Uber, Lyft and Others Launch Marketing campaign to Head Off Unions

“If I need to work 20 minutes per week, or 30 hours, I can try this,” says one employee within the advert. “After I want a time without work to check for an enormous examination, I can try this,” says one other.

The brand new advocacy effort by the app-based firms comes as some lawmakers in Congress and in statehouses push measures to reclassify their part-time staff from impartial contractors to staff who can be eligible for extra firm advantages and be permitted to affix labor unions.

Kristin Sharp,

the chief govt officer of the advocacy group, referred to as Flex, says the business’s enterprise mannequin is predicated on utilizing impartial contractors to carry down labor prices—and the charges charged to clients. The common app-based employee spends about eight hours per week on the job, in line with the business’s knowledge.

“Staff are voting with their ft and are flocking to app-based work as a result of it provides them higher work-life steadiness,” Ms. Sharp mentioned. “Our big-picture objective is to make sure that individuals who need to be versatile can accomplish that.”

The group mentioned it plans to spend greater than $1 million on the adverts.

Labor unions say that

Uber

UBER -4.22%

and different gig-economy firms exploit their staff by not giving them sufficient hours on the job to qualify for healthcare and different advantages.

They’ve the help of Democrats in Congress and President Biden, who in final week’s State of the Union handle referred to as on Congress to approve the Defending the Proper to Manage (PRO) Act, which has a provision that might reclassify some part-time, app-based staff as conventional staff.

“When a majority of staff need to type a union, they shouldn’t be stopped,” Mr. Biden mentioned.

The brand new marketing campaign echoes one which Uber, Lyft and others fought in California in 2020.

The California Legislature in 2019 enacted a regulation that created a three-step take a look at to find out whether or not staff needs to be thought-about impartial contractors or staff.

The businesses responded by qualifying an initiative for the November 2020 poll to exempt drivers from the regulation. Uber, Lyft and different supporters closely outspent labor teams and different opponents, and the initiative handed with 59% of the votes within the majority-Democratic state. Appeals of the measure are working their means by way of the courts.

The business has waged different battles over worker advantages in Miami, New York and Massachusetts. Now it’s turning its give attention to Washington, the place Mr. Biden and congressional Democrats are growing their calls to go the PRO Act. The measure would create new labor guidelines, enhance fines on firms which might be discovered to violate labor legal guidelines and customarily make it simpler for staff to type labor unions.

The Home accredited the laws final yr, but it surely has stalled within the Senate. Union leaders and prime Democrats say they consider it may win Senate approval partly as a result of it has been endorsed by Sen.

Joe Manchin

(D., W.Va.), a key Democratic vote who has blocked a few of Mr. Biden’s different priorities.

The creation of the brand new business group exhibits how advocacy from Silicon Valley tech firms is evolving as web firms’ priorities diverge.

A few of Flex’s members had beforehand been members of the Web Affiliation, a commerce group created to present web firms a unified voice in Washington. That group additionally represented such giants as

Alphabet Inc.’s

Google and

Meta Platforms Inc.’s

Fb. The affiliation dissolved final yr amid rigidity over its members’ conflicting priorities on competitors coverage and different points.

A separate group of firms together with

Snap Inc.

and Reddit Inc. created their very own group in 2020 to foyer in opposition to proposed modifications to Part 230, a regulation shielding apps and web sites from legal responsibility for internet hosting user-generated content material.

Write to Brody Mullins at brody.mullins@wsj.com and Ryan Tracy at ryan.tracy@wsj.com