Uber: “Yes on Prop 22” popups shown to drivers
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What's going on is a negotiation between the state and these companies that are able to take advantage of a gap in how insurance and other benefits work. Instead of actively negotiating with the state, Uber/Lyft/Doordash and many others have simply asked to maintain the status quo, screw the drivers, just business as usual.
Drivers do not get benefits. They deserve benefits. Lets fix that.
Instead Uber/Lyft and others have chosen absolutely insane negotiating tactics. Literally their only solution is to
1. exempt all drivers from getting basic benefits like health insurance
or else
2. we're turning off our apps in California
This is madness. No on 22.
Epic is doing the same thing with the Unreal Engine code. They deliberately violated Apple TOS knowing it would get the account banned, and then they try to leverage all those other developers who are going to lose iOS support against the big bad Apple who is taking away your livelihood, all so they can establish their own store and make a higher percentage of the revenue from the sales other people's work (to be clear: they already make money from the sales of games based on Unreal, they just want to make more).
It's not just Uber, it's part of a broader trend tech companies adopting this tactic. It's seriously disgusting, this is the lowest thing to come out of the Silicon Valley techbros in a long time.
They didn't go under when they had to start doing background checks in Austin. They don't go under when they have to pay benefits in Germany. This is a stunt to make another couple percent profit.
At the end of the day that's what this boils down to - they will make a little more money if they succeed, they will make a little less money if they don't, nobody is going under. They're using people's livelihoods as leverage so that they can make a couple percent more profit.
Say what you want about Epic, but they totally forced Valve to publicly commit to decrease it's cut for every big publisher out there without directly profi ting from it.
But yeab ofc it's poor Apple being forced to screw developers a bit less. Unacceptable!
The issue with Uber v. California is really an issue of materially new kinds of workforces requiring new and effective kinds of legislation.
We just need some responsible leaders to think a little bit, maybe the feds, other states, other countries, and make some simple legislation. There doesn't need to be a referendum, nor does the gov. need to 'negotiate' with anyone per se. Just find something that works for the new world and do it. Subject to change obviously.
Embrace that and you actually have a chance of real freedom. Being invisible is both a boon and a detriment; you occasionally get stomped on for no apparent reason, but it also means that the big players are unlikely to know (or care about) the moves that you do make.
They obviously knew that Fortnight would get banned from the Appstore, and it was a business decision for them to make.
However, it would have been reasonable for them to assume that they would maintain their ability to still develop UnrealEngine, so they can publish source code for other developers to publish games from their own accounts. That overreach was Apple's doing.
It appears that the courts agreed as well, requiring Apple to allow Epic to continue UE4 development, while maintaining the Fortnight ban.
The drivers are the essential part of their business so those who work full-time should be entitled to get benefits. Period.
Source(s): https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_22,_App-Based...
Being a driver for Uber or Lyft is hardly a career.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13
It isn’t normal for a company to negotiate with the government to figure out how much it pays its employees! If you want rules like minimum wage or mandatory health insurance for all, by all means make those rules and apply them to everyone. But there are so many exceptions to AB5, it’s clear that it isn’t a rule designed to apply fairly to the whole economy, it’s only designed to hit a particular list of companies that one political faction doesn’t like.
So the end result of AB5 is that Uber and Lift will exit California or become traditional taxi companies there. Either way California taxi state will go back to where it was before Uber and Lyft entered the market.
This already sort of happened in Austin. Uber left, then a few years later it came back. When it did, everyone went back to Uber and a lot of the competitors flopped.
Don't tell me these shady day-to-day medallion rental businesses offered benefits to the drivers...
That said i doubt they would match Uber and Lyft in quality, usually they are mediocre.
Is that a law of nature or something? An interesting way seeing ideology at work is when people start framing policy choice as the natural state of things.
To what degree gig work permeates the economy is entirely in the hands of the lawmakers of California, and if they care about the long term accumulation of human capital they better nip it in the bud right now.
I completely and entirely disagree with the idea that taxpayers are supposed to be on the hook for ever increasing benefits. Promote the creation of firms that are able to take stakeholder interests into account and invest into stable long-term employment rather than trying to make Snowcrash a reality.
yeah, don't you just know tons of people who love to have no job security, don't know how much they'll make on any given day or whether they'll be unemployed in a month?
Of course people love stable jobs, some people however are dependent on gig work because of institutional failure on several fronts within California in particular. The solution to this is, as Russ Ackoff put it, not to do the wrong thing right, which will only will have you end up in a situation that is even wronger, and not to solve problems, but to dissolve them by changing the environment in a way such that the problem does not exist any more.
In pratictal terms this means for California, reform zoning laws and actually build housing, build mass transit, create good jobs. Don't build the UBI white collar welfare dystopia that the 10% of the state love who happen to own Uber stock.
Having healthcare tied to full-time employment is almost entirely incompatible with this type of employment, as it is priced at half-time / full-time employment, not super flexible gig jobs.
Unemployment is a nonsense term for gig work. The fact that you view people as "employed" or "unemployed" speaks so much how damaged you are. I don't want to be "employed", I want to be a person who can work when I want instead of being forced to be a stable worker who predictably clocks in half of my time every week. Gig work moves us in this direction and is therefore a good thing. Americans instead want to force even more people to go full time and get tied down to a job, isn't that the horrible dystopia we all want to avoid?
> dependent on gig work because of institutional failure on several fronts within California in particular.
Those aren't most drivers though, and hurting most drivers just so that you can take the last lifeline of these poor drivers you speak of away since it doesn't meet some arbitrary standards you think these people should have makes you a horrible person imo. Also, Prop 22 actually ensures gig workers gets health benefits and minimum wage, so I am not sure why you are against it except you wanting to force people to tie themselves to a company via employment contract.
My job mostly requires me to be there for meetings and that my hours match up at the end of the year. As long as I can get my work done nobody really cares (except for laws against overwork).
> except you wanting to force people to tie themselves to a company via employment contract.
What kind of employment contract comes with a life time slavery clause?
parent probably meant something like "consistent and mandatory" more than "uncertain.
It's interesting that people frame social safety issues as "taxpayers money sharking". The reality is that privatized healthcare in the US means middle class americans typically pay quite a bit more than socialized healthcare countries (see medical debt collection industry).
It's even more mind boggling because the ones that stand to benefit the most from socialized infrastructure are older people (who typically pay the most for healthcare), yet they seem to be the most opposed group. When you put companies in charge of basic country infrastructure, you ought to expect that they're going to optimize for their own profits, over even stakeholder interests (see also telecom sector, energy sector, etc).
There's this weird pervasive idea that not paying a company out of pocket means you are funding hobo lifestyle rather than funding a systems that passes savings back to you and fuels a healthier and more diversified economy. The reality is that all that extra money spent on private healthcare ends up either being spent in clerical bureaucracy like the US healthcare insurance payments dance, or profit margins for a company.
With a private model, by definition, there's no socialized safety net for the less privileged. But then you get rich people like Ben Shapiro complaining that there are druggies around his mansion in LA. As a Canadian, I find that hard to relate to.
In my country employees at sizeable firms have guaranteed representation on the board of their firm. (30%). Stakeholdership can be enshrined in law. Small and middle-sized business doesn't just optimise for profit but employs people for life. (the unemployment during covid did not go past 6-7%).
Is that less 'efficient' in a direct sense? Yes, but it's also autonomous and decentralised and robust and gives people real stake in their workplace and control over their life. The perversity of gig work is how it alienates and atomises workers.
You're essentially building a super fragile system in which benevolent government taxes single minded competitive companies to send checks to fluid workers who get ordered around by an algorithm. That system has so many single points of failure it's not even funny. the US, ironically enough, already suffers from a version of this. What happens when the army of Uber drivers and table cleaners doesn't get their 2 trillion relief fund because one guy in charge of the entire thing throws a tantrum?
The employment security thing is something I sometimes see being argued as a weakness in the sense that it reinforces incumbents as opposed to promoting entrepreneurship (and indeed, the US being the polar opposite does show anedoctal evidence of strong entrepreneurship).
Even in the US, there are relatively common ways that companies provide stakeholdership (equity programs, for example). But I'm not convinced that this type of stakeholdership is necessarily aligned with the interests of the population at large. Unions, for example, are notorious for disruptive strikes.
IMHO, the gig economy falls into a weird area: drivers are technically independent and ought to be free to set their own prices, much like say freelance programmers can be sole proprietorships who are on the hook for their own healthcare expenses, but the ridesharing industry is extremely price sensitive, to the point drivers could easily put themselves out of work by increasing prices.
There are many lines of thought about how that dynamic ought to play out, ranging from "side gigs are just hustling between real jobs", to sacrificing some drivers in favor of allowing a subset to earn a higher minimum income, to the socialist "it's only fair if everyone gets the same treatment, even if it's not ideal for everyone", to the "this industry is important enough that government should subsidize no matter what" sort of thing you see in agriculture and many public transit systems. I'm not sure there's a right answer there.
> one guy in charge of the entire thing throws a tantrum
I think the model that makes the most sense here is the one in the name of the social safety net in Canada: employment insurance. Insurance in the traditional sense of the word: a collective pool of money from a diversified population which can be deployed systematically to bail out some subset of said population in rare emergencies. Naturally, in real life, that's not exactly how it works, especially in such large scale prolonged emergencies, but still, it's a model I like.
> Is that a law of nature or something? An interesting way seeing ideology at work is when people start framing policy choice as the natural state of things.
It isn't, but it's a clever propaganda trick to make people think it is. How much opposition will you get if you convince people that to oppose you would be like arguing against having the tide coming in tomorrow?
How work is organized is a political decision for a society, and some people want that decision to be gigs for larger segment of workers. It's pretty easy to see who, when you think about who's taking more risk in such arrangements.
Part of the deal for Uber, Lyft, etc is to push off expenses into others. Auto maintenance and repairs is another example.
Changing the system doesn’t deal with the funding. Uber, Lyft, and others are trying to not be in the funding loop for this.
Or, should other companies subsidize funding this for people who work for the gigs?
> Part of the deal for Uber, Lyft, etc is to push off expenses into others. Auto maintenance and repairs is another example.
It's kind of arbitrary to consider auto maintenance as being rightfully Uber's expense that's being pushed onto the car owner.
The only potential area of "benefits" I can see that might need some rethinking for the gig workforce is sick leave (I don't want rideshare drivers continuing to work while sick just so that they can make rent, so it would be nice if they could accumulate some amount of sick leave proportionate to the number of hours they drive).
> or else
> 2. we're turning off our apps in California
If you create a law that makes it unprofitable for a company to operate, are you really surprised that the company stops operating?
It would, of course, mean that their law-compliant competitors would eat their marketshare.
They are trying to tell us with a straight face, that a taxi-in-an-app business is impossible to operate under Prop 22. This is, of course, completely untrue.
They do not want to operate under AB5, the current law, which Prop 22 seeks to invalidate.
If you want to compel Uber and others to follow the current law (which requires them to give employee benefits to drivers), you should vote NO on Prop 22.
Where are all these competitors that offer full-time with benefits driver positions at Uber prices? Why aren't they sucking up the entire pool of available drivers right now? Why do we need a law to force Uber / Lyft to provide benefits if other companies already do it?
Uber and sharecropping firms like it compete with eachother, as well as with traditional taxi firms.
As I understand it, traditional taxi firms are already largely in compliance with the proposed legislature.
The demand for taxis is not going to go away anywhere. You can operate a taxi company (traditional, or sharecropper) with, or without prop 22. The only difference will be in the price of rides - for what is largely a luxury good.
Demand for taxis has dropped a lot because of Uber. Uber also gets passengers who would have otherwise not made the trip, taken a bus, or driven drunk. If Uber is no longer an option they'll go back to those options,not to taxis.
> The only difference will be in the price of rides - for what is largely a luxury good.
The price of rides makes a big difference and hugely effects demand. I don't know why you're treating it like it doesn't matter. Lower prices open the service up to more people. Indoor plumbing was once a luxury good. Generally progress means turning luxuries into commodities, not the opposite.
Currently Uber and Lyft don't even compete against each other, they compete against their drivers.
(Excuse me if I'm not quite so read up on this topic—I don't live in California.)
By default, laws enacted via ballot initiatives in California can't be amended by the legislature without voter approval. California has some of the strongest protections for citizen initiatives in the country, which comes with plusses and minuses depending on your perspective.
If the legislature of the State of California wants some of its citizens to get certain "benefits", it can and should provide them directly, not hold other voluntary activity hostage unless it subsidizes their list-of-goodies.
Uber/Lyft tried other accommodations with their haters, & arguably conformed with the laws as they existed. Then, a clumsy bit of legislation (AB5) from a legislator with an implacably anti-Uber/Lyft agenda outlawed what had been legal, for both Uber/Lyft & a bunch of other freelancer-centric industries, destroying lots of work for Californians.
Those on the warpath against Uber/Lyft have since added exemptions for other industries that they like. The exemptions now include:
* (in AB5) Doctors, dentists, insurance agents, lawyers, accountants, real estate agents, and hairstylists
* (since) Fine artists, Freelance writers, Still photographers, Photojournalists, Freelance editors, Newspaper cartoonists, Translators, Copy Editors, Producers, Cartographers, Musicians with single-engagement live performances, Musicians involved in sound recordings or musical compositions, Insurance inspectors, Real estate appraisers, Manufactured housing salespersons, Youth sports coaches, Landscape architects, Professional foresters
I think drivers deserve the same freedom to flexibly contract as those other dozens of professions. I wish Prop 22 were simpler, but it's better than AB5, so I'm an enthusiastic "Yes".
1) doesn’t set their own rate
2) cannot choose to do or not do a job without penalty
3) does not have a market of clients
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/01/06/ubers-s...
Disclaimer: I work @ Uber but I do not work on driver-related stuff
I've yet to hear a solid argument for why something as personal & private as health insurance should be decided by my employer. Expanding this to gig workers (who typically work multiple jobs) seems like madness to me.
I would be far more interested in seeing California lead the country in designing a better model than attempting to shoe horn contract work into an outdated system.
It makes no difference to insurance companies if the premiums are paid by the employer with pre tax dollars or the directly by an individual vis healthcare.gov with post tax dollars.
I see you added to your comment after I'd responded:
>"It makes no difference to insurance companies if the premiums are paid by the employer with pre tax dollars or the directly by an individual vis healthcare.gov with post tax dollars. "
It actually makes a huge difference to their business model who is paying, and whether the dollars are pre-tax or post-tax. When the dollars are pre-tax, people try to get the most comprehensive coverage possible, so that everything, even routine expenditures (like eyeglasses) are covered by insurance, which increases insurance company revenue. Additionally, selling to businesses is very different from selling to consumers; with the former, you're in more of an enterprise B2B market, which is totally different from a B2C.
In places where Uber/Lyft are absent, other apps quickly fill their place. All they have is network effects - they're not nearly as irreplaceable as they'd like you to think.
Regarding your other point, why do you think employers should be the providers of healthcare in the first place? This isn't the way it works in most countries.
Not the parent, but personally, I don't think employers should be the providers of healthcare, but we live in a country where that is currently the case. We should have the Universal Healthcare debate/option, but that's not the issue at hand.
Perhaps instead of trying to make 22 law, Uber/Lyft should put their weight/support behind a Universal Healthcare initiative.
Uber and lyft have one tool left: ask the people to override the assembly. If rideshare is more popular than no rideshare, it'll pass.
If you want a more nuanced solution, well, California had a chance to offer one. I don't see it.
Having said that, maybe you deserve benefits too?
Should any app that pays you a few bucks for doing small jobs pay you Healthcare now?
1. Prop 22 gives app-based workers healthcare, minimum wage, and other protections and benefits. From the text: "For an average of 25 hours or more per week of engaged time in the calendar quarter, a payment greater than or equal to 100 percent of the average ACA contribution for the applicable average monthly Covered California premium for each month in the quarter." 15-25 hours would require a 50% payment.
https://voterguide.sos.ca.gov/propositions/22/
2. The companies are exploring other options to stay in California, which is actually required as part of the appeal which happened recently. The current publicly proposed model is franchising out to local businesses: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/18/technology/uber-lyft-fran...
Disclaimer: I work @ Uber but I do not work on driver-related stuff
"A YES vote on this measure means: App-based rideshare and delivery companies could hire drivers as independent contractors. Drivers could decide when, where, and how much to work but would not get standard benefits and protections that businesses must provide employees."
If you drive full time you deserve full time benefits. That means more than a 50% payment of ACA (which is downright offensive to suggest someone can live off of while making minimum wage).
> 7454. Healthcare Subsidy. (a) Consistent with the average contributions required under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), a network company shall provide a quarterly health care subsidy to qualifying app-based drivers as set forth in this section. An app-based driver that averages the following amounts of engaged time per week on a network company’s platform during a calendar quarter shall receive the following subsidies from that network company:
> (1) For an average of 25 hours or more per week of engaged time in the calendar quarter, a payment greater than or equal to 100 percent of the average ACA contribution for the applicable average monthly Covered California premium for each month in the quarter.
> (2) For an average of at least 15 but less than 25 hours per week of engaged time in the calendar quarter, a payment greater than or equal to 50 percent of the average ACA contribution for the applicable average monthly Covered California premium for each month in the quarter.
You might have misread the parent comment, as it said full time drivers must get at least 100% payment of ACA.
EdJiang, please note this isn't to you directly (either as a poster or Uber employee), my engineer-brain is sort of thinking of loopholes and unintended consequences. I'm not expressing an opinion here.
How many "real" working hours does it take to get 25 working hours? I only found one reference (Berkeley Law) that estimated 1/3 of the time is downtime, so very roughly 40 hours a week? Of course depends on location, chosen time of work, and much more.
More cynically, would these companies be able to distribute work such that rides are given to drivers with more "buffer" before hitting these ACA payouts?
Again, not at Uber, Lyft and others specifically but the USA is a country where if we mandate workers with 30 hours get healthcare, employers may try to schedule for 29. I think it's unfortunate, but that's the incentive.
(opinion mode on: we need to fix healthcare as a country; the current state of affairs and likely the state after the Supreme Court hears Texas v. California in three weeks is ridiculous)
We already know the answer to this, from how Walmart and others schedule their employees to just under full-time status in order to avoid paying them benefits. If Walmart is doing it, it will be considered to be an orthodox business practice and Uber/Lyft/DoorDash/etc. have probably already planned for it as a contingency.
I see your point about locking people out of access once they get past a certain number of hours. I think there are two reasons why this is probably not realistic. (1) the hourly count is over a quarterly basis, so harder to track. If a user has 25 engaged hours in week 1, why lock the app if week 2 or 3 the user may have 0 engaged hours? (2) the apps commonly have "bonuses" for hitting certain trip count goals, and you don't see apps trying to lock users out before they hit that goal.
However, Uber has put out a proposal asking governments to establish a "benefits fund" that all gig-companies are required to deposit into, on an hourly basis. That way someone working 5 hours on one app and 20 hours on a second would get benefits partially paid from both companies, without an incentive for any company to shirk their duties.
See the following link, under page 12 - "we want to contribute to funds that workers can individually direct toward the benefits that matter most to them. We are asking states to require our industry to accrue such funds":
https://ubernewsroomapi.10upcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/...
That wasn't my understanding of it. This[1] says:
> Companies that employ drivers through apps — among them, Lyft, Uber, DoorDash and Instacart — would instead keep workers classified as contractors and be able to offer narrower benefits, including pay at least 120% of minimum wage, health care subsidies and accident insurance.
> Benefits under Prop. 22 would be tied to drivers’ “engaged time” completing passenger routes, excluding any wait time on apps between rides.
So if I understand right, current status quo is that companies aren't obligated to pay squat, "yes" on prop 22 commits to certain pay guarantees (which I assume means some increase in price to cover for those costs), and "no" on prop 22 means companies have to use employee model (which they argue means large increases in prices, as well as reduction of coverage due to needing to follow taxi density logistics)
I tend to think about Uber in a similar way as McDonalds (i.e. lots of competition, but strong worldwide presence and strong brand), and I suspect that it will be more or less fine regardless of the outcome because of its strengths.
Personally, I've had enough bad experiences with taxis that I can see the appeal for these companies wanting to maintain high driver volume. I guess what remains to be seen is whether "yes" would provide someone working 40 hours a week to get the same level of compensation as an employee would, while still allowing casual drivers to pocket extra money in between part time jobs or whatever.
The 120% of minimum wage + the possibility to earn linearly more given more hours certainly seems like a better outcome than an employee that makes exactly minimum wage for a maximum of exactly 40 hours, and hopefully other benefits are equally sensible, rather than a loophole for undercutting drivers. It would be great to get more clarity on how the rest of benefits numbers work out.
[1] https://calmatters.org/election-2020-guide/proposition-22-gi...
To me, Uber seems more like a marketplace that connects buyers and sellers of a particular service (rides).
If I sell something on eBay, should eBay consider me an employee and give me benefits? What about if I sell my service on Fiverr or Upwork? How is that Upwork any different than Uber?
As an aside, I fell like the whole idea of benefits being tied to employers is a horrible anti-pattern. It reminds me of the old days when you got paid in company dollars to spend at the company store.
With Uber you don't. Uber gets to decide how much the ride costs, not you.
To me the minimum wage policy should be updated to include healthcare insurance as compensation, and possibly raise the minimum wage as well.
That way those companies w/o health insurance have to pay more $$ per hour and those with health insurance are equally competitive to those who do not.
>Amending Proposition 22 would require a seven-eights (87.5%) vote in each chamber of the California State Legislature and the governor's signature, provided that the amendment is consistent with, and furthers the purpose of, Proposition 22. Changes that are not considered consistent with, and furthering the purpose of, Proposition 22 would need voter approval.
These ride sharing companies are spending hundreds of millions of dollars and engaging in shady tactics targeted at both their drivers and customers so they can give their employees fewer benefits all while completely circumventing the state legislature. This is a absolute perversion of democracy.
[1] - https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_22,_App-Based...
The reason this is a perversion of democracy is because it is fundamentally a handful of companies banding together to buy their own law. They are only able to do it because of the huge amount of money they have. This is literally the most expensive ballot measure ever. They are straight lying to the public about who support it and hoping they can convince enough people to vote yes. It is a perfect combination of abusing the US's lax laws on corporate political speech and California's lax laws on propositions.
[1] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-07/uber-lyft...
This talking point completely ignores the fact that California Props are, BY DEFAULT, not amendable by the legislature unless otherwise specified. If anything this 7/8ths clause gives the legislature more flexibility than the vast majority of propositions which the legislature cannot touch without putting another prop up for vote.
https://www.courthousenews.com/governor-newsom-signs-newspap...
The CA legislature just passed AB323, which exempts journalists from AB5, with a 71-4 margin (94.7%) in the Assembly and unanimously in the Senate. So 87.5% is certainly doable!
Funnily enough, the website advocating for journalists to be exempt says the following. Sound familiar?
==========
* If forced to comply with AB 5, many community newspapers, including local, ethnic, urban, suburban and metro papers, will be unable to sustain operations. They will close their doors, leaving many communities with no local news source.
* For those that continue to exist, news operations will be forced to make deep cuts to both print and digital community coverage and offerings in order to survive.
[IF NEWSPAPERS ARE NOT EXEMPTED FROM AB 5, READERS WILL LOSE.]
* Limited home delivery.
* Fewer local news reporters and less hometown coverage.
* Loss of sports, comics, games and investigative reporting.
* Days of week eliminated from print.
More at: https://savemypaper.com
The link you provided says 67-4. The Assembly has 80 seats so 67/80 is 83.75% and therefore wouldn't be enough to amend Prop 22.
One big difference between that change to AB5 and this one is that almost zero journalists actually wanted AB5 to apply to them. Journalism is profession that is much closer to true freelance work than rideshare workers who flip back and forth between a couple employers.
http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billVotesClient.xhtm...
If you agree that the workers should decide, the majority of drivers also don't want AB5 to apply to them.
https://therideshareguy.com/california-proposition-22-2020/
In this blog's survey ~70% of drivers want to be independent contractors, and ~60% are a Yes on 22. In case you think it's biased, the writers ultimate argued for the No vote.
Fair enough.
>In this blog's survey ~70% of drivers want to be independent contractors, and ~60% are a Yes on 22. In case you think it's biased, the writers ultimate argued for the No vote.
My point was not necessarily that the workers should always decide. It was that there is a huge difference between roughly 0% who support it for journalists and a roughly 30%-40% who support it for rideshare workers.
Also that 60% who support Prop 22 is wildly influenced by the money spent by these companies and the underhanded practices that were the topic of this post. If these workers were given an unbiased account of Prop 22 and the ramifications, I think the numbers would be different. If this was truly a popular proposal, why would this become the most expensive campaign in history with roughly 95% of the money coming in support of Prop 22?
Also, the "against" was not 40% even when "for" was 60%. It was 60% for, 24% against, and 16% undecided. I'm not sure where you got the number that 0% of journalists wanted to be employees but I doubt it's actually 0%.
Anyways, happy to get into a deeper discussion offline -- I think there's a lot of interesting philosophical arguments for both sides but with politics the way it is the Yes/No voices are currently talking past each other. Feel free to reach out to me directly!
But...lots of people in tech, and on this site, have long been pushing companies to hold and voice political opinions. To those of you who have - did you really, honestly think that these companies would not also become vocally active in their own political interests? Did you really think they'd only speak up when it was your own opinions that needed boosting?
Pushing companies to hire diversely is good. Makes them more ethical and less biased.
Pushing companies to add “black lives matter” banners on their corporate landing pages ... eh that’s got nothing to do with ethics.
This particular situation has multiple sides so defining one side as ethical implies that the other sides of the debate are not.
https://i.ibb.co/7yQLdY6/7865-CBAD-6928-4637-958-C-011736362...
I haven't used the app for a year or so.
This is fucking ridiculous. I have uninstalled Uber and I will also recommend all my friends to do the same.
https://twitter.com/unicorn__voice/status/131753631910332825...
Anyone know what is potentially illegal about this?
> But two sections of the California Labor Code (sections 1101 and 1102) specify that private employers may not do any of the following: > > 1. Make, adopt or enforce any rule or policy forbidding or preventing employees from engaging or participating in politics or running for public office; > 2. Make, adopt or enforce any rule or policy that tends to control or direct the political activities or affiliations of employees;5 or > 3. Use the threat of job loss to coerce, influence or attempt to coerce or influence employees to take or refrain from taking any particular course of political activity.6
https://www.shouselaw.com/ca/labor/harassment/political-reta...
Good thing we passed a law that forces Uber/Lyft to treat their drivers as employees.
There's also a (very weak) argument to be made for defamation, as Uber's way of gathering this information might be reckless disregard of the truth. However, even if it is defamation, showing any damages is going to be extremely tricky, and even meeting the defamation bar seems like the kind of convoluted legal reasoning that tends to lose at court.
The message has been changed, but more importantly the popups weren't actually set to pop up every time the driver picked up a ride. Instead, they were set to pop up when they went offline.
As a subsequent tweet says, "However, drivers switch between Uber, Lyft and other apps. That means they go offline all the time. That is why drivers were constantly having to click yes or okay."
Yet.
Well the company pays you every month and the activist group doesn't so I guess that's a big difference.
I think it's totally inappropriate for sure, but is it that different?
[1] https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_22,_App-Based...
I also at the moment don't have an opinion of this.
Is this understanding correct at a very high level?
Yes 22: * Benefits Uber. * Do not need to provide drivers with health benefits. They are on contract (e.g. hourly) so they can buy their own health benefits. This is similar to other workers like doing "gigs".
No 22 - Benefits Drivers. * Every driver (irregardless of hours worked) are required to receive health benefits.
If above is the case, the two sides seem very polar. Why not have a middle ground where benefits are provided to driver's, given a contract, that they work meet 40hrs per week?
If you commit to work for the platform more than X number of hours in a regular basis, you are eligible for benefits. That means that you have a quota of worked hours to meet.
If you can't commit to work for X number of hours in a regular basis, then you can work whenever you want, without benefits.
And... the company commits not take any measures to keep the number of hours for an individual worker below the benefit threshold.
This is the way things already work on many occupations.
That is in Prop 22, it is a compromise where drivers who drives a lot are eligible for benefits.
Yet we live in a society where multiple jobs are often required just to survive. And in that scenario, it is strange to require “your employer” to give you benefits because you only need one of them to do so. If you have two healthcare plans, one is “wasted”. It probably makes more sense for each of your employers to somehow cover 50% of the plan cost.
I doubt Uber/Lyft even want to pay partial benefits though, since their whole profitability seems to be defined in terms of drivers being taken advantage of.
So when a college kid wants a weekend job, that won't be allowed?
One example I haven't seen discussed much is that it requires that any future changes Business and Professions Code chapter 10 require a seven-eighths vote and that the changes be "consistent with and furthers the purpose of" the chapter.
So not only is this a gross law that special cases particular businesses, but it's a nearly impossible to overturn suicide pact to do so.
Maybe it's better to just increase payroll tax by 1% (or N) and direct transfer it to the lowest paid workers in the state?
In that sense, why is a popup window so upsetting. Is the issue somehow related to voting ( as in, my company probably shouldn't send a mass email saying to vote for Trump/Biden ) that makes people so upset? That I could understand, but that does not appear to be a complaint here.
What am I missing here?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_of_Action_to_Save_Net_Neut...