The Service Workers Worldwide Union condemned the choice.
“Each California voter ought to be involved about companies’ rising affect in our democracy and their capability to spend tens of millions of {dollars} to deceive voters and purchase themselves legal guidelines,” David Huerta, the president of S.E.I.U. California, stated in a press release.
Jon Streeter, one of many three appeals courtroom judges, disagreed with massive elements of the 63-page ruling of his colleagues, Tracie Brown and Stuart Pollak. In a 64-page dissent, Justice Streeter wrote that every one of Proposition 22 ought to be thrown out, largely due to its clause limiting the legislature’s authority over employees’ compensation for gig drivers.
“I’d affirm the judgment, however I want to go additional. I consider we should invalidate Proposition 22 in its entirety,” Justice Streeter wrote. He added that the definition of unbiased contractors used within the measure was “constitutionally infirm.”
Uber and different firms have lengthy argued that drivers worth the pliability of being an unbiased contractor with out set hours from an employer, and say they must surrender that freedom in the event that they had been made workers. Labor activists reply that drivers are exploited, deserve higher well being care and employment advantages and will keep their flexibility below a standard employment mannequin.
Gig firms spent greater than $200 million pushing for Proposition 22, which gave gig employees restricted advantages however exempted them from Meeting Invoice 5, a legislation handed by the California Legislature in 2019 that set a brand new customary for figuring out whether or not employees ought to be thought-about workers below the legislation.
If A.B. 5, which is dealing with its personal authorized problem, is ever utilized to gig drivers, Uber and different firms may very well be discovered to be improperly treating these drivers as unbiased contractors moderately than as workers.
In consequence, gig firms must alter their enterprise fashions at the price of a number of hundred million {dollars} per yr, both by giving drivers additional independence or — extra possible — changing some variety of them into workers, presumably of a third-party automobile fleet operator that might use Uber’s and Lyft’s platforms.
