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?
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.