On May 19th of 2025, the legislature introduced a bill that gives drivers for Uber, Lyft, Instacart, and similar app-based companies the possibility of self-funded health insurance (in portable benefit accounts that could possibility also receive contributions from the companies if a company, for some reason, decides to help pay for such health insurance coverage) in return for losing their status as employees under current Wisconsin law.
The legislature rushed the hearings and passage of this bill and sent it to the governor’s desk a month later on June 20th.
Media coverage of this bill has been spotty at best.
WisPolitics mostly talked about the potential health insurance coverage and quoted legislators about how drivers needed the freedom to be independent contractors.
The article failed to note that drivers currently have this “freedom” to work when they want while currently being treated as employees of these companies.
The article also failed to note that health care coverage can still be purchased at https://www.healthcare.gov/.
The Wisconsin Examiner was one of the few publications that got the proposed legislation right:
Legislation that would declare that drivers for app-based ride-share and delivery businesses are independent contractors will go to Gov. Tony Evers after clearing both houses of the Legislature Wednesday.
The legislation also [allows] the affected companies to offer drivers benefit plans without classifying them as employees.
* * *It defines those drivers as independent contractors who are not subject to laws guaranteeing minimum wage, unemployment compensation and workers compensation.
If there were any questions about the economic circumstances of why these drivers should continue to be classified as employees, their short strike in late June about their declining wages under Uber and Lyft’s app-based formulas should put such questions to rest.
Let’s hope the governor continues to veto this kind of “reform.”