Workers: California takes aim at Uber and Lyft
In California, it’s the “end of an era for the gig economy,” said Alison Griswold in Oversharing. This week, the state’s lawmakers advanced Assembly Bill 5; the law, which the governor is expected to sign, will “likely force many gig companies to reclassify their independent contractors as employees.” It’s a seismic shake-up for hundreds of thousands of the state’s workers, from freelance journalists to certain truckers, janitors, construction workers, manicurists, and software coders. It’s also the drastic change Uber and Lyft have long feared most, said Andrew Hawkins in TheVerge.com. Sensing “the writing on the wall,” the ride-sharing firms, which rely on contracted drivers, recently teamed with delivery app DoorDash to spend $90 million as a “last resort” to fund a ballot initiative that would exempt them from AB5. Uber and Lyft speculate that reclassifying their California drivers as employees would cost them nearly $800 million per year.
What’s California going to regulate next? asked Andy Kessler in The Wall Street Journal. Reclassifying gig workers “means the cost of rides, deliveries, and even manicures would go up, up, up.” It will also end up hurting workers. According to Postmates, “half of delivery workers quit after 80 days and about 45 percent work less than nine hours a week.” These are side jobs for many people who cherish the independence and extra bucks for gig work that would suddenly vanish if this bill gets passed.
Come on, all those claims about flexibility from Uber and Lyft “ring hollow to anyone familiar with their business,” said Aaron Gordon in Jalopnik.com. Yes, most drivers say they like their autonomy. But these companies have found ways to “undermine that flexibility by cutting rates, gamifying their platform, and otherwise incentivizing drivers to work certain times or drive a certain amount to a degree that it is unprofitable to do otherwise.” In reality, making money as an Uber or Lyft driver requires a full-time commitment.
The real problem is that for full-time workers of every kind,
“job security is already long gone,” said Louis Hyman in the Los Angeles Times. “For decades, in ever more insidious ways, employers have made workers disposable.” Uber didn’t start this; it thrived because shift work has become so insecure. “The choice for these drivers is not between driving for Uber and working on a unionized assembly line. It is between Uber and flipping burgers or slinging lattes.” Passing AB5 won’t restore good jobs. We should be rethinking all of our work lives so workers don’t have to choose between security and autonomy.