>In California, the legislation will affect at least one million workers who have been on the receiving end of a decades-long trend of outsourcing and franchising work, making employer-worker relationships more arm’s-length. Many people have been pushed into contractor status with no access to basic protections like a minimum wage and unemployment insurance. Ride-hailing drivers, food-delivery couriers, janitors, nail salon workers, construction workers and franchise owners could now all be reclassified as employees.
Also, classifying them as employees doesn't mean that flexibility is gone:
>Uber and Lyft have repeatedly warned that they will have to start scheduling drivers in advance if they are employees, reducing drivers’ ability to work when and where they want.
>Experts said that there is nothing in the bill that requires employees to work set shifts, and that Uber and Lyft are legally entitled to continue allowing drivers to make their own scheduling decisions.
>In practice, Uber and Lyft might choose to limit the number of drivers who can work during slow hours or in less busy markets, where drivers may not generate enough in fares to justify their payroll costs as employees. That could lead to a reduced need for drivers over all.
>But Veena Dubal, a professor at the University of California Hastings College of the Law, said it would still generally be advantageous for Uber and Lyft to rely on incentives like bonus pay to ensure they had enough drivers on the road to adjust to customer demand much more nimbly than if they scheduled drivers in advance.