This goes to say that you cannot trust private companies like Lyft for critical services. The government actually has been transparent about this change and Lyft is acting like a spoilt child, not even willing to try the employee route.
Lyft pulling the rug overnight is in bad faith.
It is not that lyft is striking, their product and process is not ready yet to do full time employees yet.
The folks I spoke to were all doing hectic work trying to build it out , my understanding is they originally planned to do this by November.
Even if the tech is ready , converting 1000’s to folks full time is ton of government paperwork that is going to take time .
They first have to figure out who wants to be full time and who they want to be retain full time .
It is not like they were given a reasonable 6-12 months to comply and they screwed up . Uber is also in the same boat.
The California government is the party that's been acting like a brat here. The rideshare drivers of California overwhelmingly didn't want this approach to receiving benefits. Lawmakers got jealous that economic activity was happening in a new way that they couldn't tax and control the way they were used to, and instead of solving problems creatively, attempted to slam a non-nail with a hammer. They were warned in no uncertain terms that it'd hurt.
Easy to do now, considering the rideshare volumes are probably lower than without SIP.