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Truckers sue California, say new gig economy law would kill 70k jobs

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Re: Truckers sue California, say new gig economy law would kill 70k jobs

#71

Post by thephyber »

nemo44x wrote: post #60

You’re watching corruption in real time Here. Lorena Gonzalez is openly condemning the court system and corporations are flexing how much they’ll spend if they can’t cut a deal. Regulations like these lead to lobbying which leads to corruption. This isn’t about “justice for workers” - it’s a shakedown by politicians in a single party state.

> Lorena Gonzalez is openly condemning the court system

Can you explain your thinking here?

From my reading, the law she wrote/sponsored was largely aligned with the Supreme Court of California interpretation of the Dynamex case.

Re: Truckers sue California, say new gig economy law would kill 70k jobs

#72

Post by wahern »

prostoalex wrote: post #23
fzeroracer wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Independent restaurants still have to comply with the law and provide a basic level of care for their employees. Now if you had a restaurant that tried to claim their staff were all independent contractors (because they worked for multiple restaurants in the same chain) in order to avoid complying with labor law, you'd have a closer analogy. Ultimately this sounds like they wanted to get away with offloading the risk…

> Independent restaurants still have to comply with the law and provide a basic level of care for their employees. The analogy is not 100% equivalent, as truckers in question are independent owners and operators. Closer restaurant analogy would be someone opening a taco truck, and getting hired to cater a small event. California now says that whoever hires that taco truck is responsible for benefits and other labor r…

> California now says that whoever hires that taco truck is responsible for benefits and other labor regulations

The law says no such thing. The biggest change from pre-existing law regards the second prong of the new law, which asks whether the type of work is within the usual course of the hiring entity's business. This is the same test in pre-existing law, it's just that this test is applied strictly rather than only given weighted consideration.

Are you a company that organizes and dispatches taco trucks? You're likely effected. Are you a company that hires a taco truck every Tuesday for employee lunch? I'd bet money that you're safe. Are you a family hiring a taco truck for a birthday party? It's ludicrous to suggest the new test imposes a legal burden on you.

Re: Truckers sue California, say new gig economy law would kill 70k jobs

#73

Post by raintrees »

In our small town in very Northern California along the coast, the local paper, which is struggling to survive, having just been bought out of receivership, has decided to start delivering the paper via USPS to avoid this law's ramifications with the paper delivery router people.

So more jobs lost, thanks to legislation to protect a certain group of people.

Hazlitt would have recommended examining the law's merits prior to passage to see if it 1) Benefited only a group of people, not the whole, and 2) Did not help the whole in the long run (paraphrased).

Re: Truckers sue California, say new gig economy law would kill 70k jobs

#74

Post by mycall »

nradov wrote: post #70
pmcginn wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in finished vehicle logistics, and I've worked directly with a wide variety of truckers, including three years in California. You are very right that the amount of cargo that needs to be moved will not change because of this law, but you are, in my opinion, wrong about everything else. I don't want to stereotype truckers because it is a diverse group. But I will say that in my anecdotal experience, this is a job…

There is no "shortage" of truckers. Never has been and never will be. New truckers can be trained in a few months. Customers and employers just don't want to pay. Claiming that there is a shortage of workers in a particular field is generally nonsense. Is there a shortage of gold? No, I can buy as much as I want tomorrow ... at the market price.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevebanker/2019/09/11/the-driv...

Re: Truckers sue California, say new gig economy law would kill 70k jobs

#75

Post by ars »

wil421 wrote: post #34
bhupy wrote: post #2

Pretty comical that it ended up being California regulation that would put truckers out of work instead of Silicon Valley automation.

What Silicon Valley companies have put workers out of a job since let’s say 2000? Some of the old companies have like HP and Intel certainly made certain office work redundant and to an extent Oracle. What does HN think?

Farmers? Farms have become very automated, you need less people to do the same work.

Re: Truckers sue California, say new gig economy law would kill 70k jobs

#76

Post by refurb »

mistrial9 wrote: post #65
pmcginn wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in finished vehicle logistics, and I've worked directly with a wide variety of truckers, including three years in California. You are very right that the amount of cargo that needs to be moved will not change because of this law, but you are, in my opinion, wrong about everything else. I don't want to stereotype truckers because it is a diverse group. But I will say that in my anecdotal experience, this is a job…

a bicycle ride in the Port of Oakland seeing idling trucks, shows many hundred very sketchy "contractor" truckers who I doubt have seen the kind of large, steady number of dollars you are quickly citing there.. the condition of their vehicle, their health, their English language skills and other superficial indicators would be the evidence

I think your “superficial” qualifier is key - none of them are proof the trucker isn’t making good money.

Re: Truckers sue California, say new gig economy law would kill 70k jobs

#77

Post by fzeroracer »

BurningFrog wrote: post #43
pmcginn wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in finished vehicle logistics, and I've worked directly with a wide variety of truckers, including three years in California. You are very right that the amount of cargo that needs to be moved will not change because of this law, but you are, in my opinion, wrong about everything else. I don't want to stereotype truckers because it is a diverse group. But I will say that in my anecdotal experience, this is a job…

Note that if trucking prices do go up, the amount of cargo that gets moved will go down.

No, not necessarily. Correlation is not causation and what not.

If trucking prices go up, companies might opt to move more cargo at the same time (same amount of moved cargo, but less trucks on the road) or they might simply eat the loss (if they're already making massive profits) or any number of alternatives.

If we were to take your argument into absurdity, the best thing to do would be to reduce trucking prices to $0, because then we would fundamentally move a lot more cargo, which would drive down prices across all of the US benefiting a lot more than just the small minority of truckers.

It's an overly simplistic way of looking at things that reminds me of the assumption that raising the minimum wage would cause the prices on everything to hike up by the same amount.

Re: Truckers sue California, say new gig economy law would kill 70k jobs

#78

Post by favorited »

joshklein wrote: post #57

This article is about a suit from The California Trucking Association, a trade group and industry lobbyist representing corporate management, not truckers. You can learn about them on their website if you're curious. The only source providing a statement in the body of this article is the association's head lobbyist. Background sources seem to include a politician and an academic institute. No truckers. I don't have…

Thank you! The Teamsters union (and locals), which actually represent truckers, supported AB5.

Re: Truckers sue California, say new gig economy law would kill 70k jobs

#79

Post by arcticbull »

manigandham wrote: post #38
arcticbull wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2019 America, "Socialism" explicitly does not mean the state or workers own the means of production. 2019 American "Socialism" is capitalism with guard rails, raising up the bottom class a bit at the cost of the top. Regardless how you feel about that, Sanders is no Marx, and the breathless ranting over on Fox is just that. The government has no interest in the means of production lol, and frankly, neither do the…

Capitalism with guard rails is just capitalism. It's never socialism or communism. No country has a completely unfettered free market, it's always on a spectrum with many socialist policies and regulations for the greater good. The question is which policies are used and how they're enforced, and America has always tended toward more individual choice over state mandated actions.

That's my point actually! :)

Re: Truckers sue California, say new gig economy law would kill 70k jobs

#80

Post by fzeroracer »

manigandham wrote: post #54
katmannthree wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point is more to set the floor for work conditions (such as with minimum wage laws) so that the very desperate and those who have difficulty assessing long-term costs (such as with MLMs or Uber) don't set the minimum conditions for everyone.

So set the floor and increase education. This regulation doesn't do any of that, instead it just removes that way of working as if these people can't make the choice for themselves.

Except we already have the floor. It's called being labeled an 'employee'. Independent contractors are a way of companies getting around the floor.

So you either modify the floor so that contractors have the same benefits as employees, or you make them employees. Both of which are fundamentally the same thing.

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