I suspect if/when this gets to a higher court, the whole thing will come crashing down, because to allow Uber's weaselly redefinition of common terms, would be to allow other classes of employment to similarly become unprotected.
Which is also one of the reasons that Uber became successful. A lot of the "Uber for..." companies that provided more personal services like massages or house cleaning failed for this exact reason. As soon as a user found a provider they liked it was easy for the two parties to come to a deal for ongoing service and cut out the tech company. That is how a lead generating company works. Uber doesn't function that way because the provider and the consumer don't have an ongoing relationship because the drivers have all been commoditized.
You schedule dog walks and lodging in advance, so it is quite tempting to cut the middle man out once you find what you like. Not so with transportation.
If I am an employee of a company, they are probably not going to let me work for a competitor while I am on the clock with them.
Having the app enabled is being on-call for potential assignments, not actually working. In my youngest years, I did that for multiple temp agencies at the same time a lot. Are they employees of both? Sure. Multiple W-2 employers is not that uncommon for people doing temp work.
> How should benefits be calculated?
In most cases, they will probably work little enough for each as to not reach mandatory benefit eligibility under most employer mandates.
> If I am an employee of a company, they are probably not going to let me work for a competitor while I am on the clock with them.
If you are an employee of a company giving on-demand assignments, they probably aren't going to consider you on the clock merely because you have indicated you are available to take an assignment if it becomes available.
If there are minimum paid shift rules in play, they may consider you on the clock and demand exclusivity for the paid period once you accept a job, even if there is a lull between assignments, though.
But not simultaneously. Once I went to a neghborhod where I knew I would not get any Lyft rides (stodgy white folk in suburban San Diego) and took Uber rides specifically to nail bonuses on both platforms.
That said, if they were on on-demand W-2 temporary workers instead of contractors, then they’d probably be treated exactly like all such workers (who often are signed up with multiple agencies to receive assignments) are by their employers and not be paid when they were merely willing to receive assignments but only after they had been offered and accepted and were actually working on a particular assignment.
McDonalds doesn't care if I also work at Burger King. Target doesn't care if I also work at WalMart. A plumber is generally fine if their assistant also works for another one.
All of this is subject to still doing the first job satisfactorially, of course.
https://www.foodandwine.com/news/fast-food-non-compete-agree...
"Amazingly, Healey’s office suggests that 80 percent of fast food workers are locked into these types of agreements."
Wonder why. (Hint: it keeps wages low and workers tied to their places of employ.)
I’ve always wondered what would happen if legislation required them all to open Go their API’s so drivers could use some “app to rule them all” that talks to lyft, Uber and more and helps them choose the best assignments....
This is how the rideshare companies claim an absurdly high hourly rate for driving — you only get that rate while actually giving rides and it is generally infeasible to be giving rides all the time. The effective hourly rate is much lower.
Ironically, taxi drivers are also contractors. I’m surprised nobody has brought up the fact that the status quo pre-Uber was a contractor model as well.
The real problem is that the Dynamex decision is legislation from the bench that redefines “contractor.” The historical definition of a contractor was basically only c in the abc test. It will be interesting to see how the court decisions come down. As the press release points out, the precedent so far is mixed.
That aside, if you think it’s a shallow criticism in this case, why do you think it required legislative action to have any effect? In other words, if this wasn’t legislation from the bench, ab5 is a noop.
As to AB5, I’m not really educated on the particulars of Dynamex or the political process around AB5 to opine on why it’s been codified. There are many possible reasons, ranging from a desire to try to freeze the law in place, to, as you say a “noop.” This, too, is just a part of the system.
AB5 is a law codifying the Dynamax decision--the precise opposite of legislating from the bench.
A coordinated Amazon/Uber/Lyft shut down in California would be something to behold.
That amount of money can go a long way. Unfortunately.