Rideshare app Uber on Thursday agreed to pay more than $3.4 million to Seattle drivers for violations of the city's pioneering paid sick leave law for gig workers.

The settlement includes $1.3 million in back pay, interest, damages, and civil penalties for 2,329 workers, as well as nearly $2.2 million in advance payment of unused paid time off to 15,084 workers, according to a press release.

In June 2020, the Seattle City Council passed a law temporarily requiring companies that rely on gig economy workers to provide paid sick and safe time leave for the duration of the coronavirus emergency.

Seattle has a paid sick and safe time ordinance, which has been in place since 2012. Gig workers are categorized as independent contractors, so they originally did not qualify for the paid sick leave.

The temporary law was put into place to help soften the strain of the pandemic. It was at a time when gig workers were considered crucial, as Uber eats and grocery delivery became more prevalent.

Uber drivers complained to Seattle’s Office of Labor Standards that they were not receiving the required Seattle benefits from Uber, which started the investigation against them.

Seattle’s Office of Labor Standards said they had found multiple instances in which mistakes benefited Uber when employees sought time off.

Uber admitted to technical glitches which prevented some drivers to access their paid-time-off accounts on the app. They found that some employees had time-off requests unexplainably canceled, some had incorrect time-off balances in their accounts, and some had been required to wait until the day after their time-off request to take it.

Uber willingly fixed the issues, the office said.

Uber's public affairs manager, Harry Hartfield said in a statement that “the company worked over a few weeks to build a new payment system to comply with the new law.”

Coronavirus