Good News Everyone!

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has thrown out the Gypsy Cab companies' attempt to strip rights from their employees.

It appears that they got greedy, and put too much in the plebiscite that they had sponsored:

A Massachusetts court ruled on Tuesday that a proposed ballot measure concerning the job status of gig drivers violated state law and was not eligible to be put to voters this fall.

The measure, which was backed by companies like Uber and Lyft, would have classified gig drivers as independent contractors rather than employees, a longtime goal of the companies. The ruling effectively ended a $17.8 million campaign by the gig companies to support the initiative.

The ballot measure contained two “substantively distinct policy decisions, one of which is buried in obscure language” violating the State Constitution, which requires all parts of a ballot measure to be related, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court wrote in its ruling.

The court took issue with a provision of the measure that said drivers were “not an employee or agent” of a gig company, because it appeared to be an attempt to shield Uber and Lyft from liability in the case of an accident or a crime. That provision was unrelated to the rest of the proposal, which was about the benefits drivers would or would not receive as independent contractors, according to the seven-judge panel. The measure would have given drivers some limited benefits but absolved the companies of the need to pay them for full health care benefits, time off or other employee benefits.

“Petitions that bury separate policy decisions in obscure language heighten concerns that voters will be confused, misled and deprived of a meaningful choice,” the court wrote.

………

Since the federal government has appeared unlikely to settle the question, Uber and Lyft have embarked on a state-by-state march to lock in their drivers’ labor statuses.

The campaign by gig companies to lock in their drivers’ labor status in Massachusetts was similar to an effort in California two years ago. In 2020, the companies persuaded California voters to pass Proposition 22, a ballot measure that enshrined drivers’ independent contractor status; a judge overturned it. The next year they tried to strike a labor bargain in New York, and this year they forged a similar agreement with legislators in Washington State, preventing drivers from being classified as employees.

I think that the gig economy companies business model, subsidize their operations with VC money until they can achieve monopoly status and raise prices, is fast approaching its sell by date.  (They have run out of useful idiots, and now have to raise prices.)

They have built their business on VC money and browbeating regulatory authorities because people loved benefiting from their subsidies.

Here's hoping that their collapse takes down Masayoshi Son and Softbank as well.