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.
According to Ken Jacobs and Michael Reich of the University of California, Berkeley Labor Center, engaged time is only 67 percent of a driver’s shift, and workers under Proposition 22 could make as little as $5.64 an hour. “Not paying for [wait] 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,” they wrote in 2019.
When you look inside the numbers of the new UC Berkeley report urging California to aggressively stockpile protective gear for the next pandemic, it doesn’t take long to understand how the state could spend itself into a financial ditch just trying to keep health care workers safe.
Capital & Main caught up with Steven Pitts less than a month before his retirement to talk about the work that has defined his career: understanding the crisis affecting Black workers and how to address it. Pitts has focused on the lack of good jobs, which he says is an underappreciated dimension of that crisis.
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