One wonders about the hubris of the folks who approved this part of Prop 22:
After the effective date of this chapter,
the Legislature may amend this chapter by a statute
passed in each house of the Legislature by rollcall
vote entered into the journal, seven-eighths of the
membership concurring, provided that the statute is
consistent with, and furthers the purpose of, this
chapter.
Prop 22 was intended to be almost impossible to overturn, requiring a higher bar for amendment than even the state constitution, and only permitting the legislature to amend it if the amendment was "consistent with" Prop 22.
Regardless of one's opinion about Prop 22 and AB5, this provision was undemocratic at its core because it deprived future citizens and their representatives of their ability to modify the law.
Thats a bit misguided in interpreting the propositions. By default propositions cannot be override by the legislature, by adding the provision it was more amendable than normal.
The standard is a two-thirds majority, so Proposition 22 (with a seven-eighths majority hurdle) was written to be much harder to amend than most California ballot measures.
> If Proposition 22 passes, could it be changed later?
> It would be very difficult. Proposition 22’s text carries language that aims to block further legislative action targeted at gig companies.
> If passed, amending it would require a seven-eighths supermajority of the Legislature — a daunting hurdle.
> In California, a law created by ballot measure can be changed only by another ballot measure, unless the original measure specifies otherwise. Because it’s a hassle to push through ballot measures, initiatives will frequently waive this protection and provide opportunity for the measure to be amended by the Legislature.
> A two-thirds majority vote is a common benchmark initiatives use. A seven-eighths majority requirement is unheard of.
I'm not making anything up. The judge that struck down Prop 22 listed its seven-eighths hurdle as one of the provisions that made Prop 22 unconstitutional.
> In a ruling issued Friday, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Frank Roesch declared that Proposition 22 is “unenforceable,” arguing several sections of the measure are unconstitutional under California state law. They included a section that required a seven-eighths legislative supermajority to amend the measure, which defied the legislature’s amendment power under the state constitution, according to the judge.
My understanding is that it is not the specific supermajority requirement that is the issue, because as others say, propositions are already by default not able to be changed or overturned by the legislature (if they were, propositions would be pointless because any proposition the legislature wants to be law would have already been passed as a normal law, and any proposition the legislature doesn't want would be changed by the majority who didn't want the law.)
The real issue is that the court is ruling that the clause is violating the single subject rule for propositions, and is restricting the legislature from making laws that are outside the scope of what the proposition says it is about. The 7/8th thing would be fine if they were just giving a way for the legislature to amend the actual proposition... instead, it is restricting the legislature from being able to make laws that are not affecting the direct stated single purpose of the proposition.
The tool is fine, it is what the tool is being used on.
> If Section 7465 had not been included, the Legislature could amend Proposition 22 by a simple majority vote according to each house's rules, followed by a popular referendum. With Section 7465 enacted, the Legislature can still amend Proposition 22 by a simple majority vote according to each house's rules, followed by a popular referendum. All Section 7465 provides is another way to amend the initiative statute, albeit one that is difficult to the point of near impossibility.
> To the degree that Section 7465, subdivisions (a) and (b), attempt to apply conditions to amendments proceeding under Article II Section 10, subdivision (c)'s majority-vote-then-referendum procedure, they are unconstitutional. To avoid the constitutional conflict, the Court should narrowly construe the "seven-eighths majority" and "consistency" requirements only to the non-referendum procedures in Section 7465, subdivisions (a) and (b).
> The judge that struck down Prop 22 listed its seven-eighths hurdle as one of the provisions that made Prop 22 unconstitutional.
As comex notes, this is untrue. To the extent the judge considers the seven-eighths hurdle at all (which he does, but not in the significant part of the opinion), it is only to note that there's no problem with it.
The original commenter said "Prop 22 was intended to be almost impossible to overturn, requiring a higher bar for amendment than even the state constitution, and only permitting the legislature to amend it if the amendment was "consistent with" Prop 22"
I am talking about that being a disingenuous interpretation considering other propositions do not allow the legislature to to amend their measures at all.
It's a fake reason because it's not a flaw in the proposition. For Proposition 22 to be ruled unconstitutional based on its unusually-generous legislative amendment requirement, the ruling would have to state that the California proposition system itself is unconstitutional, because that system specifies a legislative amendment requirement that is much, much stricter.
There's a difference between what one might criticize and what criteria the judge is using to make their ruling. The response was specifically to the claim that that portion of the proposition should not be criticized for the inclusion of a 7/8ths vote for an amendment.
Also, unusually generous? In that very same thread, it was mentioned many propositions include a provision for amendment with a 3/4ths vote.
And this proposition also (unconstitutionally, apparently) limited how the whole thing could be amended.
Unusually generous seems to be a far cry from a reasonable description. It was both harder to amend than many propositions, and included a novel attempt to restrict the ways in which it could be changed. Just because it could have been impossible to amend does not make it unusually generous.
> And this proposition also (unconstitutionally, apparently) limited how the whole thing could be amended.
The judgment explicitly notes that there is no problem with the proposition limiting how the special amendment procedure written in to the proposition can be used.
Rather, you appear to be thinking of the part of the ruling that overruled the part of the proposition defining the extension of collective bargaining rights to app-based drivers as constituting an "amendment" of the proposition.
If the California proposition system results in a passing referendum to torture Bill to death, does a court ruling that the referendum's result is unconstitutional also mean the proposition system is unconstitutional?
No. Just like when Congress passes a law ruled unconstitutional, it doesn't mean that Congress's existence, or the manner in which it drafts law is unconstitutional. It just means that particular law gets to be overturned.
> For Proposition 22 to be ruled unconstitutional based on its unusually-generous legislative amendment requirement
with what you wrote:
> does a court ruling that the referendum's result is unconstitutional
Did you forget something?
Ruling that prop 22 is unconstitutional based on a general feature of all propositions which prop 22 partially shares is ruling that the proposition system is unconstitutional.
If you pass a bill of attainder against Bill as a proposition and it gets overruled because bills of attainder are illegal, that says nothing about other propositions. But if you pass a bill of attainder against Bill as a proposition and it gets overruled because propositions are illegal, that invalidates the entire proposition system.
Which judge? As has been repeatedly pointed out elsewhere in the thread, this judge, the one overruling Prop. 22, does not discuss the option to amend Prop. 22 by seven-eighths vote of the legislature except to note that there's no problem with it.
The standard is nothing. The people will not let Sacramento override them. If a non-bond non-tax ballot initiative is passing you best believe the legislature fucked up.
Of course Californians will not give the legislature power to modify. That would defeat the point of overriding the legislature since those guys meet way more often than the every two years the voters get.
It still seems like California's process is the least democratic. It allows voters of the past to institute laws that are much, much more difficult to change than other laws.
The "Supermajority approval for ... years following" that North Dakota and Washington follow, or expiring the protection of the initiative from amendment automatically after some number of years seems appropriate.
> It still seems like California's process is the least democratic.
Did you mean the most democratic? California's process means the legislature can't override the will of the people -- only the people can do that, through another ballot initiative.
I'm not saying it's necessarily a good thing, but California ballot initiatives are about as close to direct democracy as you can get.
The problem is that it's capturing what the people say is their will at a moment in time, then forcing the legislature to commit to it forever more or start a new proposition.
Many people will misunderstand what the propositions propose is one issue. I feel like most California voters I have talked to say they are confusing more than anything else. And many will not turn out to vote. So who is to say that's even really the will of the people?
But the issue being discussed is that the will of the people can change, but California ends up stuck with the decision for decades.
If the will of the people changes, they can pass another ballot initiative that repeals or amends the first one, using exactly the same process, with a simple majority vote.
The reason California ends up stuck with some decisions for decades is that a majority of voters continue to like them or don't care enough to vote to change it.
If it stands simply because nobody cares, can it really be said to be the will of the people?
At best, it can be said to be the will at a moment in time now passed. But then there are the other issues I mentioned: many voters do not understand the propositions, many do not turn out to vote, etc. So I would even doubt that it's a valid capture at a moment in time.
How? That's been the understanding for hundreds of years and derives farther back then even our own country. It has its roots in English constitutional law and the principle of Parliamentary Sovereignty, one of the main tenets of which is that no previous act is allowed to bind the hands of a future parliament, to do so thwarts the democratic will of the people expressed by who they chose to elect.
To clarify I mean this comment ‘It still seems like California's process is the least democratic.’
Which is a bizarre way of looking at referendums, as it would imply that referendums over the entire voting population are less legitimate than bills enacted by a representative body.
It needs to be complemented by taxing actions that are speculative in nature, particularly by nonresidents.
I think something like this could work, except it would be despised by current homeowners and brokers that have a vested interest in homeowner pricing to keep going up to the stratosphere:
1)Anyone seeking to buy CA real estate is in effect subject to taxes as if he were a CA resident (with no deduction for out of state taxation).
2) create a xx% tax assessed on FV of any property beyond a 2nd, for properties not owned by a CA resident. Double the tax again for any time the property stays vacant.
Foreigners with oil money and dirty bribes can own, but not without paying taxes and also rushing to rent property out.
Since tax is based on FV, it disincentivizes owning for speculation.
And again - all of these things could be done if they could get on the ballot and pass in a referendum. The problem is not the CA constitutional arrangements.
If you lived through the madness, you would understand. (I can guarantee you were born after, I'm Mad as Hell!, by Howard Jarvis.
Every year taxes went up. Every year politicians squandered away that money on pet projects. Middle class residents feared tax day. I saw my dad cry once, and yes it was when he opened that tax bill from the county.
Prop 13 is the only real thing, in my lifetime, that truly helped the middleclass, and poor.
Yes---things were generally better 30-40 years ago, but don't blame our messed up society on prop 13.
Their are days where I feel we need to get rid of prop 13 for a few years, and let those that weren't born see what happens?
I have never heard anyone who lived through that time criticize prop 13, with the exception of a college professor trying to reel in young students during a lecture, or an upcoming politician trying to get young voters.
Instead of ragging on a prop that helps low/middleclass tax payers; I wish the young would go after how the wealthy around the world are buying up our homes.
With a phone call, or email, and then have the gall to leave them vacant.
To the young professional programmers. Let's be honest. You will be most likely shown the door around 50. If you happened to buy a house, you will eventually cherish prop 13.
In most places other than California, the problem of greedy politicians who raise taxes and spend the money on corruption and crap is to vote out the politicians. If you feel unsafe at tax time, your elected leaders should feel unsafe on election day.
It's really telling that Californians instead passed a terrible market-distorting ballot measure (which incentives hedge funds to buy properties to avoid the tax being readjusted again and pushes up prices so that nobody other than a hedge fund could afford them). If you're worried about affordability of houses, prop 13 (combined with NIMBYism and restrictive zoning laws in cities) is one of the main reasons why they are unaffordable.
It sounds like it didn't even register to Californians that maybe they should have voted for the other guy for a little while.
Old homeowners that benefit from prop13 don’t care and I can understand why.
If you’re able to own properties and pay relatively no tax on property that’s worth 10x what you paid for it that’s an insane win.
It also lets you vote to restrict supply even further to preserve “neighborhood character” and drive prices up even higher with no consequence.
Only new people get screwed. Their own kids maybe, but they can just pass the house down and capture that wealth for generations.
Meanwhile, new owners pay insane housing prices and fund the town via their actual market value property tax, while old owners leech this value and play victim. It’s a massive wealth transfer from young to old.
With such an extreme incentive structure it’s no surprise the rationalizations of it are similarly extreme.
I wouldn’t care so much if they didn’t consistently lobby to restrict new housing supply - but of course they will because the incentives are such that there is zero downside and only upside for them to do so.
It’s frustrating to listen to someone who bought a house for 300k and pays $300 a month on property tax whine when that house is now worth $3M and their neighbor had to pay $4M for a similar property and $4k per month in taxes. You won the lottery and then warped policy to your benefit, at least be gracious about it.
I truly think some people just don't learn from history, and look for easy targets. Targets they don't truly understand, but come of the tongue easily?
I would love to bar hedge funds, and wealthy non-citizen foreigners from buying our homes.
Put it into a Proposition, and you got my vote.
I have tried to tell young people how bad it was before prop 13, but I guess it's an easy target.
On my block, we have three homes out of twenty that are benefiting in a large way over prop 13 protections. Two of those homes rent rooms out to tenants. The rest of my wealthy neighbors don't need to worry about property taxes, or roommates.
The wealthy do not rent out rooms. They can pick up and leave whenever they want. So a large portion on my neighbors are paying not being served by prop 13, nor do they seem to need it.
In closing, and I'm getting tired of defending a prop, if CA residents ever lose their rational minds, and repeal prop 13; you got what you asked for. The wealthy, and Blackwater hedge fund types would love to snatch up those homes, and politicians would like those war chests they used to have access to in the 70's.
So you’re saying if property taxes go up that hedge funds and investors would be more likely to buy property? That wealthy people will hold more properties when the carrying costs are higher?
The simple way to protect individual homeowners is to limit their property tax increases while they are living in that property. This is what we do in Texas, it is by no means perfect and things can still increase quite a bit (10% / year), but you could put that ceiling as low as you like.
The word 'democracy' has its origins in the Greek language. It combines two shorter words: 'demos' meaning whole citizen living within a particular city-state and 'kratos' meaning power or rule.
It seems like a direct ballot initiative is no less democratic than an indirect representative making laws to govern the people. (I think it’s more, but it surely is not less.)
You can say you don’t like a given initiative; it’s much harder to argue that the process is undemocratic.
You mean “the most democratic”. It is direct democracy in rare instances to overrule the indirect democracy. The people speak and only the people can undo what they make.
The interesting question is whether voters can pass laws that are straight up unconstitutional. The courts are an important check on the power of legislators, but if they don't apply to the people, there may be some really interesting ballot initiatives in the future.
CA's ballot initiative process is democracy taken too far. It is close the point where democracy becomes the tyranny of the mob.
Well, a constitution can be anti-democratic if it cannot be changed by the people. Loads of dictatorships and single-party oligarchies have undemocratic constitutions.
In true democracies the constitution can be changed, and is regularly.
So basically, being a democracy and having a constitution are orthogonal.
That is the opposite position to "having a constitution is anti-democratic", which is the position taken by AaronFriel's comment.
> Loads of dictatorships and single-party oligarchies have undemocratic constitutions.
Ehh... my impression was that the bigger problem, from a standard American perspective, is that loads of dictatorships have constitutions which are everything American evangelical democracy dreams of, but which they aren't too concerned with adhering to.
> Loads of dictatorships and single-party oligarchies have undemocratic constitutions.
In many cases the issue is opposite. Many populist autocrats abuse democracies with constitution that can be changed too easily, so after one big win in election they can dismantle all checks and balances and independent institutions in the country.
This mostly true as written, but confusing to most folks not into the esoterics of this, because it implies the legislature can do nothing.
The legislature can't override it themselves, but they can submit it back to the voters:
"
(c) The Legislature may amend or repeal a referendum statute. The Legislature may amend or repeal an initiative statute by another statute that becomes effective only when approved by the electors unless the initiative statute permits amendment or repeal without the electors’ approval."
(I) It's based on the idea of a conflict between (1) a constitutional grant of unlimited power to the legislature to "create and enforce a complete system of worker's compensation"; and (2) Proposition 22's specification that "an app-based driver is an independent contractor and not an employee or agent with respect to the app-based driver's relationship with a network company if [certain] conditions are met."
(II) It states that independent contractors are not eligible for worker's compensation because, "as presently codified", California's worker's compensation law does not apply to independent contractors.
(III) It then concludes that this language from Proposition 22 restricts the Legislature's constitutionally unlimited power "to determine what workers must be covered or not covered by the worker's compensation system".
But up in step (II), there seems to be an explicit acknowledgement that the worker's compensation system could cover independent contractors if it wanted to. If the Legislature's unlimited power to create a worker's compensation system can be used to determine whether app-based drivers working as contractors are or aren't eligible for worker's compensation, how does restricting the Legislature's ability to determine whether app-based drivers are independent contractors or employees also restrict the Legislature's ability to determine whether they are covered by the worker's compensation system?
So your argument is about who could overrule who, but that is a secondary question.
General rule of thumb, if the constitution says "x has complete the power to do y", and you aren't x, your attempt to do so is unconstitutional even if x could simply overrule you.
At the federal level, you see this play out in things like the "dormant commerce clause" - States don't have the power to regulate interstate commerce. Sometimes they try in spaces where congress hasn't acted yet. Congress doesn't have to explicitly overrule them, they are simply unconstitutional in the first place.
It's not your power to play with.
You also see it play out in congress trying to regulate for the general welfare (a power reserved to states).
In this case, if the constitution says "the legislature gets to decide who has workers comp", and they decided, and you attempt to adjust that, that's probably unconstitutional.
The 100% normal thing that would happen is a court would sever it and say "to the degree the statute tries to adjust who gets workers comp, that part is null and void ". It's just that here, the statute explicitly says "if that provision is found unconstitutional, the whole statute should be struck down". So the court did.
One side thing to keep in mind, because it often plays into these things later - when a court finds a statute unconstitutional, they are finding that it was always unconstitutional from day 0, not just moving forward. In such cases, it is considered "void ab initio" - it is like it never existed.
So assuming this holds up, the next thing that will happen is a bunch of folks will then come and file cases about what they should have gotten in the intervening time period.
(void ab initio in practice is becoming harder to manage, and arguably being moved away from, but ..)
> So your argument is about who could overrule who, but that is a secondary question.
This is related, I guess, but I see my argument as being about something different. The claim of the ruling seems to be that:
(I) The Legislature has the unlimited power to determine who does and who doesn't get worker's comp.
(II) The Legislature has, using their discretion, given worker's comp to one category of worker (employees) and withheld worker's comp from another category of worker (contractors).
(III) Therefore, no other group has the power to determine who belongs to which category, because that would interfere with the Legislature's power to determine who has worker's comp.
But I don't think this works. Suppose the Legislature managed to get Proposition 209 repealed and subsequently determined that blacks receive worker's comp and whites don't. The implication of this ruling is that an initiative defining who is black and who is white would be invalid because that would interfere with the Legislature's power to define the worker's compensation scheme they want.
And this is true in general - the Legislature's power to determine who gets worker's comp now automatically includes the power to determine who belongs to any category, as long as they first decide to award worker's comp to that category, or to withhold it from that category. [1]
I don't see why the ability to use a category when describing the worker's compensation scheme necessarily includes the very different power to take control of the definition of that category.
For a different hypothetical, suppose that all workers employed in driving were already ineligible for worker's comp. Proposition 22 then would have had no impact on who was eligible for worker's comp. There's no difficulty with a "dormant commerce clause"-style argument that it should be invalid anyway because, even though the Legislature hasn't yet extended worker's compensation to drivers, they might do so in the future. But it seems to me that, in order to make that argument, you would first have to argue that it is impossible for the Legislature to extend worker's compensation to independent contractors -- otherwise, what's the difference between discretionarily extending worker's comp to driving employees before Prop 22 and discretionarily extending it to driving contractors after Prop 22?
[1] I'm having difficulty forming the hypotheticals I really want because the body given unlimited power over worker's comp in this case is the official legislature, which tends to make examples sound less ridiculous than I think they should, as the legislature already possesses most other legislative powers. But with so much being rested here specifically on their power over worker's comp (since that power is immune to statutory propositions and most others aren't), I think it's worth separating them conceptually. What if the constitution endowed a separate body, the "California Worker's Compensation Authority", with this plenary power? Then by this ruling, the official legislature would no longer have the power to define who is an independent contractor and who isn't -- that would interfere with the constitutional grant of authority to the CWCA. But I suspect the CWCA also wouldn't have the power to define who is an independent contractor. Who would?
Of course, happy to.
Okay, so thanks for framing it this way.
When framed this way, this is precisely one of the kinds of "who has what power" issues and what happens when someone else tries to do something that often comes up.
Congress uses its power to create groups A and B who are taxed different (or whatever).
The groups are never perfectly well drawn.
A state comes along, and takes some folks in the "grey area", and says "yeah we're just gonna say that these folks are in group B"
(I use congress and the states because they are easy to think about, but feel free to substitute any two groups that have explicit separation of powers)
In that case, and in your first case, the answer is "you probably can't do that".
To start with, again, the normal resolution would be for the court to simply say "you can say what you want but you can't affect who gets worker's comp by what you say - period. It's not your power". The court is literally disallowed from doing this in this case
But to dive into it:
"I don't see why the ability to use a category when describing the worker's compensation scheme necessarily includes the very different power to take control of the definition of that category."
It only does to the degree necessary to effectuate the scheme and normally would only apply to the scheme (unless said otherwise).
Again, the normal path would be to interpret the provision in a way that does not cause constitutional issues, or to sever it.
But prop 22 doesn't allow this.
So normally, the court would say "to whatever degree this provision attempts to control who has workers comp, it fails at that. No matter what exists now or in the future, only the legislature gets to decide who has workers comp. To the degree the provision has any other effect, it still does".
But again, it can't here. So it appears weird in that it appears to grant one group more power. But it's not, really. It's really saying "you won't let us sever or reinterpret this, so we aren't"
FWIW - You can make arbitrarily close calls here that rub people either way.
For example - imagine the statute said "once in your lifetime, you enter your name into a computer and 1 in a trillion times it says no. If it says no, you are in group B. Otherwise, nothing happens".
This has no effect 99.9999999999% percent of the time.
It still would be struck down (and my experience is it also feels "wronger" to people than your version).
To both your hypotheticals, for starters you are taking them farther than they normally would go in most states/etc. California is a little weird here.
In the first one, in federal court, and most states, if it had no effect, you wouldn't have standing to challenge it at all, and in most places, standing is a jurisdictional bar (IE without standing, the court literally does not have the power to hear your case).
California does not consider standing a jurisdictional bar, so it may hear it anyway. So you could end up in a case in california about something that has no effect, but it would not really happen elsewhere.
The next thing that would happen is to determine who has the power to regulate this area, and have they regulated.
If it's not you, and they have regulated, you generally can't do much of anything (this is not perfectly true, but we'll dive very far into esoterics too quickly)
This is where your first hypothetical will likely get knocked out. If it's not your power to exercise, you don't get to say anything about it. The court will try to ensure it interprets things in a way to cause the least "destruction of statutes" as possible, but you don't get to say anything about it. It may do that by determining you have had no effect, etc. But it will often do it by removing the section that says anything, even consistent. This is because it avoids issues later on when the group with the power to define the scheme changes it. Otherwise, everyone will be back in court saying "well, this other things says this", and the court will have to decide again "yeah, again, they don't have the power to change that".
In the second hypothetical you give, that body actually would have the power to define who is an independent contractor for the purposes of worker comp. It will in fact, get to define everything it wants to define for the purposes of workers comp.
None of those will have any effect outside of workers comp.
and nobody could affect their definitions as-applied to workers comp.
So to the degree the legislature's definition of something affected workers comp, it would be held to not affect workers comp :)
Or it would be held entirely unconstitutional if they had an explicit no-savings clause.
It's not infrequent to see definitions that change depending on agency context and use and power because of this happening.
For example, defining "spouse" for the purposes of federal railroad benefits vs "spouse" for the purposes of "family medical leave" vs "spouse" for the purposes of immigration law vs ....
> Congress uses its power to create groups A and B who are taxed different (or whatever).
The difficulty I have is that, as far as I can see, this step didn't happen. The groups were always defined by the states, and then Congress decided that they should be taxed differently.
I don't have a good grasp of which actual bodies hold which actual powers, so I'm going to continue talking as if this were a conflict between the formal legislature of California and the hypothetical CWCA.
There is a body of statutory law that defines the statuses of "employee" and "independent contractor". This body of law was amended by AB5. The two statuses have a variety of effects, such as tax withholding/prepayment requirements. I think this must be established by the legislature using its general legislative powers.
The CWCA has plenary power to create an arbitrary system of worker's compensation. It can do that however it likes, and it has chosen to do it -- in part -- by making reference to the statutory definitions of "employee" and "independent contractor".
As I read the (actual) ruling, the (hypothetical) CWCA's discretionary choice to make reference to the statute defining the status of "independent contractor" has now prohibited the legislature from amending that statute, despite the fact that writing the statute was within the legislature's power.
In particular, we don't see this:
> It's not infrequent to see definitions that change depending on agency context and use and power because of this happening.
> For example, defining "spouse" for the purposes of federal railroad benefits vs "spouse" for the purposes of "family medical leave" vs "spouse" for the purposes of immigration law vs ....
The CWCA could write a regulation that said "for all purposes relating to worker's compensation, an 'independent contractor' is defined as follows...", but they didn't. Instead, they have one that says "our regulations use the term 'independent contractor' as defined in §2750 of the Labor Code".
Given that body of CWCA law, I don't see how the legislature can be prohibited from amending §2750. Doing so will change the effect of the CWCA's regulations as presently codified. But that's just what happens when you make reference to an external standard. Even if you have absolute power over worker's compensation, once you use that power to delegate a definition to some other body, your absolute power cannot prevent that body from changing their definition. You won't have truly absolute power until you rescind the delegation of authority.
Going back to your example:
> Congress uses its power to create groups A and B who are taxed different (or whatever).
> The groups are never perfectly well drawn.
> A state comes along, and takes some folks in the "grey area", and says "yeah we're just gonna say that these folks are in group B"
The situation we have here seems to correspond to this:
1. Congress intends to use its power to tax lawyers differently. Perceiving a crippling lawyer shortage, they issue a law providing for a refundable tax credit of $1000 to "anyone licensed to practice law", which is a decision made at the state level.
2. Wyoming, also perceiving a crippling lawyer shortage, responds by amending their license requirements to require nothing more than an $800 one-time fee. Pay $800, and you're licensed to practice law in Wyoming.
3. Wyoming's amendment to its own licensure regime is legally blocked due to the conflict with Congress's taxing power.
What am I missing? I don't think step 3 could really happen, but I don't see the difference.
A majority is more than half, that is, more than 50%. Everything between 50% and 51% is also more than half. In a state as populus as California, that might actually matter.
"51%" is frequently used as shorthand for the technically correct but awkward term "50%+1".
Generally whenever you see it the intended meaning is clear and not worth arguing about unless you're actually writing a legal or specifications document or similar.
> "51%" is frequently used as shorthand for the technically correct but awkward term "50%+1".
This is technically incorrect. If you have a board of 9 people, it will result in the wrong rule: It will mean that 6 votes are required for majority instead of the correct 5.
The technically correct definition of majority is "more than half". It's disappointing to see the grandparent stating this correctly downvoted in the gray.
Source: Worked extensively on board and elections procedures for a nonprofit. Also [1] (expand question #4) warns explicitly against using the incorrect "50% plus 1" definition, and clarifies that the definition is "more than half".
> "51%" is frequently used as shorthand for the technically correct but awkward term "50%+1".
50%+1 is only correct about half of the time as the threshold, since votes cast is constrained to integers but not specifically even ones; ⌊50%+1⌋ is correct; as would be >50%, as, instead of trying to impress with (false, for both the 51% and 50%+1 options) precision, would be the both technically accurate and simple “a majority”, or, if the intent to is to emphasize the lack of a higher threshold, “a simple majority”.
This isn't what the judge refereed to at all when calling it unconstitutional. The California Constitution gives broad authority for workman's comp. laws to the legislature. Prop 22 said that no law can make drivers qualify for workman's comp. That's unconstitutional, because it's a law that limits what the legislature is allowed to do under the constitution. Hence, the whole thing falls apart.
> Prop 22 was intended to be almost impossible to overturn, requiring a higher bar for amendment than even the state constitution.
No, the legislature can't amend the State Constitution or initiative statutes at all normally, only the voters can. Prop 22 offered a lower bar by allowing the legislature to amend it at all (but, per the decision, overreached when it tried to expansively define what constituted an amendment in the first place to include potential future laws which did not amend the proposition.)
Interestingly, it is the Left faction of San Francisco politics that have been slipping clauses like that (allowing legislative amendments, but requiring an estimated percentage that would overcome the current opponents and requiring amendments to “further the purpose” of the act) into local initiatives recently. June 2018 Proposition F (free lawyer to tenants facing eviction, which is a policy that both sides supported), allowed the BoS to amend “if the amendment serves to further the purpose of this Initiative” https://webbie1.sfpl.org/multimedia/pdf/elections/June5_2018.... Then in November 2018 Proposition C (double the gross receipts tax to fund homelessness, which is a policy that only the Left minority at the time supported and the Mayor opposed), allowed the BoS to amend “by a two-thirds vote but only to further the Findings and intent” https://webbie1.sfpl.org/multimedia/pdf/elections/november6-... In Nov 2019 Proposition F (increase disclosure requirements political ads, supported by the Left faction of the BoS) similarly had a nonstandard amendment procedure calculated to include the Left faction’s estimated percentage https://webbie1.sfpl.org/multimedia/pdf/elections/November5_... The failed rent control enabling California initiatives (Proposition 10 Nov 2018 https://vig.cdn.sos.ca.gov/2018/general/pdf/topl.pdf#page=83, Proposition 21 Nov 2020 https://vig.cdn.sos.ca.gov/2020/general/pdf/topl.pdf#page=29) as well as a millionaire’s tax to fund mental health (Proposition 2 Nov 2018 https://vig.cdn.sos.ca.gov/2018/general/pdf/topl.pdf#page=13) also contained 2/3 supermajority amendmendability.
So basically the authors of Proposition 22 took this clause that the Left has been evolving in San Francisco anti-business initiatives and copied it to their pro-business California initiative (changing the supermajority requirement to 87.5% to overcome the 73% who supported AB5), and this clause is contributing to the downfall of their own initiative. Ironic!
To me it seems absurd to grant a person the power to pass laws, then to ignore those laws on the assumption the person didn't read them?
I mean, that's the same as abolishing ballot initiatives. And abolishing ballot initiatives may well be a fine thing to do! But it needs a constitutional amendment to do it.
It seems therefore absurd to grant a person the power to pass laws.
Democracy is a compromise, not a good or even a working system. To avoid a riot of the idiots, you tell them "ok so do it yourself then, here take it and vote yes or no". Ofc, they're still emotional idiots who vote to stick it to Uber without caring what is written.
I would suggest we reduce people's decision to representative selection, and let the representatives work without too much hindrance. You must publish the law, but as a European, hearing my dad he didn't want to vote for the European Constitution because he didn't want muslim Turkish to become Europeans (which was what everyone resisting European construction pretended the law was about), it convinced me democracy is not a good system.
> What percentage of California voters do you believe read that language?
It's not possible, by design, to read any proposition or ballot measure in the State of California while voting. You must do so prior to voting - and I might add its not even easy to do that. Typically a voter will read a summary, and confuse it with legal text. Again this is all by system design.
The system is designed with summaries and titles which are created by a committee, and in my opinion to mislead the public.
It would be far better to have titles such as "Measure 1", and a complete legal text as your question implies. But it is not possible with what voters are provided.
I guess I was just confused about why you would jump in to declare that 60% of California votes "approved this language" when you knew full well that the vast majority of voters had never even seen the language.
What percentage of California voters do you believe care about the repeal mechanics of an initiative they are voting for?
Seriously, it's completely implausible that 1/6 of the voters voting for an initiative would change their mind because it's hard for the legislature to override their vote later.
Prop 22 is a poorly designed solution to an even worse AB5. I don't even use Uber or Lyft, but I feel for their drivers whose whole purpose of joining those businesses was because it allowed them independence.
These companies should put the screws to California if they're forced to comply, and charge lots more here than in free states. It might hurt their business in CA, but that's the case anyway (by design per the legislature's goal). Maybe just pull out altogether, and only serve free states.
It took me a few seconds to learn there are two kinds of ballot initiatives in CA. They can have the force of statutes or constitutional amendments. Prop 22 was written to be a statute, so of course it couldn't override the state constitution. Whoever wrote it made a huge mistake.
"Citizens of California may initiate legislation as either a state statute or a constitutional amendment. In California, citizens also have the power to repeal legislation via veto referendum. The California State Legislature may also place measures on the ballot as legislatively referred constitutional amendments or legislatively referred state statutes. Referred amendments require a 2/3 vote of each chamber." [1]
From the article: "it limits the power of a future Legislature to define app-based drivers as workers subject to workers’ compensation law." That makes the entire ballot measure unenforceable, Roesch said.
Don't statutory ballots require a majority, while constitutional ballots call for a supermajority? This was a close fight. The decision may not have been, ex ante, as unreasonable as you suggest.
The fight isn't the issue I referenced, not fully. A statute cannot change the constitution and alter voting requirements of the legislature. That is what this attempted. As you mentioned, a different threshold is required in order to pass an amendment or a statute.
The author wanted the benefits of an amendment but to pass it by meeting the requirements for a statute.
Nope. Constitutional amendments proposed by voters require simple majority to pass, 50% + 1. That is, imho, the single largest flaw in California's initiative process (which I'm otherwise generally a fan of).
>From the article: "it limits the power of a future Legislature to define app-based drivers as workers subject to workers’ compensation law." That makes the entire ballot measure unenforceable, Roesch said.
Why? AFAIK the courts usually strike down the parts that are illegal, not the entire thing.
One of the parts that got struck down (Section 7451) was specifically defined by the text of Prop 22 as non-severable, meaning that the whole thing should be struck down if that section is. Why it was written that way, I'm not sure.
They can only strike down sections of a law if the law has been structured that way.
You e probably seen such language in contracts as well, along the lines of “if any part of this contract is found to be unenforceable that doesn’t affect the rest of the contract.”
Unions with a direct line to the legislature created AB 5. I’m amazed so many people are ok with that while shaming Uber for spending money to encourage voters to overturn it.
It's pretty obvious why someone would be okay with unions lobbying and not okay with corporations doing it. One of the two is at least as democratic as the government itself and it's not Uber.
Yes it's basically the main goal of organized labor to support the best interest of workers by any means, including legislative means. How on earth else are workers supposed to get legal protections against the multi-billion dollar corporations which are trying to give them the worst deal possible?
From their point of view, they might see the rise in a gig-work as a threat against their workers. After all, if Uber and Lyft are allowed to replace unionized taxi drivers with underpaid "private contractors" with no labor rights, what's to stop someone else from doing it with other industries?
I never said that having citizens vote on legislation is less democratic. As far as lobbying, both Uber and unions do it and when unions do it, it's far more democratic yes.
The reason they have such a special lines is because unions represent tens of thousands of voters, and politicians care about getting their votes. They are a very strong force in deciding elections.
Tens of thousands deciding what’s law in a state with tens of millions sure doesn’t sound democratic. This is the definition of special interest and is the opposite of democratic.
I don't think that's true. As a consumer I pay Uber, that internally splits its revenue between unionized and non unionized labor. Both parties want money, and the both charge me for it.
Because unions represent the broad will of a large class of workers, whereas companies like lyft and uber represent the broad will of a handful of investors most of whom don't even pay tax or live in California.
Intentionally misleading information is “misinformation”. Not sure how you can say otherwise. Most people don’t really care about how Uber and Lyft operate, and misinformation preys on individuals who only vaguely care. This is very real, and has massive impacts as most people exist on the margins of most issues. It takes a lot of time and effort to do your own independent research, and there are a lot of more important things in peoples lives.
Thank you! It's always distressing to me when folks set up real-world things based on the notion, "this will work provided people are self-interested rational actors with a grasp of the situation".
Sounds so simple, but what a demonstrably terrible axiom…
>and misinformation preys on individuals who only vaguely care.
Well, that's the real problem. People willing to act based on incomplete information they couldn't be bothered to research independently. As long as we have that, it all comes down to who can manipulate them better towards the desired decision (using labels like "misinformation" as one of the tactics), rather than what decision has better long-term perspectives.
> People willing to act based on incomplete information they couldn't be bothered to research independently.
Who are these people you talk about? That is quite a grandiose generalization as it implies that you see yourself as someone who does do the research. Humor me by answering this question: what makes you able to do this research and others not?
Would you consider the idea that many can't actually research things because the information has been locked away in a corporate vault or by capitalist knowledge hierarchies that severely limit access (through knowledge rent-seeking systems, i.e. through the IP system)? [1] Not to mention the fact that the current education system favors kids with the richest parents living in the richest neighborhoods. Learning requires trust and emotional safety which is increasingly starting to only be available to the owners of capital (and their children). Many now have stressed out parents with precarious zero-hour contracts or gig economy McJobs. I'd say we are living in some of the most unequal times, where education and knowledge have become ultra-commoditized. It's undemocratic at it's core.
Maybe you don't see the luck you had on your own journey to be able to think critically? How do you know "they couldn't be bothered to research"? You calling them lazy seems like a comfortable and easy way to avoid considering systemic causes to this problem.
Why focus your critique on individuals/workers yet give a free pass to huge over-resourced multinational firms? Do you think it's possible that you're not 100% in touch with the challenges and disadvantages that others face?
> it all comes down to who can manipulate them better towards the desired decision (using labels like "misinformation" as one of the tactics)
Your attempt to redefine the term 'misinformation' is very manipulative imo. It's the same strategy FOX news uses, and what they spend nearly all of their energy on. Many liberal news outlets do the same, FOX news just does it more overtly and targets the non-college educated.
Consider the labeling by some news organizations of the teaching of a more accurate, nuanced and complete version of American history, a version that includes the genocide of Native Americans, and the transatlantic slave-trade etc., as 'un-patriotic' and 'un-American'. [2], [3]
>Consider the labeling by some news organizations of the teaching of a more accurate, nuanced and complete version of American history, a version that includes the genocide of Native Americans, and the transatlantic slave-trade etc., as 'un-patriotic' and 'un-American'. [2], [3]
Oh, that's a perfect example if you actually look into the details of what is being taught. It's not about calling out specific behaviors that used to be norm decades/centuries ago and making sure we won't repeat them. It's about dividing the classroom students into 2 groups based on the factor they cannot chose (race) and claiming that:
1. The majority needs to feel guilt for the actions they have never committed, and cull their ambitions accordingly.
2. The minority should feel entitled to steamroll over the majority as a retribution for the actions committed by people that are long dead now.
This is exactly how you introduce division in the society and make sure that instead of cooperating, people will spend their energy fighting against each other.
My favorite example here is the actual text of the Trump's executive order [0] banning it:
(a) “Divisive concepts” means the concepts that
(1) one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex;
(2) the United States is fundamentally racist or sexist;
(3) an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously;
(4) an individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment solely or partly because of his or her race or sex;
It was combating these specific divisive behaviors. Except, the order was presented by the media as "racist" and was quickly reversed by Biden. Most of the people supporting the reversal never did the actual research, they trusted the media that portrayed a very single-sided picture. Because someone decided anything pro-Trump is "misinformation" and everything pro-Biden isn't.
If you want an example of the media bias, try searching for "trump executive order critical race theory" on Google [1] vs DuckDuckGo [2] and compare the effort needed to find the actual facts.
Customers don’t want gig work - customers want cheap labor.
I’d be surprised if Uber wins an appeal at any level. With Uber you have to follow their rules, follow their timing once a ride is scheduled, you can’t set your own prices, nor can you use any vehicle you’d like.
In summary, an Uber driver cannot complete their ride the way they want with no restrictions.
Seems like a slam dunk for classifying as an employee.
A true gig Uber would basically just be eBay, except it would have an algorithm to schedule the rides based on your location and arbitrary filtering requirements.
> A true gig Uber would basically just be eBay, except it would have an algorithm to schedule the rides based on your location and arbitrary filtering requirements.
Your right, drivers should be able to set the price they want.
> A true gig Uber would basically just be eBay, except it would have an algorithm to schedule the rides based on your location and arbitrary filtering requirements.
They basically had that in the form of SideCar (closed end of 2014), in that drivers set their own rates and passengers picked whichever they liked.
Spoiler: nobody at the time distinguished it from Uber as being somehow innocent of the abuse of contractor status.
I'm happy about this and I used to be for Prop 22. After I retired I drove for a year from Aug 2019 to Aug 2020 (I quit because Pandemic.) I didn't work full time, but maybe 20 - 25 hours a week. I did 2000 rides. I had a fun, met a lot of interesting people, and got to drive in many cities in California. I loved the flexibility of the job. However when I added it all up, I netted about $6,000, which works out to about $6/hr or $3 per ride. This includes tips. A lot of people don't tip since when Uber started up they said ppl didn't have to. Now I am of the opinion that the ride share companies should pay closer to a living wage so drivers don't have to practically live in their cars. Not everyone can be retired taking joy rides like I did.
If the vast majority of the cost is labor and your overall price to consumer is low, the people doing the work aren't being paid. It's pretty simple. I like cheap rides but I also don't like taking advantage of people. Unfortunately we live in a culture where everyone should take advantage of everyone, least ye be left behind.
I'm curious if your cost estimates even include time spent maintaining your core business capital (your vehicle): additional oil changes, additional maintenance, refueling times, wear and tear on tires and so on. AAA and the government provide some average costs per mile but you can deviate significantly from these depending on the vehicle and specific circumstances. If you have a fleet of vehicles or are estimating costs to you for a large number of vehicles, then it's good to use. If you're only doing your own vehicle, its not necessarily that accurate.
Why were you in favor of it before experiencing it but then you changed your mind? Your numbers are similar to other drivers' and have been well-publicized for years. Did you not research the numbers? Find bad information? Not care about an experience you didn't have? Just assumed the free market was taking care of it?
If that sounds bad, I'm honestly wondering. I'm just not sure how else to phrase the question, because I've been opposed to the ideas behind Prop 22 since before it was suggested and have a hard time wrapping my head around people who oppose it unless they do so out of pure self interest.
A few things: It wasn't until I did my taxes that the true cost of running and maintaining my car became clear, and I wasn't really paying attention because I really enjoyed the job and didn't care because on the surface I was getting good money put into my account. Then the unions were running absurd ads against Prop 22 claiming drivers were being abused (I didn't feel abused) and ignoring the fact that becoming an employee would negate many of the freedoms of the job I enjoyed. I felt unions were trying to mess up a good thing for their own ends.
Ah, so you, as a driver, opposed Prop 22 until you did your end of year accounting? If so, that completely changes how I (and I suspect others) read your comment. How I read it was that you opposed Prop 22 as a rider/bystander and only once you started driving for Uber changed your mind.
> Ah, so you, as a driver, opposed Prop 22 until you did your end of year accounting?
Yes, that's right. And I thought the drivers complaining about not making money were not being smart about it by cancelling rides and refusing to go to the airport. I assumed I was being rewarded by the scheduling algorithm while they were not.
Even if it is not a good deal for drivers, there is no reason to involve the government. Drivers can do something else with their time. Uber will have to pay better if enough drivers feel it is not worth it.
An enterprising driver can even decide to start up his own Uber. One that pays better to drivers.
Uber is not sustainable now. All that will happen is
A. Ride-sharing collapses and everyone returns to the taxi model
B. Prices goes WAY WAY up, less people can afford it likey resulting in A
C. Every is classified as an employee and drivers loose all flexibility or most flexibility. No more working for multiple app, no more infinite flex time. As a employee you would be exclusive to one app and have a set shift and section
People seem to think they can get cheap fares, infinite flexibility and ultra wages... Not likey
> C. Every is classified as an employee and drivers loose all flexibility or most flexibility. No more working for multiple app, no more infinite flex time. As a employee you would be exclusive to one app and have a set shift and section
This would be a choice the ride-sharing companies would be making, not a logical necessity. They could pay drivers a minimum wage to be on-call for whatever time-period was agreed upon between the company and the driver, and neither demand exclusivity outside of those periods, nor demand a minimum number of hours per week be worked. You can have more than one job without being a contractor.
e.g.
The driver says "I want to work from 3PM to 5PM today."
The app says "LOL, no, too many drivers today, try again tomorrow" or "How about 2PM to 4PM instead" or "Perfect, you're booked."
The app could also solicit drivers for shifts well ahead of time within a baseline of predicted demand, guarantee that drivers be offered X hours of shifts sometime between A o'clock and B o'clock a week ahead of time, and/or demand that drivers take at least Y hours of shifts (between the hours of A o'clock and B o'clock) if they want to continue to be offered X hours of shifts.
If they were really forward-thinking, the rideshare companies could work on making their benefits compatible with each other; maybe have them managed by an employee union.
Because a lot of drivers complaining about not making money were the same drivers who bragged about declining rides, cancelling airport runs, handing out 1 stars to passengers who didn't do exactly what the driver wanted, etc... people who should have never taken a public service job. I assumed that's why they weren't making money.
Good! And don’t take me the wrong way, good on you for changing your opinion. But my point is to actively have empathy, and actively try to think about other people beforehand, rather than only after any damage has potentially been done.
Regardless, not everyone will even learn even when confronted with new data, so again, good on you for doing that.
Read his response (up and over) to me. He seems to have been actively driving at the time (I too misread his first post), and so it wasn't a lack of empathy but his own firsthand experiences that both led him to support, then oppose, Prop 22.
Yes, I liked the freedom and flexibility of contract work so I supported 22, then did my taxes and found I wasn't making nearly as much money as I thought I was. I didn't mind making $6/hr when it was fun, but it became very much not fun after the pandemic got rolling because no one wanted to talk with a mask on and some passengers wouldn't wear a mask. It became a hassle.
Please give us the net profit Uber and Lyft drivers make on average a year in California, with sources (AKA not Uber or Lyft), instead of disparaging the parent's testimony.
The fact that companies can overtly introduce laws for their own benefit and directly advertise to voters is both disgusting and an improvement on the federal system of lobbying and campaign finance.
It's interesting and quite disturbing to see businesses play the two groups off of each other. For example, this happened:
> California cities and counties won’t be allowed to tax soda for the next 12 years after Gov. Jerry Brown signed fast-moving legislation Thursday.
> It comes after a deal was struck between legislators and business and labor interests who agreed to remove an initiative from the Nov. 6 statewide ballot that would have restricted cities and counties from raising any taxes without a supermajority vote of local citizens.
This has happened a few times. Organizations will get a measure on the ballot that threatens some other group (usually with political power), and then use it as leverage to extract concessions before withdrawing it.
I’ve always seen prop 22 as the counter attack to a union driven AB5. Both are bad, but I agree having legislators directly implement laws from lobbyists (as was the case for AB 5) is worse.
Or maybe 58% percent of people, including most Uber drivers, recognize that AB5 was a terrible bill. At best, it could only concentrate rides to a smaller pool of drivers. Money in politics just buys awareness. People aren't so suggestible that their minds will change with a 10-second ad.
> People aren't so suggestible that their minds will change with a 10-second ad.
Your assertion goes against one century of verified practice in the field of advertisement. Several 10-second ads are exactly what can suggest people and change their minds about a particular topic.
Yeah, what idiots. Somebody should have told them that people aren't so stupid that ads could possibly work. Somebody should tell the entire ad industry, for that matter.
You're not special for being able to "see through" Uber's "propaganda." That's just what happens when an ad doesn't resonate with you. Like I said, ads work by increasing awareness of something. As Bloomberg's $1 billion primary campaign proved, money doesn't buy votes.
Unions vote for union leadership, not management. Are you speaking of general elections? While some executive positions are elected rather than appointed, they are still elected by the public at large, not by union members. In fact, public sector management is generally not pro-union any more than private sector management.
Public unions are among the biggest spenders (directly and through donations) in general elections, the outcomes of which directly affect the negotiating postures of the organizations they staff.
Ah, you must believe then either that money has no influence on politics, or that it's right for public employees to vote themselves pay raises and benefits from the tax coffers. As a taxpayer, I find this latter situation to be an obvious and massive conflict of interest.
I've never heard of employees lobbying (by spending hundreds of millions of dollars) all other shareholders to vote in one of their own as a board member. Have you?
More over, a legislator has way more influence over a public agency than a board member does over a company.
You know someone has no point when they have to resort to pedantry. Call it lobbying, advertising, propagandizing, or whatever you like. The effect is the same.
The fact that companies can overtly introduce laws for their own benefit and directly advertise to voters is both disgusting and an improvement on the federal system of lobbying and campaign finance.
Why exactly is it OK for unions to do the same, then?
Because I'm sure the answer will involve downvotes, I'll make it clear from the outset that I'm honestly asking in good faith, and not attempting to use leading questions to push any particular agenda.
>> The fact that companies can overtly introduce laws for their own benefit and directly advertise to voters is both disgusting and an improvement on the federal system of lobbying and campaign finance.
> Why exactly is it OK for unions to do the same, then?
Egalitarianism. Equating corporate businesses with worker unions is a false equivalence, since ownership and wealth can be concentrated, but labor cannot. Gains made by unions on behalf of workers can be spread more broadly through the population, while gains made by corporations are typically concentrated among an elite (and become more and more concentrated with increasing status).
Now, someone will probably retort with something about prices, but there's a limit to how much a worker can benefit from lower prices when they come from pressure on labor. There's also a limit to how much a worker can benefit from penny-ante shareholding.
Equating corporate businesses with worker unions is a false equivalence, since ownership and wealth can be concentrated, but labor cannot.
Just as a thought experiment, let's say labor could be concentrated like wealth. If it could be, how would we measure it? Wouldn't the units simply be those of productivity? More work getting done -- or more precisely, more value being created -- with fewer workers?
It seems intuitively true that this is a desirable goal for society to strive for, not a problematic condition to be remedied. Unionization tries to guarantee a steady position for every worker, but if it does so equitably, the effect will be to dilute the labor pool rather than concentrating it. Is this really a progressive value?
More concretely, it can be surmised that every time unions attempt to organize labor in Amazon warehouses, the company responds by increasing the funding for robotics R&D. Is this seen as a good thing or a bad thing in labor circles? Obviously it's seen as a bad thing... but the assumption that this view is somehow morally and socially correct doesn't get challenged anywhere near often enough.
Your point assumes that unions only work for workers
History proves that to be a false assumption. Unions are a corporition like any other. They are driven by the need to increase their own power and profit. They do that by increasing the nber of workers that are required by law to pay them dues even if the worker does not want or support the unions political goals
If labor can collectively lobby the government it is only fair for 'management' to lobby collectively as well.[0] Arguing otherwise is hardly egalitarian, just cheerleading.
[0]A system where neither can collectively lobby might be best, but alas...
This is a declaration, not an argument. There's no rule that says the relationship between management and workers has to be symmetrical, and if there were such a rule, then workers should demand access to all of the books and get to sit in on all of the meetings.
Egalitarian is the parent's argument, not mine, all I did was clarify the definition -- which is, as you so adroitly pointed out, a statement. I also did not refer to the relationship between workers and management but to both's respective relationship to the government, which is not egalitarian if not symmetrical.
Unions represent a subset of the labor force, at best. Often they only represent charismatic and/or mobbed up union heads.
Unions destroyed the golden geese of American industry, and have since moved into the public sector, where they are bankrupting state governments while massively degrading accountability for public sector workers.
New York alone has nearly 300,000 unionized public sector workers making over $100,000 a year. They are huge pushers of left-wing political ideology, because they are being enriched by it.
There is no reason unions have to represent a subset of the labor force. They could very well be spread to almost all of it. We can legislate that it you want, many countries did so.
100 000$ in New York is not at all unreasonable for many public sector workers - senior administrators, senior teachers, higher education teachers, technicians, sysadmins, programmers, lawyers, engineers, etc...
Public sector workers, especially highly educated ones, in general always lean left-wing. I'll leave it to you to figure out why someone that leans left may find it morally good to work in the public function and why highly educated people are more left wing than the average.
>>There is no reason unions have to represent a subset of the labor force. They could very well be spread to almost all of it.
Unions would provide no benefit to their members if they negotiated collectively for the national workforce. It's the zero-sum rent-seeking that they engage in that benefits their members, when they force an employer to negotiate with the subset of the workforce that they represent, to the exclusion of all other workers.
>>100 000$ in New York is not at all unreasonable for many public sector workers
$100,000 a year puts you almost in the top 10% of income earners. When you add monetary value of the intangible benefit of being almost impossible to fire, I think we can reasonably class all ~300,000 as being in the top 10% of income earners.
>>Public sector workers, especially highly educated ones, in general always lean left-wing.
It's in their financial interest, as left-wing political ideology encourages more spending on social programs, which unions convert to compensation for public sector workers. Unionized public sector workers are the dominant political faction in advanced economies, and are responsible for, and benefit from, this trend:
> Unions would provide no benefit to their members if they negotiated collectively for the national workforce. It's the zero-sum rent-seeking that they engage in that benefits their members, when they force an employer to negotiate with the subset of the workforce that they represent, to the exclusion of all other workers.
That's absurd, the only way this was true was if the amount of money that companies could spend on labor was completely fixed, and the only way to get a larger wage would be for somebody else to get a smaller wage.
Yes, companies could be forced to spend more on labor in the short run, but that's a Faustian bargain that harms all parties in the long run.
Artificially higher wages at the expense of lower profit margins means lower volumes of investment, which reduces long-term productivity/wage growth. I recommend you read this 1957 book, Why Wages Rise:
This type of view of things is extremely hard to maintain considering that the last 20 years where wages have stagnated, yet productivity and profitability has been growing like crazy. Minimum wage earners have actually been dropping in pay due to deflation.
This is NOT true. First of all, you're limiting your analysis to just the US. For the world as a whole, wages have grown more over the last 30 years than in any other period in human history:
New York is not a Midwestern town. the median salary in NY is 67k.
New York itself has ~700 000 workers, so 300k making 30k more than the median knowing they are all more educated than the average is perfectly normal.
Unions provide an advantage even when everyone is in an union. Again, see the multiple countries that have almost full unionization. There is such a thing as the wage share, and there are many other advantages of being able to have a democratic input on your workplace.
>>New York itself has ~700 000 workers, so 300k making 30k more than the median
Which is significant, given New York has 300,000 public sector workers. The median would be much lower if you excluded them when calculating the median income. They're the dominant political faction, voting in governments that give them more tax dollars.
>>Unions provide an advantage even when everyone is in an union. Again, see the multiple countries that have almost full unionization.
What advantage are you talking about? Anemic wage growth? Public sector pensions that threaten to bankrupt the state? Industrial sectors that are steadily being eclipsed by East Asian economies?
People vote for unconstitutional stuff all the time.
If the constitution says don't do something, and people vote for legislation to do it, then the constitution has to be the controlling document or else it doesn't mean anything.
There have to be some limits to that. If there's a democratic vote of the people called, and 50+1% of the people who bother to vote decide to reintroduce slavery (beyond the current loophole in the 13th Amendment regarding criminal sentences that allows e.g. mandatory prison labor), I'm glad that any judge in the country would strike that down.
In California we the people can amend the constitution. But Prop 22 didn’t do it correctly. The gig company’s are free to put a constitutional amendment in front of the people for a vote if they want.
> The fact that judges can override a democratic vote of the people is disgusting.
The rule that allows judges to determine if a measure presented to the people met the rules for such votes, and the rule for the votes that judges apply, were, themselves, adopted by a democratic vote of the people.
I find this to be a weak reading of the judicial system.
Laws are not last in, first out; previous laws need to be taken into context when new laws are created, no matter how they are created. The fact that this law was created by popular vote has no bearing on its validity or standing in court.
I’ve always thought that one of the most important functions of the judicial system is to balance the equities of majorities and minorities. There are numerous examples of courts striking down unconstitutional laws with majority support.
A judge can overrule the "will of the people". The people can overrule a judge by by selecting a new judge or by an amendment to the constitution. Those take more work in order for them to not be subject to the vagaries of the current political winds.
The people ostensibly have a say in what judges serve in their courts, though. The only reason that Uber and Lyft were able to ram Prop 22 through is that they have a lot of money.
Money only lets you buy an audience. You need a convincing argument to show that audience, which they presumably had, unless you think Californians are fools.
Maybe. But Uber and Lyft were effectively also blackmailing a huge chunk of the population at the time.
Uber and Lyft were threatening to simply shut down if this proposition lost. A LOT of people at the time only had Uber/Lyft as their income. That was going to be catastrophic.
Trump was still President so people had little prospect of unemployment benefits. We had no vaccines and no known timeline. Lockdowns were still in effect at various levels of strength.
If you had this vote again, now, I'm not sure it would pass.
(I could also go into how Uber and Lyft were spamming the hell out of my email and phone. That should have gotten a whopping fine from the FEC.)
Basically, through Uber’s greed in the proposition by writing in the provision about legislators not being able to overturn Prop 22, Uber et al ended up getting the whole Proposition cancelled vs if they'd just kept it for the contractor stuff.
So I've been told that the default of a proposition is that the legislature can't overturn it at all, and the clause allowing a supermajority actually increases the legislature's power.
> So I've been told that the default of a proposition is that the legislature can't overturn it at all, and the clause allowing a supermajority actually increases the legislature's power.
This isn't about a supermajority clause. No such clause is being discussed.
What he took issue to is the part of the prop that said regardless of any future laws, app-drivers are never allowed not to be subject to any workman's comp laws. The judge ruled that this overbroad language unfairly limited future legislature's powers beyond the scope of the proposition and that such limitation didn't align with the listed reasoning for the proposition. Hence, that was a violation of the law and therefore the whole prop is out.
> [...] the clause allowing a supermajority actually increases the legislature's power.
> Is that wrong?
Yes, because—and this is critical because it is the basis of the ruling here—the proposition purported to define additional legislation that did not change the proposition (and thus would not normally be restricted) as an “amendment” subject to its restriction, which as a non-germane provision is what was found to render the proposition invalid here.
> So if it had been worded differently, to make the relevant definitions part of the proposition, it would have been fine
Maybe, maybe not. I haven't read the full analysis in the ruling, but it seems from the excerpts I’ve seen that the attempt to sweep workers comp rules into the amendment restrictions without them being part of the main body was found to be an attempt to do an end run around the single-subject rule, which means it would have been struck down either way.
> Also it seems really weird to call that theoretical legislation "unrelated" when it would change how the proposition works.
It wouldn't change how the proposition works. It would change how the businesses affected by the proposition work, but lots of unrelated laws would do that.
> So if it had been worded differently, to make the relevant definitions part of the proposition, it would have been fine?
Courts don't usually answer this question. They leave that up to future court cases.
It would be really hard for a court to answer that question in the affirmative (that a law is totally sound and will hold up to all further legal scrutiny). The court case is always about specific things (a lawsuit will be brought around specific clauses in the law, and all the arguments in the court are going to be focused on those clauses). The court isn't examining the law as a whole, only the specific claims of the lawsuit. There is no way the court is going to be able to know all the possible arguments about a law without having them argued in front of them.
> Basically, through Uber’s greed in the proposition by writing in the provision about legislators not being able to overturn Prop 22,
That wasn't it nor was it referenced by the judge. The issue was the part of Prop 22 that says that app-drivers can never qualify for workman's comp, regardless of any future law passed. The California Constitution gives the legislature power to modify workman's comp laws to apply to whomever. Therefore, that part of the Prop cannot be a legal law, therefore the whole thing is out.
My favorite part is that this was of course purportedly written for the benefit of their independent contractors. But then they couldn't resist and threw in something about collective bargaining in there that has nothing at all to do with the subject matter of the proposition at all. And that's killed it.
I've all but stopped taking Uber / Lyft in SF since the pool option was removed and $6 dollar rides started becoming $20+. Mostly adjusted lifestyle by:
1. Taking buses
2. Traveling less in general
I guess the $6 ride business model was never sustainable.
I'm actually all for better treatment of ride-share drivers, but I can't help but feel that it doesn't necessarily help drivers if the volume of rides drop significantly as they get more expensive due to regulations.
I've noticed most commentary around this topic tend to skirt this issue. What is a sensible response to this?
The price should be 20$+, there wasn't much middle ground, it is nice to have cheap rides for certain things but if the low cost option dominates, the whole model is unsustainable.
Uber, and all, will just rewrite the prop and try again. Gig work is here to stay. They just have to figuerout how to make it work for all.
I doubt the legislature will get its way or that Uber will get their way either. A few years from now a middle ground will be found. Gig work works at some level since both workers and customers want it. Uber just took a bigger bite than it should have this round.
Also, this issue will end up at the California supreme court level so this is just the first round of many.
Uber only has so much cash on hand (about $6B as of Jun 20th, 2021; having lost $28B over the last 5.5 years [1]). Governments and legal proceedings can outlast unprofitable gig work companies with limited runway, no? Eventually someone with common sense is going to stop throwing money at these concerns with no chance of profitability.
Gig work is a new way to work. Just because Uber might go away it does not mean that gig work will disappear, other business models will continue it. I suspect someone will make it work.
Look at free shipping, at first, it looks like a money pit that could never be part of a profitable business. But Amazon Prime is not only making it work but it powers the company's earnings. You just never know.
Gig work exists until regulation catches up. It’s worker classification fraud masquerading as innovation (imho), in typical Silicon Valley fashion. It’s taking longer than it took Homejoy to fail (~5 years), but someone will close the capital spigot eventually. What is the terminal or discounted cash flow value of perpetual double digit negative margins?
Gig work doesn't HAVE to be classification fraud; a service could actually treat the gig workers as contractors in the correct legal way... the current services don't, but it isn't necessarily fundamental to the business model.
Re-read your text again: Uber lost almost 30 billion dollars over 5 years, and literally no one batted an eye.
Uber has been around for 10 years. It'll be around for ten more. It does have unlimited money (as does every other "unicorn" in the US). Because that's Uber's modus operandi: dump prices until all competitors that don't have infinite money die off.
> Because that's Uber's modus operandi: dump prices until all competitors that don't have infinite money die off.
What happens after that? The minute they raise prices, they invite an antitrust lawsuit for the low prices. If they don’t raise prices, they continue to be a money sink.
> Gig work works at some level since both workers and customers want it.
That's rather superficial.
Workers want it compared to what? A full time job with benefits? Most likely not. It's mainly driven by sweatshop market logic, "So you want the textile workers to starve?".
Customer want it? Of course, the lower prices enables an inflated lifestyle.
Let me break this down based on my understanding after reading the opinion and the law. I am not a lawyer.
From the judge's opinion
"The Court finds that Section 7451 is unconstitutional because it limits the power of a future legislature to define app-based drivers as workers subject to workers’ compensation law....
Because Section 7451 is not severable from the remainder of the statute, the Court finds that the entirety of Proposition 22 is unenforceable.
The petition is therefore GRANTED."
Why is that?
7451 says that workers are independent contractors, but per the Judge's ruling:
"The California Constitution vests in the Legislature the “plenary power, unlimited by any provision of this Constitution, to create, and enforce a complete system of workers’ compensation.” (Cal. Const. art. XIV, § 4)
Since that specific enumerated power conflicts with the more general ballot initiative rule in the constitution regarding the legislature not being able to amend ballot initiative passed laws, that section of the law is unconstitutional. (See Scalia's Canons of Construction, The Specific/General Canon)
Since Prop 22 explicitly said if that section is invalid the whole law is invalid (7467 (b)) the whole law is thus invalid.
This is likely to be appealed and stayed upon appeal so it's not taking effect immediately.
Note that “Superior Court” is a first-level trial court; there is an opportunity for appeal of right to the Court of Appeal and potentially a discretionary appeal to the State Supreme Court before this is final.
Not a CA resident here, but I'm trying to understand Prop 22: does it require all gig companies except Uber and Lyft to "provide a health care subsidy and wage floor"?
So with this ruling, Uber and Lyft will start providing benefits to their drivers similar to what all other gig companies are doing?
The purpose of Prop 22 is to overturn a previous bill (AB5) passed by the state legislature that classified drivers as employees. First they claimed that these laws didn't apply to them and didn't comply for
months, then Uber/Lyft/etc... got prop 22 on the ballot and spent incredible amounts of money advertising for it (if you were in CA at the time it was all over YouTube, as well as in the apps). These subsidies and wage floors were window-dressing so that Uber and Lyft could claim to offer an alternative solution to some of the problems AB5 was intended to address.
A lot of people disliked AB5 - I was happy Prop22 passed. The companies were obviously operating in their own interests, but I also think the legislature was wrong (and just politically targeting ride share companies).
Yeah, a lot of people were pointing out how ridiculously large the list of exceptions in AB5 were. I saw a bunch of stories about people in random fields getting screwed in the crossfire.
It could just have been marketing-speak, but the arguments I heard from companies around voting time were that contractor status was for the benefit of drivers. IIRC they were arguing that if prop 22 did not pass, they were just going to pass the costs to the riders, and decrease service availability to match a smaller, less flexible driver workforce. In other words, many drivers would just wake up one day and find themselves booted from the platforms. And riders would find themselves unable to summon a ride depending on driver volume in the area, or time of day (basically old school cab availability)
Historically, Uber has even pulled out of markets altogether (and in Austin's case, only to come back w/ their shit together later and mop the floor with the competition...)
The thing that irks me about this is that I thought ballot initiatives like prop 22 were supposed to give constituents a direct voice, especially considering CA is basically a one-party state. To my understanding, legislation like AB5 gets championed by a politician without much direct input from voters.
> in Austin's case, only to come back w/ their shit together later and mop the floor with the competition…
Uber and Lyft played hardball with increased regulations, saying they’d leave if the regulations were voted in place. Their ultimatums and campaigns (easily a dozen mailers to many people) irked residents who wouldn’t have voted against them otherwise.
They returned because the state overrode the local requirements. Nothing to do with having their shit together.
Sorry, I should've worded that better; "with their shit still together" is more in line w/ I what I wanted to say. I meant that rather than struggling to gain marketshare (like happened in China, Russia, etc), they ramped back up from 0% to virtually all of their lost marketshare, eventually causing local competitors to wind down.
> The thing that irks me about this is that I thought ballot initiatives like prop 22 were supposed to give constituents a direct voice, especially considering CA is basically a one-party state.
The issue with Prop 22 is in how it was set up.
- The state constitution gives the legislature the duty to set up a worker’s comp system.
- Prop 22 was voted on as a piece of legislation that denied the legislature the ability to set up a worker’s comp system, so the superior court denied it as unjustly limiting the legislature’s ability to function.
- The worker’s comp rules in Prop 22 were not severable from the rest of the proposition, so the entire thing was struck down.
There are two types of ballot initiatives in CA: ones that act with the effect of legislation, and ones that act with the effect of a state constitutional amendment. The threshold for the latter is higher than the former. The proponents of Prop 22 wanted the force of a constitutional amendment (changing how the legislature can create a worker’s comp system), but at the lower ballot threshold.
> The thing that irks me about this is that I thought ballot initiatives like prop 22 were supposed to give constituents a direct voice, especially considering CA is basically a one-party state. To my understanding, legislation like AB5 gets championed by a politician without much direct input from voters.
Isn’t it ironic that democrat states tend to be the least democratic?
I don't ride share often but in the more than handful of times I have since this issue has been in the news I've yet to find a single driver who supports it.
The support for AB5 doesn't seem come from the people it "protects".
The whole business model of companies like Uber and Lyft relies on drivers not realizing how little they are getting out of the deal. The ones who do realize - often after some accident that leaves them injured or their cars too damaged to repair - will simply stop working and regret the past.
Gig work usually looks very good when you're starting out and everything is going smoothly. With Uber and Lyft also investing massively in propaganda to ensure their drivers believe AB5 would cause numerous catastophes for their work, it's really not that surprising that most who are actually driving would be against it.
The companies made it seem like drivers couldn’t work flexible hours if this passed. Nurses and other shift workers are employees, yet have flexible hours. That was completely obfuscated in this messaging.
This is a bad definition of flexible: "flexible hours means you have different start and end times for your workday than the standard 9 a.m. to 5 p.m."
This is a good definition of flexible: "A flexible work schedule is an alternative to the traditional 9 to 5, 40-hour work week. It allows employees to vary their arrival and/or departure times." Also "gives a worker greater latitude in choosing his or her particular hours of work, or freedom to change work schedules from one week to the next depending on the employee's personal needs"
The first one applies to nurses and shift workers. But the goal and the appeal of Uber and Lyft is the second one.
> Nonexempt: An individual who is not exempt from the overtime provisions of the FLSA and is therefore entitled to overtime pay for all hours worked beyond 40 in a workweek (as well as any state overtime provisions). Nonexempt employees may be paid on a salary, hourly or other basis.
> They can be a part-time employees and chose when they work without having a fixed salary.
In a way where it actually makes sense for uber to hire them? If someone can sit in their house and push a button to start being paid their full rate, and doesn't have to actually do anything for the company during that time...
They can't just limit hires, which already hurts the flexibility, they would have to limit shifts to different amounts based on the time of day, which would basically kill the idea of spontaneously working whenever you want.
That’s a good point. There will be some flexibility removed. It isn’t as dire as Uber / Lyft claim where you can’t have a day job anymore, but in order to pay drivers minimum wage, they may have to limit driver supply some at certain hours.
I disliked AB5 but was unhappy Prop 22 passed. AB5 already was designed to create carveouts for politically influential white collar gig workers, and Prop 22 would have just added carveouts but not changed the essential fact of AB5 banning gig work in less politically influential industries.
No, Prop 22 required Uber, Lyft, and other similar companies to provide a health care subsidy and a wage floor.
However the devil is in the details:
Prop 22 set the wage floor 20% higher than minimum wage based off of the time that drivers spent "actively working" (e.g. driving to pick up a passenger and then driving a passenger to their destination).
With the AB5 wage floor, Uber and Lyft would have had to pay a lower guaranteed rate (just minimum wage), but it would have included idle time. So in Uber/Lyft's nightmare scenario, a million people sign up to be drivers, set their phone locations to the middle of nowhere and get paid $15/hour to do nothing.
With the healthcare subsidy, IIRC Prop22 sets the amount of subsidy on a sliding scale based off of # of hours worked per week. AB5 would've treated someone who drives 20 hours a week the same as someone who drives 40 hours a week for insurance purposes
> With the AB5 wage floor, Uber and Lyft would have had to pay a lower guaranteed rate (just minimum wage), but it would have included idle time. So in Uber/Lyft's nightmare scenario, a million people sign up to be drivers, set their phone locations to the middle of nowhere and get paid $15/hour to do nothing.
Even in the scenario where drivers are employees, Uber and Lyft don't have to accept an unlimited number of driver applicants and don't have to allow them continued future hours if they pull that trick. Or they could restrict the locations where drivers can activate a shift, based on demand. Et cetera. Lots of ways they could manage their staff.
I think, from Uber and Lyft's perspective, having to require drivers to sign up for shifts in advance (or preventing a driver from signing in to the app) is basically the death of the gig economy.
Instead of doing their laissez-faire approach where the supply of drivers is (more or less) self-regulating, rideshare companies will have to tackle some nasty optimization problems. If a rural area only has 2 or 3 passengers a night, should they let a driver sign on or is it cheaper to just deny the customers? If a sporting event is ending at 7pm, should you increase the driver threshold if you're just going to force all the drivers to sign off in 30 minutes? Or is it better to increase wait times by decreasing the supply of drivers? etc etc
I'm not saying they'd like to do that kind of management, but every other employer of shift workers manages the shifts they offer and accept and limits the supply of workers they agree to pay.
You're not wrong about how it's the death of what they call the gig economy, but that's more the death of their current exploitative model than what was truly the gig economy - independent contracting - before they appropriated the term for their propaganda.
Maybe the different "rideshare" companies should collaborate on a way for drivers to bid in a truly independent way with many apps and many pricing arrangements etc, and give some selection control to the rider as well, to make it a real and unambiguous independent contractor situation?
If they do get stuck with an actual optimization problem, well, they already solve plenty of those to maximize profit under their current model. They can keep applying those skills even if the workers get a fairer deal.
> every other employer of shift workers manages the shifts they offer and accept and limits the supply of workers they agree to pay
The problem isn't that it's a burden on the employer, it's that it removes an entire category of worker flexibility. I can't be commuting or parked somewhere or sitting around in my room while also signed into uber if they have to pay minimum wage for that; they're not a charity and aren't going to pay for nothing.
The rule is good for someone that goes out to do an entire shift of uber and nothing else. It's not as good for someone that wants to multitask or make their own schedule.
> Maybe the different "rideshare" companies should collaborate on a way for drivers to bid in a truly independent way with many apps and many pricing arrangements etc, and give some selection control to the rider as well, to make it a real and unambiguous independent contractor situation?
Is competitive bidding actually going to get drivers paid more than accept/reject? I don't know if this actually solves the right problem.
So, a thought: granted that you want to multitask and make your own schedule, by setting things up so you can be interrupted at any moment by your employer with demands for your attention. You don't want to work a shift, you want it looser and less defined: you are not in fact making your own schedule, you're arranging to pre-empt whatever your schedule might be for the benefit of your employer and you figure this is your competitive advantage, being able to offer this precarious willingness to drop everything and take a gig. And you could be right: to the employer, that makes you higher value.
Is this not a concession, a way of competing by tempting the employer with more than they would be able to get from other employees? In essence you're not so much negotiating with the employer, but competing directly with other workers, some of whom might have stuff to do in their life that requires scheduling and predictability?
And this too is fine (ish), but then the question becomes: to what extent can the employer then pressure all employees to function on YOUR terms and abandon their own? Are you defining the new normal, the fundamental expectation for this type of work going forward? Does the employer benefit at the expense of employees as a class by establishing this precarity as the expectation?
Agreed. I charge for being on-call. If other employees don't, that's not good - now being on-call becomes a requirement and work I'm not being paid for.
You don't get to pay a fast food worker during the time they are serving a customer, then stop paying them when that customer leaves the counter. There isn't a technical reason you can't do this; we've set a baseline on the least workers have a right to expect.
The other points here are quite valid, but I think they miss the reason why legal scholars disliked Prop 22 so much. It requires something like a 7/8ths majority in order to be amended? It was effectively a statute trying to backdoor as a constitutional amendment.
Apparently the 7/8ths thing isn't so problematic in itself, as other ballots don't allow even that. The bigger problem is that they prevent the legislature not just from overturning prop 22 itself, but from passing other laws in this area that are not aligned with it. This is the part the judge understandably took issue with.
> The Court finds that Section 7431 is unconstitutional because it limits the power of a future legislature to define app-based drivers as workers subject to workers’ compensation law.
This was the key section of prop 22 which defined app-based service providers as non-employees.
> The Court finds that Section 7465, subdivision (¢)(4) is unconstitutional because it defines unrelated legislation asan “amendment” and is not germane to Proposition 22's stated “theme, purpose, or subject.”
This was the section that imposed a 7/8ths requirement on modification to the statute.
What's the non-human cost to operate Uber? Server costs, customer service people (maybe?)
I'd be interested to see what the breakdown is on how fees collected are spent. If it is mostly ROI for capital invested then that's the problem.
Not a crypto bull, but this would be a great opportunity for a DAO/smart contract. Act as a backend, fees collected go directly to operations. Maybe a diminishing royalty is collected by the creators.
Most the time I spend $10 for a five minute ride, and often even see the person before me get dropped off. There's no way that the "ultra cheap" rates being paid couldn't actually provide a decent wage, given that capital isn't chopping off their lions share.
AB5 is an ordinary law that can be erased by any future legislature with a simple majority vote at any time. Or, it could be repealed by initiative. There's no reason why Prop 22 or an initiative like it was necessary.
Regardless of the merits of arguments before the court, or the soundness of the ruling, I fear that this development will only serve to undermine California voters' faith in the judiciary and/or the ballot initiative process.
Not in this way. Propositions are supposed to cover a single specific issue, they can't cover a whole area of law. You can pass a prop saying the legislature must refer to any dog as 'your honor', and the legislature would forever have to respect it and not be allowed to repeal it. However, you can't then add wording in this proposition saying that the legislature can't pass similar laws for referring to cats with higher honorifics, which is what Prop 22 tried.
How about we just repeal the damn law in the first place rather than adding all this stuff on top. That was my issue with Prop 22. The original law it was layering on top of is faulty from the get go and needs to get repealed. The person who proposed it is an utter asshole to boot (her twitter is full of personal fiery attacks on other people and she can't take criticism)
Alameda County Superior Court Judge Frank Roesch wrote Proposition 22 is unconstitutional because “it limits the power of a future Legislature to define app-based drivers as workers subject to workers’ compensation law.” That makes the entire ballot measure unenforceable, Roesch said. ... It’s likely the ruling gets appealed.
What is the purpose of a proposition but to limit the power of the legislature? If the legislature can just go against whatever the proposition says what is the point of a proposition?
In short, California’s Constitution says that the Legislature has “plenary power, unlimited by any provision of this Constitution, to create, and enforce a complete system of workers’ compensation”, and the judge ruled that “any provision of this Constitution” includes the provision saying that the Legislature can’t override propositions.
I think you're reading the ruling correctly, but the judge's understanding of the constitution would also imply that state courts would not be able to limit the Legislature's "system of workers’ compensation" (because the state constitution is what delegates power to the courts). I don't think this makes sense.
The law requires a super-majority in order to change any aspects of the law. The supermajority requirement goes above what’s in the constitution. At least that’s my interpretation as a non-lawyer.
1. This was a referendum statute and not a referendum amendment.
2. referendum statutes can't normally be amended by the legislature directly, but they can submit it back to the voters by normal majority vote on the legislation/etc. The referendums can, if they want, add ways for the legislature to amend it without going back to the voters.
3. With that in mind, here are the issues:
A. Prop22 inartfully tries to say it can only be amended by 7/8th vote of the legislature. That would, normally, be unconstitutional- the constitution requires allowing the majority vote + submit back to voters. To avoid this, the court has (IMHO, correctly) interpreted this to be just be a way to amend the statute without going back to the voters, rather than the only way to amend it at all.
It also tries to change the publication rules for any possible amendments (which is also not allowed to do to the majority vote path, and so this is severed and only applies to the 7/8th path)
B. California has a single subject rule on ballot amendments.
This statute has a stated subject/purpose (too long to quote). That purpose/subject does not include collective bargaining, even a little. It does not talk, in any part of the statute, about collective bargaining.
At the very end, after just about all meaningful text it attempts to limit collective bargaining it in a super-odd way. It says anything dealing with collective bargaining is considered an amendment to the statue and is explicitly subject it to the 7/8th rule to pass it
. By defining anything related to collective bargaining as an amendment, it causes itself to run afoul of the single subject rule - it's entirely unrelated to anything in the statute.
It also can't subject it only to the 7/8th rule as it attempts to do, but as above, that would normally be reinterpreted by the court to say "7/8th rule or submitting back to voters".
The court severed this provision, which seems right.
C. Even if the above issue didn't exist, the actual constitution (remember, this is not an amendment) provides that the Legislature shall have the power to create worker's compensation laws “unlimited by any provision of this Constitution”. So, the statute's attempt to limit workers comp also fails. The statute, for some reason, also says this provision may not be severed, so if it is held unconstitutional, like here, the entire statute is struck down.
On appeal, B will be argued about to death because the single subject rule is easily twistable. But since it is severable, i think a court will sever it in the end.
C will have a flat yes/no ruling - either it's usurping power the legislature has (without being an amendment) or it's not.
On its face, it's hard to see how you can successfully argue it's not. The wording in the california constitution is pretty strong.
The superior court takes the reasonable position that an amendment-by-ballot could change workers comp because it can overrule the constitutional provision, but that an statute-by-ballot cannot.
It would take some mental gymnastics to uphold this part.
This is a rideshare capital vs opponent capital legal battle. Any claims to doing this for the drivers is absurd; different drivers want different things, and for that, you would have to design an environment whereby a driver can be either freelance or employee. Some drivers want the flexibility, and genuinely like the way the system works today. Some want security, a guaranteed hourly wage, as they need a consistent income. Some want healthcare, etc. The legal straightjacket is convenient for tax purposes but little else.
The idea that a driver can only be one or the other is of course the capitalists convenience. Having the law back them up is the goal of the shareholder- hence this war- but the claims that drivers want it one way or the other is silly.
As to the claim that it has to be one way or the other because of the legal environment (taxes etc) and the rigidity in work classifications, then a different bureaucracy is in order, a conversation which is conveniently ignored in this public debate.
Referenda 'A Device of Dictators and Demagogues' - Margaret Thatcher.
We had one in the UK recently that has pretty much wrecked the country. It would appear that California (and other states?) do this sort of thing all the time!
Ride firms ultimately forced to pay more for labor. Less drivers total and more expensive rides. Poorer areas stop getting service. Stock prices fall. Not a big deal if you don’t care about ride share transportation. If you actually like it then it costs more and gives less.
This website is full of rich techies so won’t affect us. However will affect less well-off people negatively.
> “Paying drivers more will hurt the poor” is an interesting argument
Take that line of thought to its conclusion, and you end up claiming that paying workers anything at all hurts the poor. After all, if workers weren't paid, wouldn't prices decrease making things more affordable to the poor?
Of course, then the poor wouldn't make any money to pay for anything, but let's overlook that irrelevant detail.
>This website is full of rich techies so won’t affect us. However will affect less well-off people negatively.
Just imagining the less well off losing huge chunks of their 401ks, IRA savings, pensions, and so on when Uber loses 2% of its market cap... it's giving me chills!
Volunteer at a shelter this weekend, folks. Many of those less diversified individuals in the bread line will have seen their net worth drop double digit percentage points.
That's one interpretation, although I believe the implication there was that the less well-off person is more affected by the actual price of rides than by the price of stock.
Regardless of one's opinion about Prop 22 and AB5, this provision was undemocratic at its core because it deprived future citizens and their representatives of their ability to modify the law.