Gig Worker Protections in NYC and Brazil: Two Examples of Government Action on Platform Workers' Rights
Workers for platform-based companies (Uber, DoorDash, etc.) face multiple challenges: low and unpredictable pay, few/no benefits, often unsafe working conditions, and more. Please join us to learn about recent studies on the actual earnings of gig workers in the U.S., to explore the impact of the gig company business model, and to hear about how New York City has emerged as a national leader in establishing pay standards for drivers and delivery workers. We will also explore a comparative international perspective, and learn about the challenges facing gig workers in Brazil and government action in relation to these workers.
Speakers include:
From New York City government:
- Meera Joshi, NYC Deputy Mayor Meera Joshi
- Elizabeth Wagoner, Deputy Commissioner of the Office of Labor Policy & Standards, NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection
Academic experts:
- Veena Dubal, Law Professor, University of California, Irvine School of Law
- Vitor Filgueiras, Professor of economics at the Federal University of Bahia, Brazil; also serving as a programs manager in the FUNDACENTRO, the Brazilian Ministry of Labor’s health and safety foundation.
- James Parrot, Director of Economic and Fiscal Policies at the Center for New York City Affairs, The New School
Moderated by Terri Gerstein, Director, NYU Wagner Labor Initiative
Veena Dubal is a Professor at the University of California, Irvine School of Law. Her research focuses broadly on law, technology, and precarious workers, combining legal and empirical analysis to explore issues of labor and inequality. Her work encompasses a range of topics, including the impact of digital technologies and emerging legal frameworks on workers' lives, the interplay between law, work, and identity, and the role of law and lawyers in solidarity movements.
Professor Dubal has written numerous articles in top law and social science journals and publishes essays in the popular press. Her research has been cited internationally in legal decisions, including by the California Supreme Court, and her research and commentary are regularly featured in media outlets, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, NPR, CNN, etc.
Prof. Dubal received a B.A. from Stanford University and holds J.D. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, where she conducted an ethnography of the San Francisco taxi industry. The subject of her doctoral research arose from her work as a public interest attorney and Berkeley Law Foundation Fellow at the Asian Law Caucus where she founded a taxi worker project and represented Muslim Americans in civil rights cases. Prof. Dubal completed a post-doctoral fellowship at her alma mater, Stanford University. She returned to Stanford again in 2022 as a Residential Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. Prof. Dubal is the recipient of numerous awards and grants, including the Fulbright, for her scholarship and previous work as a public interest lawyer.
Vitor Filgueiras is a Professor in the Graduate Program in Economics at the Federal University of Bahia. Professor Filgueuiras is currently serving in the Fundacentro, the Brazilian Ministry of Labor's health and safety foundation, where he coordinates projects related to labor reform. He is the author of the book It's All New Again, published by Boitempo, which analyzes the nature of the "great transformations" of contemporary capitalism. Professor Filgueiras holds a post-doctorate in economics from the State University of Campinas (Unicamp), a doctorate in social sciences from UFBA, a master's degree in political science from Unicamp, and a degree in economics from UFBA. He was secretary of the Brazilian Association of Labor Studies (Abet) between 2018 and 2019 and the Tax Auditor of the Ministry of Labor between 2007 and 2017.
Terri Gerstein is the Director of the newly created NYU Wagner Labor Initiative, at the NYU Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. Previously, she directed the Project on State and Local Enforcement at the Harvard Law School Center for Labor and a Just Economy and was a Senior Fellow at the Economic Policy Institute. She is also a former Open Society Foundations Leadership in Government Fellow. Terri was a longtime public servant in New York state government; she worked for over 17 years enforcing labor laws, including as the Labor Bureau Chief for the New York State Attorney General’s Office, and as a Deputy Commissioner in the New York State Department of Labor. Before her government service, Terri was a nonprofit lawyer in Miami, Florida, where she represented immigrant workers and also co-hosted a Spanish language radio show on workers’ rights. She speaks and writes frequently about labor and workers' rights issues, with bylines in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Slate, CNN, The American Prospect, Teen Vogue, and more. She has testified in the U.S. Senate and in a number of state legislatures. Terri is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School.
Meera Joshi is the Deputy Mayor for Operations in New York City, overseeing New York City’s infrastructure, public realm, and climate portfolio. Everyday, her teams work to expand the City’s open, green and aquatic space, reduce New York City’s building and transportation emissions as well as its waste stream, and protect New Yorkers from the ever-mounting threats from excessive heat and rainwater. This is done while ensuring that the city’s concrete infrastructure, such as water and sewer systems, miles of roadway, sidewalk, bike and bus lanes, hundreds of bridges, and tens of thousands of acres of parkland, and core foundational services, such as trash collections and clean drinking water, are strong, resilient, and reliable.
Prior to joining the Adam’s Administration, Meera Joshi was President Biden’s nominee for Administrator of USDOT’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the agency responsible for regulation of interstate trucking. In this role, Meera led initiatives aimed at improving roadway safety, the working conditions of truck drivers and accountability mechanisms to integrate automation. She was previously Chair and CEO of the New York Taxi and Limousine Commission, the nation’s largest for-hire transportation regulator where she spearheaded Vision Zero campaigns keeping high risk drivers and unsafe vehicles off the road and led landmark policy, including establishing robust open transportation data standards; enacting the nation’s first for-hire driver pay protection program and providing broad and on demand access to for-hire transportation for passengers who use wheelchairs. In addition to transportation oversight, Meera was the Inspector General for New York City’s Department of Corrections, responsible for investigation of corruption and criminality at all levels of New York City’s jail operations and the First Deputy Executive Director of New York City’s Civilian Complaint Review Board, leading investigations of civilian allegations of police misconduct.
In addition to her government transportation experience, Meera served as General Manager for the New York Office of Sam Schwartz Transportation Consultants and was a visiting scholar at New York University’s Rudin Center for Transportation Policy.
Meera Joshi was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She holds B.A. and J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.
James Parrott is the Director of Economic and Fiscal Policies at the Center for New York City Affairs at The New School. Parrott’s recent research projects include analyses of the of the economic impact of the Covid-19 crisis in New York City, and of the magnitude of gig and other low-paid independent contract work in New York State. He has studied the effect of New York’s $15 minimum wage and pay inequities in the nonprofit New York City contract workforce.
Parrott co-authored, along with Michael Reich of the University of California, Berkeley, the analysis that led to New York City’s first-in- the-nation minimum pay standard for app-dispatched drivers. In July 2020, Parrott and Reich released a similar study commissioned the City of Seattle. Parrott has several years of experience studying the New York City and State economies and labor markets, and analyzing labor, city and state budget and tax policies.
He has a PhD in Economics from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and in previous positions has worked for the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, the City of New York’s economic development strategy office, the Office of the State Comptroller for New York City, and the Fiscal Policy Institute. He has taught at Hunter College, The New School, and CUNY’s Murphy Institute.
Elizabeth Wagoner is the Deputy Commissioner of the Office of Labor Policy & Standards in the New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, which investigates and enforces NYC worker protections, including the Paid Safe and Sick Leave Law, the Fair Workweek Laws in fast food and retail, and Delivery Worker Laws protecting app-based restaurant delivery workers. Under Elizabeth’s leadership, in 2023 DCWP set a minimum pay rate of $19.96 per hour for delivery workers at Uber, DoorDash, and Grubhub, raising their pay from just $7.09 per hour. DCWP has also become a national leader in using data analytics to enforce worker protections, which has recently resulted in several multi-million-dollar settlements with national fast-food chains to compensate workers for violations of scheduling protections, including a $21 million settlement with Chipotle. Elizabeth joined DCWP in 2019,serving as Director of Investigations and then as Legal Director. Prior to joining DCWP, she held litigation roles focused on low-wage workers’ rights at the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty, the Labor Bureau of the New York State Office of the Attorney General, Outten & Golden LLP, and Make the Road New York. Elizabeth earned her J.D. from the University of Texas School of Law and a B.S. in Foreign Service from Georgetown University.
