Rideshare 2025
SEIU and Rideshare Drivers are a Sure Bet!
Uber & Lyft drivers are underpaid, without any protections or representation from organized labor. Our goal was to put pressure on the Chicago City Council to persuade Alders to support the Rideshare Living Wage and Safety Ordinance.
Our firm received a call with an urgent request: How fast could we create a targeted list of Alderpersons in Chicago, and a list of voters sympathetic to our issue, call them, and convince them to take time out of their day to ask their Alderperson to support the Rideshare Living Wage and Safety Ordinance.
The ‘Go Order’ occurred on a Zoom call while the firm’s point of contact was on vacation. SEIU asked to convene via Zoom while staff was en route to Chicago, just west of Cleveland. The closest place where we could just chat via Zoom, with free Wi-Fi, was the Hollywood Casino, near Toledo. Our point of contact grabbed his backpack and ran to the coffee shop, logged into Zoom and our voter data provider, while a Buffalo slot machine was
in the background.
Over the next hour, SEIU Local 1 staff and our firm 1-defined the Alderpersons we wanted to pressure, 2-crafted a script, 3-purchased 47,000 phone numbers of voters in targeted wards, and 4-started dialing.
Partnering with Illinois Drivers Alliance, a coalition powered by SEIU and the International Association of Machinists, our work connected likely progressive voters directly with their alderperson to urge support for the Rideshare Living Wage and Safety
Ordinance. Over 4 hours of calling, this campaign successfully reached voters in 16 wards.
We made over 26,000 dials, spoke with 4451 voters, and delivered 560 successful patch calls to the targeted Alders. By 6 pm, SEIU asked us to stop calling; our work was done. We successfully persuaded these members of Chicago City Council, paving the way for increased wages and worker protections for over 100,000 rideshare drivers. This effort was one of the first in the country to protect rideshare drivers.
In a time when large, powerful corporations are reshaping what labor looks like to the American people, it was imperative that our campaign demonstrated how innovative outreach can empower citizens and create change. We worked to generate sustained constituent pressure by educating voters on rideshare pay and safety policies.
During this ordinance debate, our project earned widespread media coverage, including the Chicago Sun-Times, the Chicago Tribune, and local TV news, further amplifying our message. This project shows how modern voter contact can translate public support into direct legislative action in real-time. Together, we turned a conversation into a call for action and contributed towards a brighter future for worker protection and unionization
efforts.
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