At least 50 US gig workers murdered or killed since 2017 – study

theguardian.com:

On a Sunday afternoon in August 2021, the Lyft driver Isabella Lewis was shot in the head by a passenger she had just picked up and left for dead as the man sped off in what appeared to be a fatal carjacking.

Lyft released a statement to the press at the time saying it was “heartbroken by this incident” – but Allyssa Lewis, Isabella’s sister, said her family had never received direct communication from the company, nor any financial compensation.

Instead, in the days following the killing, Lyft sent an insurance representative to Isabella’s abandoned, bullet-riddled vehicle before the family could collect her remaining belongings, Allyssa said.

“There is nothing that could bring my sister back, but it would have meant a lot just being able to get Lyft to acknowledge that she died while working for them,” Allyssa said.

Isabella was one of at least 50 US gig workers killed on the job since 2017, a new study from the advocacy organization Gig Workers Rising reports. The group found dozens of workers for firms such as Lyft, Uber and Postmates have been fatally assaulted on the job – including six in the first two months of 2022. The report charges the companies don’t do enough to mitigate “an urgent safety crisis”, or help victims’ families following assaults.

“This is a systemic and sickening practice in which these corporations – which do not do enough to protect their workers – try to protect their bottom line by offloading risk on to them,” said Cherri Murphy, a co-author of the report.

Victims were identified through publicly available resources including news reports, police documents, legal filings and GoFundMe fundraising campaigns, the organization said. Most gig firms do not publicly share data on the number of deaths,