The App Drivers Union (ADU) said on Monday that they have been recognised by the US state of Massachusetts, making it the first certified Uber/Lyft drivers union in the nation.
The ADU said that it will represent nearly 70,000 drivers in the state, which would be the largest group of private-sector workers to have their union recognised since Ford workers joined the United Auto Workers in 1941.
The union’s executive director, Autumn Weintraub said: ‘It’s one of the biggest organising union victories in the last century.’
The App Drivers Union received support from 32 per cent of active ride-share drivers, Massachusetts’ Department of Labour Relations found, above the 25 per cent threshold required by state law for certification.
Democrat Governor of Massachusetts’ Maura Healey said: ‘This is a historic day for the state, for the country.
‘Being able to unionise means better pay, better wages for them, for their families, so it’s a really great thing.
‘We want people in Massachusetts to have the kind of wages that can support their families.’
As a recognised union, the App Drivers Union will be able to collectively bargain on behalf of the state’s ride-share drivers for a contract.
Massachusetts voters approved ride-share drivers’ right to unionise in 2024, with 54% approving the ballot measure.
The App Drivers Union is affiliated with the Service Employees International Union and International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.
The presidents of both organisations attended a rally in Boston on Monday.
Meanwhile, over 140 members of Teamsters Local 350 at Recology in San Mateo in California have voted overwhelmingly to ratify a new five-year contract that delivers major gains in wages, retirement benefits, and workplace protections.
The agreement includes a 25 per cent wage increase, enhanced retirement benefits, and important protections against surveillance by cameras in and around trucks.
Brian Marshall, a sanitation driver and bargaining committee member said: ‘This is a huge win for all of us.
‘Securing a strong contract like this makes all the difference in the world so that we can provide for our families and stay safe on the job.
‘We clock in to work every day to keep our communities clean and healthy. This contract delivers the compensation and respect we have earned.’
Recology Teamsters service hundreds of commercial and residential routes collecting waste, recycling, and compost throughout San Mateo County, including communities like Belmont, Burlingame, East Palo Alto, Foster City, Menlo Park, Redwood City, San Carlos, San Mateo, Hillsborough, and part of the West Bay Sanitary District.
Robert Sandoval, Secretary-Treasurer of Local 350 said: ‘This strong contract is the result of worker militancy.
‘Earlier this year, our members unanimously voted to authorise a strike, making clear that they were done with Recology’s delays and disrespect at the bargaining table.
‘Recology Teamsters spoke with a unified voice and we are proud to secure an agreement that raises standards across the industry.’
- Alabama cannot use a new Republican-friendly map in this year’s midterm elections because it was drawn to intentionally discriminate against black voters, a panel of three federal judges ruled on Tuesday.
The decision blocks Alabama from using a congressional map lawmakers passed in 2023 but never went into effect because the same court found it was drawn with intent to discriminate.
Alabama was eventually ordered to adopt a map with two majority-black districts that both elected Democrats.
After the US supreme court gutted a major provision of the Voting Rights Act in April, Alabama took the extraordinary step of moving its imminent congressional primary and sought to use the 2023 congressional map this year.
The state is likely to appeal to the US supreme court.
However, Tuesday’s ruling is significant because the judges said the supreme court’s landmark ruling on the Voting Rights Act did not permit Alabama to use the map.
‘We cannot see our way clear to requiring Alabamans to cast their votes in the 2026 elections under a districting plan tainted by intentional race-based discrimination,’ the court wrote in its opinion.
- Andy Kim, a Democratic senator, said he was pepper sprayed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on Monday during a protest at a New Jersey detention facility.
Video posted on social media showed Kim receiving help from a volunteer who is seen pouring water in his eyes outside Delaney Hall where detainees are staging a hunger strike against poor conditions and denial of medical care.
Demonstrators clashed with immigration officers who used batons and pepper spray as they attempted to transfer a detainee who organised the hunger strike to another facility.
Kim, a senator for New Jersey, joined the state’s governor, Mikie Sherrill, at the protest to speak with relatives of some of those detained.
He said that the incident in which he was sprayed by a chemical substance came shortly after he had been inside Delaney Hall to see conditions for himself.
He said he emerged to a stand-off between protesters and agents from ICE, who he said had deployed an armoured vehicle as a barricade, and that he ‘kind of lined up in front of them’ to try to de-escalate the situation.
Kim added: ‘ICE officials told me that they were going to push through the crowd with their vehicle and they wanted to get some vehicles out of there.
‘I tried to arrange a situation where people would not get hurt, where there wouldn’t be a confrontation. Unfortunately, ICE just continued on.’
People were ‘getting tackled and brought to the ground’ and ICE ‘started pushing through with their vehicles’ and ‘started shooting at us with pepper balls and using pepper spray’, he said.
‘I tried to do whatever I could standing in the middle to keep people safe.’
Kim said he saw ‘chaos inside and outside’ of the facility.
He continued: ‘Instead of engaging with me and others about the poor conditions, ICE sent in an armoured vehicle and a line of armed agents that only poured gasoline on the fire,’ he wrote.
‘What I witnessed and experienced today was shameful. Delaney Hall is a failure; it’s this administration’s failure.
‘The only way to make this right for our communities is to shut it down and make sure the failures we’ve seen never happen again.’
Demonstrators have been at Delaney Hall since last Friday, alleging detainees have been denied fresh food and medical care, and that air conditioning was not working.
Tensions escalated during Sunday when word spread that authorities were planning to move Martin Soto, a detainee who announced the strike, to another facility.
A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson said on Monday ‘agitators’ had blocked the agency’s initial attempt to move him, but that he had been successfully transferred to the Elizabeth contract detention facility about seven miles away ‘later in the evening’.
Violence continued through the early hours. At about 1am Monday, ICE agents blocked the roadway along Delaney Hall’s back gate, Gothamist reported, seemingly to let out vehicles.
Demonstrators confronted ICE agents and some tried blocking their vehicles.
ICE agents responded by clearing the area with force, pushing them on to sidewalks and shoving them into parked cars, Gothamist said.
The website reported that at least one demonstrator was pepper-sprayed and one suffered a leg injury.
Several other Democratic politicians, including Sherrill and the congressman Rob Menendez, were at the demonstration earlier in the day on Monday, but not present when Kim was sprayed.
The senator said that his eyes and throat were still burning.
He said he would continue to fight the ‘lawlessness and unaccountability perpetuated by the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress’.
