In August a California court ordered Uber and Lyft to reclassify more than 100,000 drivers as regular employees. The two companies, which depend on a business model that defines drivers as independent contractors, got the decision lifted for at least a few months. But in the meantime their threat to shut down operations in California—and …
Return of the Lockout: Uber and Lyft Try to Strong-Arm California Read More »
Calling people “gig” workers is a subtle trap. “Gig” can sound anywhere from upbeat to just a mundane description. The truth is the “gig” economy is just another way of exploiting people and it’s a dream for all capitalists to have a pool of workers who can be used and abused at the beckon call …
Australia’s bushfire crisis has killed tens and incinerated an area two-thirds the size of Illinois. The resulting blanket of smog reduced air quality in the nation’s capital, Canberra, to third worst among all major cities. But the latest manifestation of the climate crisis has hurt an already hard-done by group: gig workers delivering food for Uber Eats. While state governments have …
Why Many Uber Drivers Couldn’t Afford To Stay Home During Australia’s Fires Read More »
In an Axios interview that aired on HBO last Sunday, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi made a troubling analogy. Discussing Uber’s ties to Saudi Arabia—whose sovereign fund is one of Uber’s largest shareholders—Khosrowshahi described the assassination of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi as a “mistake” comparable to the company’s own “mistakes” in reckless automation. This “mistake” was brushed off casually, with no mention of its place …
Today Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law Assembly Bill 5. The untitled new law will have a significant impact on the gig economy in California. It will be increasingly difficult to lawfully classify California workers as independent contractors. With the exception of several significant carveouts, which I discuss below, the definition of “to employ” announced …
How Does the Passage of AB 5 in California Affect Me and Others in the Gig Economy? Read More »
The rideshare industry seems to have been on an unstoppable tear, running roughshod over regulations, filling the streets with cars, and making astronomical sums of Wall Street capital. But California just tripped up Uber and Lyft’s business model with pioneering legislation to rein in the freewheeling “gig economy.” The law, Assembly Bill 5 (AB5), passed overwhelmingly in …
Hey, Uber and Lyft: Gig Work Is Work. California Just Said So. Read More »
The California Senate passed a bill reining in gig economy abuses on Tuesday night, and by Wednesday afternoon, before Gov. Gavin Newsom had a chance to sign it, Uber had already come out to say that it was confident the new law wouldn’t apply to Uber drivers, and also Uber had already allocated tens of millions of …
This is huge. The California state Senate passed Assembly Bill 5, which will rein in gig economy abuses, in a 29 to 11 vote. App-based companies like Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash tried to negotiate an exemption for themselves, but legislators held firm and the bill—which needs to be re-passed by the state Assembly and then signed …
California Senate passes landmark bill cracking down on gig economy abuses Read More »
Google is famous for workplaces called “campuses” where employees get enormous paychecks and enjoy all the perks of fancy private college campuses, including pingpong tables and other entertainment. But other workers who produce for Google across the country are not so pampered. They are Google’s underclass. In this two-tier system, these workers get less money, less respect, …
A million California workers are denied key workplace protections—including the minimum wage—because their employers falsely label them as independent contractors. But that came one step closer to changing on Friday when the state Senate’s appropriations committee passed Assembly Bill 5, a plan to crack down on that misclassification of workers. AB5 is based on a 2018 decision by the …
Madeline Messa is a 3L at Syracuse University College of Law. She graduated from Penn State with a degree in journalism. With her legal research and writing for Workplace Fairness, she strives to equip people with the information they need to be their own best advocate.
