An Addendum To This Morning's Post

This morning I wrote about Apple and North Carolina well since then another incident happened in North Carolina with a trans person.

Military vet lost UberEats job ‘after transphobic customers complained about her’
An UberEats driver and military veteran lost her job in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic after customers complained about her being trans.
Pink News
By Josh Milton
April 26, 2021


North Carolina resident Rebecca, who has been driving for the food delivery service since May 2020, told ABC11 that UberEats had been a lifeline for her in the last year.

But two customers, she explained, filed complaints about her – she’s not “who she claims to be”, they said – causing her to lose her job.

While her account has since been reactivated after the broadcaster reached out to Uber, Rebecca stressed that what happened to her captures how companies still have ways to go to better protect trans staffers.
[…]
Uber later pressed Rebecca about the complaint, writing in an account notice that “someone has been using your account to complete deliveries” while mounting a review into her account.

“After a lengthy conversation, they understood that I was trans and why someone might vindictively report me and said it would never happen again,” she said.

Yet, following a recent delivery, another user complained – prompting a more severe reprimand from Uber Support. “Permanently deactivating” her account, the department said she was “no longer eligible” to be employed by Uber.

“Our decision is final,” the email concluded.

Then Uber Eats changed their story and said it was “Safety Concerns” that fired her.

“Now your story has changed so it sounds like you are trying to hide the fact you discriminated against me for being transgender.”

As more and more companies see “independent contractors” as a way of cutting cost and passing the burden of Social Security, unemployment insurance, and other cost on to the workers. The companies also get out of Title VII of the Civil Rights Acts because when the laws were written back in the sixties there were no such things as “independent contractors” and therefore are not cover under Title VII.

Before I retired we got bought out and the new company fired… err… laid off the drafting and engineering department for lack of work but the following week they were all back… but as independent contractors who were now responsible to pay their own Social Security and health insurance. They worked each year for 11 month, 3 weeks so that they would not be considered full time employees.