Hi everyone, 

My name is Andy Feng and I am a rising sophomore at Georgetown University. I am double majoring in Government and Justice and Peace Studies with a focus on Labor Studies. I hope to obtain a JD specializing in labor, employment, and contract law. My ultimate academic and professional goals revolve around strengthening organized labor in the US through policy and advocacy. I hope to one day become General Counsel for the AFL-CIO, SAG-AFTRA, or the WGA. 

My Laidlaw topic allows me to explore the world of organized labor movements while intersecting this research with recent legislative movements at the state and federal levels. I am focusing on gig work, the platform economy, and the representative companies of Uber and Lyft. Particularly, I will be analyzing the action or inaction of organized labor and governments on the subject of workers’ rights in the gig economy and determining motivating factors for their particular stances.

After this project, I aim to better comprehend the political maneuvers of labor unions, government officials, and Uber and Lyft officials in regard to unionizing gig workers. By examining this microcosm of the larger platform economy that includes other services like DoorDash, Instacart, and GoPuff, I hope to extrapolate larger conclusions about the state of organized labor in our rapidly changing economy.

I will be working alongside labor historian and Georgetown Professor Dr. Joseph McCartin for this project. In terms of concrete research skills, I hope to leave this project with a stronger sense of synthesizing secondary sources, summarizing complicated legislative information, and producing a firm conclusion at the end of my research. I also hope to sharpen my legal writing, familiarize myself with the tools used for legal research, and understand how to apply legal topics in a wider research context.