Gig workers' status, death penalty discussed in Legislature
By Fred Knapp 
, Senior Reporter/Producer Nebraska Public Media
Jan. 31, 2025, 5 p.m. ·
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Should gig workers, like Uber drivers, be considered employees? And should Nebraskans vote on abolishing the death penalty?
Those were among questions considered in the Legislature Friday.
Drivers for companies like Uber and Lyft are currently considered independent contractors, not employees. But that status has been challenged in other states, so Sen. Robert Hallstrom wants to write it into Nebraska law.
“Uber drivers are currently treated as independent contractors under any test of that nature, and the bill simply specifies the nature of their employment as independent contractors, which would be statutorily based,” Hallstrom said in debate Friday.
Supporting Hallstrom's bill, LB229, Sen. Brad von Gillern talked about the test his construction company used to determine if someone should be considered an employee.
“The daily litmus test was whether you told them where to work, when to work and what to do…Ride share apps do none of these,” he said.
In a committee hearing earlier in the week, Uber supported the bill, while the AFL-CIO union federation opposed it. Sen. Terrell McKinney voiced his opposition on Friday, and criticized his colleagues who supported it.
“We're not thinking about people. We're thinking about business,” McKinney said. "We're putting business over people. We're supposed to be working for the people of Nebraska, not Uber -- a corporation. And that's the problem with America. That's the problem with a lot of things we do around here."
Sen. Mike Jacobson said the bill is important to protect ride share companies.
“I think we all know what would happen if we tried to make these ride share drivers employees. It would probably destroy the ride share business because of the cost that would be involved. We're curbing free enterprise,” Jacobson said.
McKinney disagreed.
“While reclassification will require Uber to pay for benefits like health insurance, unemployment insurance, minimum wage, companies adapt to regulatory changes all the time,” he said. “Uber could adjust by slightly raising fares or reducing executive pay rather than exploit its drivers.”
Sen. Megan Hunt said treating drivers as independent contractors is part of a troubling trend.
“Eventually, all we're going to have is these gig workers, independent contractors who would like benefits, who would like fair pay, who would like the right to refuse a ride or to have safety protections from their passengers that their company is denying them," she said. "But lawmakers are saying that you are not an employee. You are not working for Uber. You are an independent contractor."
Von Gillern praised ride-sharing companies as innovative, and objected to the tone of some opponents.
“Probably the most frustrating thing for me is that some in the room would seek to kill the entrepreneurial spirit that has made our country great,” he said.
The Legislature adjourned for the day before reaching a vote on the bill.
Friday afternoon, the Judiciary Committee held a public hearing on a proposrd state constitutional amendment, LR15CA by McKinney, which would put abolition of the death penalty up for a vote in next year’s November election.
McKinney said the time has come to move on from the death penalty.
“As a society, we must move beyond the outdated and ineffective 'eye for an eye' mindset," he said. "Research consistently shows that the death penalty does not deter crime more effectively than life imprisonment. In fact, states with the death penalty have not demonstrated lower crime or murder rates compared to those without."
Testifying in support of the proposal, Marylyn Felion of Omaha said executions are hard on the people that have to carry them out. Felion described her experience as a witness to the execution of condemned murderer Robert Williams in 1997 at the Nebraska State Penitentiary.
“There were six big guards who led us down the hall, military fashion, ‘Hup 2-3-4, down the elevator. At the execution chamber, they guided Robert inside, and I had to go another way to go back up the stairs and around to the witness room. And I had to pass those six big guards, and they were sobbing,” Felion said.
Alex Houchin of Nebraskans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty said 23 states do not have the death penalty, with 11 of those having abolished it since 2000. The Legislature voted to abolish it in Nebraska in 2015, but supporters staged a referendum campaign to reinstate it, which voters approved by a margin of 61-39%.
No one testified against the proposal at Friday’s hearing. If it gets out of committee, it would require a vote by 30 of the Legislature’s 49 senators to put it on the ballot, where the decision would then be up to Nebraska voters.
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