{"id":200610,"date":"2021-02-18T19:35:00","date_gmt":"2021-02-19T00:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2021\/02\/18\/of-course-they-are-getting-screwed\/"},"modified":"2021-02-18T19:35:00","modified_gmt":"2021-02-19T00:35:00","slug":"of-course-they-are-getting-screwed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2021\/02\/18\/of-course-they-are-getting-screwed\/","title":{"rendered":"Of Course They Are Getting Screwed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>  That was the whole purpose of the massive funding for Proposition 22 in   California, to   <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2021\/feb\/18\/uber-lyft-doordash-prop-22-drivers-california\">get a license to treat their employees like crap<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>  Anyone who says that they voted for Prop 22 because they thought that it would   improve the lot of the Gypsy cab drivers and food delivery folks is either a   liar or an idiot:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>  <span style=\"color: #2b00fe;\">Weeks after Proposition 22 went into effect in     <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/california\">California<\/a> and     exempted some major tech firms from fully complying with labor laws, workers     for rideshare and delivery apps in the state claim poor working conditions     have persisted and pay has decreased.<\/p>\n<p>Drivers and labor groups     opposed Prop 22, saying it would allow companies to     <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2020\/oct\/29\/uber-lyft-racist-business-model-prop-22\">sidestep their obligations<\/a>    to provide benefits and standard minimum wages to their workers even as they     make billions of dollars. But     <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2020\/nov\/04\/california-election-voters-prop-22-uber-lyft\">the measure passed<\/a>    at the ballot box.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s clear that as soon as Prop 22 passed, it     was open season to start cutting my pay again,\u201d said Peter Young, a     rideshare driver for four years in Los Angeles. \u201cI\u2019m looking for other work.     I can\u2019t keep doing this at this pay. I\u2019m doing food delivery right now.     Everyone is ordering food online so there\u2019s demand. It\u2019s just that what they     are choosing to pay me isn\u2019t reliable any more and it\u2019s getting     lower.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was under the impression that I was going to get an additional $0.30 per mile after Prop 22,\u201d said <span style=\"color: black;\">[Uber driver Ben]<\/span> Valdez, but he hasn\u2019t received that extra compensation because, according to Uber\u2019s metrics, his pay exceeds their calculation of 120 percent of minimum wage.<\/p>\n<p>A <a href=\"https:\/\/laborcenter.berkeley.edu\/the-uber-lyft-ballot-initiative-guarantees-only-5-64-an-hour-2\/\">study<\/a>by labor economists at the University of California, Berkeley, in October 2019 found Prop 22 guarantees a minimum wage of $5.64 an hour, as only engaged time is accounted for in the wage calculations.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA lot of drivers were duped because they expected they were magically going to be able to qualify for benefits that the companies made it sound like they were going to pay for up front and that drivers were going to be getting reimbursement for the mileage,\u201d said Valdez. \u201cThey also made drivers believe that if Prop 22 didn\u2019t pass then Uber and Lyft were going to leave the state of California because they couldn\u2019t afford to pay drivers as employees.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It&#8217;s pretty simple.&nbsp; The gig companies won because they lied and because they spent a lot of money.<\/p>\n<p>Start collecting signatures for a repeal, and come back again, and again.<\/p>\n<p>Uber, Lyft, Doordash, and have lots of venture capital money, but no meaningful profits.<\/p>\n<p>Between the lies, and the limits of their VCs, eventually they will lose.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>That was the whole purpose of the massive funding for Proposition 22 in California, to get a license to treat their employees like crap. Anyone who says that they voted for Prop 22 because they thought that it would improve the lot of the Gypsy cab drivers and food delivery folks is either a liar &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[969,1284,978,1084],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-200610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-evil","category-gig-economy","category-politics","category-voting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200610"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200610\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}