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.
What evidence do you have of this "coercion"? To me it just seems like there's a much simpler Occam's razor explanation. These companies business models rely on part time workers rather than full time workers (mainly due to very spiky demand). The workers prefer doing this job to their other options (otherwise the millions of them in CA wouldn't be doing it to begin with). Therefore it's in both the company and majority of drivers' best interests not to let AB5 stand.
It also seems a bit disingenuous to say this is allowing an industry to write its own laws. It's just an ad-hominem - who cares who wrote the law? It's the content of the law that is important, and the process that it goes through to pass. In this case if it is voted on and approved by the public, that seems like a perfectly legitimate example of direct democracy.
(Whether you think direct democracy is a good idea for nuanced policy decisions, or whether what amounts to a constitutional amendment that can't be changed by the legislature is a good process for regulating a fast-changing new industry, are separate questions. Those are very valid concerns IMO. But that has nothing to do with the arguments you brought up).
Edit: and thinking about a precedent that this sets, I see that differently as well. AB5 was pretty clearly a bad law, and the legislators behind it completely shut off all negotiations with rideshare companies and were intent on playing hardball instead of coming up with a compromise. It was clearly all about retaliating against these companies that these legislators didn't like, with no thought given to how it would actually work or what would be best for constituents (as evidenced by just how many other industries, from journalists to musicians, were caught in the crossfire and had to be exempted one by one).
Given that, I think this sets a precedent to legislators that they actually need to do their jobs. They need to do the hard work of designing practical laws that will actually work for all of their constituents. Their job is not just to make bold symbolic gestures to fire up the most extreme members of their base, and if they do and they insist on doubling down on bad policies that work against a large number of their constituents best interests, it can backfire like it did with prop 22.
> Earlier this month, before California users of the app could call for a ride, they had to “confirm” they’d seen a message that described how wait times and prices would rise if Prop 22 wasn’t passed
> Last week, Uber users complained on social media about in-app notifications stating that “Prop 22 will save lives,” in an apparent violation of Apple’s app developer agreement
> “Almost every time we log on, we are fed more one-sided information to pressure us into supporting Prop 22,” Ben Valdez, a driver for Uber and one of the plaintiffs in the case, said in a statement. That includes in-app videos of drivers speaking about why “Prop 22 would make a difference,” reinforcing Uber’s stance that the measure should pass.
Coerce: persuade (an unwilling person) to do something by using force or threats.
Maybe we could disagree on whether this was a misinformation campaign, but it's still certainly not coercion. Still doesn't even seem like misinformation to me, the reality was that every driver who did not want to work full-time on the company's schedule would lose the ability to work if AB5 stands. (And if the companies shut down operations altogether in CA or demand took a big hit due to higher prices, then some or all of the rest of the drivers would lose their jobs too). I don't see how advertising that to drivers is dishonest.
Drivers were forced to watch political ads before they could start working. They were forced to read pro-prop-22 messages before they could start working. Some of these messages warned (some might say threatened) that the drivers would lose their jobs if Prop 22 passed.
Forced to watch an ad != forced to vote a certain way.
And again, a threat implies it is done maliciously. You think it would be better if the companies just stayed quiet, and then just out of blue one day said "sorry we're shutting down operations, you're all out of jobs"?
They get coerced to watch ads, not coerced to vote a certain way or have a certain opinion. The reason they started supporting prop 22 after watching the ad is that prop 22 gave them minimum wage and healthcare without being employees, which is exactly what most drivers wants.
I voted against Prop 22 but you have to respect that it got 58% of the vote according to currently posted results. That is a pretty good majority. The result (a) undermines the argument that workers were widely coerced and (b) demonstrates there's a widespread reaction to AB5.
It's hard to avoid the conclusion that the California Assembly brought this situation on the citizens by writing a bad law.
I mean it seems equally as bad as targeting laws specifically against companies as a result of lobby efforts.
The CA law was created directly to change Uber, Lyft, etc and was backed by lobbying groups with lots of funding. So this exemption being funded by Uber is just as bad.
I’d rather laws be created based on actual first principles with goals to help the people. I think this ping pong game of lobby/counter lobby is not good for society.
I don’t think that having your paid contractors freely agree to do a job you instruct them to do counts as coercion.
They were free to not participate in any of that, just as anyone else.
If you take on a job from a customer and it has certain terms to be paid, and you agree to those terms, that isn’t coercion: it’s work.
It’s possible that you view the very nature of the societal work-for-money as coercive, which has its own argument, as people need food and shelter to survive. If that’s the argument, make that one. In that’s not the argument for this being “coercive”, however, then I can’t really see it, as they could have simply not done the thing you claimed they were being coerced into doing.
They’re independent, remember: they can just not sign in to the app if it demands they do things with which they are uncomfortable.
Prop 22 gives gig drivers a minimum wage and forces uber to pay for their healthcare if they drive enough hours. That is the reason it passed, if it didn't add protections to gig workers people wouldn't have voted yes to it.
Then why did people need so much money to make it pass if it is a good law most people like? Because there is so much misinformation going around about prop 22! Even in this thread most people still think that prop 22 means drivers wont have healthcare or minimum wage, meaning the Californian union lobbying got to most of you. They don't need money to spread misinformation, they just go to their journalist friends and gets biased articles written for free. How many articles were written which mentioned all the benefits prop 22 gave drivers? Not many, most just said it was so Uber could continue to oppress workers.
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.
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.
