Of Course They Are

Hoocoodanode?

After making nice to the drivers in order to get Proposition 22 passed, Uber and Lyft have reversed their employee friendly policies, because their drivers are disposable, and they have no more need to make nice with them.

This outcome was completely predictable:

Last year, the ride-hailing service Uber gave its drivers unprecedented control over their fares and working conditions.

The goal was to win drivers’ support for Proposition 22, through which Uber and other gig companies aimed to rewrite California labor law in the companies’ favor.

The firms’ pitch was that the ballot measure would preserve the “flexibility” in hours and earnings that their workers valued, and that they said would be threatened unless the labor law was changed.

Uber’s new options seemed to make that flexibility more real: The company gave drivers more latitude to set their own fares, and more visibility into the trips they were offered before deciding whether to accept them.

Proposition 22 was passed by an overwhelming margin in the November election. Since then, some drivers say, Uber has taken the flexibility options away, and even cut the drivers’ income on many trips.

Lyft executives raised the same alarm during a Wall Street conference call after the firm released its first-quarter financial results on May 4.

Driver advocates have greeted these remarks skeptically, noting that the firms could attract more drivers quickly by improving their pay.

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But when California codified labor rules to mandate that such workers receive all the benefits of employees, Uber, Lyft and other gig companies drafted Proposition 22 to exempt their drivers, delivery workers and others from the employment rules and allow them to be classified as independent contractors.

After a campaign in which the companies spent more than $200 million, a national record for a ballot measure, Proposition 22 passed with nearly 60% of the vote.

“A huge part of their Proposition 22 campaign was to get the drivers on their side,” says Veena Dubal, a labor law expert at UC Hastings College of the Law and a critic of Uber and Lyft. “So they rolled out these things they knew that drivers would be excited about and would make them feel independent. And of course they’ve thrown them away.”

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Support for the bill has been waning since organized labor took a closer look at its terms. They discovered that it would bar workers from striking or taking any other job action and forbid local governments from imposing a minimum wage for gig workers.

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Uber also has sharply cut drivers’ pay for trips originating at Los Angeles International, San Francisco and San Diego airports. At LAX and San Diego, drivers say, they now receive 32 cents per mile, regardless of the distance traveled.

That’s down from about 60 cents before the passage of Proposition 22, drivers say. It’s also well below the 56 cents per mile that the Internal Revenue Service has set as the deductible cost of ownership of cars driven for business use, counting fuel, maintenance, insurance and wear and tear.

It's like the tale of the scorpion and the frog, it's in their nature.

You should not be surprised when it stings you.