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This stipend bears little resemblance to traditional employer-based insurance, which is what drivers would get if they were considered employees instead of gig workers, said Ken Jacobs, chair of the University of California-Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education.

“Instead of spreading the cost of new cleaner technologies to whole industries, you’re putting that on the backs of workers,” said Carol Zabin.

“Obama was carrying us out of a very deep and long recession, and Trump inherited that. If anything, it’s notable that real income didn’t rise any faster under Trump than it did under Obama, despite the stimulus that his tax cuts were supposed to provide.”

“This is a really important battle. We’ll see it spread to other industries. It’s not just an issue in California. It has huge implications for labour – more of a race to the bottom by taking away worker protections through outsourcing and subcontracting.”

Much of gig work is spent waiting for a job in the app. UC Berkeley’s Labor Center did a study where they tried to take time between rides into account, along with wear and tear on the vehicle. Adding those factors in the mix, the study found the wage guarantee drops to just $5.64 an hour.

Drivers are only compensated when they’re fulfilling a ride request, not when they’re waiting for one, [so] the actual average pay for total time spent in the car is only $5.64 per hour.

Only paying drivers for engaged time would be the equivalent of a fast food restaurant or retail store saying they will only pay the cashier when a customer is at the counter.

Reich and Jacobs say the studies backed by Uber and Lyft underestimate costs like gas, vehicle damage and car-value depreciation, in part because those studies discount expenses incurred outside of engaged time.

Labor activists say Uber is failing to provide drivers basic protections only offered to employees, such as healthcare and the ability to unionize. They also say the protections outlined in Prop 22 are inadequate, pointing to an analysis from the Labor Center at the University of California Berkeley that found the minimum wage under Prop. 22 would only be $5.64 due to loopholes and hidden costs.

In late 2019, the Labor Center at the University of California, Berkeley, released a report estimating that drivers working under Prop. 22 could receive a net wage as low as five dollars and sixty-four cents an hour—less than half the minimum wage in California, and hardly a third of the minimum wage in San Francisco

Economists at the University of California at Berkeley Labor Center crunched the numbers and included other costs, like the time when drivers must wait to be matched with a rider. They concluded drivers’ actual wage to be closer to $5.64 per hour.

California receives some $27 billion a year from the federal government to subsidize insurance coverage for low- and moderate-income Californians, an amount roughly equivalent to what the state spends annually on prisons, colleges and universities, according to estimates by the UC Berkeley Labor Center.

Labor activists say Uber is failing to provide drivers basic protections, such as healthcare, wage protections and the ability to unionize, because they aren’t employees.

Los Angeles County worked with UCLA’s Labor Center and the University of California Berkeley’s Labor Center to study and respond to the situation. The first step was to give workers a direct and private way to report worrisome situations. Thousands of tips poured in, allowing the county to crack down on situations.

“The U.C. Berkeley Labor Center estimates that California could annually lose 27 billion [dollars] and potentially 299,000 jobs if the ACA was struck down,” Kelch outlined.

Reich has a more optimistic view than Uber and Lyft of their ability to transition. He predicts that in California, prices would increase 5% to 10%, while labor costs would go up 25% to 30%.

A UC Berkeley Labor Center study said Uber and Lyft would have owed California $413 million for unemployment between 2014 and 2019 if drivers were employees.

A study by my colleagues at UC Berkeley found that under Prop 22, Uber and Lyft drivers would be guaranteed only $5.64 an hour – a far cry from the $13 an hour minimum wage they’d otherwise get. And the vast majority would not qualify for the health benefits outlined in Prop 22.

Proposition 22, which is being put to voters on the same day as the November 3 presidential election, will determine whether California’s government can enforce a law which became effective this year requiring on-demand companies to treat drivers as employees, instead of independent contractors.

The NLRB has been “ripped asunder by the current leadership,” says Jane McAlevey, a longtime labor organizer and fellow at UC Berkeley’s Labor Center. The result is that corporations are more likely to cheat in negotiations, knowing there won’t be any real consequences.

“You know, that’s about $6 an hour, what they’re proposing — it’s actually less than I make right now. That’s how bad this thing is.” (Labor and economics experts at University of California, Berkeley, later confirmed the driver’s calculations.)

Prop 22 also will not likely offer higher wages because of a complex formula that will be used to determine “minimum wage.” A study by the University of California, Berkeley Labor Center found that if Proposition 22 passes, many drivers could earn as little as $5.64 an hour once their considerable driving expenses are subtracted, which is not even half of California’s minimum wage of $12 per hour.

LA officials pushed to set up tip lines for violations on workplace health enforcement and other offenses. UC Berkeley Labor Center believed the idea was “innovative,” noting that the workplace was the driver of COVID-19 in the county, affecting mostly Latinos and Blacks.

Union members see the tech-funded initiative as a direct attack on the working class.

“If the ACA is overturned, policymakers would be facing a lot of hard decisions about how to respond,” Lucia said. “Over $28 billion in federal funding would be very difficult for the state to replace.”