More than 250,000 Pennsylvanians are actively engaged in app-based work, delivering food, groceries, and packages for companies like DoorDash, GrubHub, Instacart, Uber, Lyft, and Amazon. These corporations rake in billions while avoiding nearly any regulation or oversight, using opaque algorithms to decide worker compensation, consumers costs, assignments, and suspensions.  

 

App workers – like all workers – deserve transparency, clarity and to be paid a livable wage. Consumers who use their services shouldn’t be gouged by surveillance pricing and corporate greed either.  

 

As our Commonwealth continues to embrace and rely on app-based services, it’s imperative that we have transparency about how these tools operate and ensure that workers and consumers are being treated fairly.  

 

The App Workers Transparency Act would do the following: 

 

• Require companies to provide detailed weekly pay statements and itemized receipts to workers and consumers. 

• Empower workers to learn how their pay rate, assignments, and disciplinary suspensions are determined.

• Ensure workers the right to appeal suspensions and account deactivations done without just cause. 

• Guarantee that app-based drivers receive at least 75 percent of each passenger fare.

• Provide that app-based workers are correctly classified as employees and informed of their due rights under state law, including the right to unionize. 

• Require equal pay for equal work.  

 

As the proliferation of app-based work grows in the Commonwealth, it is imperative we enact safeguards to protect and empower workers and consumers. Please join me in sponsoring this legislation to ensure transparency and fairness.