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Not a CA resident here, but I'm trying to understand Prop 22: does it require all gig companies except Uber and Lyft to "provide a health care subsidy and wage

Not a CA resident here, but I'm trying to understand Prop 22: does it require all gig companies except Uber and Lyft to "provide a health care subsidy and wage floor"? So with this ruling, Uber and Lyft will start providing benefits to their drivers similar to what all other gig companies are doing?

singlow 5y ago
I thought the wage floor and healthcare were a compromise to avoid being covered by other labor laws.
tdeck 5y ago
The purpose of Prop 22 is to overturn a previous bill (AB5) passed by the state legislature that classified drivers as employees. First they claimed that these laws didn't apply to them and didn't comply for months, then Uber/Lyft/etc... got prop 22 on the ballot and spent incredible amounts of money advertising for it (if you were in CA at the time it was all over YouTube, as well as in the apps). These subsidies and wage floors were window-dressing so that Uber and Lyft could claim to offer an alternative solution to some of the problems AB5 was intended to address.
- fossuser 5y ago
  A lot of people disliked AB5 - I was happy Prop22 passed. The companies were obviously operating in their own interests, but I also think the legislature was wrong (and just politically targeting ride share companies).
  - parineum 5y ago
    I don't ride share often but in the more than handful of times I have since this issue has been in the news I've yet to find a single driver who supports it. The support for AB5 doesn't seem come from the people it "protects".
    - tsimionescu 5y ago
      The whole business model of companies like Uber and Lyft relies on drivers not realizing how little they are getting out of the deal. The ones who do realize - often after some accident that leaves them injured or their cars too damaged to repair - will simply stop working and regret the past. Gig work usually looks very good when you're starting out and everything is going smoothly. With Uber and Lyft also investing massively in propaganda to ensure their drivers believe AB5 would cause numerous catastophes for their work, it's really not that surprising that most who are actually driving would be against it.
      - parineum 5y ago
        If this is true, I think the responsibility of the people who support AB5 is to first convince the Uber/Lyft drivers themselves. I think it's incredibly arrogant to force those people to do something against their will for their own good.
    - ec109685 5y ago
      The companies made it seem like drivers couldn’t work flexible hours if this passed. Nurses and other shift workers are employees, yet have flexible hours. That was completely obfuscated in this messaging.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - Dylan16807 5y ago
        This is a bad definition of flexible: "flexible hours means you have different start and end times for your workday than the standard 9 a.m. to 5 p.m." This is a good definition of flexible: "A flexible work schedule is an alternative to the traditional 9 to 5, 40-hour work week. It allows employees to vary their arrival and/or departure times." Also "gives a worker greater latitude in choosing his or her particular hours of work, or freedom to change work schedules from one week to the next depending on the employee's personal needs" The first one applies to nurses and shift workers. But the goal and the appeal of Uber and Lyft is the second one.
  - lhorie 5y ago
    Yeah, a lot of people were pointing out how ridiculously large the list of exceptions in AB5 were. I saw a bunch of stories about people in random fields getting screwed in the crossfire. It could just have been marketing-speak, but the arguments I heard from companies around voting time were that contractor status was for the benefit of drivers. IIRC they were arguing that if prop 22 did not pass, they were just going to pass the costs to the riders, and decrease service availability to match a smaller, less flexible driver workforce. In other words, many drivers would just wake up one day and find themselves booted from the platforms. And riders would find themselves unable to summon a ride depending on driver volume in the area, or time of day (basically old school cab availability) Historically, Uber has even pulled out of markets altogether (and in Austin's case, only to come back w/ their shit together later and mop the floor with the competition...) The thing that irks me about this is that I thought ballot initiatives like prop 22 were supposed to give constituents a direct voice, especially considering CA is basically a one-party state. To my understanding, legislation like AB5 gets championed by a politician without much direct input from voters.
    - antiterra 5y ago
      > in Austin's case, only to come back w/ their shit together later and mop the floor with the competition… Uber and Lyft played hardball with increased regulations, saying they’d leave if the regulations were voted in place. Their ultimatums and campaigns (easily a dozen mailers to many people) irked residents who wouldn’t have voted against them otherwise. They returned because the state overrode the local requirements. Nothing to do with having their shit together.
      - lhorie 5y ago
        Sorry, I should've worded that better; "with their shit still together" is more in line w/ I what I wanted to say. I meant that rather than struggling to gain marketshare (like happened in China, Russia, etc), they ramped back up from 0% to virtually all of their lost marketshare, eventually causing local competitors to wind down.
    - GaryTang 5y ago
  - ummonk 5y ago
    I disliked AB5 but was unhappy Prop 22 passed. AB5 already was designed to create carveouts for politically influential white collar gig workers, and Prop 22 would have just added carveouts but not changed the essential fact of AB5 banning gig work in less politically influential industries.
Tempest1981 5y ago
Prop 22 allows app-based drivers to remain classified as independent contractors, despite a state law known as AB-5 that classifies them as employees.
Rebelgecko 5y ago
No, Prop 22 required Uber, Lyft, and other similar companies to provide a health care subsidy and a wage floor. However the devil is in the details: Prop 22 set the wage floor 20% higher than minimum wage based off of the time that drivers spent "actively working" (e.g. driving to pick up a passenger and then driving a passenger to their destination). With the AB5 wage floor, Uber and Lyft would have had to pay a lower guaranteed rate (just minimum wage), but it would have included idle time. So in Uber/Lyft's nightmare scenario, a million people sign up to be drivers, set their phone locations to the middle of nowhere and get paid $15/hour to do nothing. With the healthcare subsidy, IIRC Prop22 sets the amount of subsidy on a sliding scale based off of # of hours worked per week. AB5 would've treated someone who drives 20 hours a week the same as someone who drives 40 hours a week for insurance purposes
- jkaplowitz 5y ago
  > With the AB5 wage floor, Uber and Lyft would have had to pay a lower guaranteed rate (just minimum wage), but it would have included idle time. So in Uber/Lyft's nightmare scenario, a million people sign up to be drivers, set their phone locations to the middle of nowhere and get paid $15/hour to do nothing. Even in the scenario where drivers are employees, Uber and Lyft don't have to accept an unlimited number of driver applicants and don't have to allow them continued future hours if they pull that trick. Or they could restrict the locations where drivers can activate a shift, based on demand. Et cetera. Lots of ways they could manage their staff.
  - Rebelgecko 5y ago
    I think, from Uber and Lyft's perspective, having to require drivers to sign up for shifts in advance (or preventing a driver from signing in to the app) is basically the death of the gig economy. Instead of doing their laissez-faire approach where the supply of drivers is (more or less) self-regulating, rideshare companies will have to tackle some nasty optimization problems. If a rural area only has 2 or 3 passengers a night, should they let a driver sign on or is it cheaper to just deny the customers? If a sporting event is ending at 7pm, should you increase the driver threshold if you're just going to force all the drivers to sign off in 30 minutes? Or is it better to increase wait times by decreasing the supply of drivers? etc etc
lambdasquirrel 5y ago
The other points here are quite valid, but I think they miss the reason why legal scholars disliked Prop 22 so much. It requires something like a 7/8ths majority in order to be amended? It was effectively a statute trying to backdoor as a constitutional amendment.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  Apparently the 7/8ths thing isn't so problematic in itself, as other ballots don't allow even that. The bigger problem is that they prevent the legislature not just from overturning prop 22 itself, but from passing other laws in this area that are not aligned with it. This is the part the judge understandably took issue with.

singlow 5y ago

I thought the wage floor and healthcare were a compromise to avoid being covered by other labor laws.

tdeck 5y ago

The purpose of Prop 22 is to overturn a previous bill (AB5) passed by the state legislature that classified drivers as employees. First they claimed that these laws didn't apply to them and didn't comply for months, then Uber/Lyft/etc... got prop 22 on the ballot and spent incredible amounts of money advertising for it (if you were in CA at the time it was all over YouTube, as well as in the apps). These subsidies and wage floors were window-dressing so that Uber and Lyft could claim to offer an alternative solution to some of the problems AB5 was intended to address.

fossuser 5y ago
A lot of people disliked AB5 - I was happy Prop22 passed. The companies were obviously operating in their own interests, but I also think the legislature was wrong (and just politically targeting ride share companies).
- parineum 5y ago
  I don't ride share often but in the more than handful of times I have since this issue has been in the news I've yet to find a single driver who supports it. The support for AB5 doesn't seem come from the people it "protects".
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    The whole business model of companies like Uber and Lyft relies on drivers not realizing how little they are getting out of the deal. The ones who do realize - often after some accident that leaves them injured or their cars too damaged to repair - will simply stop working and regret the past. Gig work usually looks very good when you're starting out and everything is going smoothly. With Uber and Lyft also investing massively in propaganda to ensure their drivers believe AB5 would cause numerous catastophes for their work, it's really not that surprising that most who are actually driving would be against it.
    - parineum 5y ago
      If this is true, I think the responsibility of the people who support AB5 is to first convince the Uber/Lyft drivers themselves. I think it's incredibly arrogant to force those people to do something against their will for their own good.
  - ec109685 5y ago
    The companies made it seem like drivers couldn’t work flexible hours if this passed. Nurses and other shift workers are employees, yet have flexible hours. That was completely obfuscated in this messaging.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - Dylan16807 5y ago
      This is a bad definition of flexible: "flexible hours means you have different start and end times for your workday than the standard 9 a.m. to 5 p.m." This is a good definition of flexible: "A flexible work schedule is an alternative to the traditional 9 to 5, 40-hour work week. It allows employees to vary their arrival and/or departure times." Also "gives a worker greater latitude in choosing his or her particular hours of work, or freedom to change work schedules from one week to the next depending on the employee's personal needs" The first one applies to nurses and shift workers. But the goal and the appeal of Uber and Lyft is the second one.
- lhorie 5y ago
  Yeah, a lot of people were pointing out how ridiculously large the list of exceptions in AB5 were. I saw a bunch of stories about people in random fields getting screwed in the crossfire. It could just have been marketing-speak, but the arguments I heard from companies around voting time were that contractor status was for the benefit of drivers. IIRC they were arguing that if prop 22 did not pass, they were just going to pass the costs to the riders, and decrease service availability to match a smaller, less flexible driver workforce. In other words, many drivers would just wake up one day and find themselves booted from the platforms. And riders would find themselves unable to summon a ride depending on driver volume in the area, or time of day (basically old school cab availability) Historically, Uber has even pulled out of markets altogether (and in Austin's case, only to come back w/ their shit together later and mop the floor with the competition...) The thing that irks me about this is that I thought ballot initiatives like prop 22 were supposed to give constituents a direct voice, especially considering CA is basically a one-party state. To my understanding, legislation like AB5 gets championed by a politician without much direct input from voters.
  - antiterra 5y ago
    > in Austin's case, only to come back w/ their shit together later and mop the floor with the competition… Uber and Lyft played hardball with increased regulations, saying they’d leave if the regulations were voted in place. Their ultimatums and campaigns (easily a dozen mailers to many people) irked residents who wouldn’t have voted against them otherwise. They returned because the state overrode the local requirements. Nothing to do with having their shit together.
    - lhorie 5y ago
      Sorry, I should've worded that better; "with their shit still together" is more in line w/ I what I wanted to say. I meant that rather than struggling to gain marketshare (like happened in China, Russia, etc), they ramped back up from 0% to virtually all of their lost marketshare, eventually causing local competitors to wind down.
  - GaryTang 5y ago
- ummonk 5y ago
  I disliked AB5 but was unhappy Prop 22 passed. AB5 already was designed to create carveouts for politically influential white collar gig workers, and Prop 22 would have just added carveouts but not changed the essential fact of AB5 banning gig work in less politically influential industries.

Tempest1981 5y ago

Prop 22 allows app-based drivers to remain classified as independent contractors, despite a state law known as AB-5 that classifies them as employees.

Rebelgecko 5y ago

No, Prop 22 required Uber, Lyft, and other similar companies to provide a health care subsidy and a wage floor. However the devil is in the details: Prop 22 set the wage floor 20% higher than minimum wage based off of the time that drivers spent "actively working" (e.g. driving to pick up a passenger and then driving a passenger to their destination). With the AB5 wage floor, Uber and Lyft would have had to pay a lower guaranteed rate (just minimum wage), but it would have included idle time. So in Uber/Lyft's nightmare scenario, a million people sign up to be drivers, set their phone locations to the middle of nowhere and get paid $15/hour to do nothing. With the healthcare subsidy, IIRC Prop22 sets the amount of subsidy on a sliding scale based off of # of hours worked per week. AB5 would've treated someone who drives 20 hours a week the same as someone who drives 40 hours a week for insurance purposes

jkaplowitz 5y ago
> With the AB5 wage floor, Uber and Lyft would have had to pay a lower guaranteed rate (just minimum wage), but it would have included idle time. So in Uber/Lyft's nightmare scenario, a million people sign up to be drivers, set their phone locations to the middle of nowhere and get paid $15/hour to do nothing. Even in the scenario where drivers are employees, Uber and Lyft don't have to accept an unlimited number of driver applicants and don't have to allow them continued future hours if they pull that trick. Or they could restrict the locations where drivers can activate a shift, based on demand. Et cetera. Lots of ways they could manage their staff.
- Rebelgecko 5y ago
  I think, from Uber and Lyft's perspective, having to require drivers to sign up for shifts in advance (or preventing a driver from signing in to the app) is basically the death of the gig economy. Instead of doing their laissez-faire approach where the supply of drivers is (more or less) self-regulating, rideshare companies will have to tackle some nasty optimization problems. If a rural area only has 2 or 3 passengers a night, should they let a driver sign on or is it cheaper to just deny the customers? If a sporting event is ending at 7pm, should you increase the driver threshold if you're just going to force all the drivers to sign off in 30 minutes? Or is it better to increase wait times by decreasing the supply of drivers? etc etc

lambdasquirrel 5y ago

The other points here are quite valid, but I think they miss the reason why legal scholars disliked Prop 22 so much. It requires something like a 7/8ths majority in order to be amended? It was effectively a statute trying to backdoor as a constitutional amendment.

tsimionescu 5y ago
Apparently the 7/8ths thing isn't so problematic in itself, as other ballots don't allow even that. The bigger problem is that they prevent the legislature not just from overturning prop 22 itself, but from passing other laws in this area that are not aligned with it. This is the part the judge understandably took issue with.