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California Voters Exempt Uber, Lyft, DoorDash from Having to Reclassify Drivers

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Re: California Voters Exempt Uber, Lyft, DoorDash from Having to Reclassify Drivers

#271

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

mbgerring wrote: post #265

No matter how you feel about AB5, allowing an industry to write laws and then coerce its workers into acting as campaign volunteers whether they agree with the law or not is a horrible precedent. This is not how our laws should be made, and we will come to regret this.

This did not set that precedent. Anyone has been free to write California ballot propositions for quite some time. It's hard to see a way to prevent that eventuality given the Citizens United ruling and the conservative bent of the federal supreme court.

Re: California Voters Exempt Uber, Lyft, DoorDash from Having to Reclassify Drivers

#272

Post by bzbarsky »

kube-system wrote: post #255
bzbarsky wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your claim about gay marriage is just empirically wrong. Popular "support" for gay marriage passed 50% in 2013 according to https://www.pewforum.org/fact-sheet/changing-attitudes-on-ga... and passed the "oppose" level in 2011 (it looks like ~10% of survey respondents consistently pick neither option, so the lines crossed at the 45% mark). Obergefell v. Hodges was decided in 2015. Support for gay marriage was at the 2…

If we are entertaining what would happen regarding gay marriage ... > if we left that up to popular opinion ... then national polls are not relevant, because marriage laws are set at the state level. In fact, until Obergefell v. Hodges, it essentially was left up to popular opinion, and many people lived in states where it was unpopular enough to pass legislative, or even constitutional bans.

Sure, the mechanics of how things become "law" is complicated by the fact that you can have actual laws, constitutional amendments, supreme court decisions, etc, depending on the exact thing being discussed and where responsibility for it rests in the various levels of government in the US.

But no matter how you slice it, I see no obvious support in the data for the original claim that "gay marriage was legalized when popular support was only at 25%".

Now maybe there were some states that had support at only 25% in 2015. For example, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/where-same-sex-marriage... is a 2014 article that mentions that Missisipi had 14% support in 2004 and support went up by "1-2% per year since then". So _maybe_ it was at only 25%, as an absolute lower bound. But chances are it was higher than that even there.

Re: California Voters Exempt Uber, Lyft, DoorDash from Having to Reclassify Drivers

#273

Post by dahdum »

drewda wrote: post #268
zachware wrote: post #256

I think you can have a favorable opinion about the intent of AB5 but also realize that it was a sloppy law that had caused lot of collateral damage when it was passed. Its sponsor even had a dispute on Twitter with a journalist affected where she said, basically, hey, we had to get it done and we didn't have time to get the details right. I suspect this is not the end of this fight but hopefully if it comes up again,…

Prop 22 is written such that it can only be modified by 7/8 vote of the legislature in the future. Its funders made sure to protect their "investment" from the normal political process of push/pull/debate/change. In the words of one political science professor: > “I’ve looked at a lot of ballot measures over the years,” said Moylan, adding that a two-thirds majority is common. > But a seven-eighths “super, super, sup…

Your article states Prop 22 gives the legislature more power than normal.

> By default, a law enacted by ballot measure can only be changed by another law enacted by ballot measure. The exception to that rule: If crafters of the initiative explicitly say otherwise. No surprise, many ballot measures do not say otherwise. Compared to that default, Prop. 22’s high bar for amendments actually gives the Legislature more influence than the norm.

Re: California Voters Exempt Uber, Lyft, DoorDash from Having to Reclassify Drivers

#274

Post by novok »

username90 wrote: post #85
gogopuppygogo wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The People have voted and they desire low cost transportation options more so than protecting vulnerable transportation workers. The state will not get its payroll tax. The employees will not get their benefits. Wait till the people get to vote on public sector pension plans...

The state gets its payroll tax, being an independent contractor doesn't prevent that. The drivers will get their benefits, prop 22 added benefits to them without making them employees.

The big tax loss is all the removal of deductions that the state gets if they’re employees, which nobody talks about with AB5 on the govt side because they know it wouldn’t go over well.

Re: California Voters Exempt Uber, Lyft, DoorDash from Having to Reclassify Drivers

#275

Post by cblconfederate »

mbgerring wrote: post #265

No matter how you feel about AB5, allowing an industry to write laws and then coerce its workers into acting as campaign volunteers whether they agree with the law or not is a horrible precedent. This is not how our laws should be made, and we will come to regret this.

They are also responsible for the law being written in the first place. It's not unusual for industries to lobby for legislation

Re: California Voters Exempt Uber, Lyft, DoorDash from Having to Reclassify Drivers

#276

Post by nxc18 »

dkural wrote: post #115
Wolfenstein98k wrote: post #101

Good. The users and the drivers both wanted this. You may dislike hearing this, but it takes a lot to inject yourself into that arrangement and massively increase the cost because you want it done differently. I recognise that it appears to create "rules for thee but not for me" for these companies, but when they are so thoroughly satisfying both their customers and their workers, you should ask yourself if forcing t…

Another "user" is the taxpayer - who ultimately ends up paying for the social security, healthcare, and other unmet needs (lack of paid sick leave, lack of paid maternity/paternity leave etc.) of these contractors. So in a way, by exempting Uber from these rules, but not others, society is handing out a subsidy for both the passengers and drivers.

I voted for this arrangement specifically because I think the state _should_ be paying, ideally fully, for maternity, paternity, healthcare, and social security.

Having a functional social safety net basically moots the issue of classifying employees.

Re: California Voters Exempt Uber, Lyft, DoorDash from Having to Reclassify Drivers

#277

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

whimsicalism wrote: post #157
chmod600 wrote: post #154

Prop 22 may or may not be good, but its passage means that AB5 was bad. The state Assembly screwed up. When you pass a law that affects so many ordinary people, you better be sure that's what they want. Instead of a practical solution, AB5 came across as just meddling.

> When you pass a law that affects so many ordinary people, you better be sure that's what they want The reason we have a representative democracy is because sometimes legislators can make decisions that might be different from the typical voter who has not spent extensive time thinking about the issue.

Those same reps changed their minds and carved out tons of “whoops that’s not what we meant” exemptions, which is presumably what that comment is referring to with “you better be sure that’s what they want.”

Re: California Voters Exempt Uber, Lyft, DoorDash from Having to Reclassify Drivers

#278

Post by jackmodern »

mbgerring wrote: post #265

No matter how you feel about AB5, allowing an industry to write laws and then coerce its workers into acting as campaign volunteers whether they agree with the law or not is a horrible precedent. This is not how our laws should be made, and we will come to regret this.

they weren't coerced into anything. independent research and internal research at lyft showed drivers preferred being labeled as contractors due to the flexibility that offered. the drivers got what they wanted here.

Re: California Voters Exempt Uber, Lyft, DoorDash from Having to Reclassify Drivers

#279

Post by ac29 »

shuckles wrote: post #182
mdorazio wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many Californians would willingly work in 1900s factory conditions with machines eating body parts and people passing out from exhaustion because that's the only work they can get. This kind of completely unregulated employment market that you seem to want is exactly the thing that people fought against for decades for damn good reasons.

There is plenty of unfilled demand for the trades, so I’m skeptical that there is a large pool of labor willing to work those kinds of jobs.

Sure, but the post you are responding to isn't talking about things like electricians or plumbers - which require some amount of training and licensing/certification. They're talking about things like garment workers - jobs with little to no requirements.

Re: California Voters Exempt Uber, Lyft, DoorDash from Having to Reclassify Drivers

#280

Post by dragonwriter »

nxc18 wrote: post #276
dkural wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another "user" is the taxpayer - who ultimately ends up paying for the social security, healthcare, and other unmet needs (lack of paid sick leave, lack of paid maternity/paternity leave etc.) of these contractors. So in a way, by exempting Uber from these rules, but not others, society is handing out a subsidy for both the passengers and drivers.

I voted for this arrangement specifically because I think the state _should_ be paying, ideally fully, for maternity, paternity, healthcare, and social security. Having a functional social safety net basically moots the issue of classifying employees.

> I voted for this arrangement specifically because I think the state _should_ be paying, ideally fully, for maternity, paternity, healthcare, and social security.

I don't know why you would want to change the law now to a state that would be better in this area if you had a law you would like, but which doesn't exist and for which there is very little public or institutional support.

It would seem to make more sense to change this law as part of implementing that other law, if and when support for that could be built.

Otherwise, its kind of like abolishing a hypothetical law mandating certain minimum decency standards for owners treating slaves on the basis that slavery shouldn't exist in the first place without actually abolishing slavery.

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