers from an upcoming state auditor’s report showing that, based on drivers’ $1.4 billion in gross earnings in Massachusetts last year, the companies avoided paying some $47 million to unemployment insurance, family medical leave, and other contributions required of companies with employees.
“It’s not flexibility they care about, it’s profit,” said the East Boston Democrat.
In statements, Uber and Lyft said they care immensely about the safety of their drivers, and are regularly introducing measures to better protect them. They also say serious incidents are extremely rare — though rare in an industry this big means thousands of cases nationally each year.
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Each company has introduced in-app emergency buttons that allow drivers and riders to make direct contact with security consultants or emergency responders, and real-time tracking that will set off an alarm if a ride veers off course or is stopped for too long. Uber is expanding its verification of rider identities, and Lyft has introduced a feature called Women + Connect that matches women and nonbinary drivers with more women and nonbinary riders. Both companies say riders are in fact suspended for serious or multiple offenses, and that drivers are never penalized for bringing safety concerns to them.
This is all great. But to take advantage of many of the features that protect them — particularly when it comes to getting their harassers or attackers banned — drivers need to feel secure enough to pursue complaints against passengers. And according to these women, and to the unions and legislators trying to protect them, they simply do not: The gig economy can be a cruel, capricious place, where pay and conditions are subservient to the whims of the market and the moment, and where even companies with good intentions owe drivers nothing.
Unions and labor laws exist to make sure companies do the right thing by their workers. Having union backing would mean drivers wouldn’t be alone when trouble arises with passengers, or the company. They’d have access to advocates who could challenge the companies for kicking them off the apps, for example, and to counselors and legal help during crises.
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“They need a collective voice to improve wages and working conditions,” said Mike Vartabedian, an official at the International Association of Machinists, which backs legislation to unionize the workers.
Edwards says they need more than that — employee status, which would give drivers and other gig workers access to labor laws, and protections against harassment and discrimination.
“When you rely on the kindness of a corporation, you’re basically saying we should trust them and their bottom line to do right by workers,” said the senator. “I’m saying we should trust the law.”
Victoria will take whatever help she can get.
“We need somebody who can stand up for us,” she said. “Right now, we have nobody but ourselves.”
Globe columnist Yvonne Abraham can be reached at yvonne.abraham@globe.com.
