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California passes bill that classifies gig economy workers as employees

nytimes.com

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Re: California passes bill that classifies gig economy workers as employees

#191

Post by pnongrata »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #47
toomuchtodo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe! In the interim, burn rates of already unprofitable companies are going to increase drastically. Does it matter if you overturn the law if you’ve already ceased operations?

Uber ride share is actually profitable in California (and most of the USA), they are burning lots of cash on UberEats however. If this law is applied fairly, it affects taxi and limo operators as well, so everyone will be in the same boat at least, fares will surge but they will still be in business.

I'm curious, do you have a source for the claim that uber is profitable in most of the USA? That goes against their disclosed info of huge annual losses.

Re: California passes bill that classifies gig economy workers as employees

#192

Post by clinta »

AndyMcConachie wrote: post #167
jackmodern wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

don't know why this is getting down voted, all of you folks using lyft/uber.. get ready for the prices to double or triple.

If that means people driving for Uber/Lyft can now have a decent standard of living I'm all for it.

Even if it means that fewer people get the opportunity to to do it at all? I know people who drive for a little extra money while they work other jobs. This kind of flexibility is what might be at risk, excluding many people who need that extra income from ever getting the opportunity.

Re: California passes bill that classifies gig economy workers as employees

#193

Post by lr »

bluedino wrote: post #179
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If what you do as a software consultant is outside of the usual activities of the company you work for I suspect you should be fine. Uber however is a taxi company and the brunt of their primary activities are done (atm) by contractors. Driving people around is their core business - even if they will probably give the defense that they're only a middle man with an app that links independent drivers up with people loo…

What about FedEx? Aren't most of their drivers contractors?

FedEx works on a franchise model. The franchisee may indeed need to classify its drivers as employees.

Re: California passes bill that classifies gig economy workers as employees

#194

Post by drngdds »

jackmodern wrote: post #83
stickfigure wrote: post #14

If this actually gets enforced, I predict we'll all be talking about the law of unintended consequences in a year's time.

don't know why this is getting down voted, all of you folks using lyft/uber.. get ready for the prices to double or triple.

>don't know why this is getting down voted

It's literally just "regulation bad!" with no argument backing it up

Re: California passes bill that classifies gig economy workers as employees

#195

Post by impendia »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #12
daveFNbuck wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ad spend can undo this in November 2020. Ballot propositions can't be undone by the legislature or governor.

That seems exceedingly unlikely to occur, regardless of ad spend, in a state as progressive politically as California (similar to AirBnB’s tone deaf failed ad campaign in San Francisco). This assumes gig companies haven’t exhausted their runway by then. Humorously, Uber and Lyft thought they might extinguish taxis if they waited them out long enough, and then the California government did the same to them.

When I lived in San Francisco, there were several ballot propositions roughly along these lines: various corporations or special interests advocating for some measure that was designed to sound reasonable, but whose explicit purpose was to benefit whoever wrote it and was paying to promote it.

At least while I was there, these never passed.

I remember that the San Francisco Bay Guardian (then an alt-weekly newspaper) used to absolutely howl about these propositions. My memory is that the SFBG hated them even more than, say, the anti-gay marriage proposition which passed in 2008. They were quite unequivocal in labeling them as crony capitalism.

Unfortunately, the SFBG has ceased publication; although they still have a website, they appear to basically be dead.

Re: California passes bill that classifies gig economy workers as employees

#196

Post by bencollier49 »

wastedhours wrote: post #172
mikekchar wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a software contractor... (A) and (B) are terrifying. I think (A) means you really can't do contract work while working under the direction of a manager, or PGM. So you essentially have to be doing work for hire rather than filling in a specialist role for a defined period of time. (B)... Wow... So if the company is a software development company, they can't hire contractors??? I really hope I'm reading that wrong.…

My reading is that it's similar to the UK's IR35 regulation? Do any UK contractors here have any additional experience of working in/out of IR35 to give some context?

Well, it's a different law, but IR35 often hinges on whether you're part of the chain of command in the business, and whether you could substitute another qualified person without the agreement of the client.

HMRC provide this tool to determine employment status:

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/check-employment-status-for-tax

Re: California passes bill that classifies gig economy workers as employees

#197

Post by drtillberg »

onion2k wrote: post #98
username90 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California loves making bandaid state fixes to federal problems, I think this is the wrong way to go. Problem: You need a full-time job at a company to get benefits such as healthcare. Californian solution: Reclassify as many as possible as full-time workers. Problem: USA immigration laws are horribly inflexible. Californian solution: Make it illegal to go after illegal immigrants. I don't think that these passive-ag…

Making laws is very similar to writing code - you can't just jump straight to the final, feature-complete, scalable solution (and, just like code, that probably isn't even a thing anyway). It's an iterative process. This is very much the v0.1.1 of the law around gig economy jobs.

We'll, I'd say v.1.99. There is ample law out there that could make gig workers full employees in certain circumstances. What the gig platforms did was not new, it was simply big enough, bold enough, and arguably legally reckless enough that law enforcement either lost the will or ability to enforce existing laws to force gig platforms to act like mature, adult, law-abiding enterprises. California isn't legislating in an absence of law, it's clarifying that no one really likes guttersnipe employment practices, never did, and the fact that they have become prevalent in large, well-funded enterprises is a public policy problem that needs to be solved.

Re: California passes bill that classifies gig economy workers as employees

#198

Post by moduspol »

djrobstep wrote: post #56
tylerl wrote: post #25

They're calling that "Remaking the Gig Economy"? Making Uber and Lyft drivers into employees? What a sham. For 10 years I ran my own consultancy. Every new engagement was a new "job" where I could negotiate the rules of engagement however I deemed fit. Usually lasting no more than 5 days each. Every new month for 10 years I'd think: "this is it, it's over; I have no work scheduled for next month, I'm going to have to…

As well as laws like this that recognize the reality of the employment relationship, making these jobs decent requires: - unionization and industry bargaining to get decent wages and conditions - quality social welfare systems (including universal healthcare) so that people aren't afraid of poverty if they get fired/quit/change jobs I've always wondered why there isn't more of an appetite for Medicare for All and uni…

> How many people would like to do a startup but don't because they'd have no health insurance?

How many people would like to do a startup but don't because they have no food or shelter? We don't really care because the costs of those things are manageable.

The problem isn't that the government isn't paying for it. The problem is that it costs way too much.

Re: California passes bill that classifies gig economy workers as employees

#200

Post by buboard »

DeonPenny wrote: post #57

Well, RIP to the Gig economy hopefully robots get here soon. Cause I can't see the market surviving this.

Driver robots? See you in 20 years

Its more likely you ll see drivers forming shell contractor companies so they can still work for both uber and lyft etc

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