CA voters must stop app-company scheme to profit at workers’ expense

The COVID-19 pandemic is showing us the best and worst of the gig economy.

The best: drivers and shoppers becoming first responders to keep home-bound seniors fed and transport nurses to work. The worst: app companies like Uber, Lyft and Doordash buying themselves a special exemption on the November ballot to deny employees sick pay, unemployment leave, and the protective equipment employers are required to provide under California law.

After California’s attorney general sued app companies for illegally misclassifying their workers as contractors instead of employees as state law requires, they made a choice: rather than comply with the law, they accelerated their spending to deceive voters into supporting their misclassification-for-profit scheme.

Now Californians must make their choice — stand with working families or submit to rich gig CEOs. We are urging them to slam the brakes on the app companies’ measure by voting no on Proposition 22 this November.

We’ve already seen Uber, Lyft, and Doordash trying to tell voters their measure is about rider safety, but nothing could be further from the truth. If the app companies get their way, they would only be held accountable to their own dubious set of worker safety regulations, instead of following the same rules every other law-abiding company follows.

If the app companies get their way, they would never pay a dime into California’s unemployment insurance program, which is already stretched thin as millions who have lost their jobs to COVID-19 fight for coverage. A study by the University of California, Berkeley’s Labor Center found that Uber and Lyft combined have already left a $400 million crater in our state unemployment fund, after stealing five years worth of payments from taxpayers and hardworking families.

App companies are prepared to spend a fortune to take away their driver-employees’ right to paid sick leave and health care. As a result, sick drivers — or those who know they’ve been exposed to COVID-19 — will find themselves forced to make an impossible choice between working to pay the rent or staying home to keep themselves and their riders safe.

Under the guise of “flexibility,” Uber, Lyft, and Doordash have gotten away with treating their driver-employees like independent contractors for years. But let’s be honest: flexibility means nothing if app companies can cut wages or refuse to provide paid sick leave at the drop of a hat. There is no freedom as long as corporations can sacrifice the well-being and safety of their drivers and riders to boost their bottom line and fund million-dollar raises for their CEOs.

As the coronavirus pandemic rages on, spending unspeakable sums of money to leave workers out in the cold will weaken our economy, not strengthen it. Uber, Lyft, Instacart, and Doordash should drop their deceptive measure, finally protect their driver-employees, and invest their $110 million into providing their driver-employees with personal protective equipment.

California’s worker safety and worker protection laws are in place for a reason: to make sure powerful corporations can’t take advantage of their employees. Wiping those laws away for a handful of billion-dollar app companies sets a dangerous precedent and puts workers’ lives at risk.

Californians have an opportunity on the November ballot to vote no on Prop. 22, slamming the brakes on app company opportunism and holding them accountable to provide their workers with the protections, wages, and safety net programs they have earned.