In recent months, unions in the United States and Canada have been claiming victory in gig worker organizing. In May 2026, Uber settled its first collective bargaining agreement with drivers in Victoria, British Columbia. Massachusetts has recognized a union representing seventy thousand Uber drivers, constituting what labor leaders describe as “the largest private-sector organizing win” since the United Auto Workers unionized the Ford Motor Company in 1941. This long-standing record has since been outdone again as the Service Employees International Union (SEIU)–affiliated California Gig Workers Union was named the “union of record” to represent potentially two hundred thousand app-based drivers in the state, establishing “the largest union of gig rideshare drivers in the world.” Legislation allowing drivers collective bargaining rights has also passed in Illinois. All of this, on the surface, enables the possibility for record numbers of workers to be brought into the labor movement.

That companies like Uber and Lyft would allow workers to have a say in their own pay and conditions — when their entire business model has been predicated on flouting labor law through misclassification — would be remarkable, and undoubtedly signal that we have reached a turning point within the struggles for gig worker justice and, more broadly, within platform capitalism.

If only it were true.