“None of this is controversial,” Bernhardt said. “Workers should have the right to know which systems their employer is using, and they have the right to expect that it’s a human, not an algorithm, that is making critical decisions impacting their economic future.”
“[AB1228] made sense for the fast-food industry because of the highly fissured nature of the industry,” said Enrique Lopezlira, director of the Low-Wage Work Program at the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education.
More and more unions are bargaining for advanced notice of new technology from employers, helping them understand in real time whether it will displace workers or change the environment, said Lisa Kresge, a researcher at the University of California-Berkeley who studies tech clauses in union contracts.
“Workers aren’t waking up to change the world; they’re waking up to get a good contract,” said Jane McAlevey. “And you need to help them win it—soon—or they’re going to walk away.”
“Many workers understood the opportunity of this moment in terms of winning greater pay and benefits,” Jacobs said. “And I think they faced a tremendous need. All of those together really pushed a lot of the strike activity.”
Contracting out the driver’s role allows companies to shift the cost of truck ownership and operation to individual drivers, according to a report from the Labor Center at the University of California, Berkeley.
“Basically, these are largely untested technologies with virtually no oversight,” said Lisa Kresge, research and policy associate at the University of California, Berkeley Labor Center, who studies the intersection of technological change and inequality. “That’s unprecedented in the workplace.”
While the $220 million campaign to pass the ballot initiative promised drivers “120% of the minimum wage,” a report from the University of California, Berkeley Labor Center estimated that real driver earnings will be $5.64 an hour.
“If the companies lose, it may garner the attention of other states who are looking for what to do here,” said Ken Jacobs, the chair of the Center for Labor Research and Education at the University of California at Berkeley. “California isn’t the only one with lots of these suits.
The laws vary but generally require companies to take a hands-off approach to union organizing efforts in exchange for state permission to sell cannabis.
If Uber and Lyft can continue delaying an order to convert their California drivers to employees and reorganize into franchise models, it would signal to other companies that corporations have the power to avoid complying with the law, said Ken Jacobs, chair of the Berkeley Labor Center.
