Rideshare Drivers United protest, 2020. Credit: RDU.
Gig workers have won an important victory in California’s courts. On August 20, a judge ruled that a ballot initiative by Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash aimed at creating a permanent precarious workforce was unconstitutional. The decision is a major blow to the platform companies, which spent well over $200 million last year on Prop 22 to overturn a state law extending employee rights to most California gig workers.
In his ruling, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Frank Roesch protected the right of California’s voters and legislators to amend their states’ laws. This ruling was necessary because the companies behind Prop 22 went a bit too far; they included a clause making it impossible for California’s legislature to ever amend that law.
The decision was just the latest salvo in a growing war between gig companies and the workers on their platforms. The California battle began in 2018, when a case involving delivery driversreached the California Supreme Court. The court ruled that “on demand” drivers are employees — unless they meet a simple “ABC” test: (A) the worker is free from the control and direction of the hirer in how they perform the work; (B) the work is outside the hiring entity’s core business; and (C) the individual performing the work can demonstrate they independently perform this business for others.
Gig companies like Uber and DoorDash quickly understood they could prove none of these factors. Workers are dependent on the platform for control and direction of their work. The delivery or transportation service is the gig company’s main business. And most gig workers do not, in fact, have their own independent small businesses. Companies might have complied with the law, but today’s prevailing corporate culture is one that rewards legal evasion. So instead they decided to dare state legislators to make them comply.
State legislators rose to the occasion, and in 2019 they passed a landmark piece of legislation, Assembly Bill 5, which codified the California Supreme Court ruling. Again, companies might have chosen to figure out how to comply. Instead they doubled down on misclassifying their workers as independent contractors, compelling California’s Attorney General to bring suit against them. Ignoring rising worker momentum, the companies hired armies of lawyers and public relations experts. They bought off civic organizations. They forced their own workers to distribute propaganda. And they blitzed the public with their Prop 22 ballot initiative, which voters passed amid a sea of disinformation in 2020.
But worker advocates did not give up or give in — despite enormous obstacles. As Nicole Moore of Rideshare Drivers United (RDU) told me shortly after the ruling last week, the Prop 22 vote was a devastating blow to workers who were already forced to shoulder multiple burdens in the face of an ongoing pandemic. Many were more financially vulnerable than ever.