UFCW signs controversial closed-door deal with Uber

“The opposite of everything the labour movement should be doing”

By Dan Darrah and Doug Nesbitt

On January 27, Uber Canada and the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) announced they reached a “landmark agreement” covering 100,000 Uber workers in Canada.

As the press release states, “UFCW Canada can provide representation if requested by drivers and delivery people facing an account deactivation or other account dispute issues, including representation throughout the existing third-party dispute resolution process.”

Uber says that “through this agreement, we’re prioritizing what drivers and delivery people tell us they want: enhancing their flexibility to work if, when, and where they want with a stronger voice and new benefits and protections.”

Together, UFCW and Uber will “press provincial governments” for “industry-wide legislative standards – like minimum earnings standard, a benefits fund, and access to workers’ rights – across the country.”

The announcement came as a big surprise to unions like Gig Workers United (GWU). GWU organizes couriers in Ontario and had no clue the agreement — which affects their members — was coming.

“It’s not democratic,” says GWU Vice President Brice Sopher. “It’s not worker-driven.”

“You’re supposed to be a union and instead you’re just collaborating with the boss,” Sopher continues. “Gig Workers United is fighting for 100 percent of workers’ rights. This is a concession. This is saying ‘workers do not deserve 100 percent.’ It’s saying they deserve less. And it’s been decided by people above. It’s very disturbing.”

Uber’s Flexible Work+

The UFCW-Uber agreement sounds awfully similar to Uber’s Flexible Work+ plan released in 2021.

Flexible Work+ called on provincial governments to pass legislation entrenching the legal fiction of Uber workers as “independent contractor”, thus preventing them from unionizing and accessing worker benefits like Employment Insurance and Workers’ Compensation. They sugarcoated the plan with the creation of a weak benefits fund.

Unions attacked Flexible Work+ as an effort to exclude gig workers from the same rights as other workers while dangling a thin benefits fund in gig workers’ faces. In March 2021, UFCW Canada released a statement condemning Uber’s Flexible Work+ plan. UFCW’s Pablo Gadoy stated:

“This is just Uber’s latest tactic to circumvent the labour laws and deny Uber workers the same rights as other workers. The idea that employers like Uber would like to unilaterally impose business models is not only a dangerous proposition. It also ignores decades of hard-fought legislation meant to protect workers.”

Similarly, Gig Workers United, the union organizing couriers in Ontario, said Uber’s Flexible Work+ plan would “prevent Canadian gig workers from organizing, and to allow Uber to avoid confronting the real problems of dwindling pay and precarity.”

Gig workers have long criticized the language of “flexibility,” noting that it often provides cover for companies like Uber who don’t want to recognize workers’ status as employees or abide by labour laws.

There is no mention of Flexible Work+ in the press releases or on the UFCW website. UFCW also recently endorsed the Gig Workers’ Bill of Rights that called for full employment rights, protections, and other benefits. There is no mention of the Gig Workers’ Bill of Rights in the press release.

Meanwhile, GWU remains focused on organizing from the ground up. “We’re trying to communicate a positive vision [to workers] of what organized labour can do,” Sopher says. “Our main strategy – and the only way we can truly win – is to continue to do what we’re doing. Continue to go out in the streets and talk to workers. Continue to hear what they have to stay.” 

Neutrality agreements and legal questions

As labour lawyer Dave Doorey points out, UFCW has signed a kind of a “neutrality agreement” whereby Uber recognizes UFCW in some limited capacity. It is reasonable to assume UFCW plans to translate representation of Uber workers into card signing, certifications, and dues money.

Since representation in disputes will be free to workers, David Doorey asks: “one has to assume that the goal is eventually to recoup these costs somehow–future union dues?–unless Uber actually gave UFCW money to help offset the cost of potentially representing thousands of workers in litigation.” 

In fact, the agreement might violate labour law. Doorey notes, “the question arises whether it is unlawful for Uber to enter into an agreement with UFCW that gives the UFCW special rights that are not equally available to CUPW [which supports GWU].” 

“What if an Uber driver is already a member of CUPW? Can Uber and UFCW really enter into a side agreement that provides that the driver can only be represented by UFCW and not CUPW in a rights dispute?”

Framework of Folly

There is also a chance the entire agreement amounts to nothing. Take the example of the 2007 “Framework of Fairness” signed between the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) and auto parts giant Magna. The deal was signed after a lot of CAW members were lost to plant closures, and 42 of Magna’s 45 auto parts plants were non-union.

The resulting “Framework of Fairness” was a travesty. Magna would voluntarily recognize majority sign-ups, but the union agreed there would be no strikes ever and no shop stewards.

At a “union” Magna plant, an unelected “employee advocate” would sit on a “fairness committee” with 50/50 union/management representation. Management would even have a say in approving the “employee advocate.” CAW described the relationship as “non-adversarial.” Critics said this was a plan to build a company union.

The framework led to no great breakthrough at Magna, but proved to be a signpost on the way to CAW’s historic two-tier concession to the Big Three automakers in 2012.

“The hard way is the right way”

There’s no evidence UFCW has bargained this agreement from a position of power. How could they with small footholds in Vancouver and Toronto?

This closed door deal is a wishful shortcut to building union power, and Uber most likely knows it. A deal like this could be used to undercut organizing efforts that can build the kind of union that really threatens Uber and their ruthless exploitation and subversion of workers’ rights.

“We’re out there all the time,” Sopher concludes. “We’re talking to people, we’re doing outreach – that’s the essential part of union work. It’s not supposed to be easy. That’s why it’s been a long struggle for us, because the hard way is the right way.”

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About the authors
Dan Darrah is a writer of nonfiction and poetry from Toronto. He has written about work, culture, money, and debt for Jacobin, Canadian Dimension, Briarpatch Magazine, and more.
Doug Nesbitt is the co-founder and editor of Rankandfile.ca.