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US court rules Uber and Lyft workers are contractors

bbc.com

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Re: US court rules Uber and Lyft workers are contractors

#31

Post by dragonwriter »

akira2501 wrote: post #3
CSMastermind wrote: post #2

https://www.courts.ca.gov/opinions/documents/A163655.PDF ^ Actual court ruling which is linked in the article itself. I find the article's headline misleading. The court ruled that a proposition that was passed by voters in California which classified these drivers as contractors was mostly constitutional and would be allowed to have the effect of law, noting that California's legislative branch was free to change th…

Lawmakers cannot change if they so choose. Propositions amend the constitution of California. They can modify it, but they have to honor the rule itself and cannot simply remove it or abrogate it through this alteration. > Legislature can amend Proposition 22’s provisions with a statute passed by a seven-eighths majority in both houses, so long as the statute is “consistent with, and furthers the purpose of,” the ini…

> Propositions amend the constitution of California.

Initiate Constitutional Amendments do, Initiative Statutes do not. Prop 22 was an initiative statute, and as such did not amend the Constitution.

Nevertheless, because the legislative power resides in the people first and is delegated by them to the legislature to the extent that they have not themselves exercised it, an initiative statute, while subordinate to the State Constitution, cannot usually be altered by the legislature (the legislature can propose changes, but they must be passed by the people.) But, OTOH, Prop 22, as you note, contains a provision allowing a legislative hypermajority to amend it, and so can, in fact, be altered by the legislature unilaterally.

On the gripping hand, though, those unilateral alterations that the legislature can make are explicitly limited, and do not include making app-based drivers regular employees rather than contractors.

Re: US court rules Uber and Lyft workers are contractors

#32

Post by dragonwriter »

SllX wrote: post #14
karmasimida wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read modifying it requires like super super majority like over 80% of approval from senate legislature, effectively it couldnt be done So it is yes and no i guess, in theory yes, in practice better forget about it. This is state constitution, it isnt meant to be modified as someone pleases

Our State Constitution is modified frequently at the ballot box. This one amendment to the law is just more difficult to amend than all the rest of the Constitution because it was designed specifically to be extremely difficult verging on impossible to amend but not technically impossible to amend as part of its text; and voters approved it with a far lower threshold than it would take for the legislature to modify i…

> This one amendment to the law is just more difficult to amend than all the rest of the Constitution

No, its not.

The Constitution can only be amended by a vote of the people (either by initiative or proposed by the legislature.)

This law can be amended by a vote of the people (either by initiative or proposed by the legislature), or it can be amended within certain bounds by a 7/8 vote of each house of the State Legislature without a vote of the people. It is, strictly, easier to amend than any part of the State Constitution.

Re: US court rules Uber and Lyft workers are contractors

#33

Post by dragonwriter »

arlort wrote: post #15
akira2501 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lawmakers cannot change if they so choose. Propositions amend the constitution of California. They can modify it, but they have to honor the rule itself and cannot simply remove it or abrogate it through this alteration. > Legislature can amend Proposition 22’s provisions with a statute passed by a seven-eighths majority in both houses, so long as the statute is “consistent with, and furthers the purpose of,” the ini…

> passed by a seven-eighths majority in both houses Holy mother of supermajorities ... What's the procedure for reversing a ballot measure? Can only be done via a different ballot measure?

Yes, the people have primacy over the representative bodies, so usually a ballot measure can only be modified by a subsequent ballot measure. This one makes a special allowance for unilateral amendment, within certain bounds, by the legislature as well as being modifiable by a ballot measure (which can either be proposed by petition or by a simple majority of the legislature), and is therefore strictly (if only slightly) easier to modify than a normal ballot measure.

Re: US court rules Uber and Lyft workers are contractors

#34

Post by SllX »

dragonwriter wrote: post #32
SllX wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our State Constitution is modified frequently at the ballot box. This one amendment to the law is just more difficult to amend than all the rest of the Constitution because it was designed specifically to be extremely difficult verging on impossible to amend but not technically impossible to amend as part of its text; and voters approved it with a far lower threshold than it would take for the legislature to modify i…

> This one amendment to the law is just more difficult to amend than all the rest of the Constitution No, its not. The Constitution can only be amended by a vote of the people (either by initiative or proposed by the legislature.) This law can be amended by a vote of the people (either by initiative or proposed by the legislature), or it can be amended within certain bounds by a 7/8 vote of each house of the State Le…

On paper you are 100% correct that it is strictly speaking legally easier to amend this law; but in reality, clearing the majority necessary to amend our Constitution is politically a lower bar than getting 7/8 of the legislature to amend this particular law. We really do amend it regularly and most voters I talk to don’t put a whole lot of thought into whether it’s a constitutional amendment or a statute. If they’re for whatever it is, they’re for it, and if they’re against it, they’re against it. The mechanics matter to a minority of us.

Re: US court rules Uber and Lyft workers are contractors

#35

Post by epgui »

chii wrote: post #25
uoaei wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> At what point does blatant advertising/propaganda meaningfully undermine human agency? at the point where there's a gov't agency that is forbidding free media from existing, or to censored to prevent the alternative argument. Otherwise, the voters would not vote against their own interest (or if they do, it's deemed to be their choice to do so).

I don't disagree with anything you said, but my intuition tells me you're possibly under-estimating the proportion of voters who routinely vote against their self-interest without realizing it.

It wouldn't surprise me at all if that was >30% of voters. Assuming that number I just made up was correct, just for the sake of argument, the parent comment's question is very interesting: what does that say about voters' agency?

Re: US court rules Uber and Lyft workers are contractors

#36

Post by dragonwriter »

SllX wrote: post #34
dragonwriter wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This one amendment to the law is just more difficult to amend than all the rest of the Constitution No, its not. The Constitution can only be amended by a vote of the people (either by initiative or proposed by the legislature.) This law can be amended by a vote of the people (either by initiative or proposed by the legislature), or it can be amended within certain bounds by a 7/8 vote of each house of the State Le…

On paper you are 100% correct that it is strictly speaking legally easier to amend this law; but in reality, clearing the majority necessary to amend our Constitution is politically a lower bar than getting 7/8 of the legislature to amend this particular law. We really do amend it regularly and most voters I talk to don’t put a whole lot of thought into whether it’s a constitutional amendment or a statute. If they’re…

> On paper you are 100% correct that it is strictly speaking legally easier to amend this law; but in reality, clearing the majority necessary to amend our Constitution is politically a lower bar than getting 7/8 of the legislature to amend this particular law.

Perhaps, but the comparison isn’t “7/8 of the legislature vs. a bare majority of the people” it is “7/8 of the legislature or a bare majority of the people vs. a bare majority of the people”.

It is absolutely not harder to amend Prop 22 than the State Constitution, or a normal initiative statute. It is easier. Perhaps only so slightly easier as to make no substantial difference, but your claim is that it is harder, and that is completely wrong. Even if it is not substantially easier, it is also not at all harder.

Re: US court rules Uber and Lyft workers are contractors

#37

Post by wilg »

sourcecodeplz wrote: post #17

In Europe, you can't drive for Uber or deliver food without a standard work contract which includes: healthcare, pension, payroll and income taxes. Drivers here PAY private companies a weekly amount in order to work for Uber et all (to have that contract). Uber et all work with these companies only, not individuals.

I'd be curious to know how this actually breaks down at the end of the day, in dollars, if you were to fully account for all the money. For example, factor in the cost of getting nonemployer health insurance through an exchange, whatever the equivalent of a pension would be such as using an IRA, etc. (Not sure what "payroll and income taxes" mean in this context.)

I don't have a clear sense of how it all nets out, besides loose high-level mostly political assumptions about various social programs that give me a vague sense Europe is going to be better here. Assuming someone was able to take advantage of all the various programs and whatnot in both the US and EU, how does the actual efficiency of delivering these services net out, fully considered. I wouldn't be surprised with a result that showed it is actualy more similar than you'd think, but I also wouldn't be surprised to learn that Europe is doing significantly better on this metric. I just don't know!

Re: US court rules Uber and Lyft workers are contractors

#38

Post by wilg »

unfairly4820 wrote: post #7

California Labor Union Leader: "Our system is broken. It would be an understatement to say we are disappointed by this decision allowing companies to buy their way out of our state’s labor laws" Uber Executive: "Our system is working. We’re pleased that the court respected the will of the people by upholding a voter-approved law.”

Is there some reason to suspect that there was corruption involved with this ruling? Or is this just general fearmongering?

Re: US court rules Uber and Lyft workers are contractors

#39

Post by [deleted] »

maldev wrote: post #22
uoaei wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You can see this actually doesn't have that big an effect. See https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_16,_Repeal_Pr... To summarize, the law is extremely simple. Remove the line "the government and public institutions cannot discriminate against or grant preferential treatment to persons on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in public employment, public education, and public contract…

[deleted]

Re: US court rules Uber and Lyft workers are contractors

#40

Post by teetertater »

alchemist1e9 wrote: post #21
sourcecodeplz wrote: post #17

In Europe, you can't drive for Uber or deliver food without a standard work contract which includes: healthcare, pension, payroll and income taxes. Drivers here PAY private companies a weekly amount in order to work for Uber et all (to have that contract). Uber et all work with these companies only, not individuals.

How does the prevalence and costs of Uber and food delivery in European cities compare to US cities? I don’t know myself, just wondering how this difference effects the end consumer.

Uber exists in Vienna but I've never found a reason to use it. Public transport is amazing, and the only time I would need a car (to the airport at night), taxis are cheaper
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