Illinois passes – After months of lobbying by Uber and Lyft drivers, Illinois lawmakers passed a bill early Monday that would let more than 100,000 rideshare drivers form unions and gain collective bargaining rights as independent contractors. The measure heads to Gov. JB Pritz
On a winter night in Springfield, Mark Balentine watched the clock turn toward 2 a.m. and kept thinking about a bonus that never arrived.
Last summer, Uber offered drivers a company-wide promotion promising a guaranteed $1,800 if they completed 140 rides. Balentine, who has driven for Uber and Lyft since 2014, said he got sick and missed almost a month of work. When the deadline shrank. he scrambled to catch up—checking receipts and screenshots from the app—and tallied 150 rides in total.
But when the payment didn’t come, Balentine called Uber. He said the company told him its system showed he fell short and only logged 124 rides that month.
“I said, ‘So y’all just gonna take my money like that?’” Balentine asked the representative. He said the representative “shrugged his shoulders” and told him, “I guess so.”
For Balentine. the delay wasn’t just personal—it became the kind of moment drivers describe when they’re left with little recourse. Over the last five months. he and hundreds of other Uber and Lyft drivers brought their stories to Springfield and pushed for a new Illinois measure that would allow more than 100. 000 rideshare drivers to form a union.
Genie Kastrup, a leading advocate for the legislation, said collective bargaining rights could help prevent low wages, unfair and sporadic deactivation of drivers’ accounts, and unsafe working conditions.
The bill passed early Monday, with advocates waiting in the balconies until 2 a.m. It now heads to Gov. JB Pritzker’s desk for his signature.
Since the vote, Balentine said he’s been on “cloud nine,” because next time he has issues at work, “we’re going to have a union where they’re gonna stand up for me, and they’re going to go to bat for me.”
Illinois is poised to become only the third state to pass similar rideshare union legislation. The first wave has come from California and Massachusetts. where laws have already started laying groundwork for collective bargaining rights for gig workers. The idea of giving independent contractors collective bargaining power is still rare across the country.
Support came from Democrats, but Republican votes were split.
State Rep. Dan Ugaste, a Republican from Geneva, said the hardest part is the labor agreement itself—especially when drivers are not employed full-time under one company. He described the challenge of unionizing workers who operate as their own independent contractors.
“What I’m trying to understand is how do we unionize people who aren’t employees, people who are their own independent contractors?” Ugaste said. “They run themselves as their own business, they’re just contracting with an overall company that says, ‘Okay, you can operate under our umbrella.’”
The push for the bill drew an unusual coalition. Backers included Uber—an irony some drivers say helped make the urgency sharper—alongside concerns from labor groups that have long opposed limiting access to benefits tied to full-time employment.
Some labor organizations, including AFSCME Council 31, opposed the measure. Their concern was that an agreement would restrict drivers from qualifying for benefits typically available to full-time employees, such as health and dental coverage.
The bill lands in the middle of a long-standing legal barrier for rideshare drivers: historically, they have been unable to collectively bargain because they are classified as independent contractors. The measure would mark a significant shift in who can and can’t unionize.
Kastrup, who is president of SEIU Local 1, said supporters spent years organizing drivers who were receptive to the idea of a rideshare union. She pointed to a pattern drivers recognize—work schedules changing, pay changing, and the lack of a voice on the job.
“These drivers are really dedicated, and they understand what it means to not have a voice on the job,” Kastrup said. “Many of them have seen where they used to work 40 hours a week, and now they have to work 80 hours to make what they used to make at 40.”
Supporters also signaled how close they were to action as the 2025 spring session neared its end. At the end of the 2025 spring session, supporters planned to introduce legislation this session and brought that message to lawmakers in Springfield.
Balentine said he lobbied legislators personally while he was there. He described catching a legislator on the way to a bar after work and pulling him aside.
“I was like, ‘Can I please talk to you for one minute?’” Balentine said. He recalled the legislator responding, “He was like, ‘Sure.’”
Balentine said he approached the meeting with urgency because he believed the deal had to pass.
“I was going above and beyond, because this deal had to pass. This is history that we’re about to make.”
Illinois Uber Lyft rideshare drivers unionize collective bargaining JB Pritzker Springfield SEIU Local 1 AFSCME Council 31 gig economy