Even the idea that Uber drivers themselves wanted to keep their contractor status is questionable given that they collected those statistics via polls in the driver app. There is/was legitimate concern that Uber et al would collect that info and retaliate. There is no recourse for this on the workers’ behalf because they don’t have a union! This is a TEXTBOOK example of why gig workers need to be given the right to collectively bargain. Now, thanks to prop 22, overturning its provisions needs a 7/8 majority in the state legislature. Aka, not gonna happen, and that’s by the design of some really cynical lawyers.
More generally, the prop 22 campaign is an indictment of the referendum process, and how easily it can be abused in the absence of sensible campaign finance laws.
https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_16,_Repeal_Pr...
Is it possible that maybe the voters actually have their own opinions regarding these ballot propositions? So maybe Californian voters think that drivers should have the right to decide for themselves whether to work with Uber or not?
The choices were 1. the previous system where drivers were purely contractors, 2. the AB5 world where the vast majority of them can't work at all anymore but the ones that remain are full-time employees, without the flexibility that attracted many of them to this work in the first place as opposed to, say, getting a job at a traditional taxi company, or 3. a compromise where the work stays fundamentally the same but pays more in many cases.
Most of the people I saw opposing prop 22, which I'm guessing includes the above commenter, and certainly included the legislator behind AB5, were just bystanders who viewed it as yet another a philosophical showdown of unionized full-time work vs anything goes exploitation. Even though that framework is a poor fit for the details of this particular situation.
The people with skin in the game saw it differently, the details actually mattered to them and they voted accordingly.
> overturning its provisions needs a 7/8 majority in the state legislature.
Given that prop 22 overturns a law that had recently been passed by the current sitting legislature, there wouldn't have been any point to doing it if it could just be immediately repealed by the same people. Prop 22 can be still be overturned with just a >50% vote by a future ballot proposition.
Why do people keep lying that AB5 had a requirement for people to be full-time employees? I know in many office-based work environments, there is a strong preference for all regular (non-contract) employees to be full-time employees, but that’s not true in lots of industries, and there is nothing in AB5 that requires people working in conditions which it defines as employees rather than contractors to be full-time.
The bigger point though is there would still be major limitations on flexibility even if Uber/Lyft was able to offer every driver the option of full or part-time. They still wouldn't be able to set their own hours, only work a few weeks here and there with no predictable schedule, sign up and start working immediately with minimal overhead, etc.
I mean, it's a small sample of course. But the effect size was large.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/10/22/uber-pr...
I'm sure many would not consider themselves exploited and prefer to be contractors, but I'm personally skeptical that the breakdowns of this opinion are as reported by the companies.
Only after the ride shares corps spent over two hundred million dollars misrepresenting Prop 22. That's one fifth of a billion dollars... to write themselves a law. [1]
Asking in good faith, do you genuinely believe what you wrote above?
[1] https://www.wired.com/story/200-million-uber-lyft-write-own-...