Proposition 22 will harm California’s gig workers. Here’s why voters should reject it

Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and other app-based businesses represent a digital “gig economy” that offers flexible, part-time hours to workers and amazing convenience to customers.

While people ordering home deliveries of restaurant meals or hailing rides to doctors’ appointments have certainly benefited from those services, it’s not clear that the drivers themselves have gained much.

Some drivers say they love the ability to set their own hours and pick up as many riders as they want, when they want. Others say they don’t make a decent wage, have no benefits and are being exploited.

Now comes California’s Proposition 22, the super-expensive November ballot initiative sponsored by the app companies that undermines a new state law called Assembly Bill 5 and codifies app-based drivers as independent contractors free of the state’s labor rules.

Is this the right way to define a person doing work? California’s Supreme Court did not think so in a landmark 2018 decision that cuts to the heart of the argument the app companies make that their drivers are independent workers.

Dynamex decision

In Dynamex Operations West, Inc. v. Superior Court of Los Angeles, the state Supreme Court found that a worker is presumed to be an employee unless the company meets three specific standards. Among them is that the “worker performs work that is outside the usual course of the hiring entity’s business.”

Dynamex is a nationwide courier and delivery business that had considered its drivers as employees until 2004. Then, it reclassified them as independent contractors to cut costs.

It is obvious that picking up and delivering passengers or goods is integral to the business model of the app-based companies pushing Prop. 22.

AB 5 impact

In 2019, the California Legislature hammered out a definition of what constitutes work and who qualifies as an employee. Following the high court’s ruling, AB 5 required a wide swath of industries to reclassify workers from independent contractors to employees. (Among those affected are newspaper companies. They have an exemption from AB 5 regarding newspaper carriers that expires in 2022).

In so doing, the Legislature adopted the historical definition of a worker, and not one that recognizes the new possibilities of the digital workplace.

It is expensive, however, to provide workers with things like minimum wage, overtime, sick time, Social Security, family leave and the usual benefits most employees in California take for granted. That’s why Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart and Postmates have donated $180 million to support Prop. 22. Opponents have raised $9.4 million, making Proposition 22 the most expensive ballot measure in California since 1999.

The app companies say they will have to drastically scale back services if they have to reclassify drivers as normal employees. That, in turn, will harm users of app-based services. Some of their stories are compelling: a legally blind man told The Fresno Bee, for example, how he relies on Uber to take him to appointments.

New rules needed

There is a real need for the services that Uber, DoorDash and the others offer. Unfortunately, given the Supreme Court’s ruling and the scope of AB 5, there seems to be little room for independent contractors in California at the moment.

AB 5 was certainly not perfect. It was an obvious play to the state’s powerful unions by a Democratic-majority Legislature. Lawmakers have already had to clean up aspects of the law that harm legitimate freelance workers. More fixes may be necessary.

But Prop. 22 simply represents special-interest politics at their worst. The Sacramento Bee Editorial Board recommends a no vote.