California appeals court rules Uber, Lyft must reclassify drivers as employees • Hacker News Board

Re: California appeals court rules Uber, Lyft must reclassify drivers as employees

#421

Post by KozmoNau7 » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 11:03 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #368

nemothekid wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by "left wing systems"? And do they wield power through any other means than capitalism? In America, at least, I do not see any significantly powerful, economically left, political structures.

> What do you mean by "left wing systems"? Non-capitalist ones. > And do they wield power through any other means than capitalism? Sure. For an obvious example, see public sector unions. For another, NASA. The public school system. In the news lately are the police interests. The military. Organized religion. They wield considerable political power via controlling large voting blocks. Other means historically used ar…

Wielding political power by virtue of being a large number of voters is literally what democracy is.

Unless you somehow think these people are somehow deluded or being manipulated or simply wrong because they do not agree with your political views, the ideal of democracy must be to have as large a part of the population as possible involved in politics and voting as possible.

Re: California appeals court rules Uber, Lyft must reclassify drivers as employees

#422

Post by donor20 » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 1:24 PM UTC

CameronNemo wrote: post #124

nickpp wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AB5 was written by the Teamsters - an multinational Syndicate who couldn’t include and collect Uber drivers membership fees unless they were actual employees. Its main architect, Lorena Gonzales, is a Teamsters woman through and through, by her own admission. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Brotherhood_of_T...

This is so off base. It sounds like a regurgitation of a Red State post. If anyone wants to read about Lorena Gonzalez-Fletcher, just check her Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorena_Gonzalez#Early_life,_ed... She was involved with the AFL-CIO, but I see no mention of involvement with the Teamsters union.

I'm not familiar with red state (I'm a maxed out dem donor BTW). I will look into Lorena a bit more though to confirm she is not labor involved. There was one other bill that had this same sort of ham fisted approach which turned out to be heavily union influenced, which is why I wondered about AB5 (ie, even highly liberal orgs struggle to operate within this bill FYI because even if you want to do right many things are just not possible with it).

Re: California appeals court rules Uber, Lyft must reclassify drivers as employees

#423

Post by donor20 » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 1:36 PM UTC

akiselev wrote: post #85

donor20 wrote: post #71

AB5 has been a total disaster. The number of special cased carve-outs is ridiculous - it's not a normal law. Obviously AB5 was hacked together by some special interests (unions maybe - what is history?). It's totally unworkable. The carveouts that keep coming are the sign of this - how many are there now, anyone have the list? And yes, I'm a maxed out dem donor. If AB5 is the way workers rights are going to be advanc…

> The number of special cased carve-outs is ridiculous - it's not a normal law. I looked up AB5 [1] and read about the "carve outs" last time the topic came up, among several other. It's far shorter than other nontrivial bills and I couldn't find a single one that didn't specifically mention a superseding precedent or specialized State or Federal law that had supremacy regardless. For example, the primary exceptions…

A quick list (likely much more / more complicated than this) of carveouts I could find:

accountants

architects

cartographers

copy editors

dentists

direct sales salespersons

engineers

fine artists

fishermen working on an American vessel

freelance editors

freelance writers

insurance agents

insurance inspectors

investment advisers

landscape architects

lawyers

manufactured housing salespersons

musicians involved in sound recordings or musical compositions

musicians with single-engagement live performances

newspaper cartoonists

photojournalists

podiatrists

private investigators

producers

professional foresters

psychologists

real estate appraisers

securities broker-dealers

still photographers

surgeons

translators

veterinarians

youth sports coaches

Industries with exemptions:

appraising

auditing

competition judging

copy editing and illustrations

digital content and feedback aggregation

home inspections

insurance underwriting inspections

international and cultural exchange services

landscape architecture

manufactured housing sales

master class performance

performing arts

recording arts and music

registered professional forestry

risk management and loss control

translation of documents

You make claims that this list is shorter than other non-trivial bills. I've worked in this space trying to get things right - this is BY FAR the hardest to implement law out there. A seller wants to sell their home, as part of that they pay out of escrow for an appraiser (normally handled as a contractor) to appraise the house. Under AB5 they had to HIRE that person as an employee in most cases - they are not even setup to run payroll!

An org wants to sponsor a "fellowship" for $1,000 or $2,000 to a student and have them attend an event / do a presentation. Can't do that under AB5, they can't be 1099'ed anymore, they are below exempt comp threshold, even if you pay them as non-exempt this student has to track their hours "working" for employer, get paid overtime etc. Reality - student doesn't want to track their hours, employer doesn't care and doesn't want to have to onboard and ramp up someone for a feel good thing like a $2,000 fellowship and program is cancelled.

You hire someone to write an article. Do you want them tracking their hours, do they? Will you hire them if you might have to pay for hours and overtime and missed meal breaks while someone is at home writing this article?

The list goes on.