2750.3. (a) (1) For purposes of the provisions of this code and the Unemployment Insurance Code, and for the wage orders of the Industrial Welfare Commission, a person providing labor or services for remuneration shall be considered an employee rather than an independent contractor unless the hiring entity demonstrates that all of the following conditions are satisfied:
(A) The person is free from the control and direction of the hiring entity in connection with the performance of the work, both under the contract for the performance of the work and in fact.
(B) The person performs work that is outside the usual course of the hiring entity’s business.
(C) The person is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation, or business of the same nature as that involved in the work performed.
This seems to pretty conclusively result in Uber drivers being employees, then. Specifically, in B. It's going to be hard for Uber to argue that driving cars is outside of the usual course of Uber's business.
I actually don’t think that point B is the ones they failed off. They claim that they are in the business of facilitating a connection between drivers and riders, in the same way that Youtube connects creators to viewers without employing them.
The main thing they failed on is that the court thinks that they exert too much control on the drivers. For example, they don’t allow users to choose their own drivers. They also don’t allow drivers to price their ride.
>They claim that they are in the business of facilitating a connection between drivers and riders, in the same way that Youtube connects creators to viewers without employing them.
This doesn't stand. If YouTube hired every single YouTuber as a contractor it would be forced to reclassify them as employees. Because Uber doesn't facilitate connections between two third parties, it facilitates connections between clients and their contractors. If drivers on Uber were neither contractors nor clients and if contractual obligations were between drivers and riders then it would make sense.
So your argument is that since Uber was classifying them as contractors, they should always be able to?
According to a quick search, they have 900,000 drivers and 27,000 employees. At most 3-ish% of the people that they pay to work for them are tech employees (and we can probably safely assume most of those 27,000 are not tech).
My argument is actually the inverse: currently uber has no driver employees, the only way to change that under this law is to assume they do, then you can use that to argue any new driver is an employee. You need a first set of driver-employees to argue others are now employees. But there has never been a first set of driver-employees. Its actually a little confusing that that is required as it seems to allow Uber etc to skirt this definition (unless they have been taking on drivers as full employees without my knowledge?)
I'd be interested to know how many creators YouTube "employs" or how many retail workers Ebay has and what their percentages are. This is where this whole thing confuses me: If Uber drivers are employees (and maybe they are?) then basically every major tech company has millions on employees they have been misclassifying. Paying them all minimum wage with benefits and taxes deducted etc will be a massive massive change for these companies.
> I'd be interested to know how many creators YouTube "employs" or how many retail workers Ebay has and what their percentages are. This is where this whole thing confuses me: If Uber drivers are employees (and maybe they are?) then basically every major tech company has millions on employees they have been misclassifying. Paying them all minimum wage with benefits and taxes deducted etc will be a massive massive change for these companies.
YouTubers are not contractors of YouTube. eBay sellers are not contractors of eBay. Uber drivers are contractors of Uber.
This is why Uber will be affected and not YouTube, nor eBay. Uber would also be free to have a system where drivers are not contractors nor employees of Uber (but it would not fit their business model).
Whats the difference between youtube paying creators $x/1000 views and Uber paying drivers $X per km/minute of driving? Surely they're both contractors right? What distinction am I missing here?
YouTube is actually very different. As a YouTuber, you, by default, have no monetary transaction with YouTube. It is possible for you, however, to ask YouTube to place ads on your video, where they get a 30% cut of the ad revenue. Crucially however, you are allowed to place your own ads and monetize your videos any which way you like. So YouTube just acts as an ad agency, and as far as YouTube is concerned you are just a user of their ad service, or in the majority of cases just a user of their video sharing platform.
There is no contract between you and YouTube where you do work and in exchange you get money. There is only the option for YouTube to choose ads for your videos and give you a cut in exchange - it's quite literally just like placing ads on your website using AdSense. No guarantee of $ per video or even $ per view, it works almost exactly like AdSense.
Which is crucially different from Uber where the contract is that you do a task in exchange for some money, therefore meaning that you do the work for Uber. On YouTube, you're allowing YouTube to place ads on your IP for money, and you're allowed to do anything else with your work and monetize it however you like, so really YouTube is providing a service for you.
The law was drafted to formalize a set of legal criteria that was established and enforced by Californian courts. The spirit of the law was not to target Uber/Lyft. The letter of the law, according to the courts so far does not appear to clear Uber in anyway. We will see how the appeal goes.
Edit:
I don't see how you think the letter of the law clears Uber, Uber sea to fail every part of the test.
A) Uber does exert control over many aspects of how the work is performed, e.g. acceptable car models, acceptable ride acceptance rates.
B) The rides provided by drivers are central to Uber's business. Uber has no business model without its drivers.
C) Many drivers do drive for other companies and would pass this critiwia but some do completely different work and have not done any driving work independently from Uber. These drivers would not pass this criteria.
2750.3. (a) (1) For purposes of the provisions of this code and the Unemployment Insurance Code, and for the wage orders of the Industrial Welfare Commission, a person providing labor or services for remuneration shall be considered an employee rather than an independent contractor unless the hiring entity demonstrates that all of the following conditions are satisfied: (A) The person is free from the control and direction of the hiring entity in connection with the performance of the work, both under the contract for the performance of the work and in fact. (B) The person performs work that is outside the usual course of the hiring entity’s business. (C) The person is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation, or business of the same nature as that involved in the work performed.
[0] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...