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"content": "\u003cp>For almost a decade, on-demand services like Lyft, DoorDash and Instacart have allowed customers to rate and tip workers with just the tap of a finger. Even though it has been almost a decade, we still have no idea how much this allows customer bias to hurt Black and brown workers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While rating workers on an app is new, it’s just the latest system companies have devised to allow customers to impact pay or promotions. If their ratings aren’t perfect, workers can lose income, or even their job, and there’s mounting evidence these systems allow bias to hurt workers of color.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>How Restaurants Paved the Way\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Long before apps entered the picture, tipping established a way for consumer bias to impact worker pay. Michael Lynn, a professor of consumer behavior at Cornell University, said he has long suspected bias influenced tips.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I believe that we have an implicit bias against people of color in this country, and I believe those implicit biases are likely to impact tipping,” Lynn said. But over and over again, he’s come up against a major hurdle in proving it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ve asked a lot of different companies to give me data,” Lynn said. “But there’s no interest on their part in finding out because it doesn’t benefit them. If there is racism, that puts them in a bind, and it’s worse when there is racism and they know about it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That said, Lynn was able to get some data \u003ca href=\"https://www.wagehourlitigation.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/215/2015/10/cornell.pdf\">to run a small study on waiters\u003c/a> in 2008. He found that customers did indeed give workers of color lower tips.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Similar Findings in Other Industries\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Studies have consistently shown that\u003ca href=\"https://www.yalelawjournal.org/pdf/207_wd54xsc1.pdf\"> Black, brown and immigrant taxi drivers\u003c/a> get lower tips; and health care, management and sales professionals\u003ca href=\"https://journals.aom.org/doi/abs/10.5465/amj.2010.49388763\"> get more negative customer feedback\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The trend is the same in online reviews: Black and brown professors \u003ca href=\"https://teaching.pitt.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/OMET-Racial_bias_and_student_ratings_of_instructors.pdf\">get worse student evaluations\u003c/a>, while \u003ca href=\"https://news.northeastern.edu/2016/12/06/researchers-find-racial-gender-bias-in-online-freelance-marketplaces/\">freelancers on Fiverr and TaskRabbit get lower reviews\u003c/a>, which means fewer jobs and less money.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Customers may not even realize they’re treating Black and brown workers differently, giving them lower tips, leaving less positive feedback or rating them lower on an app. The cause of all this, according to researchers, is implicit or unconscious bias.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside label=\"Related Stories\" tag=\"gig-economy\"]To fully understand the extent of the problem, researchers would need to look at large data sets and see what different groups of workers were getting tipped and rated. Race is just one possible trait to evaluate for bias. The same problem could exist for gender, age, ability or any category that is regularly discriminated against.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But while many companies are resistant to collect or share data along these lines, on-demand service apps like DoorDash and Uber don’t even have to gather worker demographic data.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s because of the way they classify their workers. App companies call workers contractors instead of employees. The contractor status also protects these on-demand app service companies from liability if is found that customers are discriminating against any of the workers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The news that the app rating system is problematic is far from new. Labor advocates have been warning about it since the apps started. In 2016, there was an entire study done by Data & Society titled “\u003ca href=\"https://datasociety.net/pubs/ia/Discriminating_Tastes_Customer_Ratings_as_Vehicles_for_Bias.pdf\">Discriminating Tastes: Customer Ratings as Vehicles for Bias\u003c/a>,” which was co-authored by Alex Rosenblat, who now works for Uber as the Head of Marketplace Policy, Fairness and Research.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>What the Companies Say\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>KQED reached out to several major app companies: DoorDash, Lyft, Uber and TaskRabbit. Only Lyft and DoorDash responded.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>DoorDash PR representatives talked about protocols for kicking overtly racist customers off the app, but didn’t mention anything about a system for detecting or addressing implicit bias.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A representative from Lyft said the company had commissioned a study to understand the extent of the problem. The PR representative said the company found no evidence of implicit bias in ratings, but it’s not possible to confirm the veracity of this assessment, as the company has not made the results or methodology of the study public.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Also Lyft, like many other app companies, does not gather demographic information on workers. Without that data, researchers say it’s impossible to know with certainty how much a rating and/or tip system allows for implicit bias to hurt workers. The companies are in the dark, and so are the workers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ashley Salas would love to know what led to non-perfect ratings she got delivering for Instacart in San Francisco. After those, she said, everything changed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote sze='medium' align='right' citation=\"Ashley Salas, Instacart shopper\"]‘It got really, really hard. I went from making $200 a day to struggling to make $100.’[/pullquote]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It got really, really hard. I went from making $200 a day to struggling to make $100,” Salas said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s $100 a day before expenses like gas and wear and tear on her car, while she went to school for radiology and took care of her newborn baby.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Did she get low ratings because she did something wrong? Were the customers just grumpy? Or did they react negatively to who she is? Salas is part Pacific Islander, part Native American.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s kind of a bummer,” Salas said. “I would have wished to know why so I could improve myself.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Frustrated, Salas reached out to Gig Workers Rising, an advocacy group for app workers. Lead organizer Lauren Casey said she has heard this same story again and again from workers of color.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Casey said, “Their performance at work is held to a different standard and in turn they receive worse ratings.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A representative from Instacart said it has policies to deal with overt racism, but like other app companies, there’s no mechanism for detecting implicit bias, let alone addressing it.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>No Data, No Context\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Stanford University law professor Richard Ford said the app rating system has magnified the problem of implicit bias, making it easier for customers to hurt workers and harder for workers to prove it is happening.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You don’t have context, and you don’t have the interpersonal reactions that might give you some clue that the ratings were based on race,” Ford said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All you have is a number, and given our society’s increasing fetishization of data, Ford said a number without context can be very dangerous. “The difference in today’s environment is that it looks more objective. You’re getting, you know, a numerical rating. How could you argue with the numbers?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even if the ratings are high, it doesn’t mean they are fair. It’s possible that a person of different a race, sex or origin had to work harder to get good ratings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>UC Hastings labor law professor Veena Dubal has interviewed more than 100 Lyft and Uber drivers. She said Black and brown drivers often talk about having to perform to make white customers happy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s a lot of emotional labor and a lot of emotional performance that goes into ensuring that you’re not getting poor ratings, because otherwise you’re going to get fired. It’s almost that you have to play into the racial sensibilities of consumers,” Dubal said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some restaurants pool tips so any negative impacts from implicit bias are shared by the whole staff. App companies could adjust tips and ratings for Black and brown drivers to compensate for bias, but that means first figuring out how much lower they are on average.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thanks to Proposition 22, app companies face no legal pressure to gather the necessary demographic data. Without data, individual workers are left to interpret their own experience, isolated and unprotected.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>For almost a decade, on-demand services like Lyft, DoorDash and Instacart have allowed customers to rate and tip workers with just the tap of a finger. Even though it has been almost a decade, we still have no idea how much this allows customer bias to hurt Black and brown workers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While rating workers on an app is new, it’s just the latest system companies have devised to allow customers to impact pay or promotions. If their ratings aren’t perfect, workers can lose income, or even their job, and there’s mounting evidence these systems allow bias to hurt workers of color.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>How Restaurants Paved the Way\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Long before apps entered the picture, tipping established a way for consumer bias to impact worker pay. Michael Lynn, a professor of consumer behavior at Cornell University, said he has long suspected bias influenced tips.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I believe that we have an implicit bias against people of color in this country, and I believe those implicit biases are likely to impact tipping,” Lynn said. But over and over again, he’s come up against a major hurdle in proving it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ve asked a lot of different companies to give me data,” Lynn said. “But there’s no interest on their part in finding out because it doesn’t benefit them. If there is racism, that puts them in a bind, and it’s worse when there is racism and they know about it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That said, Lynn was able to get some data \u003ca href=\"https://www.wagehourlitigation.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/215/2015/10/cornell.pdf\">to run a small study on waiters\u003c/a> in 2008. He found that customers did indeed give workers of color lower tips.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Similar Findings in Other Industries\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Studies have consistently shown that\u003ca href=\"https://www.yalelawjournal.org/pdf/207_wd54xsc1.pdf\"> Black, brown and immigrant taxi drivers\u003c/a> get lower tips; and health care, management and sales professionals\u003ca href=\"https://journals.aom.org/doi/abs/10.5465/amj.2010.49388763\"> get more negative customer feedback\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The trend is the same in online reviews: Black and brown professors \u003ca href=\"https://teaching.pitt.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/OMET-Racial_bias_and_student_ratings_of_instructors.pdf\">get worse student evaluations\u003c/a>, while \u003ca href=\"https://news.northeastern.edu/2016/12/06/researchers-find-racial-gender-bias-in-online-freelance-marketplaces/\">freelancers on Fiverr and TaskRabbit get lower reviews\u003c/a>, which means fewer jobs and less money.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Customers may not even realize they’re treating Black and brown workers differently, giving them lower tips, leaving less positive feedback or rating them lower on an app. The cause of all this, according to researchers, is implicit or unconscious bias.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>To fully understand the extent of the problem, researchers would need to look at large data sets and see what different groups of workers were getting tipped and rated. Race is just one possible trait to evaluate for bias. The same problem could exist for gender, age, ability or any category that is regularly discriminated against.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But while many companies are resistant to collect or share data along these lines, on-demand service apps like DoorDash and Uber don’t even have to gather worker demographic data.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s because of the way they classify their workers. App companies call workers contractors instead of employees. The contractor status also protects these on-demand app service companies from liability if is found that customers are discriminating against any of the workers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The news that the app rating system is problematic is far from new. Labor advocates have been warning about it since the apps started. In 2016, there was an entire study done by Data & Society titled “\u003ca href=\"https://datasociety.net/pubs/ia/Discriminating_Tastes_Customer_Ratings_as_Vehicles_for_Bias.pdf\">Discriminating Tastes: Customer Ratings as Vehicles for Bias\u003c/a>,” which was co-authored by Alex Rosenblat, who now works for Uber as the Head of Marketplace Policy, Fairness and Research.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>What the Companies Say\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>KQED reached out to several major app companies: DoorDash, Lyft, Uber and TaskRabbit. Only Lyft and DoorDash responded.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>DoorDash PR representatives talked about protocols for kicking overtly racist customers off the app, but didn’t mention anything about a system for detecting or addressing implicit bias.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A representative from Lyft said the company had commissioned a study to understand the extent of the problem. The PR representative said the company found no evidence of implicit bias in ratings, but it’s not possible to confirm the veracity of this assessment, as the company has not made the results or methodology of the study public.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Also Lyft, like many other app companies, does not gather demographic information on workers. Without that data, researchers say it’s impossible to know with certainty how much a rating and/or tip system allows for implicit bias to hurt workers. The companies are in the dark, and so are the workers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ashley Salas would love to know what led to non-perfect ratings she got delivering for Instacart in San Francisco. After those, she said, everything changed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "‘It got really, really hard. I went from making $200 a day to struggling to make $100.’",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It got really, really hard. I went from making $200 a day to struggling to make $100,” Salas said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s $100 a day before expenses like gas and wear and tear on her car, while she went to school for radiology and took care of her newborn baby.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Did she get low ratings because she did something wrong? Were the customers just grumpy? Or did they react negatively to who she is? Salas is part Pacific Islander, part Native American.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s kind of a bummer,” Salas said. “I would have wished to know why so I could improve myself.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Frustrated, Salas reached out to Gig Workers Rising, an advocacy group for app workers. Lead organizer Lauren Casey said she has heard this same story again and again from workers of color.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Casey said, “Their performance at work is held to a different standard and in turn they receive worse ratings.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A representative from Instacart said it has policies to deal with overt racism, but like other app companies, there’s no mechanism for detecting implicit bias, let alone addressing it.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>No Data, No Context\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Stanford University law professor Richard Ford said the app rating system has magnified the problem of implicit bias, making it easier for customers to hurt workers and harder for workers to prove it is happening.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You don’t have context, and you don’t have the interpersonal reactions that might give you some clue that the ratings were based on race,” Ford said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All you have is a number, and given our society’s increasing fetishization of data, Ford said a number without context can be very dangerous. “The difference in today’s environment is that it looks more objective. You’re getting, you know, a numerical rating. How could you argue with the numbers?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even if the ratings are high, it doesn’t mean they are fair. It’s possible that a person of different a race, sex or origin had to work harder to get good ratings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>UC Hastings labor law professor Veena Dubal has interviewed more than 100 Lyft and Uber drivers. She said Black and brown drivers often talk about having to perform to make white customers happy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s a lot of emotional labor and a lot of emotional performance that goes into ensuring that you’re not getting poor ratings, because otherwise you’re going to get fired. It’s almost that you have to play into the racial sensibilities of consumers,” Dubal said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some restaurants pool tips so any negative impacts from implicit bias are shared by the whole staff. App companies could adjust tips and ratings for Black and brown drivers to compensate for bias, but that means first figuring out how much lower they are on average.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thanks to Proposition 22, app companies face no legal pressure to gather the necessary demographic data. Without data, individual workers are left to interpret their own experience, isolated and unprotected.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>A trial to determine if Lyft violates the Americans With Disabilities Act concluded in San Francisco on Tuesday. A pending decision by Judge William Alsup may soon determine if the ride-hail company will be compelled to provide service for those who use powered wheelchairs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Berkeley and New York-based Disability Rights Advocates group filed the class-action \u003ca href=\"https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/5776959/Disability-Rights-Lawsuit-versus-Lyft.pdf\">complaint\u003c/a> in US Northern District Court \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11734339/lawsuit-seeks-to-force-lyft-to-provide-full-equal-service-to-the-disabled\">against Lyft in 2019\u003c/a>, alleging it ran afoul of the ADA by failing to ensure service for those who require special wheelchair accessible vehicles (WAVs) to get around.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The suit didn't aim to pinch Lyft's purse — instead, disability community advocates wished to push the ride-hail giant to provide wheelchair-accessible service in the Bay Area that's \"full and equal\" to the service it provides the rest of the public.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In court, Alsup said his decision would likely not come later than August.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Wheelchair Users Left in Limbo\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Powered wheelchairs are preferred in the disability community for the independence they allow, but vehicles able to fit them properly can cost tens of thousands of dollars to retrofit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Bay Area's traditional taxi industry used to have a robust number of drivers \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/luxor-cabs-financial-strain-jeopardizes-crucial-wheelchair-taxi-trips/\">behind a fleet equipped with wheelchair-accessible vans\u003c/a>. But as Lyft and competitor Uber, which \u003ca href=\"https://www.cnet.com/news/uber-discriminates-against-people-in-wheelchairs-lawsuit-says/\">faced a similar lawsuit in 2018\u003c/a>, rose to prominence over the last decade, taxi drivers fled the industry by the hundreds. Those wheelchair rides vanished with them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Dorene Giacopini, lawsuit plaintiff and member of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission\"]'[There's an] exhaustion that I think our community feels ... And the frustration that after having worked so hard and won such great success with the ADA, that these companies have come along and caused us to lose some of the independence we had gained.'[/pullquote]And since ride-hail companies contend they are merely app services which connect drivers with riders, instead of owning fleets of vehicles themselves, Lyft's attorneys argued in court that providing a wheelchair service would be an entirely new business altogether — and that it's therefore outside the bounds of what the ADA mandates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Without that service, however, wheelchair users are left in limbo, said Dorene Giacopini, one of the suit's plaintiffs. Giacopini also sits on the Bay Area Metropolitan Transportation Commission, and is president of the board of Community Resources for Independent Living in Hayward. She uses a powered wheelchair for her mobility.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When talking about Lyft's lack of wheelchair accessibility, and the ride-hailing industry's decimation of similar services from taxis, Giacopini likened the situation to what she called the \"bad old days\" when people with disabilities were confined to their bedrooms by their families. Often they were trapped there for life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I remember being a kid and people talking about shut-ins, people who are just stuck in their houses\" due to a family's shame about their disability. Lyft's indifference to the effect their company's growth had on people with disabilities hearkened back to those times, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Giacopini's own parents fought against her grandparents, who said \"don't talk about her disability, keep her home.\" Lyft's practices are contributing to making some people with disabilities become shut-ins again, Giacopini told KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said there's an \"exhaustion that I think our community feels with having to deal with the inaccessible environment ... And the frustration that after having worked so hard and won such great success with the Americans with Disabilities Act, that these companies have come along and caused us to lose some of the independence we had gained.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>'Lyft Simply Refuses to Try'\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Lyft defended its early wheelchair accessibility pilot in the Bay Area, which it has attempted in fits and starts since 2019. The program started with just five vehicles for the nine-county region, but a planned partnership with rental car company Hertz was to scale up its fleet to 65 vehicles, which would be owned by Hertz. That pilot project never got off the ground, as Hertz declared bankruptcy in May 2020. After that, Lyft reduced its number of WAVs to just two.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Lyft’s goal is to provide access to WAV service in a reliable and sustainable way, and this trial has highlighted how incredibly challenging it is to facilitate WAV service on-demand,\" a Lyft spokesperson wrote in a statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During the trial, attorneys for disability community advocates argued Lyft already had WAV programs running in 10 different markets, including New York and Oregon, and could replicate that service in the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They also pointed out Lyft got roughly $2 million from its state regulators – the California Public Utilities Commission – to help get its WAV pilot project. They argued that Lyft itself determined it could potentially cover 80% of the demand for wheelchair service with a fleet of 65 vehicles, though Lyft witnesses later countered that claim.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Advocates' attorney Stuart Seaborn argued Lyft scrapped its large-scale plan to provide wheelchair-accessible service at the start of the pandemic before it even had a chance to fail. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"The evidence has shown Lyft, a company that revolutionized the way people travel in this country, is fully capable of implementing wheelchair-accessible service in the Bay Area,\" Seaborn said in the case's closing arguments. \"The evidence shows Lyft simply refuses to try.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside label='Disability Community Coverage' tag='disability-community']Attorneys want to give Lyft a year to get a program for the disability community off the ground.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Judge Alsup spelled some doubt for the disability community advocates, indicating they weren't asking for a specific enough change to Lyft's service, like a direct modification to the design of a vehicle, to meet ADA requirements. Instead, Alsup said, they were asking the court to order Lyft to begin a process to discover what business modifications are needed to run a wheelchair service in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Lyft implements these programs all over the country,\" Seaborn countered. \"The fact of the matter is, they do provide those services.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alsup also took aim at advocates' arguments that Lyft could still feasibly implement the 65 wheelchair-accessible vehicle program in the Bay Area without Hertz.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"You make it sound so easy. I think Lyft should just hire you, stick you in charge, and then you be responsible for making it cost-effective,\" Alsup told Seaborn, the advocates' attorney. \"It's a problem for me as a judge to wonder where that 65 [vehicles] will come from.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Attorneys for the advocates then pointed out that despite Hertz's bankruptcy, Lyft failed to reach out to other car companies to form partnerships to supply wheelchair-accessible vehicles, including Enterprise, or MobilityWorks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Throughout the trial, Lyft argued that although they have wheelchair-accessible vehicles in other cities, they are only provided because cities or states have regulations that mandated them. Those wheelchair programs don't make money or break even, they argued.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We are trying to solve this problem long term for our business overall,\" Joyce Chan, vice president of product operations at Lyft testified.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>'You're Just Donating That Money to the State Treasury?'\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Some California lawmakers have tried to help Lyft help itself, by creating a program that charges Lyft a 10-cent-per-ride fee that is deposited in a fund expressly for wheelchair operations. That program, compelled by Senate Bill 1376, authored by Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo, was signed into law by former Gov. Jerry Brown in late 2018.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the program made $1.8 million available to Lyft since 2019, Chan argued it needed at least $2 million annually to run a wheelchair-accessible program locally. The funding also fluctuates so often that they cannot effectively calculate the amount into their annual budget, Chan argued, another complicating factor for utilizing it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So Lyft pays the fee and it goes to the CPUC, largely unused, Chan said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Judge Alsup was skeptical of that practice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"You're just donating that money to the State Treasury without trying to put a program in place?\" he asked Chan, to which she replied, \"Yes, sir.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The CPUC is also in the process of ruling on wheelchair accessibility regulations for Lyft and Uber, but witnesses said the CPUC may not finish deliberating on those rules until 2025. Alsup said that CPUC proceeding may have impacted his ruling, but only if it were closer to fruition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"A lot of people who need these wheelchair vehicles are going to be dead by 2025,\" Alsup told attorneys.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"US District Court Judge William Alsup\"]'The people you're leaving out are these disabled people, who want to go out and have a drink every now and then too, but Lyft will not serve them ... And you ought to think about how that looks, while all those cool people are going out and having their drinks and you're cashing in on that business model.'[/pullquote]Data scientists and technical experts also testified for Lyft, arguing that the disability community was so small that the company could not generate enough data to effectively serve them. The only way to do so would be for Lyft to manually dispatch drivers, almost like a taxi service.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alsup was skeptical of that claim, as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"But you know, your entire company started with zero data points,\" he told one witness. \"You're making it sound like you're mentally paralyzed and can't make a decision unless you've got a million data points.\" So, Alsup said, \"You're exaggerating.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In her closing arguments Tuesday, Jiyun Lee, an attorney for Lyft, asked the judge, \"who should bear the financial burden\" of learning and experimentation to create an on-demand service for wheelchair users that has \"never been done before?\" Private entities shouldn't bear the burden of modifying vehicles to be wheelchair accessible, which can cost more than $20,000 per vehicle, Lee said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ultimately, Lee argued, the ADA says people with disabilities can ask for \"reasonable\" modification to make services accessible, but what disability community advocates are asking for is too much.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That burden surpasses what the ADA calls for, with \"reasonable\" accommodations, Lee said. In fact, she said, \"that's just outright establishing a new transportation service.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Seaborn shot back that Lyft already runs wheelchair-accessible programs throughout the country, and therefore \"cannot argue that something it is already doing would fundamentally alter its business, though doing so may be cost-prohibitive in our region.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the outcome of the trial may not be known until August, Alsup had harsh words for the ride-hail company on the case writ large.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Your business model is based on the cool people in their 20s and 30s who like to go to bars and spend money and get a ride home, the people who are fully able to walk around, and people in this part of the world who have lots of money to spend,\" he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"So you're cashing in on that model. And the people you're leaving out are these disabled people, who want to go out and have a drink every now and then too, but Lyft will not serve them. Lyft just will not serve them ... And you ought to think about how that looks, while all those cool people are going out and having their drinks and you're cashing in on that business model.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A Lyft attorney tried to interrupt him at this point, but Alsup continued, \"I think Lyft's got to look into its own soul to see what's best and what looks best. This is just me talking as a citizen. As a judge, I'm going to rule according to the law, and the plaintiffs may lose on account of this, because the law is not as favorable to the plaintiffs as they seem to think.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, Alsup said, \"I'm telling you how it looks.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Wheelchair Users Left in Limbo\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Powered wheelchairs are preferred in the disability community for the independence they allow, but vehicles able to fit them properly can cost tens of thousands of dollars to retrofit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Bay Area's traditional taxi industry used to have a robust number of drivers \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/luxor-cabs-financial-strain-jeopardizes-crucial-wheelchair-taxi-trips/\">behind a fleet equipped with wheelchair-accessible vans\u003c/a>. But as Lyft and competitor Uber, which \u003ca href=\"https://www.cnet.com/news/uber-discriminates-against-people-in-wheelchairs-lawsuit-says/\">faced a similar lawsuit in 2018\u003c/a>, rose to prominence over the last decade, taxi drivers fled the industry by the hundreds. Those wheelchair rides vanished with them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "'[There's an] exhaustion that I think our community feels ... And the frustration that after having worked so hard and won such great success with the ADA, that these companies have come along and caused us to lose some of the independence we had gained.'",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>And since ride-hail companies contend they are merely app services which connect drivers with riders, instead of owning fleets of vehicles themselves, Lyft's attorneys argued in court that providing a wheelchair service would be an entirely new business altogether — and that it's therefore outside the bounds of what the ADA mandates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Without that service, however, wheelchair users are left in limbo, said Dorene Giacopini, one of the suit's plaintiffs. Giacopini also sits on the Bay Area Metropolitan Transportation Commission, and is president of the board of Community Resources for Independent Living in Hayward. She uses a powered wheelchair for her mobility.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When talking about Lyft's lack of wheelchair accessibility, and the ride-hailing industry's decimation of similar services from taxis, Giacopini likened the situation to what she called the \"bad old days\" when people with disabilities were confined to their bedrooms by their families. Often they were trapped there for life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I remember being a kid and people talking about shut-ins, people who are just stuck in their houses\" due to a family's shame about their disability. Lyft's indifference to the effect their company's growth had on people with disabilities hearkened back to those times, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Giacopini's own parents fought against her grandparents, who said \"don't talk about her disability, keep her home.\" Lyft's practices are contributing to making some people with disabilities become shut-ins again, Giacopini told KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said there's an \"exhaustion that I think our community feels with having to deal with the inaccessible environment ... And the frustration that after having worked so hard and won such great success with the Americans with Disabilities Act, that these companies have come along and caused us to lose some of the independence we had gained.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>'Lyft Simply Refuses to Try'\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Lyft defended its early wheelchair accessibility pilot in the Bay Area, which it has attempted in fits and starts since 2019. The program started with just five vehicles for the nine-county region, but a planned partnership with rental car company Hertz was to scale up its fleet to 65 vehicles, which would be owned by Hertz. That pilot project never got off the ground, as Hertz declared bankruptcy in May 2020. After that, Lyft reduced its number of WAVs to just two.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Lyft’s goal is to provide access to WAV service in a reliable and sustainable way, and this trial has highlighted how incredibly challenging it is to facilitate WAV service on-demand,\" a Lyft spokesperson wrote in a statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During the trial, attorneys for disability community advocates argued Lyft already had WAV programs running in 10 different markets, including New York and Oregon, and could replicate that service in the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They also pointed out Lyft got roughly $2 million from its state regulators – the California Public Utilities Commission – to help get its WAV pilot project. They argued that Lyft itself determined it could potentially cover 80% of the demand for wheelchair service with a fleet of 65 vehicles, though Lyft witnesses later countered that claim.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Advocates' attorney Stuart Seaborn argued Lyft scrapped its large-scale plan to provide wheelchair-accessible service at the start of the pandemic before it even had a chance to fail. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"The evidence has shown Lyft, a company that revolutionized the way people travel in this country, is fully capable of implementing wheelchair-accessible service in the Bay Area,\" Seaborn said in the case's closing arguments. \"The evidence shows Lyft simply refuses to try.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Attorneys want to give Lyft a year to get a program for the disability community off the ground.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Judge Alsup spelled some doubt for the disability community advocates, indicating they weren't asking for a specific enough change to Lyft's service, like a direct modification to the design of a vehicle, to meet ADA requirements. Instead, Alsup said, they were asking the court to order Lyft to begin a process to discover what business modifications are needed to run a wheelchair service in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Lyft implements these programs all over the country,\" Seaborn countered. \"The fact of the matter is, they do provide those services.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alsup also took aim at advocates' arguments that Lyft could still feasibly implement the 65 wheelchair-accessible vehicle program in the Bay Area without Hertz.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"You make it sound so easy. I think Lyft should just hire you, stick you in charge, and then you be responsible for making it cost-effective,\" Alsup told Seaborn, the advocates' attorney. \"It's a problem for me as a judge to wonder where that 65 [vehicles] will come from.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Attorneys for the advocates then pointed out that despite Hertz's bankruptcy, Lyft failed to reach out to other car companies to form partnerships to supply wheelchair-accessible vehicles, including Enterprise, or MobilityWorks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Throughout the trial, Lyft argued that although they have wheelchair-accessible vehicles in other cities, they are only provided because cities or states have regulations that mandated them. Those wheelchair programs don't make money or break even, they argued.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We are trying to solve this problem long term for our business overall,\" Joyce Chan, vice president of product operations at Lyft testified.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>'You're Just Donating That Money to the State Treasury?'\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Some California lawmakers have tried to help Lyft help itself, by creating a program that charges Lyft a 10-cent-per-ride fee that is deposited in a fund expressly for wheelchair operations. That program, compelled by Senate Bill 1376, authored by Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo, was signed into law by former Gov. Jerry Brown in late 2018.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the program made $1.8 million available to Lyft since 2019, Chan argued it needed at least $2 million annually to run a wheelchair-accessible program locally. The funding also fluctuates so often that they cannot effectively calculate the amount into their annual budget, Chan argued, another complicating factor for utilizing it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So Lyft pays the fee and it goes to the CPUC, largely unused, Chan said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Judge Alsup was skeptical of that practice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"You're just donating that money to the State Treasury without trying to put a program in place?\" he asked Chan, to which she replied, \"Yes, sir.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The CPUC is also in the process of ruling on wheelchair accessibility regulations for Lyft and Uber, but witnesses said the CPUC may not finish deliberating on those rules until 2025. Alsup said that CPUC proceeding may have impacted his ruling, but only if it were closer to fruition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"A lot of people who need these wheelchair vehicles are going to be dead by 2025,\" Alsup told attorneys.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "'The people you're leaving out are these disabled people, who want to go out and have a drink every now and then too, but Lyft will not serve them ... And you ought to think about how that looks, while all those cool people are going out and having their drinks and you're cashing in on that business model.'",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Data scientists and technical experts also testified for Lyft, arguing that the disability community was so small that the company could not generate enough data to effectively serve them. The only way to do so would be for Lyft to manually dispatch drivers, almost like a taxi service.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alsup was skeptical of that claim, as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"But you know, your entire company started with zero data points,\" he told one witness. \"You're making it sound like you're mentally paralyzed and can't make a decision unless you've got a million data points.\" So, Alsup said, \"You're exaggerating.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In her closing arguments Tuesday, Jiyun Lee, an attorney for Lyft, asked the judge, \"who should bear the financial burden\" of learning and experimentation to create an on-demand service for wheelchair users that has \"never been done before?\" Private entities shouldn't bear the burden of modifying vehicles to be wheelchair accessible, which can cost more than $20,000 per vehicle, Lee said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ultimately, Lee argued, the ADA says people with disabilities can ask for \"reasonable\" modification to make services accessible, but what disability community advocates are asking for is too much.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That burden surpasses what the ADA calls for, with \"reasonable\" accommodations, Lee said. In fact, she said, \"that's just outright establishing a new transportation service.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Seaborn shot back that Lyft already runs wheelchair-accessible programs throughout the country, and therefore \"cannot argue that something it is already doing would fundamentally alter its business, though doing so may be cost-prohibitive in our region.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the outcome of the trial may not be known until August, Alsup had harsh words for the ride-hail company on the case writ large.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Your business model is based on the cool people in their 20s and 30s who like to go to bars and spend money and get a ride home, the people who are fully able to walk around, and people in this part of the world who have lots of money to spend,\" he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"So you're cashing in on that model. And the people you're leaving out are these disabled people, who want to go out and have a drink every now and then too, but Lyft will not serve them. Lyft just will not serve them ... And you ought to think about how that looks, while all those cool people are going out and having their drinks and you're cashing in on that business model.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A Lyft attorney tried to interrupt him at this point, but Alsup continued, \"I think Lyft's got to look into its own soul to see what's best and what looks best. This is just me talking as a citizen. As a judge, I'm going to rule according to the law, and the plaintiffs may lose on account of this, because the law is not as favorable to the plaintiffs as they seem to think.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, Alsup said, \"I'm telling you how it looks.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"disqusTitle": "How Franchising Paved the Way for the Gig Economy",
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"content": "\u003cp>If you walk into a 7-Eleven in California and it’s too hot or cold, don’t blame the franchisee who runs the place. The thermostat is controlled remotely from the company's corporate headquarters in Dallas — as are the store’s hours, prices and the specific kinds of pizza, wings and tacos they can sell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A group of four franchisees in California are involved in an ongoing suit against 7-Eleven over the extent of the company's control, arguing that it's treating them like employees, but classifying them as independent contractors. If they get so little say on how to run their businesses, the franchisees argue, they should at least receive basic employee protections, like overtime pay and workers' compensation.[pullquote align=\"right\" size=\"medium\" citation=\"Serge Haitayan, 7-Eleven franchise owner\"]'I feel like nothing but an unglorified store manager without benefits.'[/pullquote]Much of the lawsuit rests on \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200AB5\">Assembly Bill 5\u003c/a>, the California law intended to make it harder for gig companies like Uber, Lyft and DoorDash to have sway over their workers without providing employee benefits. And while that 2018 law was drafted in response to today’s gig work environment, it was the franchising industry that originally normalized the labor relations on which the “gig economy” is built.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the franchise model, a business owner buys the right to run a store under the franchisor's brand. As part of the deal, the franchisee must follow a set of rules laid out by the parent company.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Starting in the 1970s, franchising set a legal precedent for gig companies by helping change the enforcement of U.S. antitrust law, and weakening the labor protections that prevent corporations from misclassifying workers as independent contractors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The link between franchising and gig work was evident in the lead-up to the election in November. When it looked like Proposition 22 — an ultimately successful bid by gig companies to circumvent California's new labor law — could fail, forcing companies to pay for basic employee protections, executives reportedly started \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/18/technology/uber-lyft-franchise-california.html\">looking into franchising models\u003c/a> as a backup plan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But gig companies were already capitalizing on the business framework that decades of franchising has normalized — an ongoing tension reflected in the 7-Eleven lawsuit.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>Family Business\u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>There’s an old 7-Eleven on the outskirts of Fresno with a hot dog sign on the window. It says, “Anyone who is hungry and can't pay for a hot dog can have one for free!” Next to the sign is an illustration of a jolly Lebanese Santa Claus with a big beard, the name “Serge” written across his chest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11862646\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-11862646 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/Hot-Dog-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/Hot-Dog-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/Hot-Dog-800x600.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/Hot-Dog-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/Hot-Dog-160x120.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/Hot-Dog-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/Hot-Dog-2048x1536.jpg 2048w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/Hot-Dog-1920x1440.jpg 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/Hot-Dog-1832x1374.jpg 1832w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/Hot-Dog-1376x1032.jpg 1376w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/Hot-Dog-1044x783.jpg 1044w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/Hot-Dog-632x474.jpg 632w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/Hot-Dog-536x402.jpg 536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The sign on the outside of Serge Haitayan's 7-Eleven store in Fresno. \u003ccite>(KQED/Sam Harnett)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>That's Serge Haitayan, a man in his 60s who has run the franchise for 30 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Santa’s beard used to be black” he says. “Now, it’s more grayish.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A refugee from Lebanon, Haitayan came to Los Angeles in the 1980s, and then moved to Fresno — a place he thought would be good to raise a family — where he began running the 7-Eleven store and eventually became a franchise owner.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My kids were raised in the store,” he says. “I used to go pick them up every day after school, and they would stay in this office, and they would do their homework and they would spend the afternoon in the store. I used to have them open the doors for customers and say, ‘Hello. Good afternoon, good evening, welcome to the store.’ ”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Haitayan says ever since the 7-Eleven company was bought by a major Japanese retail firm 16 years ago, the store has felt increasingly less like his own. He says he can’t even control the store temperature himself. He points to the place on the wall where his old thermostat used to be, and describes how a few years ago, a crew from the company came, ripped it out and replaced it with one that is controlled remotely from U.S. corporate headquarters in Dallas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In what world is that OK for you to live in Dallas and control my temperature here where I am sitting?” he asks. “How do you know my environment? How do you know my body? How do you know everyone else's bodies?”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>Increasing Control\u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Haitayan says there has always been a struggle over control with 7-Eleven. Franchisees have to sign lengthy contracts, obligating them to comply with even lengthier operations manuals. The company's manual is nearly 1,000 pages long, he says. And 7-Eleven can change the rules in the manual at any time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When he started his franchise back in the 1990s, Haitayan says the company's control was tolerable. But ever since 7-Eleven was bought out, he says, it has increasingly dictated everything from when franchisees can order from vendors to what they can sell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The final straw for Haitayan was a two-pack of batteries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Haitayan says a few years ago he suddenly could only order jumbo packs of 14 or 16 batteries. “This is not Costco. This is not Walmart,” he says. “This is a convenience store.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His customers wanted small packs of batteries, but he says for some reason that inventory had vanished from the system. Over time, the list of products he couldn’t order continued to grow, like certain kinds of sodas, iced teas and cigarettes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>7-Eleven did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The company has made other changes in recent years. It installed corporate cameras in franchise stores, raised the maximum share of profits the company can keep from 50% to 59%, and increased the focus on food sales, resulting in higher costs for franchisees because they are responsible for covering payroll and have to hire more employees to prepare the food.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Haitayan, the batteries drove home the reality of how powerless he was. “I feel like nothing but an unglorified store manager without benefits,” he says. So, he joined a handful of other California franchisees in the now more than 3-year-old misclassification lawsuit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11862647\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-11862647 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/Serge-Out-Front-scaled-e1616018130427.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1868\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/Serge-Out-Front-scaled-e1616018130427.jpg 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/Serge-Out-Front-scaled-e1616018130427-800x778.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/Serge-Out-Front-scaled-e1616018130427-1020x992.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/Serge-Out-Front-scaled-e1616018130427-160x156.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/Serge-Out-Front-scaled-e1616018130427-1536x1494.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Serge Haitayan outside of his store. \u003ccite>(Sam Harnett/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Jaspreet Dhillon, another 7-Eleven franchisee in Southern California, and a plaintiff in the suit, echoes many of the points made by Haitayan. He says for years he didn’t fight the company's control.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You don’t have time to think,” he says. “You have family, you come home, you’re tired, you rest and the next day you’re up again ready to go again.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But a few years ago he, like Haitayan, reached his breaking point. “I used to love going to the store,” he says. “Now, I dread it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The franchisees, who filed the suit in federal district court in Los Angeles in 2017, initially lost. But the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the lower court's ruling in 2018, determining that the judge made a hasty decision and focused too much on the amount of control detailed in the franchisee agreement, rather than the plaintiffs’ allegations of what was actually happening in their stores.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The 7-Eleven decision is now back in a lower federal district court, and a new ruling is expected this month.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>‘Prehistory of the Gig Economy’\u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Brian Callaci, an economist at Data and Society, a nonprofit that researches technology and regulation, recently released\u003ca href=\"https://datasociety.net/library/puppet-entrepreneurship/\"> a lengthy report\u003c/a> on the current level of corporate control in franchising.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It would be a stretch to call it real independent business ownership,\" says Callaci, who reviewed more than 500 franchise contracts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although he says 7-Eleven is one of the more overbearing franchises, franchisors in general have moved towards more centralized control.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It's not a coincidence that this increase parallels the heightened control in the gig economy, Callaci says, adding that franchising helped lay the legal groundwork for gig companies like Lyft and DoorDash.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The legal history of franchising is very much the prehistory of the gig economy,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote align=\"right\" size=\"medium\" citation=\"Brian Callaci, economist\"]'The legal history of franchising is very much the prehistory of the gig economy.'[/pullquote]Before the 1970s, regulators were more likely to use antitrust law to try and stop larger corporations from tightly controlling smaller independent businesses, Callaci says. The prospect of corporate domination, he adds, was a bigger factor in assessing and enforcing antitrust violations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But through a series of subsequent court cases, franchisors gained the ability to exert greater control over franchisees. In 1977, they scored a major victory in Continental TV v. GTE Sylvania, in which the U.S. \u003ca href=\"https://www.oyez.org/cases/1976/76-15\">Supreme Court ruled \u003c/a>that large corporations controlling smaller operators, like franchisees, was intrinsic to the American business model.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That ruling and others like it changed how antitrust laws were enforced in the U.S. The principles of shareholder capitalism became the guiding ideology, with the focus shifting from trying to prevent the domination of smaller independent businesses and workers to strengthening \"consumer welfare\" and \"economic efficiency.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>Squeezed Out\u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Today, there are some 770,000 franchisees in America. Many are immigrants or people of color who had to scrape together money from friends and family to pay the franchise fee required to enter the business. For prime 7-Eleven locations in California, that can amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dhillon says 7-Eleven promises true business ownership, the American dream. “They paint a rosy picture, but then when you get in you find it’s a different reality.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once franchisees get into the business, it’s hard to get out. For one, most franchisees do not own their property. That means if they lose the right to the franchise, they lose their business and their investment, which could mean sacrificing the entire franchise fee.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Haitayan says the power 7-Eleven has over franchisees keeps many of them from speaking up. He hasn’t kept quiet, though.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Haitayan has been involved in several lawsuits against 7-Eleven in recent years, including one over the installation of cameras in stores, which franchisees eventually accepted in a settlement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside label=\"related coverage\" tag=\"proposition-22\"]Last fall, on Haitayan’s 30th anniversary owning his franchise, he says the company sent him a letter informing him they weren’t renewing the lease and were closing the store.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Haitayan says the store was doing well and he could see no financial reason for to close it down. “Beside saying, ‘We want to teach every franchisee a lesson, that the moment you stand up to 7-Eleven and you create problems and you challenge them and you take them to court, this is what is going to end up happening to you,’ ” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Haitayan is relatively lucky. Unlike most other 7-Eleven franchisees, he owns his property, which means he was able to reopen it as his own store under a different name. But he says because 7-Eleven neglected to do maintenance for years, he had to spend over a quarter million dollars on renovations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even though he's opening his own store, he plans to remain involved in the current lawsuit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My fight is still with franchisees and with all the new economy gig employees,” he says, “because they’re not treated fair.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Haitayan says franchisees and gig workers are in a similar boat because they’re both fighting against companies that he says are taking excessive control over workers without having to provide basic benefits. He says American workers should either be granted employee protections or true independence.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>From Franchising to Gig Platforms\u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Today's franchisors and gig companies have both benefited heartily from the decreasing focus on corporate domination in antitrust enforcement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With the development of apps, gig companies have gone a step further than the franchise model. Instead of requiring franchisees to buy into the brand to run their own business, gig workers sign up on their platforms to do piecemeal gigs. This \"platform argument\" has been key to how many gig companies justify their employment practices to regulators.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gig company executives and their legal teams consistently argue they are not running taxi or delivery businesses, but instead tech companies that have created platforms to connect consumers to independent service providers. Under this platform argument, Uber drivers, Instacart grocery shoppers or DoorDash deliverers are not employees, but rather entrepreneurs running their own businesses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This argument has been very successful, largely because of the way the U.S. now enforces antitrust law, says University of Utah economist Marshall Steinbaum.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The business model of gig companies is dependent on the weakening of antitrust,” says Steinbaum, who\u003ca href=\"https://marshallsteinbaum.org/assets/steinbaum-2019-antitrust-the-gig-economy-and-labor-market-power-law-and-contemporary-problems-.pdf\"> published a paper\u003c/a> on the issue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If regulators enforced antitrust law the way they used to, Steinbaum says, gig companies would risk being sued for how much they control their supposedly independent contractors. They would be encouraged to classify their workers as employees so that they could continue setting prices and controlling the interaction between independent workers and customers, things that could have triggered antitrust enforcement in the past.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While changes in antitrust enforcement have made it easier for large companies to dictate prices and exert greater control over supposedly independent businesses, they have also become a tool to prevent workers from organizing or forming their own collectives.[pullquote align=\"right\" size=\"medium\" citation=\"Jaspreet Dhillon, 7-Eleven franchise owner\"]'They paint a rosy picture, but then when you get in you find it’s a different reality.'[/pullquote]If a bunch of taxi drivers got together, made an app and called themselves independent businesses, but collectively set prices, consumers could easily sue them for price fixing, says Steinbaum, \u003ca href=\"https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3279629\">pointing to numerous examples\u003c/a> of crackdowns on employee coordination.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The reorientation of antitrust enforcement has also helped prevent gig workers from organizing and pushing for higher wages. In 2015, the Seattle City Council passed a measure extending collective bargaining rights to Lyft and Uber drivers. Right after its passage, Lyft, Uber and the city's chamber of commerce sued, claiming the measure violated federal antitrust law — on the grounds that workers would potentially be able to spur price hikes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After the federal government weighed in, supporting the suit, \u003ca href=\"https://www.geekwire.com/2020/uber-seattle-u-s-chamber-end-legal-dispute-union-law-city-plans-minimum-wage-drivers/\">the council pulled the collective bargaining provision.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Reforming antitrust would require regulators to be honest that “economic efficiency” is not some neutral, objective metric, but an ideological construct, argues Sanjukta Paul, a Wayne State law professor who wrote \u003ca href=\"https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4919&context=lcp\">a study that touched on how gig companies\u003c/a> have exerted control over \"independent contractors\" without using the franchise model.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When you’re telling someone else what to do and dominating them economically and extracting as much as you can from them, effort-wise, whether it’s a worker or small firm, that is ‘efficiency,' ” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Paul envisions an alternative metric based on social good. “If we can be more systematic and honest about what values we want to promote,” she says, “then we might say it is actually efficient and pro-social to have truck drivers and taxi cab drivers make a living wage so that they can invest in their communities and then invest in green technology for their trucks and cars.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Paul's pitch — that antitrust law be again used to better protect workers instead of focusing on lowering costs for consumers and making profit for shareholders — could go a long way in helping both gig workers who want employee protections and franchisees like Haitayan who want true independence.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>If you walk into a 7-Eleven in California and it’s too hot or cold, don’t blame the franchisee who runs the place. The thermostat is controlled remotely from the company's corporate headquarters in Dallas — as are the store’s hours, prices and the specific kinds of pizza, wings and tacos they can sell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A group of four franchisees in California are involved in an ongoing suit against 7-Eleven over the extent of the company's control, arguing that it's treating them like employees, but classifying them as independent contractors. If they get so little say on how to run their businesses, the franchisees argue, they should at least receive basic employee protections, like overtime pay and workers' compensation.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Much of the lawsuit rests on \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200AB5\">Assembly Bill 5\u003c/a>, the California law intended to make it harder for gig companies like Uber, Lyft and DoorDash to have sway over their workers without providing employee benefits. And while that 2018 law was drafted in response to today’s gig work environment, it was the franchising industry that originally normalized the labor relations on which the “gig economy” is built.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the franchise model, a business owner buys the right to run a store under the franchisor's brand. As part of the deal, the franchisee must follow a set of rules laid out by the parent company.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Starting in the 1970s, franchising set a legal precedent for gig companies by helping change the enforcement of U.S. antitrust law, and weakening the labor protections that prevent corporations from misclassifying workers as independent contractors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The link between franchising and gig work was evident in the lead-up to the election in November. When it looked like Proposition 22 — an ultimately successful bid by gig companies to circumvent California's new labor law — could fail, forcing companies to pay for basic employee protections, executives reportedly started \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/18/technology/uber-lyft-franchise-california.html\">looking into franchising models\u003c/a> as a backup plan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But gig companies were already capitalizing on the business framework that decades of franchising has normalized — an ongoing tension reflected in the 7-Eleven lawsuit.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>Family Business\u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>There’s an old 7-Eleven on the outskirts of Fresno with a hot dog sign on the window. It says, “Anyone who is hungry and can't pay for a hot dog can have one for free!” Next to the sign is an illustration of a jolly Lebanese Santa Claus with a big beard, the name “Serge” written across his chest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11862646\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-11862646 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/Hot-Dog-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/Hot-Dog-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/Hot-Dog-800x600.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/Hot-Dog-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/Hot-Dog-160x120.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/Hot-Dog-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/Hot-Dog-2048x1536.jpg 2048w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/Hot-Dog-1920x1440.jpg 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/Hot-Dog-1832x1374.jpg 1832w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/Hot-Dog-1376x1032.jpg 1376w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/Hot-Dog-1044x783.jpg 1044w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/Hot-Dog-632x474.jpg 632w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/Hot-Dog-536x402.jpg 536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The sign on the outside of Serge Haitayan's 7-Eleven store in Fresno. \u003ccite>(KQED/Sam Harnett)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>That's Serge Haitayan, a man in his 60s who has run the franchise for 30 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Santa’s beard used to be black” he says. “Now, it’s more grayish.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A refugee from Lebanon, Haitayan came to Los Angeles in the 1980s, and then moved to Fresno — a place he thought would be good to raise a family — where he began running the 7-Eleven store and eventually became a franchise owner.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My kids were raised in the store,” he says. “I used to go pick them up every day after school, and they would stay in this office, and they would do their homework and they would spend the afternoon in the store. I used to have them open the doors for customers and say, ‘Hello. Good afternoon, good evening, welcome to the store.’ ”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Haitayan says ever since the 7-Eleven company was bought by a major Japanese retail firm 16 years ago, the store has felt increasingly less like his own. He says he can’t even control the store temperature himself. He points to the place on the wall where his old thermostat used to be, and describes how a few years ago, a crew from the company came, ripped it out and replaced it with one that is controlled remotely from U.S. corporate headquarters in Dallas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In what world is that OK for you to live in Dallas and control my temperature here where I am sitting?” he asks. “How do you know my environment? How do you know my body? How do you know everyone else's bodies?”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>Increasing Control\u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Haitayan says there has always been a struggle over control with 7-Eleven. Franchisees have to sign lengthy contracts, obligating them to comply with even lengthier operations manuals. The company's manual is nearly 1,000 pages long, he says. And 7-Eleven can change the rules in the manual at any time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When he started his franchise back in the 1990s, Haitayan says the company's control was tolerable. But ever since 7-Eleven was bought out, he says, it has increasingly dictated everything from when franchisees can order from vendors to what they can sell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The final straw for Haitayan was a two-pack of batteries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Haitayan says a few years ago he suddenly could only order jumbo packs of 14 or 16 batteries. “This is not Costco. This is not Walmart,” he says. “This is a convenience store.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His customers wanted small packs of batteries, but he says for some reason that inventory had vanished from the system. Over time, the list of products he couldn’t order continued to grow, like certain kinds of sodas, iced teas and cigarettes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>7-Eleven did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The company has made other changes in recent years. It installed corporate cameras in franchise stores, raised the maximum share of profits the company can keep from 50% to 59%, and increased the focus on food sales, resulting in higher costs for franchisees because they are responsible for covering payroll and have to hire more employees to prepare the food.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Haitayan, the batteries drove home the reality of how powerless he was. “I feel like nothing but an unglorified store manager without benefits,” he says. So, he joined a handful of other California franchisees in the now more than 3-year-old misclassification lawsuit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11862647\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-11862647 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/Serge-Out-Front-scaled-e1616018130427.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1868\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/Serge-Out-Front-scaled-e1616018130427.jpg 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/Serge-Out-Front-scaled-e1616018130427-800x778.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/Serge-Out-Front-scaled-e1616018130427-1020x992.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/Serge-Out-Front-scaled-e1616018130427-160x156.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/Serge-Out-Front-scaled-e1616018130427-1536x1494.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Serge Haitayan outside of his store. \u003ccite>(Sam Harnett/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Jaspreet Dhillon, another 7-Eleven franchisee in Southern California, and a plaintiff in the suit, echoes many of the points made by Haitayan. He says for years he didn’t fight the company's control.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You don’t have time to think,” he says. “You have family, you come home, you’re tired, you rest and the next day you’re up again ready to go again.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But a few years ago he, like Haitayan, reached his breaking point. “I used to love going to the store,” he says. “Now, I dread it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The franchisees, who filed the suit in federal district court in Los Angeles in 2017, initially lost. But the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the lower court's ruling in 2018, determining that the judge made a hasty decision and focused too much on the amount of control detailed in the franchisee agreement, rather than the plaintiffs’ allegations of what was actually happening in their stores.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The 7-Eleven decision is now back in a lower federal district court, and a new ruling is expected this month.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>‘Prehistory of the Gig Economy’\u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Brian Callaci, an economist at Data and Society, a nonprofit that researches technology and regulation, recently released\u003ca href=\"https://datasociety.net/library/puppet-entrepreneurship/\"> a lengthy report\u003c/a> on the current level of corporate control in franchising.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It would be a stretch to call it real independent business ownership,\" says Callaci, who reviewed more than 500 franchise contracts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although he says 7-Eleven is one of the more overbearing franchises, franchisors in general have moved towards more centralized control.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It's not a coincidence that this increase parallels the heightened control in the gig economy, Callaci says, adding that franchising helped lay the legal groundwork for gig companies like Lyft and DoorDash.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The legal history of franchising is very much the prehistory of the gig economy,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Before the 1970s, regulators were more likely to use antitrust law to try and stop larger corporations from tightly controlling smaller independent businesses, Callaci says. The prospect of corporate domination, he adds, was a bigger factor in assessing and enforcing antitrust violations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But through a series of subsequent court cases, franchisors gained the ability to exert greater control over franchisees. In 1977, they scored a major victory in Continental TV v. GTE Sylvania, in which the U.S. \u003ca href=\"https://www.oyez.org/cases/1976/76-15\">Supreme Court ruled \u003c/a>that large corporations controlling smaller operators, like franchisees, was intrinsic to the American business model.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That ruling and others like it changed how antitrust laws were enforced in the U.S. The principles of shareholder capitalism became the guiding ideology, with the focus shifting from trying to prevent the domination of smaller independent businesses and workers to strengthening \"consumer welfare\" and \"economic efficiency.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>Squeezed Out\u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Today, there are some 770,000 franchisees in America. Many are immigrants or people of color who had to scrape together money from friends and family to pay the franchise fee required to enter the business. For prime 7-Eleven locations in California, that can amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dhillon says 7-Eleven promises true business ownership, the American dream. “They paint a rosy picture, but then when you get in you find it’s a different reality.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once franchisees get into the business, it’s hard to get out. For one, most franchisees do not own their property. That means if they lose the right to the franchise, they lose their business and their investment, which could mean sacrificing the entire franchise fee.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Haitayan says the power 7-Eleven has over franchisees keeps many of them from speaking up. He hasn’t kept quiet, though.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Haitayan has been involved in several lawsuits against 7-Eleven in recent years, including one over the installation of cameras in stores, which franchisees eventually accepted in a settlement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Last fall, on Haitayan’s 30th anniversary owning his franchise, he says the company sent him a letter informing him they weren’t renewing the lease and were closing the store.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Haitayan says the store was doing well and he could see no financial reason for to close it down. “Beside saying, ‘We want to teach every franchisee a lesson, that the moment you stand up to 7-Eleven and you create problems and you challenge them and you take them to court, this is what is going to end up happening to you,’ ” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Haitayan is relatively lucky. Unlike most other 7-Eleven franchisees, he owns his property, which means he was able to reopen it as his own store under a different name. But he says because 7-Eleven neglected to do maintenance for years, he had to spend over a quarter million dollars on renovations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even though he's opening his own store, he plans to remain involved in the current lawsuit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My fight is still with franchisees and with all the new economy gig employees,” he says, “because they’re not treated fair.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Haitayan says franchisees and gig workers are in a similar boat because they’re both fighting against companies that he says are taking excessive control over workers without having to provide basic benefits. He says American workers should either be granted employee protections or true independence.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>From Franchising to Gig Platforms\u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Today's franchisors and gig companies have both benefited heartily from the decreasing focus on corporate domination in antitrust enforcement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With the development of apps, gig companies have gone a step further than the franchise model. Instead of requiring franchisees to buy into the brand to run their own business, gig workers sign up on their platforms to do piecemeal gigs. This \"platform argument\" has been key to how many gig companies justify their employment practices to regulators.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gig company executives and their legal teams consistently argue they are not running taxi or delivery businesses, but instead tech companies that have created platforms to connect consumers to independent service providers. Under this platform argument, Uber drivers, Instacart grocery shoppers or DoorDash deliverers are not employees, but rather entrepreneurs running their own businesses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This argument has been very successful, largely because of the way the U.S. now enforces antitrust law, says University of Utah economist Marshall Steinbaum.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The business model of gig companies is dependent on the weakening of antitrust,” says Steinbaum, who\u003ca href=\"https://marshallsteinbaum.org/assets/steinbaum-2019-antitrust-the-gig-economy-and-labor-market-power-law-and-contemporary-problems-.pdf\"> published a paper\u003c/a> on the issue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If regulators enforced antitrust law the way they used to, Steinbaum says, gig companies would risk being sued for how much they control their supposedly independent contractors. They would be encouraged to classify their workers as employees so that they could continue setting prices and controlling the interaction between independent workers and customers, things that could have triggered antitrust enforcement in the past.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While changes in antitrust enforcement have made it easier for large companies to dictate prices and exert greater control over supposedly independent businesses, they have also become a tool to prevent workers from organizing or forming their own collectives.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>If a bunch of taxi drivers got together, made an app and called themselves independent businesses, but collectively set prices, consumers could easily sue them for price fixing, says Steinbaum, \u003ca href=\"https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3279629\">pointing to numerous examples\u003c/a> of crackdowns on employee coordination.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The reorientation of antitrust enforcement has also helped prevent gig workers from organizing and pushing for higher wages. In 2015, the Seattle City Council passed a measure extending collective bargaining rights to Lyft and Uber drivers. Right after its passage, Lyft, Uber and the city's chamber of commerce sued, claiming the measure violated federal antitrust law — on the grounds that workers would potentially be able to spur price hikes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After the federal government weighed in, supporting the suit, \u003ca href=\"https://www.geekwire.com/2020/uber-seattle-u-s-chamber-end-legal-dispute-union-law-city-plans-minimum-wage-drivers/\">the council pulled the collective bargaining provision.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Reforming antitrust would require regulators to be honest that “economic efficiency” is not some neutral, objective metric, but an ideological construct, argues Sanjukta Paul, a Wayne State law professor who wrote \u003ca href=\"https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4919&context=lcp\">a study that touched on how gig companies\u003c/a> have exerted control over \"independent contractors\" without using the franchise model.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When you’re telling someone else what to do and dominating them economically and extracting as much as you can from them, effort-wise, whether it’s a worker or small firm, that is ‘efficiency,' ” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Paul envisions an alternative metric based on social good. “If we can be more systematic and honest about what values we want to promote,” she says, “then we might say it is actually efficient and pro-social to have truck drivers and taxi cab drivers make a living wage so that they can invest in their communities and then invest in green technology for their trucks and cars.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Paul's pitch — that antitrust law be again used to better protect workers instead of focusing on lowering costs for consumers and making profit for shareholders — could go a long way in helping both gig workers who want employee protections and franchisees like Haitayan who want true independence.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>“Rideshare drivers,” “dashers,” “taskers,” “driver partners,” “entrepreneurs,” “earners”: There’s a long list of euphemisms for low-wage service workers in the U.S. today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The “cute” monikers don’t just constitute a clever strategy by the public relations departments at companies like Uber and Lyft. These firms have made billions by calling their workers contractors, thereby denying them basic employee protections and benefits.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While so-called gig companies are best known for the practice these days, American companies have been making up names for low-wage workers for decades. Since the 1970s, managers and executives have created increasingly elaborate titles for workers at the same time they have weakened benefits, held wages stagnant, undermined unions and replaced full-time positions with part-time contract work. \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/howwegothere\">Here’s a three-hour radio documentary about how they did all that.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A long history\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In 1975, Walmart CEO Sam Walton decided the people staffing his stores would henceforth be called “associates.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, Subway employees are called “sandwich artists.” Taco Bell cashiers, “champions.” Amazon workers, ”Amazonians.” At Disney World, managers call everyone from the janitor to the person inside the Mickey Mouse costume a “cast member.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11852714\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11852714\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/12/GettyImages-1226305272.jpg\" alt=\"Say hello to a “cast member” at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim. \" width=\"2560\" height=\"1707\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/12/GettyImages-1226305272.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/12/GettyImages-1226305272-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/12/GettyImages-1226305272-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/12/GettyImages-1226305272-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/12/GettyImages-1226305272-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/12/GettyImages-1226305272-2048x1366.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/12/GettyImages-1226305272-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Say hello to a “cast member” at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim. \u003ccite>(Photo by Derek Lee/Disneyland Resort via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“They conjure a kind of egalitarian, creative, nurturing, healthy workplace — where in almost every case in this country, what you really have is a hierarchical, routine, dull, indifferent, and more and more these days, a toxic and unhealthy workplace,” said John Patrick Leary, author of “\u003ca href=\"https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1243-keywords\">Keywords: The New Language of Capitalism\u003c/a>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Leary adds these titles aren’t just about trying to make workers feel better about their jobs, but consumers, too. The names puts a positive gloss on low-wage labor for customers who might feel guilty being served by people working jobs for little pay or satisfaction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Leary says terms like “associate” or “sandwich artist” are so absurd they are disorienting and block critique. “It can make you feel kind of crazy sometimes,” he said. “Like, ‘Am I the only person who thinks calling the person who checks you out at Target an associate is kind of ridiculous given their place in the Target hierarchy?’ It’s part of this saturation of dishonesty and lies that you are surrounded by that can make you feel a little bit overwhelmed.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gig companies like Uber and DoorDash have taken the titling of workers to a new level. Almost every company comes up with a particular name for workers, and typically, the term mirrors the company name. People doing tasks for TaskRabbit are called “taskers.” People delivering food for DoorDash are called “dashers.” People gathering up and recharging e-scooters for Lime are called “juicers.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A new economic model\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Unlike the “champions” of Taco Bell, or “cast members” of Disney, executives at DoorDash, Uber and the like also claim that their workers are not employees at all, but independent business owners the company is just connecting to clients through an online platform.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"John Patrick Leary, author of 'Keywords: The New Language of Capitalism'\"]“They conjure a kind of egalitarian, creative, nurturing, healthy workplace — where in almost every case in this country, what you really have is a hierarchical, routine, dull, indifferent, and more and more these days, a toxic and unhealthy workplace.”[/pullquote]Labor lawyer Caitlin Vega said these invented names help bolster this argument. “They [the gig companies] invented these terms to describe the work that they do that I think is meant to capture both that you should be loyal to the company, and yet we don’t owe you anything,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many of the invented terms at gig companies obscure the labor of workers in a more drastic way than the aggrandizing titles given to employees at companies like Target and Walmart.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Back in 2013, the marketing team at Lyft pushed this rebranding of work to the extreme. In advertisements, cheery narrators told consumers that Lyft drivers were “your friend with a car.” Customers were encouraged to sit in the front seat and fist-bump drivers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Early Uber marketing material promised drivers they could own their own businesses and work without a boss. In fliers and ads, the company boasted about creating more than 100,000 “entrepreneurs.” The company then adopted the term “driver partners.” Most recently, Uber managers and PR people have been calling workers “earners.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These invented terms have legal and economic significance. In 2013, lawyers and executives at Uber and Lyft were able to get the California Public Utilities Commission to write into law an entirely new regulatory category for their business: transportation network companies, or TNCs. This allowed TNCs to steer clear of local taxi and transportation laws, as well as laws governing TNC drivers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This was part of the whole “sharing economy” trend \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/10851717/the-movement-to-kill-the-phrase-sharing-economy\">that journalists and politicians helped invent and inflate in the early days of Uber, Lyft and Airbnb\u003c/a>. Neither “rideshare” nor “sharing economy” has ever made any sense if you take into account any dictionary definition of the word sharing. Nevertheless, the term rideshare is still in use today. \u003ca href=\"https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3668606\">Here’s a whole essay on the complicity of tech media, if you’re curious.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California’s Supreme Court, attorney general and Legislature agree there’s one accurate term for gig workers: employees, a term that guarantees benefits and protections. \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11843123/prop-22-explained-why-gig-companies-are-spending-huge-money-on-an-unprecedented-measure\">But gig companies spent more than $200 million on Proposition 22\u003c/a>, which legalized a new sub-employee category. It comes with limited benefits, but the company still controls how the workers work and how they get paid.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While Sam Walton at Walmart helped mainstream fancy titles for low-paid employees, executives at gig companies like Lyft and Instacart have succeeded in passing labor laws that created a whole new legally defined sub-employee class for their workers. The new term for this sub-employee category? “Independent contractor plus.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>“Rideshare drivers,” “dashers,” “taskers,” “driver partners,” “entrepreneurs,” “earners”: There’s a long list of euphemisms for low-wage service workers in the U.S. today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The “cute” monikers don’t just constitute a clever strategy by the public relations departments at companies like Uber and Lyft. These firms have made billions by calling their workers contractors, thereby denying them basic employee protections and benefits.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While so-called gig companies are best known for the practice these days, American companies have been making up names for low-wage workers for decades. Since the 1970s, managers and executives have created increasingly elaborate titles for workers at the same time they have weakened benefits, held wages stagnant, undermined unions and replaced full-time positions with part-time contract work. \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/howwegothere\">Here’s a three-hour radio documentary about how they did all that.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A long history\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In 1975, Walmart CEO Sam Walton decided the people staffing his stores would henceforth be called “associates.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, Subway employees are called “sandwich artists.” Taco Bell cashiers, “champions.” Amazon workers, ”Amazonians.” At Disney World, managers call everyone from the janitor to the person inside the Mickey Mouse costume a “cast member.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11852714\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11852714\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/12/GettyImages-1226305272.jpg\" alt=\"Say hello to a “cast member” at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim. \" width=\"2560\" height=\"1707\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/12/GettyImages-1226305272.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/12/GettyImages-1226305272-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/12/GettyImages-1226305272-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/12/GettyImages-1226305272-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/12/GettyImages-1226305272-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/12/GettyImages-1226305272-2048x1366.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/12/GettyImages-1226305272-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Say hello to a “cast member” at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim. \u003ccite>(Photo by Derek Lee/Disneyland Resort via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“They conjure a kind of egalitarian, creative, nurturing, healthy workplace — where in almost every case in this country, what you really have is a hierarchical, routine, dull, indifferent, and more and more these days, a toxic and unhealthy workplace,” said John Patrick Leary, author of “\u003ca href=\"https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1243-keywords\">Keywords: The New Language of Capitalism\u003c/a>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Leary adds these titles aren’t just about trying to make workers feel better about their jobs, but consumers, too. The names puts a positive gloss on low-wage labor for customers who might feel guilty being served by people working jobs for little pay or satisfaction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Leary says terms like “associate” or “sandwich artist” are so absurd they are disorienting and block critique. “It can make you feel kind of crazy sometimes,” he said. “Like, ‘Am I the only person who thinks calling the person who checks you out at Target an associate is kind of ridiculous given their place in the Target hierarchy?’ It’s part of this saturation of dishonesty and lies that you are surrounded by that can make you feel a little bit overwhelmed.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gig companies like Uber and DoorDash have taken the titling of workers to a new level. Almost every company comes up with a particular name for workers, and typically, the term mirrors the company name. People doing tasks for TaskRabbit are called “taskers.” People delivering food for DoorDash are called “dashers.” People gathering up and recharging e-scooters for Lime are called “juicers.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A new economic model\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Unlike the “champions” of Taco Bell, or “cast members” of Disney, executives at DoorDash, Uber and the like also claim that their workers are not employees at all, but independent business owners the company is just connecting to clients through an online platform.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Back in 2013, the marketing team at Lyft pushed this rebranding of work to the extreme. In advertisements, cheery narrators told consumers that Lyft drivers were “your friend with a car.” Customers were encouraged to sit in the front seat and fist-bump drivers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Early Uber marketing material promised drivers they could own their own businesses and work without a boss. In fliers and ads, the company boasted about creating more than 100,000 “entrepreneurs.” The company then adopted the term “driver partners.” Most recently, Uber managers and PR people have been calling workers “earners.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These invented terms have legal and economic significance. In 2013, lawyers and executives at Uber and Lyft were able to get the California Public Utilities Commission to write into law an entirely new regulatory category for their business: transportation network companies, or TNCs. This allowed TNCs to steer clear of local taxi and transportation laws, as well as laws governing TNC drivers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This was part of the whole “sharing economy” trend \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/10851717/the-movement-to-kill-the-phrase-sharing-economy\">that journalists and politicians helped invent and inflate in the early days of Uber, Lyft and Airbnb\u003c/a>. Neither “rideshare” nor “sharing economy” has ever made any sense if you take into account any dictionary definition of the word sharing. Nevertheless, the term rideshare is still in use today. \u003ca href=\"https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3668606\">Here’s a whole essay on the complicity of tech media, if you’re curious.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California’s Supreme Court, attorney general and Legislature agree there’s one accurate term for gig workers: employees, a term that guarantees benefits and protections. \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11843123/prop-22-explained-why-gig-companies-are-spending-huge-money-on-an-unprecedented-measure\">But gig companies spent more than $200 million on Proposition 22\u003c/a>, which legalized a new sub-employee category. It comes with limited benefits, but the company still controls how the workers work and how they get paid.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While Sam Walton at Walmart helped mainstream fancy titles for low-paid employees, executives at gig companies like Lyft and Instacart have succeeded in passing labor laws that created a whole new legally defined sub-employee class for their workers. The new term for this sub-employee category? “Independent contractor plus.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>With the \u003ca href=\"http://bit.ly/fioreprop22passes\">passage of Prop. 22\u003c/a> – the most expensive ballot initiative campaign in California history – gig workers for companies like Uber and Lyft will not be categorized as employees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The workers, who are essential to the success of the handful of multibillion-dollar corporations who pushed the ballot measure through, will be considered some sort of new “contract gig worker” not eligible for regular employee benefits.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Uber and Lyft stock \u003ca href=\"https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/04/uber-and-lyft-stock-jump-after-californians-vote-to-pass-prop-22.html\">jumped at the news\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cp>Former Uber engineer Eddy Hernandez said it started with the yes on Proposition 22 Zoom backgrounds that began appearing around the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. Then employees were offered free Proposition 22 T-shirts, managers and executives talked about the proposition in meetings and Hernandez got the sense that bonuses and promotions would go to people who worked on projects related to promoting the proposition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hernandez said he felt a constant push to support the proposition at work. He didn’t like feeling that kind of political pressure on the job. On top of that, Hernandez opposes the ballot initiative, and he did not feel comfortable having that viewpoint. If the proposition passes, so-called gig economy companies such as Uber, Lyft and Instacart would be exempted from state labor law and allowed to continue classifying workers as contractors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I felt like I was stripped of my voice because if I said anything there would be a conflict of interest or it would affect the financials of the company. That’s a weird place to be in. It’s something I didn’t want to normalize,” he said.[pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Eddy Hernandez, former Uber engineer\"]‘I felt like I was stripped of my voice because if I said anything there would be a conflict of interest or it would affect the financials of the company … It’s something I didn’t want to normalize.’[/pullquote]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Finally, in the middle of the pandemic and without another job, he decided he would quit. At the end of September, he handed in his resignation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hernandez, \u003ca href=\"https://news.techworkerscoalition.org/2020/10/30/issue-13/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">who has since written a public letter about leaving Uber\u003c/a> and his opposition to Proposition 22, is not the first employee to speak out about this kind of pressure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Drivers at Uber tried, unsuccessfully, to sue the company over the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11842964/gig-companies-are-making-their-workers-promote-prop-22\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">in-app pop-ups soliciting their support\u003c/a>. Current Uber employee Kurt Nelson also wrote an \u003ca href=\"https://techcrunch.com/2020/10/06/im-a-software-engineer-at-uber-im-voting-against-prop-22/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">op-ed in TechCrunch\u003c/a> about opposing Proposition 22, and later described yes on Proposition 22 pressure at the company, similar to what Hernandez experienced.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hernandez said he only started working there in 2019 because the team that was hiring said the company was really changing its culture. He was apprehensive, but eventually took the job.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over the last year, Hernandez said he realized the company has not changed from its past, and that there was no real interest for social good — just economic gain for the company and those who worked there. [ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hernandez said he was alarmed by an email he said he received from Uber asking him to tell his family and friends why he supported Proposition 22.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Uber spokesperson Davis White said there were only two company-wide emails related to Proposition 22. White said that the second email said: “As always, lending your voice, your vote, or your time to Prop. 22 is entirely up to you. With that being said, here are some ways to pitch in, if you choose.” [aside postID=\"news_11843123\" label=\"More on Proposition 22\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During the coronavirus, Hernandez said the pressure to support Proposition 22 grew. He saw more and more managers start putting the yes on Proposition 22 backgrounds on Zoom, and the company offered to give a free “yes-on-prop-22” T-shirt to any employee who wanted one and many employees started working on yes on Proposition 22 products, like pop-ups urging drivers to vote yes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There is an internal wiki page at Uber with company initiatives and priorities that employees look at to know what is important to talk about in performance review meetings, Hernandez said. He saw Proposition 22 listed there, which he felt meant that employees who did work on Proposition 22-related projects would have an easier chance of being rewarded with bonuses and promotions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“These materials are not what managers use as a guide for performance reviews. There is a lot displayed on the site that is not relevant to everyone,” Uber spokesperson White wrote in an email. “It is simply a general sense of what’s important to the company as a whole, which Prop. 22 obviously is.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He added, “an employee’s position on Prop. 22 has never and in no way will factor into performance reviews.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>With gig companies turning Proposition 22 into the \u003ca href=\"http://bit.ly/fioreprop22\">most expensive ballot measure in California history\u003c/a>, polling shows its passage is anything but certain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The well-funded proposition essentially carves out a new category of gig worker that would not include the usual employee protections mandated in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Uber has been \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11842964/gig-companies-are-making-their-workers-promote-prop-22\">particularly aggressive\u003c/a> in enlisting its workers to advocate for the measure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Watching multibillion-dollar companies pouring millions into a ballot measure so they can reap the rewards of an app that connects drivers and riders ... sure makes the days of taxi cabs seem simpler.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"slug": "prop-22-explained-why-gig-companies-are-spending-huge-money-on-an-unprecedented-measure",
"title": "Prop. 22 Explained: Why Gig Companies Are Spending Huge Money on an Unprecedented Measure",
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"headTitle": "Prop. 22 Explained: Why Gig Companies Are Spending Huge Money on an Unprecedented Measure | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ci data-stringify-type=\"italic\">This story was updated Wednesday, Nov. 4 at 12:40pm\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb data-stringify-type=\"bold\">UPDATE: Proposition 22 was approved by California voters Tuesday, Nov. 3. \u003c/b>\u003cb data-stringify-type=\"bold\">\u003ca class=\"c-link\" href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11844725/proposition-22-passes-locking-in-sub-employee-status-for-gig-workers\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-stringify-link=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11844725/proposition-22-passes-locking-in-sub-employee-status-for-gig-workers\" data-sk=\"tooltip_parent\">Read the full details here\u003c/a>\u003c/b>\u003cb data-stringify-type=\"bold\">.\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci data-stringify-type=\"italic\">Original story:\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The decision California voters face on Proposition 22 boils down to this: should a handful of companies be allowed to create a new gig contractor category for their workers that doesn’t include employee protections and benefits, like unemployment insurance and workers compensation? Or should companies like Uber, Lyft and DoorDash have to follow state labor law and classify their drivers as employees, which could mean directing more revenue to workers, higher prices for consumers and increased requirements for more casual drivers?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s the choice on the ballot. But there’s so much more going on with this unprecedented and far-reaching proposition — a proposition that recent polling indicates will come down to Californians who are still undecided. As of Oct. 26, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11843691/poll-measure-pushed-by-uber-lyft-falling-just-short-of-passage-many-voters-still-undecided\">polling of likely voters\u003c/a> shows 46% in favor, 42% opposed and 12% undecided. Here’s everything you’d need to know about the proposition and its backstory before you vote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Skip to:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"#backstory\">The Backstory\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>: How companies like Lyft, Uber and DoorDash have avoided employee classification for eight years despite pressure from workers, labor groups and every branch of state government\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"#written\">What’s Actually in Prop. 22?\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>: An explanation of the limited worker benefits and why the “7/8ths provision” would make it nearly impossible to change this law in the future\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"#money\">Unprecedented Money\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>: Gig companies are spending record amounts of cash to market Prop. 22 — and it’s being framed as a social justice issue\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"#surveys\">Those Driver Surveys, and What’s Wrong With Them\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>: What do drivers want? Surveys used to market Prop. 22 are often flawed and don’t tell the full story\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"#directtovoter\">Unprecedented Direct-to-Voter Connection\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>: Millions of apps in millions of pockets, workers asked to deliver political ads and pop ups galore — win or lose, a new election playbook is being written\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"#ramifications\">The Ramifications\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>: If Prop. 22 passes, what will it mean for gig work, labor protections, election campaigning and local governance?\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003ch1>\u003ca id=\"backstory\">\u003c/a>The Backstory\u003c/h1>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11843145\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11843145\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Lyft-moustache.jpg\" alt=\"Lyft car with mustache\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1250\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Lyft-moustache.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Lyft-moustache-800x521.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Lyft-moustache-1020x664.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Lyft-moustache-160x104.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Lyft-moustache-1536x1000.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A Lyft driver with one of the early fuzzy pink mustaches drives in downtown San Francisco in January, 2014. \u003ccite>(Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>It all began in 2012 with a fuzzy pink mustache and a fist bump. It was Lyft, not Uber, that first started paying drivers to use their own cars to do taxi work. Both companies cast themselves not as taxi companies, but platforms to connect riders to drivers, and tech journalists helped propel this image. \u003ca href=\"https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3668606\">Here’s the even deeper backstory on how that all went down\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Using the platform argument, the gig companies classified their workers as contractors, which shielded them from liability and allowed them to avoid paying for protections like overtime and unemployment insurance. Regulators and the government at the state and federal levels did not stop Uber and Lyft, and soon, companies like Instacart, DoorDash and Postmates began following suit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But this contractor model was legally suspect from the start. In California, the determination of whether a worker was a contractor or an employee was made by the Borello test, which is a \u003ca href=\"https://caselaw.findlaw.com/ca-supreme-court/1774638.html\">complex set of 11 factors established by a 1989 California Supreme Court case\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside label=\"Election 2020\" link1=\"https://www.kqed.org/voterguide,KQED's California Voter Guide\" hero=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS45342_001_KQED_SanFrancisco_Election2020_MailinBallot_10122020-qut-1020x680.jpg\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was arguable that under those parameters, gig workers were not independent entrepreneurs running their own businesses on a platform provided by “tech” companies, but instead, employees of a transportation company in the case of Uber and Lyft, a service company in the case of TaskRabbit and a delivery company in the case of Postmates or DoorDash.\u003ca href=\"https://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-tech-drivers-lawsuit/uber-drivers-granted-class-action-status-in-lawsuit-over-employment-idUSKCN0R14O920150901\"> Lawyers began trying to make the case\u003c/a> with big lawsuits against gig companies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Workers were and still are fighting almost all the battles over employee protections and benefits behind closed doors. That’s because gig companies make workers sign arbitration clauses, which prevent them from taking any grievance to court. That has helped preempt and neutralize class-action lawsuits. Law professor Charlotte Garden \u003ca href=\"https://digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1794&context=faculty\">wrote a whole academic paper\u003c/a> on how the gig economy relies on mandatory arbitration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2014, as Uber and Lyft began to slash wages in a price war, workers increased their protest, but they could make no headway toward employment status. Gig companies leaned on customer support for political support, and consumers loved these cheap rides, which were kept low by the contractor model and venture capital. It took six years for any notable action from California’s government. And it came first from the judicial branch.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a ruling on a case known as \u003ca href=\"https://scocal.stanford.edu/opinion/dynamex-operations-west-inc-v-superior-court-34584\">Dynamex in 2018\u003c/a>, California’s Supreme Court simplified the Borello test, boiling it down to just three factors, called the ABCs. A worker could now only be classified as a contractor if they:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>A) Were free from the control and direction of the hirer\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>B) Performed work outside the hirer’s normal course of business\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>C) Had their own independently established trade, occupation or business\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>The ruling made it much more difficult for gig companies to deny workers employee benefits and protections. But still, gig companies kept classifying workers as contractors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After the state Supreme Court, the Legislature took up the fight. Lawmakers passed \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200AB5\">Assembly Bill 5\u003c/a>, which went into effect on Jan. 1, 2020. AB 5 codified the Dynamex ruling and was designed with gig companies in mind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, the new law also affected a number of other industries that have come to rely on contractors. The bill was amended after a backlash, and a number of professions got exemptions, like fine artists, foresters and translators — but not gig workers. Still, gig companies kept classifying workers as contractors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID=news_11833598 hero='https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2019/09/09182019_uber-lyft-qut-1020x640.jpg']\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then in May, several months into the coronavirus pandemic, with tens of thousands of Uber and Lyft drivers seeking unemployment funds that didn’t exist because the companies had never paid into the state unemployment fund, the executive branch got involved. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, along with a handful of city attorneys, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11816321/california-city-attorneys-sue-uber-and-lyft-over-worker-misclassification\">sued Uber and Lyft for misclassifying workers\u003c/a>. On Oct. 22 Uber and Lyft \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-10-22/uber-and-lyft-must-comply-with-labor-law-ab-5-appeals-court-orders\">lost an appeal\u003c/a>, and will have to start classifying workers as employees in 30 days — unless Proposition 22 passes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After AB 5 passed, the gig companies started their ballot initiative campaign, hoping that voters would enshrine their gig contractor model into law. Now, with all three branches of California’s government pressuring them to classify workers as employees, they are pouring money into Proposition 22. It’s become \u003ca href=\"https://ballotpedia.org/What_were_the_most_expensive_ballot_measures_in_California\">the most well-funded ballot initiative in California history\u003c/a>. And it’s designed to be a conclusive victory for gig companies.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch1>\u003ca id=\"written\">\u003c/a>What’s Actually in Prop. 22?\u003c/h1>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11843210\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11843210\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS45263_001_KQED_ElectionStockPhotos_TikaHall_10062020-qut.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS45263_001_KQED_ElectionStockPhotos_TikaHall_10062020-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS45263_001_KQED_ElectionStockPhotos_TikaHall_10062020-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS45263_001_KQED_ElectionStockPhotos_TikaHall_10062020-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS45263_001_KQED_ElectionStockPhotos_TikaHall_10062020-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS45263_001_KQED_ElectionStockPhotos_TikaHall_10062020-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A San Francisco resident fills out their mail-in ballot on Oct. 6, 2020. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Proposition 22 is written as an exemption from AB 5 for any company that provides transportation or delivery services through an app. It would enshrine in law a kind of third employment category: the contract gig worker. This has been a goal of gig companies for years. They have pursued it at the federal level, and have already \u003ca href=\"https://www.nelp.org/publication/rights-at-risk-gig-companies-campaign-to-upend-employment-as-we-know-it/\">had success in getting legislation on the books in a number of states\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the measure has several other provisions built around the central premise of exempting gig companies from AB 5.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Limited Employee Benefits\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Prop. 22 would guarantee gig workers some limited benefits and protections. As contractors, they currently have none. But the benefits are not as straightforward as they appear at first read.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The most murky benefit is the guaranteed wage floor. Prop. 22 would ensure 120% of minimum wage and 30 cents per mile for drivers, adjusted for inflation. But there’s a pretty big catch. The guarantee is only for “engaged” driving time, defined as the time between “accepting a service request and completing the request.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Much of gig work is spent waiting for a job in the app. \u003ca href=\"https://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/the-uber-lyft-ballot-initiative-guarantees-only-5-64-an-hour-2/\">UC Berkeley’s Labor Center did a study\u003c/a> 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, a drastic pay cut from the $13 minimum wage they would be guaranteed as employees in California. Uber and Lyft disputed the findings in the study, and \u003ca href=\"https://ucreconomicforecast.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Prop22_Driver_Earnings_Analysis_August2020.pdf\">they commissioned another study\u003c/a> that put the earnings at between $25 and $27 an hour. That prompted \u003ca href=\"https://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/the-effects-of-proposition-22-on-driver-earnings-response-to-a-lyft-funded-report-by-dr-christopher-thornberg/#_edn5\">a rebuttal from UC Berkeley.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Aside from the wage floor, Prop. 22 includes a number of benefits that are substitutes for protections guaranteed by traditional employment. In each case, these protections are weaker than what workers would get as employees, and some are contingent on driving a certain number of hours.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead of health care, drivers who put in over 25 hours per week of engaged driving time would get health care subsidies. Instead of workers compensation, companies would offer occupational accident insurance for medical expenses, lost income and disability. Companies would also offer accidental death insurance. It is not clear if these insurance plans would be given to workers automatically, or if they would only be guaranteed the opportunity to purchase them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11843841\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11843841\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS41942_005_KQED_Oakland_RideHail_03102020_-qut.jpg\" alt=\"ride-hail driver in Oakland\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS41942_005_KQED_Oakland_RideHail_03102020_-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS41942_005_KQED_Oakland_RideHail_03102020_-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS41942_005_KQED_Oakland_RideHail_03102020_-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS41942_005_KQED_Oakland_RideHail_03102020_-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS41942_005_KQED_Oakland_RideHail_03102020_-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A ride-hail driver in Oakland In March, 2020. Prop. 22 would guarantee gig workers some limited benefits and protections. As contractors, they currently have none. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Prop. 22 also includes provisions to address long-term accountability issues in the gig industry, like discrimination, sexual misconduct, a lack of background checks and drivers working more than 12 hours a day. Gig companies would be required to create anti-discrimination and sexual harassment policies, develop training programs for drivers and require criminal background checks — all things that the companies have been criticized for lacking in the past.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many of the issues these final provisions would address are things that are exacerbated by the contractor status of workers. If these workers were actually employees, gig companies would be far more liable for things like car accidents, sexual misconduct and criminal activity.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Prop. 22 Would Be Nearly Impossible to Change\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>If Proposition 22 passes, it would prevent local governments from passing laws that require companies to provide additional benefits and protections for gig workers not included in Prop. 22. It would also be the hardest statute for the Legislature to alter, aside from a handful of propositions that bar any amendment whatsoever. That’s because of the 7/8ths provision.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A single sentence on page 18 of the initiative requires a 7/8ths vote of both the state Assembly and Senate in order to amend Prop. 22 in any way. \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/politics/post-it/2020/10/california-amendment-threshold-proposition-22/\">This particular requirement is unprecedented\u003c/a>. Some propositions have required 2/3rds or 3/5s — but never 7/8ths.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If it passes, Prop. 22 would be harder to amend than the state’s Wildlife Protection Act, the Clean Air and Transportation Improvement Act or the Cruelty to Farm Animals Act. Amending it would take eight more votes than are needed to override a governor’s veto or revise the state Constitution, according to data provided to KQED by Alex Vassar, communications manager at the California State Library.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID=news_11840343,news_11841547,news_11841059 label='Election 2020 Resources']In California, a proposition can only be undone by another ballot initiative. So why is the threshold for amendment so high on Prop. 22? Part of the reason is that a section of the proposition’s stated purpose is contradictory to the wishes of gig companies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Proposition 22 states that it would “require rideshare and delivery network companies to offer new protections and benefits for app-based rideshare and delivery drivers.” That might sound good to voters who want more protections for workers, but it could cause problems for gig companies. The Legislature could, for example, alter Prop. 22 once it becomes statute or pass new laws to increase benefits for workers beyond what gig companies want. The 7/8ths provision presents a very high barrier to that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Prop. 22 would also stop local governments from requiring gig companies to increase benefits and protections to gig workers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Proposition 22 lops off the top by cutting off the state Legislature’s ability to amend the law, and it lops off the bottom [by] preventing local governments from ever modifying its requirements,” said Rey Fuentes, a fellow at The Partnership for Working Families, an advocacy group for workers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cities in California are often where laws that grant the most rigorous worker benefits and protections start: things like the Healthy SF program, or San Francisco’s mandatory sick leave. Cities have also been the most proactive in requiring gig companies to provide additional benefits to workers. San Francisco and San Jose, for instance, \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Two-Bay-Area-cities-poised-to-approve-paid-sick-15185145.php\">extended COVID-19 emergency benefits to gig workers\u003c/a>. \u003ca href=\"https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2020/06/seattle-extends-sick-leave-to-gig-workers-including-food-delivery-workers-more-heroes-of-the-covid-19-crisis/\">Seattle passed a similar ordinance\u003c/a>. Prop. 22 has a clause that would preempt future measures like these.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yes on Prop. 22 Spokesperson Geoff Vetter said the issue is consistency for workers who cross city and county lines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Given the cross-jurisdictional nature of the service,” Vetter said, “it would be impossible to allow all 58 counties and 480+ cities to establish separate requirements. Prop. 22 establishes uniform statewide standards for app-based driver scheduling, benefits.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch1>\u003ca id=\"money\">\u003c/a>Unprecedented Money\u003c/h1>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11843334\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11843334\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/UberLyftWindshield.jpg\" alt=\"A driver who drives for both Uber and Lyft\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/UberLyftWindshield.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/UberLyftWindshield-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/UberLyftWindshield-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/UberLyftWindshield-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/UberLyftWindshield-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Uber and Lyft have spent nearly $100 million combined in support of Prop. 22. \u003ccite>(ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Proposition 22 is on track to become the most well-funded ballot initiative in California history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It has already drawn about $200 million, most of it on the pro side. As of 10 days before the election, the anti-side had around $19 million, coming mainly from labor organizations. The pro-side has over $199 million coming from gig companies. As of the beginning of October, Uber had contributed over $50 million; Lyft, $48 million; DoorDash, $47 million; InstaCart, $28 million; and Postmates, $11 million.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That money is not just being spent on TV and digital advertising. The Yes on Prop. 22 campaign has also contributed to political parties, including $2 million to the California Republican Party. It has spent millions hiring consultants, lobbyists and PR firms like MB Public Affairs, which is known for working with tobacco companies. These firms have launched personal and \u003ca href=\"https://www.cnet.com/features/uber-lyfts-fight-over-gig-worker-status-as-campaign-against-labor-activists-mounts/\">intrusive attacks on academics like Veena Dubal\u003c/a>, a UC Hastings law professor who has been critical of gig companies and Proposition 22.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Yes on Prop. 22 campaign has also sent money to newsrooms in return for digital advertising. By the middle of September, it had sent almost $48,000 to the Sacramento Bee, $13,500 to the San Diego Union Tribune and a little over $36,000 to the San Francisco Chronicle. Both the Tribune and the Chronicle endorsed the measure, but in their endorsements made no mention of the ad revenue they had received.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Marketing Prop. 22 as a Social Justice Measure\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Many workers in the gig economy in California are people of color – a fact reflected in the advertising campaign for Prop. 22, which presents the initiative as a boon for social justice. In the past, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11643681/lyft-gains-on-uber-by-appealing-to-progressive-political-ideals\">Lyft had leaned heavily on social justice messaging\u003c/a> to appeal to liberals and distinguish itself from Uber, especially after Trump was elected. Now, this tactic has become a major thrust of the entire Yes on Prop. 22 campaign.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Rep Barbara Lee\"]‘You have very clearly crossed the line when you try to claim the equity mantle for a campaign that has always been about allowing multi-billion-dollar app companies to write their own law so they can keep exploiting drivers.’[/pullquote]PR firms working for the campaign \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Fake-progressive-mailers-urge-yes-on-Uber-Lyft-15635173.php\">have created a number of political mailers\u003c/a> that urge people to vote yes on Prop. 22 and are designed to look like voter guides coming from progressive sources. In small letters at the bottom of these mailers it says the guides are prepared by organizations like “Feel the Bern, Progressive Voter Guide,” “Council of Concerned Women Voters Guide” and “Our Voice, Latino Voter Guide,” which are all fake progressive organizations. They don’t actually exist. After these mailers were reported, Bernie Sanders \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/BernieSanders/status/1315650084567121920?s=20\">came out publicly against\u003c/a> Proposition 22.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many of the ads in the Yes on Prop. 22 campaign feature people of color, like Aisha A. from Los Angeles, who say they need this flexible job to survive. Uber ran an ad campaign this summer with billboards in many major cities that said “If you tolerate racism, delete Uber.” Lyft \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yImMyOkeaKQ\">created a television ad\u003c/a> using a recording of Maya Angelou reading her poem, “On the Pulse of Morning.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yImMyOkeaKQ\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Lyft ad begins with a voiceover of Angelou saying “Lift up your eyes upon / This day breaking for you.” You see Black and brown people getting ready for work. And then it transitions to the inside of a Lyft. There’s a montage of drivers, all people of color, picking up passengers. “Each new hour holds new chances / For a new beginning.” Angelou says “Do not be wedded forever / To fear, yoked eternally / To brutishness.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Getting the California NAACP to endorse Proposition 22 was a big win for gig companies. The organization has authored voter guides telling people to vote yes, and Alice Huffman, head of the California NAACP, has been writing editorials in support of the proposition. Huffman also happens to run a consulting firm called AC Public Affairs. That firm has so far received $85,000 from the Yes on Prop. 22 Campaign. Huffman has a history of receiving contributions from corporations to support their ballot initiatives. The Yes on Prop. 22 money \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/politics/2020/09/california-naacp-president-helps-corporate-ballot-measure-campaigns/\">is part of $1.2 million her firm has already received this year\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many Black and Latino leaders in California have come out against Proposition 22; Rep. Barbara Lee from Oakland, Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs and members of both the Latino and Black California Legislative Caucus were part of a group that \u003ca href=\"https://thehill.com/policy/technology/520671-democrats-accuse-tech-companies-of-deceitful-tactics-in-campaign-against\">publicly denounced\u003c/a> Proposition 22 in mid-October.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Addressing the gig companies on the call, Lee said, “You have very clearly crossed the line when you try to claim the equity mantle for a campaign that has always been about allowing multi-billion-dollar app companies to write their own law so they can keep exploiting the drivers.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In response, Vetter said “Prop. 22 not only protects the jobs of drivers of color and their freedom to work independently, it would provide drivers an earnings guarantee, access to benefits like health care and provide drivers and passengers alike with new safety protections.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch1>\u003ca id=\"surveys\">\u003c/a>Those Driver Surveys, and What’s Wrong With Them\u003c/h1>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11843323\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11843323\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/YesOn22Driver.jpg\" alt=\"Uber driver Sergei Fyodorov holds a flyer supporting a yes vote on Proposition 22 in Oakland.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1290\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/YesOn22Driver.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/YesOn22Driver-800x538.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/YesOn22Driver-1020x685.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/YesOn22Driver-160x108.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/YesOn22Driver-1536x1032.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Uber driver Sergei Fyodorov, in Oakland, holds a flyer suggesting his riders ask him about why he supports Proposition 22. \u003ccite>(Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Many ads from the Yes on Prop. 22 campaign say four out of five drivers prefer being independent contractors. This data comes from a survey done on the blog of \u003ca href=\"https://therideshareguy.com/\">Harry the Rideshare Guy\u003c/a>. It’s one of a slew of surveys the gig companies have been using to advocate for Prop. 22. These surveys are often methodologically flawed, and they never tell the whole story of what drivers want.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the Harry the Rideshare Guy survey has been a central piece of advertising for Proposition 22 and used in legal arguments, it is a non-scientific, informal poll done on a blog. There was no guarantee that respondents were drivers, let alone that there was a representative sample in terms of demographics, hours driven or political leanings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Harry Campbell, CEO of The Rideshare Guy blog, said he believes the site’s survey reflects what he has been hearing from drivers. Yes on Prop. 22 campaign spokesperson Geoff Vetter agreed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The Rideshare Guy polled app-based drivers in California and did it without offering payment to the respondents,” Vetter said. “All this makes for a much fuller, more accurate data set and one that correctly demonstrates how drivers feel about Prop. 22 and independent contractor v. employee status.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But The Rideshare Guy survey is indicative of a number of the broader issues that the No on Prop. 22 campaign and scholars studying the gig economy have with how drivers are being surveyed. Juliet Schor, a professor of sociology at Boston College who has spent years studying the gig economy, said these surveys don’t capture the full picture. There is often bias in the sample, flawed and misleading questions and information presented that influences responses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11843775\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 411px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-11843775\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/edelson-survey-800x466.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"411\" height=\"239\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/edelson-survey-800x466.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/edelson-survey-1020x595.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/edelson-survey-160x93.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/edelson-survey.png 1501w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 411px) 100vw, 411px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Drivers got this prompt before being asked if they supported Proposition 22. \u003ccite>(Edelson Survey Screenshot)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>This \u003ca href=\"https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/themes/5ef0e34fc294806719977470/attachments/original/1592866174/cadriversurvey.pdf?1592866174\">survey from Edelman\u003c/a> is a good example. In a question about Prop. 22, the survey included a snippet from a TechCrunch article that cast the proposition in positive light. Given that prompt, 72 percent of respondents said they supported the measure. On August 19, Lyft issued a survey that had a common flaw in the questioning, equating contractor status to freedom. The survey asked if “the freedom of being an independent contractor outweighs the benefits of being an employee.” Conflating freedom with being an independent contractor is misleading. Employees can have autonomy and freedom, and likewise contractors can be constrained and coerced.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Finally, there is the sample issue. The surveys give equal weight to those who drive only a few hours a week with those who drive much more. And the surveys only poll active workers, which could have a distorting effect on the results. There have been tens or even hundreds of thousands of people in California who have done some work for these gig companies and then stopped. These workers represent a large percentage of the labor that has been done for these companies, yet their opinions are being left out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a big methodological weakness of the surveys,” Schor said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Schor and her research team have interviewed hundreds of gig workers over the years, ethnographic data that can capture what a survey doesn’t. She says there is actually a lot of consistency in what drivers want. They want to be autonomous and have flexibility, but they also want to earn enough that they can pay their bills, buy insurance, and have money set aside if something goes wrong. Schor said she thinks a lot of gig workers in California are answering surveys with what they wish they could have: independent status and enough money to truly be their own bosses. \u003ca href=\"https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3488009\">Veena Dubal wrote an entire academic paper unpacking all of this\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Driver Noemi Torres agreed with Schor’s conclusions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We want to be independent contractors, but Uber doesn’t treat us like independent contractors,” said Torres, who has been driving for seven years outside of North Hollywood. “Initially, we would get paid enough to support ourselves in terms of getting our own health insurance, but since they keep lowering the rates, you don’t have the flexibility.” She opposes Proposition 22.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Drivers who support Proposition 22 often don’t sound that different when it comes to what they want. They just believe the ballot proposition can get it for them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I decided to vote yes on Prop. 22, because it would allow me and my fellow drivers to retain the flexibility we need while ensuring we get the benefits and protections we deserve,” said Dave Thomasson, a driver from West Covina.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch1>\u003ca id=\"directtovoter\">\u003c/a>Unprecedented Direct-to-Voter Connection\u003c/h1>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11843415\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11843415\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/LyftAppProp22Ad.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1317\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/LyftAppProp22Ad.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/LyftAppProp22Ad-800x549.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/LyftAppProp22Ad-1020x700.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/LyftAppProp22Ad-160x110.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/LyftAppProp22Ad-1536x1054.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A Lyft app displays a message asking users to vote yes on Proposition 22. \u003ccite>(JOSH EDELSON/AFP via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Last month, Hector Castellanos started seeing the pop-ups while driving for Uber. Under a dialog box emblazoned with “Prop. 22 is progress,” Castellanos had to click either “Yes on Prop. 22” or “OK” to proceed with his ride. At the same time, his riders were getting pop ups that said their drivers support Prop. 22 and that they should talk with them about it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Castellanos drives full-time, and throughout the day kept seeing the pop up again and again. Castellanos opposes Proposition 22 and he didn’t want to have to click yes or OK, but he had no option. “Drivers have to click ‘yes’ even if they don’t want it,” he said. “They have to click yes or OK.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID=news_11842964 hero='https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Uber-Driver-1020x701.jpg']Uber spokesperson Davis White said Castellanos’s experience is not the norm, and that drivers should only see the pop up once when signing off the app, and that the pop up has been changed so drivers can just close it without selecting an answer. \u003ca href=\"https://beta.documentcloud.org/documents/20398520-uber-prop-22-complaint\">Castellanos and another driver are now suing\u003c/a> Uber for allegedly infringing on their right to be free of political coercion at work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Uber’s popups are an example of the unprecedented advantage gig companies have in this ballot campaign: their own apps.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With their apps already used by millions of California workers and consumers, proponents of no other ballot proposition have ever had direct-to-voter connection at this scale — and gig companies are using the opportunity. They’re sending emails, push notifications to phones and using pop-ups to continually send the pro-Prop. 22 message directly to their customers and workers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"David McCuan, Sonoma State University\"]‘It is the holy grail of political communication.’[/pullquote]Lyft and Uber have been particularly aggressive in using apps to market Prop. 22 to customers. In the Uber app, riders will see a little blue text bubble coming out of the car image that says “Yes on 22.” Uber is sending push notifications that pop up on phones saying things like “Vote early on Prop. 22. Support drivers and help keep Uber in your city.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11842964/gig-companies-are-making-their-workers-promote-prop-22\">gig companies are also pressuring their workers\u003c/a> to spread pro-Prop. 22 messages to consumers. In October, Instacart asked workers through the app to put pro-Prop. 22 stickers in customers’ orders at a Bay Area store. The sticker said “Yes 22, Save App-Based Jobs and Services.” DoorDash is providing free delivery bags to restaurants that have Prop. 22 ads on their sides. Then workers have to use these bags to bring food to customers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After backlash online, Instacart is no longer asking workers to add stickers to orders. But DoorDash is continuing to send pro-Prop. 22 delivery bags to restaurants. The company says restaurants have requested over 4 million bags.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This widespread use of apps to spread messages is unprecedented in a proposition campaign, and it could prove to be a powerful tactic that other corporations want to emulate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It is the holy grail of political communication,” said David McCuan, professor of political science at Sonoma State University who has been studying ballot propositions for decades.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If the gig companies are successful in getting Prop. 22 passed, McCuan said it could change the way ballot initiatives are fought in California. Companies with apps and money to leverage them may see ballot initiatives as a worthwhile way to get their policies enacted if this campaign shows that apps can be used to sway voters.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch1>\u003ca id=\"ramifications\">\u003c/a>The Ramifications\u003c/h1>\n\u003cp>If Proposition 22 fails, gig companies would have to reclassify workers as employees. That could mean redirecting more revenue to pay for basic employee protections, increasing fares and increased requirements to work on these apps, especially for more casual, part-time drivers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gig companies could be responsible for years of back pay, lost benefits, taxes and unpaid unemployment insurance, which could be an especially big deal for Uber and Lyft. \u003ca href=\"https://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/press-release-what-would-uber-and-lyft-owe-to-the-state-unemployment-insurance-fund/#:~:text=BERKELEY%2C%20CA%20%E2%80%94%20A%20new%20report,Fund%20between%202014%20and%202019.\">A report from UC Berkeley’s Labor Center\u003c/a> estimates they could owe as much as $413 million for the period between 2014 to 2019.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Uber has said prices \u003ca href=\"https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-fares-double-small-cities-if-voters-reject-prop-22-2020-10\">could double in small cities\u003c/a>. The Yes on Prop. 22 campaign has suggested that 80% to 90% of drivers could lose work. Given the lack of data from gig companies, it is hard to know how much each would have to change their prices or operations. Also Uber and Lyft are still not profitable, so some change is bound to happen to their services regardless of what happens with Proposition 22.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gig companies have also said they could leave California temporarily. In the past, Uber and Lyft have left places like Austin in order to urge lawmakers to overturn regulations they didn’t like. The companies have always come back, and they’ve never pulled out of a market as big as California. \u003ca href=\"https://medium.com/tusk-venture-partners/initial-thoughts-on-what-the-2020-election-means-for-you-b7d8200b1bf6\">Bradley Tusk is a former political advisor to Uber, and he assumes\u003c/a> gig companies would use their billions of dollars to continue appealing to the Legislature and to voters to find a way to maintain their gig contractor model if Prop. 22 fails.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If Proposition 22 passes, California would have a third category of worker — the gig contractor — enshrined in law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gig companies like Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Postmates and Instacart would get a carve out from state labor law and would be allowed to classify workers as gig contractors, thereby denying them basic employee benefits. The door would be open for other companies to develop apps to take advantage of this new gig worker category.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The measure would become the \u003ca href=\"#written\">hardest statute to amend\u003c/a> in California history, and local governments would have no power to enact laws that provide gig workers with additional benefits.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It would \u003ca href=\"#directtovoter\">establish a playbook\u003c/a> for other companies that want to use an app to market a ballot initiative.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A handful of companies will have proven that they can use a ballot initiative to maintain a business practice that has been deemed illegal either directly or indirectly by all three branches of California’s government.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There would certainly be lawsuits over things like the 7/8ths provision, but barring a new ballot proposition or a major legal victory, gig workers would have to continue working without basic employee protections.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "The state's most expensive ballot measure ever would lock-in a new category of worker in California - and it would be nearly impossible to change.",
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"title": "Prop. 22 Explained: Why Gig Companies Are Spending Huge Money on an Unprecedented Measure | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ci data-stringify-type=\"italic\">This story was updated Wednesday, Nov. 4 at 12:40pm\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb data-stringify-type=\"bold\">UPDATE: Proposition 22 was approved by California voters Tuesday, Nov. 3. \u003c/b>\u003cb data-stringify-type=\"bold\">\u003ca class=\"c-link\" href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11844725/proposition-22-passes-locking-in-sub-employee-status-for-gig-workers\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-stringify-link=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11844725/proposition-22-passes-locking-in-sub-employee-status-for-gig-workers\" data-sk=\"tooltip_parent\">Read the full details here\u003c/a>\u003c/b>\u003cb data-stringify-type=\"bold\">.\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci data-stringify-type=\"italic\">Original story:\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The decision California voters face on Proposition 22 boils down to this: should a handful of companies be allowed to create a new gig contractor category for their workers that doesn’t include employee protections and benefits, like unemployment insurance and workers compensation? Or should companies like Uber, Lyft and DoorDash have to follow state labor law and classify their drivers as employees, which could mean directing more revenue to workers, higher prices for consumers and increased requirements for more casual drivers?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s the choice on the ballot. But there’s so much more going on with this unprecedented and far-reaching proposition — a proposition that recent polling indicates will come down to Californians who are still undecided. As of Oct. 26, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11843691/poll-measure-pushed-by-uber-lyft-falling-just-short-of-passage-many-voters-still-undecided\">polling of likely voters\u003c/a> shows 46% in favor, 42% opposed and 12% undecided. Here’s everything you’d need to know about the proposition and its backstory before you vote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Skip to:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"#backstory\">The Backstory\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>: How companies like Lyft, Uber and DoorDash have avoided employee classification for eight years despite pressure from workers, labor groups and every branch of state government\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"#written\">What’s Actually in Prop. 22?\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>: An explanation of the limited worker benefits and why the “7/8ths provision” would make it nearly impossible to change this law in the future\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"#money\">Unprecedented Money\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>: Gig companies are spending record amounts of cash to market Prop. 22 — and it’s being framed as a social justice issue\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"#surveys\">Those Driver Surveys, and What’s Wrong With Them\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>: What do drivers want? Surveys used to market Prop. 22 are often flawed and don’t tell the full story\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"#directtovoter\">Unprecedented Direct-to-Voter Connection\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>: Millions of apps in millions of pockets, workers asked to deliver political ads and pop ups galore — win or lose, a new election playbook is being written\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"#ramifications\">The Ramifications\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>: If Prop. 22 passes, what will it mean for gig work, labor protections, election campaigning and local governance?\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003ch1>\u003ca id=\"backstory\">\u003c/a>The Backstory\u003c/h1>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11843145\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11843145\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Lyft-moustache.jpg\" alt=\"Lyft car with mustache\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1250\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Lyft-moustache.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Lyft-moustache-800x521.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Lyft-moustache-1020x664.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Lyft-moustache-160x104.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Lyft-moustache-1536x1000.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A Lyft driver with one of the early fuzzy pink mustaches drives in downtown San Francisco in January, 2014. \u003ccite>(Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>It all began in 2012 with a fuzzy pink mustache and a fist bump. It was Lyft, not Uber, that first started paying drivers to use their own cars to do taxi work. Both companies cast themselves not as taxi companies, but platforms to connect riders to drivers, and tech journalists helped propel this image. \u003ca href=\"https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3668606\">Here’s the even deeper backstory on how that all went down\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Using the platform argument, the gig companies classified their workers as contractors, which shielded them from liability and allowed them to avoid paying for protections like overtime and unemployment insurance. Regulators and the government at the state and federal levels did not stop Uber and Lyft, and soon, companies like Instacart, DoorDash and Postmates began following suit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But this contractor model was legally suspect from the start. In California, the determination of whether a worker was a contractor or an employee was made by the Borello test, which is a \u003ca href=\"https://caselaw.findlaw.com/ca-supreme-court/1774638.html\">complex set of 11 factors established by a 1989 California Supreme Court case\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was arguable that under those parameters, gig workers were not independent entrepreneurs running their own businesses on a platform provided by “tech” companies, but instead, employees of a transportation company in the case of Uber and Lyft, a service company in the case of TaskRabbit and a delivery company in the case of Postmates or DoorDash.\u003ca href=\"https://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-tech-drivers-lawsuit/uber-drivers-granted-class-action-status-in-lawsuit-over-employment-idUSKCN0R14O920150901\"> Lawyers began trying to make the case\u003c/a> with big lawsuits against gig companies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Workers were and still are fighting almost all the battles over employee protections and benefits behind closed doors. That’s because gig companies make workers sign arbitration clauses, which prevent them from taking any grievance to court. That has helped preempt and neutralize class-action lawsuits. Law professor Charlotte Garden \u003ca href=\"https://digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1794&context=faculty\">wrote a whole academic paper\u003c/a> on how the gig economy relies on mandatory arbitration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2014, as Uber and Lyft began to slash wages in a price war, workers increased their protest, but they could make no headway toward employment status. Gig companies leaned on customer support for political support, and consumers loved these cheap rides, which were kept low by the contractor model and venture capital. It took six years for any notable action from California’s government. And it came first from the judicial branch.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a ruling on a case known as \u003ca href=\"https://scocal.stanford.edu/opinion/dynamex-operations-west-inc-v-superior-court-34584\">Dynamex in 2018\u003c/a>, California’s Supreme Court simplified the Borello test, boiling it down to just three factors, called the ABCs. A worker could now only be classified as a contractor if they:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>A) Were free from the control and direction of the hirer\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>B) Performed work outside the hirer’s normal course of business\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>C) Had their own independently established trade, occupation or business\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>The ruling made it much more difficult for gig companies to deny workers employee benefits and protections. But still, gig companies kept classifying workers as contractors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After the state Supreme Court, the Legislature took up the fight. Lawmakers passed \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200AB5\">Assembly Bill 5\u003c/a>, which went into effect on Jan. 1, 2020. AB 5 codified the Dynamex ruling and was designed with gig companies in mind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, the new law also affected a number of other industries that have come to rely on contractors. The bill was amended after a backlash, and a number of professions got exemptions, like fine artists, foresters and translators — but not gig workers. Still, gig companies kept classifying workers as contractors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then in May, several months into the coronavirus pandemic, with tens of thousands of Uber and Lyft drivers seeking unemployment funds that didn’t exist because the companies had never paid into the state unemployment fund, the executive branch got involved. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, along with a handful of city attorneys, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11816321/california-city-attorneys-sue-uber-and-lyft-over-worker-misclassification\">sued Uber and Lyft for misclassifying workers\u003c/a>. On Oct. 22 Uber and Lyft \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-10-22/uber-and-lyft-must-comply-with-labor-law-ab-5-appeals-court-orders\">lost an appeal\u003c/a>, and will have to start classifying workers as employees in 30 days — unless Proposition 22 passes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After AB 5 passed, the gig companies started their ballot initiative campaign, hoping that voters would enshrine their gig contractor model into law. Now, with all three branches of California’s government pressuring them to classify workers as employees, they are pouring money into Proposition 22. It’s become \u003ca href=\"https://ballotpedia.org/What_were_the_most_expensive_ballot_measures_in_California\">the most well-funded ballot initiative in California history\u003c/a>. And it’s designed to be a conclusive victory for gig companies.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch1>\u003ca id=\"written\">\u003c/a>What’s Actually in Prop. 22?\u003c/h1>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11843210\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11843210\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS45263_001_KQED_ElectionStockPhotos_TikaHall_10062020-qut.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS45263_001_KQED_ElectionStockPhotos_TikaHall_10062020-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS45263_001_KQED_ElectionStockPhotos_TikaHall_10062020-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS45263_001_KQED_ElectionStockPhotos_TikaHall_10062020-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS45263_001_KQED_ElectionStockPhotos_TikaHall_10062020-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS45263_001_KQED_ElectionStockPhotos_TikaHall_10062020-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A San Francisco resident fills out their mail-in ballot on Oct. 6, 2020. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Proposition 22 is written as an exemption from AB 5 for any company that provides transportation or delivery services through an app. It would enshrine in law a kind of third employment category: the contract gig worker. This has been a goal of gig companies for years. They have pursued it at the federal level, and have already \u003ca href=\"https://www.nelp.org/publication/rights-at-risk-gig-companies-campaign-to-upend-employment-as-we-know-it/\">had success in getting legislation on the books in a number of states\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the measure has several other provisions built around the central premise of exempting gig companies from AB 5.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Limited Employee Benefits\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Prop. 22 would guarantee gig workers some limited benefits and protections. As contractors, they currently have none. But the benefits are not as straightforward as they appear at first read.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The most murky benefit is the guaranteed wage floor. Prop. 22 would ensure 120% of minimum wage and 30 cents per mile for drivers, adjusted for inflation. But there’s a pretty big catch. The guarantee is only for “engaged” driving time, defined as the time between “accepting a service request and completing the request.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Much of gig work is spent waiting for a job in the app. \u003ca href=\"https://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/the-uber-lyft-ballot-initiative-guarantees-only-5-64-an-hour-2/\">UC Berkeley’s Labor Center did a study\u003c/a> 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, a drastic pay cut from the $13 minimum wage they would be guaranteed as employees in California. Uber and Lyft disputed the findings in the study, and \u003ca href=\"https://ucreconomicforecast.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Prop22_Driver_Earnings_Analysis_August2020.pdf\">they commissioned another study\u003c/a> that put the earnings at between $25 and $27 an hour. That prompted \u003ca href=\"https://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/the-effects-of-proposition-22-on-driver-earnings-response-to-a-lyft-funded-report-by-dr-christopher-thornberg/#_edn5\">a rebuttal from UC Berkeley.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Aside from the wage floor, Prop. 22 includes a number of benefits that are substitutes for protections guaranteed by traditional employment. In each case, these protections are weaker than what workers would get as employees, and some are contingent on driving a certain number of hours.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead of health care, drivers who put in over 25 hours per week of engaged driving time would get health care subsidies. Instead of workers compensation, companies would offer occupational accident insurance for medical expenses, lost income and disability. Companies would also offer accidental death insurance. It is not clear if these insurance plans would be given to workers automatically, or if they would only be guaranteed the opportunity to purchase them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11843841\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11843841\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS41942_005_KQED_Oakland_RideHail_03102020_-qut.jpg\" alt=\"ride-hail driver in Oakland\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS41942_005_KQED_Oakland_RideHail_03102020_-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS41942_005_KQED_Oakland_RideHail_03102020_-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS41942_005_KQED_Oakland_RideHail_03102020_-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS41942_005_KQED_Oakland_RideHail_03102020_-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/RS41942_005_KQED_Oakland_RideHail_03102020_-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A ride-hail driver in Oakland In March, 2020. Prop. 22 would guarantee gig workers some limited benefits and protections. As contractors, they currently have none. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Prop. 22 also includes provisions to address long-term accountability issues in the gig industry, like discrimination, sexual misconduct, a lack of background checks and drivers working more than 12 hours a day. Gig companies would be required to create anti-discrimination and sexual harassment policies, develop training programs for drivers and require criminal background checks — all things that the companies have been criticized for lacking in the past.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many of the issues these final provisions would address are things that are exacerbated by the contractor status of workers. If these workers were actually employees, gig companies would be far more liable for things like car accidents, sexual misconduct and criminal activity.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Prop. 22 Would Be Nearly Impossible to Change\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>If Proposition 22 passes, it would prevent local governments from passing laws that require companies to provide additional benefits and protections for gig workers not included in Prop. 22. It would also be the hardest statute for the Legislature to alter, aside from a handful of propositions that bar any amendment whatsoever. That’s because of the 7/8ths provision.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A single sentence on page 18 of the initiative requires a 7/8ths vote of both the state Assembly and Senate in order to amend Prop. 22 in any way. \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/politics/post-it/2020/10/california-amendment-threshold-proposition-22/\">This particular requirement is unprecedented\u003c/a>. Some propositions have required 2/3rds or 3/5s — but never 7/8ths.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If it passes, Prop. 22 would be harder to amend than the state’s Wildlife Protection Act, the Clean Air and Transportation Improvement Act or the Cruelty to Farm Animals Act. Amending it would take eight more votes than are needed to override a governor’s veto or revise the state Constitution, according to data provided to KQED by Alex Vassar, communications manager at the California State Library.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>In California, a proposition can only be undone by another ballot initiative. So why is the threshold for amendment so high on Prop. 22? Part of the reason is that a section of the proposition’s stated purpose is contradictory to the wishes of gig companies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Proposition 22 states that it would “require rideshare and delivery network companies to offer new protections and benefits for app-based rideshare and delivery drivers.” That might sound good to voters who want more protections for workers, but it could cause problems for gig companies. The Legislature could, for example, alter Prop. 22 once it becomes statute or pass new laws to increase benefits for workers beyond what gig companies want. The 7/8ths provision presents a very high barrier to that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Prop. 22 would also stop local governments from requiring gig companies to increase benefits and protections to gig workers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Proposition 22 lops off the top by cutting off the state Legislature’s ability to amend the law, and it lops off the bottom [by] preventing local governments from ever modifying its requirements,” said Rey Fuentes, a fellow at The Partnership for Working Families, an advocacy group for workers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cities in California are often where laws that grant the most rigorous worker benefits and protections start: things like the Healthy SF program, or San Francisco’s mandatory sick leave. Cities have also been the most proactive in requiring gig companies to provide additional benefits to workers. San Francisco and San Jose, for instance, \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Two-Bay-Area-cities-poised-to-approve-paid-sick-15185145.php\">extended COVID-19 emergency benefits to gig workers\u003c/a>. \u003ca href=\"https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2020/06/seattle-extends-sick-leave-to-gig-workers-including-food-delivery-workers-more-heroes-of-the-covid-19-crisis/\">Seattle passed a similar ordinance\u003c/a>. Prop. 22 has a clause that would preempt future measures like these.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yes on Prop. 22 Spokesperson Geoff Vetter said the issue is consistency for workers who cross city and county lines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Given the cross-jurisdictional nature of the service,” Vetter said, “it would be impossible to allow all 58 counties and 480+ cities to establish separate requirements. Prop. 22 establishes uniform statewide standards for app-based driver scheduling, benefits.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch1>\u003ca id=\"money\">\u003c/a>Unprecedented Money\u003c/h1>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11843334\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11843334\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/UberLyftWindshield.jpg\" alt=\"A driver who drives for both Uber and Lyft\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/UberLyftWindshield.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/UberLyftWindshield-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/UberLyftWindshield-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/UberLyftWindshield-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/UberLyftWindshield-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Uber and Lyft have spent nearly $100 million combined in support of Prop. 22. \u003ccite>(ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Proposition 22 is on track to become the most well-funded ballot initiative in California history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It has already drawn about $200 million, most of it on the pro side. As of 10 days before the election, the anti-side had around $19 million, coming mainly from labor organizations. The pro-side has over $199 million coming from gig companies. As of the beginning of October, Uber had contributed over $50 million; Lyft, $48 million; DoorDash, $47 million; InstaCart, $28 million; and Postmates, $11 million.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That money is not just being spent on TV and digital advertising. The Yes on Prop. 22 campaign has also contributed to political parties, including $2 million to the California Republican Party. It has spent millions hiring consultants, lobbyists and PR firms like MB Public Affairs, which is known for working with tobacco companies. These firms have launched personal and \u003ca href=\"https://www.cnet.com/features/uber-lyfts-fight-over-gig-worker-status-as-campaign-against-labor-activists-mounts/\">intrusive attacks on academics like Veena Dubal\u003c/a>, a UC Hastings law professor who has been critical of gig companies and Proposition 22.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Yes on Prop. 22 campaign has also sent money to newsrooms in return for digital advertising. By the middle of September, it had sent almost $48,000 to the Sacramento Bee, $13,500 to the San Diego Union Tribune and a little over $36,000 to the San Francisco Chronicle. Both the Tribune and the Chronicle endorsed the measure, but in their endorsements made no mention of the ad revenue they had received.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Marketing Prop. 22 as a Social Justice Measure\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Many workers in the gig economy in California are people of color – a fact reflected in the advertising campaign for Prop. 22, which presents the initiative as a boon for social justice. In the past, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11643681/lyft-gains-on-uber-by-appealing-to-progressive-political-ideals\">Lyft had leaned heavily on social justice messaging\u003c/a> to appeal to liberals and distinguish itself from Uber, especially after Trump was elected. Now, this tactic has become a major thrust of the entire Yes on Prop. 22 campaign.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "‘You have very clearly crossed the line when you try to claim the equity mantle for a campaign that has always been about allowing multi-billion-dollar app companies to write their own law so they can keep exploiting drivers.’",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>PR firms working for the campaign \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Fake-progressive-mailers-urge-yes-on-Uber-Lyft-15635173.php\">have created a number of political mailers\u003c/a> that urge people to vote yes on Prop. 22 and are designed to look like voter guides coming from progressive sources. In small letters at the bottom of these mailers it says the guides are prepared by organizations like “Feel the Bern, Progressive Voter Guide,” “Council of Concerned Women Voters Guide” and “Our Voice, Latino Voter Guide,” which are all fake progressive organizations. They don’t actually exist. After these mailers were reported, Bernie Sanders \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/BernieSanders/status/1315650084567121920?s=20\">came out publicly against\u003c/a> Proposition 22.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many of the ads in the Yes on Prop. 22 campaign feature people of color, like Aisha A. from Los Angeles, who say they need this flexible job to survive. Uber ran an ad campaign this summer with billboards in many major cities that said “If you tolerate racism, delete Uber.” Lyft \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yImMyOkeaKQ\">created a television ad\u003c/a> using a recording of Maya Angelou reading her poem, “On the Pulse of Morning.”\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/yImMyOkeaKQ'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/yImMyOkeaKQ'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>The Lyft ad begins with a voiceover of Angelou saying “Lift up your eyes upon / This day breaking for you.” You see Black and brown people getting ready for work. And then it transitions to the inside of a Lyft. There’s a montage of drivers, all people of color, picking up passengers. “Each new hour holds new chances / For a new beginning.” Angelou says “Do not be wedded forever / To fear, yoked eternally / To brutishness.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Getting the California NAACP to endorse Proposition 22 was a big win for gig companies. The organization has authored voter guides telling people to vote yes, and Alice Huffman, head of the California NAACP, has been writing editorials in support of the proposition. Huffman also happens to run a consulting firm called AC Public Affairs. That firm has so far received $85,000 from the Yes on Prop. 22 Campaign. Huffman has a history of receiving contributions from corporations to support their ballot initiatives. The Yes on Prop. 22 money \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/politics/2020/09/california-naacp-president-helps-corporate-ballot-measure-campaigns/\">is part of $1.2 million her firm has already received this year\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many Black and Latino leaders in California have come out against Proposition 22; Rep. Barbara Lee from Oakland, Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs and members of both the Latino and Black California Legislative Caucus were part of a group that \u003ca href=\"https://thehill.com/policy/technology/520671-democrats-accuse-tech-companies-of-deceitful-tactics-in-campaign-against\">publicly denounced\u003c/a> Proposition 22 in mid-October.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Addressing the gig companies on the call, Lee said, “You have very clearly crossed the line when you try to claim the equity mantle for a campaign that has always been about allowing multi-billion-dollar app companies to write their own law so they can keep exploiting the drivers.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In response, Vetter said “Prop. 22 not only protects the jobs of drivers of color and their freedom to work independently, it would provide drivers an earnings guarantee, access to benefits like health care and provide drivers and passengers alike with new safety protections.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch1>\u003ca id=\"surveys\">\u003c/a>Those Driver Surveys, and What’s Wrong With Them\u003c/h1>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11843323\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11843323\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/YesOn22Driver.jpg\" alt=\"Uber driver Sergei Fyodorov holds a flyer supporting a yes vote on Proposition 22 in Oakland.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1290\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/YesOn22Driver.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/YesOn22Driver-800x538.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/YesOn22Driver-1020x685.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/YesOn22Driver-160x108.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/YesOn22Driver-1536x1032.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Uber driver Sergei Fyodorov, in Oakland, holds a flyer suggesting his riders ask him about why he supports Proposition 22. \u003ccite>(Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Many ads from the Yes on Prop. 22 campaign say four out of five drivers prefer being independent contractors. This data comes from a survey done on the blog of \u003ca href=\"https://therideshareguy.com/\">Harry the Rideshare Guy\u003c/a>. It’s one of a slew of surveys the gig companies have been using to advocate for Prop. 22. These surveys are often methodologically flawed, and they never tell the whole story of what drivers want.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the Harry the Rideshare Guy survey has been a central piece of advertising for Proposition 22 and used in legal arguments, it is a non-scientific, informal poll done on a blog. There was no guarantee that respondents were drivers, let alone that there was a representative sample in terms of demographics, hours driven or political leanings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Harry Campbell, CEO of The Rideshare Guy blog, said he believes the site’s survey reflects what he has been hearing from drivers. Yes on Prop. 22 campaign spokesperson Geoff Vetter agreed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The Rideshare Guy polled app-based drivers in California and did it without offering payment to the respondents,” Vetter said. “All this makes for a much fuller, more accurate data set and one that correctly demonstrates how drivers feel about Prop. 22 and independent contractor v. employee status.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But The Rideshare Guy survey is indicative of a number of the broader issues that the No on Prop. 22 campaign and scholars studying the gig economy have with how drivers are being surveyed. Juliet Schor, a professor of sociology at Boston College who has spent years studying the gig economy, said these surveys don’t capture the full picture. There is often bias in the sample, flawed and misleading questions and information presented that influences responses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11843775\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 411px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-11843775\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/edelson-survey-800x466.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"411\" height=\"239\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/edelson-survey-800x466.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/edelson-survey-1020x595.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/edelson-survey-160x93.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/edelson-survey.png 1501w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 411px) 100vw, 411px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Drivers got this prompt before being asked if they supported Proposition 22. \u003ccite>(Edelson Survey Screenshot)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>This \u003ca href=\"https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/themes/5ef0e34fc294806719977470/attachments/original/1592866174/cadriversurvey.pdf?1592866174\">survey from Edelman\u003c/a> is a good example. In a question about Prop. 22, the survey included a snippet from a TechCrunch article that cast the proposition in positive light. Given that prompt, 72 percent of respondents said they supported the measure. On August 19, Lyft issued a survey that had a common flaw in the questioning, equating contractor status to freedom. The survey asked if “the freedom of being an independent contractor outweighs the benefits of being an employee.” Conflating freedom with being an independent contractor is misleading. Employees can have autonomy and freedom, and likewise contractors can be constrained and coerced.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Finally, there is the sample issue. The surveys give equal weight to those who drive only a few hours a week with those who drive much more. And the surveys only poll active workers, which could have a distorting effect on the results. There have been tens or even hundreds of thousands of people in California who have done some work for these gig companies and then stopped. These workers represent a large percentage of the labor that has been done for these companies, yet their opinions are being left out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a big methodological weakness of the surveys,” Schor said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Schor and her research team have interviewed hundreds of gig workers over the years, ethnographic data that can capture what a survey doesn’t. She says there is actually a lot of consistency in what drivers want. They want to be autonomous and have flexibility, but they also want to earn enough that they can pay their bills, buy insurance, and have money set aside if something goes wrong. Schor said she thinks a lot of gig workers in California are answering surveys with what they wish they could have: independent status and enough money to truly be their own bosses. \u003ca href=\"https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3488009\">Veena Dubal wrote an entire academic paper unpacking all of this\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Driver Noemi Torres agreed with Schor’s conclusions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We want to be independent contractors, but Uber doesn’t treat us like independent contractors,” said Torres, who has been driving for seven years outside of North Hollywood. “Initially, we would get paid enough to support ourselves in terms of getting our own health insurance, but since they keep lowering the rates, you don’t have the flexibility.” She opposes Proposition 22.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Drivers who support Proposition 22 often don’t sound that different when it comes to what they want. They just believe the ballot proposition can get it for them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I decided to vote yes on Prop. 22, because it would allow me and my fellow drivers to retain the flexibility we need while ensuring we get the benefits and protections we deserve,” said Dave Thomasson, a driver from West Covina.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch1>\u003ca id=\"directtovoter\">\u003c/a>Unprecedented Direct-to-Voter Connection\u003c/h1>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11843415\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11843415\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/LyftAppProp22Ad.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1317\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/LyftAppProp22Ad.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/LyftAppProp22Ad-800x549.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/LyftAppProp22Ad-1020x700.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/LyftAppProp22Ad-160x110.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/LyftAppProp22Ad-1536x1054.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A Lyft app displays a message asking users to vote yes on Proposition 22. \u003ccite>(JOSH EDELSON/AFP via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Last month, Hector Castellanos started seeing the pop-ups while driving for Uber. Under a dialog box emblazoned with “Prop. 22 is progress,” Castellanos had to click either “Yes on Prop. 22” or “OK” to proceed with his ride. At the same time, his riders were getting pop ups that said their drivers support Prop. 22 and that they should talk with them about it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Castellanos drives full-time, and throughout the day kept seeing the pop up again and again. Castellanos opposes Proposition 22 and he didn’t want to have to click yes or OK, but he had no option. “Drivers have to click ‘yes’ even if they don’t want it,” he said. “They have to click yes or OK.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Uber spokesperson Davis White said Castellanos’s experience is not the norm, and that drivers should only see the pop up once when signing off the app, and that the pop up has been changed so drivers can just close it without selecting an answer. \u003ca href=\"https://beta.documentcloud.org/documents/20398520-uber-prop-22-complaint\">Castellanos and another driver are now suing\u003c/a> Uber for allegedly infringing on their right to be free of political coercion at work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Uber’s popups are an example of the unprecedented advantage gig companies have in this ballot campaign: their own apps.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With their apps already used by millions of California workers and consumers, proponents of no other ballot proposition have ever had direct-to-voter connection at this scale — and gig companies are using the opportunity. They’re sending emails, push notifications to phones and using pop-ups to continually send the pro-Prop. 22 message directly to their customers and workers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Lyft and Uber have been particularly aggressive in using apps to market Prop. 22 to customers. In the Uber app, riders will see a little blue text bubble coming out of the car image that says “Yes on 22.” Uber is sending push notifications that pop up on phones saying things like “Vote early on Prop. 22. Support drivers and help keep Uber in your city.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11842964/gig-companies-are-making-their-workers-promote-prop-22\">gig companies are also pressuring their workers\u003c/a> to spread pro-Prop. 22 messages to consumers. In October, Instacart asked workers through the app to put pro-Prop. 22 stickers in customers’ orders at a Bay Area store. The sticker said “Yes 22, Save App-Based Jobs and Services.” DoorDash is providing free delivery bags to restaurants that have Prop. 22 ads on their sides. Then workers have to use these bags to bring food to customers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After backlash online, Instacart is no longer asking workers to add stickers to orders. But DoorDash is continuing to send pro-Prop. 22 delivery bags to restaurants. The company says restaurants have requested over 4 million bags.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This widespread use of apps to spread messages is unprecedented in a proposition campaign, and it could prove to be a powerful tactic that other corporations want to emulate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It is the holy grail of political communication,” said David McCuan, professor of political science at Sonoma State University who has been studying ballot propositions for decades.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If the gig companies are successful in getting Prop. 22 passed, McCuan said it could change the way ballot initiatives are fought in California. Companies with apps and money to leverage them may see ballot initiatives as a worthwhile way to get their policies enacted if this campaign shows that apps can be used to sway voters.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch1>\u003ca id=\"ramifications\">\u003c/a>The Ramifications\u003c/h1>\n\u003cp>If Proposition 22 fails, gig companies would have to reclassify workers as employees. That could mean redirecting more revenue to pay for basic employee protections, increasing fares and increased requirements to work on these apps, especially for more casual, part-time drivers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gig companies could be responsible for years of back pay, lost benefits, taxes and unpaid unemployment insurance, which could be an especially big deal for Uber and Lyft. \u003ca href=\"https://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/press-release-what-would-uber-and-lyft-owe-to-the-state-unemployment-insurance-fund/#:~:text=BERKELEY%2C%20CA%20%E2%80%94%20A%20new%20report,Fund%20between%202014%20and%202019.\">A report from UC Berkeley’s Labor Center\u003c/a> estimates they could owe as much as $413 million for the period between 2014 to 2019.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Uber has said prices \u003ca href=\"https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-fares-double-small-cities-if-voters-reject-prop-22-2020-10\">could double in small cities\u003c/a>. The Yes on Prop. 22 campaign has suggested that 80% to 90% of drivers could lose work. Given the lack of data from gig companies, it is hard to know how much each would have to change their prices or operations. Also Uber and Lyft are still not profitable, so some change is bound to happen to their services regardless of what happens with Proposition 22.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gig companies have also said they could leave California temporarily. In the past, Uber and Lyft have left places like Austin in order to urge lawmakers to overturn regulations they didn’t like. The companies have always come back, and they’ve never pulled out of a market as big as California. \u003ca href=\"https://medium.com/tusk-venture-partners/initial-thoughts-on-what-the-2020-election-means-for-you-b7d8200b1bf6\">Bradley Tusk is a former political advisor to Uber, and he assumes\u003c/a> gig companies would use their billions of dollars to continue appealing to the Legislature and to voters to find a way to maintain their gig contractor model if Prop. 22 fails.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If Proposition 22 passes, California would have a third category of worker — the gig contractor — enshrined in law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gig companies like Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Postmates and Instacart would get a carve out from state labor law and would be allowed to classify workers as gig contractors, thereby denying them basic employee benefits. The door would be open for other companies to develop apps to take advantage of this new gig worker category.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The measure would become the \u003ca href=\"#written\">hardest statute to amend\u003c/a> in California history, and local governments would have no power to enact laws that provide gig workers with additional benefits.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It would \u003ca href=\"#directtovoter\">establish a playbook\u003c/a> for other companies that want to use an app to market a ballot initiative.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A handful of companies will have proven that they can use a ballot initiative to maintain a business practice that has been deemed illegal either directly or indirectly by all three branches of California’s government.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There would certainly be lawsuits over things like the 7/8ths provision, but barring a new ballot proposition or a major legal victory, gig workers would have to continue working without basic employee protections.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Uber used pop-up messages in the app to enlist driver support of Proposition 22, the most expensive ballot measure in California history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it's not just Uber.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other gig companies like Lyft, DoorDash and InstaCart \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11842964/gig-companies-are-making-their-workers-promote-prop-22\">are getting their workers to advocate for Prop. 22\u003c/a>, which would exempt those companies from state labor law and allow workers to continue as contractors rather than employees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In most cases, supporting this proposition runs counter to the interests of workers, yet these multibillion-dollar corporations are finding ways to do it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cp>Even as gig companies \u003ca href=\"https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_22,_App-Based_Drivers_as_Contractors_and_Labor_Policies_Initiative_(2020)\">spend a record amount\u003c/a> of advertising money on Proposition 22, they’re making their gig workers help them market the ballot initiative.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Proposition 22 would create a carve out from \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200AB5\">California labor law\u003c/a> to allow a handful of gig companies to continue classifying their workers as contractors, making them ineligible for employee protections and benefits like unemployment insurance and workers compensation. Lyft, Uber, Instacart, DoorDash and Postmates have spent almost $200 million on the pro-Proposition 22 campaign. Where does the money go? Ads, obviously, and political consultants – but it’s also going to in-app messages, flyers and takeout packaging.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"William Gould, Stanford University law professor\"]‘If ever there was compelled speech, and an interference with a right of freedom of speech, which is protected in California for private sector workers, this is it.’[/pullquote]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you’ve taken a ride with Uber or Lyft recently, you’ve probably seen a pro-Proposition 22 ad in the app. That marketing is also directed at drivers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last month at work, Hector Castellanos started seeing it while he was driving for Uber. Under a dialog box emblazoned with “Prop 22 is progress,” Castellanos had to click either “Yes on Prop 22” or “Okay.” At the same time, his riders were getting pop ups that said their drivers support Proposition 22 and that they should talk with them about it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11843019\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 577px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11843019\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Prop-22-Pop-Up-Drivers-e1603233411510.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"577\" height=\"575\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Prop-22-Pop-Up-Drivers-e1603233411510.jpeg 577w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Prop-22-Pop-Up-Drivers-e1603233411510-160x159.jpeg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 577px) 100vw, 577px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A screenshot from Uber driver Hector Castellanos’ phone. There was no option for him to click ‘no’ to close the pop up. \u003ccite>(Courtesy Hector Castellanos)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Castellanos drives full-time, and throughout the work day, he kept seeing the pop up again and again. “Drivers have to click ‘yes’ even if they don’t want it,” he said. “They have to click yes.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This was particularly upsetting to Castellanos because he opposes Proposition 22. A few years ago, he got into an accident while driving for Lyft and needed surgery on his shoulder. He couldn’t work for eight months, and because he is not an employee, he did not get worker’s compensation. His oldest daughter had to drop out of college and go to work to help the family pay the bills.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That was something that really got to my heart,” Castellanos says, “I was probably just one case in thousands like me.” He decided drivers like him had to be employees to get basic protections like guaranteed minimum wage and workers compensation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An Uber spokesperson says the company changed the pop up recently to be more informational and give drivers an option to close it. Also, the spokesperson said that the pop up should have only appeared one time when drivers go offline.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But drivers sometimes log off when they switch between all different apps they work for, which means they could have to click through the pop up repeatedly. Castellanos estimates that he was seeing it 25 or 30 times a day.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/SamWHarnett/status/1318289882347786240?s=20\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Uber isn’t the only company using workers to spread pro-Proposition 22 messages to consumers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last week, \u003ca href=\"https://www.vice.com/en/article/7kp5yq/instacart-asked-its-gig-workers-to-distribute-propaganda-that-would-hurt-them\">Instacart asked workers through the app\u003c/a> to put pro-Proposition 22 stickers in customers’ orders at a Bay Area store. \u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2020/10/16/21520005/doordash-prop-22-gig-workers-ab5-apps\">DoorDash is providing free pro-Proposition 22 food delivery bags\u003c/a> to restaurants, which workers then have to use to bring food to customers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11842965\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1200px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11842965\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Prop-22-Bags.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"1200\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Prop-22-Bags.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Prop-22-Bags-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Prop-22-Bags-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Prop-22-Bags-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Prop-22-Bags-1104x1104.jpg 1104w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Prop-22-Bags-912x912.jpg 912w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Prop-22-Bags-550x550.jpg 550w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Prop-22-Bags-470x470.jpg 470w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">One of the millions of pro-Proposition 22 delivery bags that DoorDash sent to restaurants, and that gig workers have to use to deliver food to customers. \u003ccite>(DoorDash)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Stanford law professor William Gould says all three of these instances could be violating the protected speech of workers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If ever there was compelled speech, and an interference with a right of freedom of speech, which is protected in California for private sector workers, this is it,” Gould said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Federally these workers have little protection. Since the Supreme Court protected the speech of corporations as if they were people in its 2010 Citizens United decision, companies have had far more ability to \u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/07/politics-at-work-employee-mobilization-lobbying\">mobilize their workers toward particular political goals\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However what these gig companies have made workers do “could be in violation of California \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=1101&lawCode=LAB\">labor code sections 1101 and 1102\u003c/a>,” said David Levine, a law professor at UC Hastings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those sections prevent an employer from attempting to control or direct the political activities or affiliations of their employees. The gig companies contend their workers are actually contractors not employees – which means they would not be protected by these sections of the labor code.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, that very employment status is the central issue at stake with Proposition 22 – and if it passes, gig companies would have a much easier time having workers distribute political materials.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In response to the assertion that distributing these materials infringed on freedom of speech, a spokesperson for the Yes on Prop. 22 campaign said “Each company is communicating with their customers in various ways because of the high stakes in this election.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After backlash online, Instacart is no longer asking workers to add stickers to orders. But DoorDash is continuing to send pro-Prop. 22 delivery bags to restaurants. The company says it has sent more than 4 million of the bags to over 600 restaurants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Update: \u003c/em>\u003cem>A spokesperson for DoorDash says more than 4 million bags have been requested by restaurants, but that the company has only sent out around 150 thousand.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Even as gig companies \u003ca href=\"https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_22,_App-Based_Drivers_as_Contractors_and_Labor_Policies_Initiative_(2020)\">spend a record amount\u003c/a> of advertising money on Proposition 22, they’re making their gig workers help them market the ballot initiative.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Proposition 22 would create a carve out from \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200AB5\">California labor law\u003c/a> to allow a handful of gig companies to continue classifying their workers as contractors, making them ineligible for employee protections and benefits like unemployment insurance and workers compensation. Lyft, Uber, Instacart, DoorDash and Postmates have spent almost $200 million on the pro-Proposition 22 campaign. Where does the money go? Ads, obviously, and political consultants – but it’s also going to in-app messages, flyers and takeout packaging.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you’ve taken a ride with Uber or Lyft recently, you’ve probably seen a pro-Proposition 22 ad in the app. That marketing is also directed at drivers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last month at work, Hector Castellanos started seeing it while he was driving for Uber. Under a dialog box emblazoned with “Prop 22 is progress,” Castellanos had to click either “Yes on Prop 22” or “Okay.” At the same time, his riders were getting pop ups that said their drivers support Proposition 22 and that they should talk with them about it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11843019\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 577px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11843019\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Prop-22-Pop-Up-Drivers-e1603233411510.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"577\" height=\"575\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Prop-22-Pop-Up-Drivers-e1603233411510.jpeg 577w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Prop-22-Pop-Up-Drivers-e1603233411510-160x159.jpeg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 577px) 100vw, 577px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A screenshot from Uber driver Hector Castellanos’ phone. There was no option for him to click ‘no’ to close the pop up. \u003ccite>(Courtesy Hector Castellanos)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Castellanos drives full-time, and throughout the work day, he kept seeing the pop up again and again. “Drivers have to click ‘yes’ even if they don’t want it,” he said. “They have to click yes.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This was particularly upsetting to Castellanos because he opposes Proposition 22. A few years ago, he got into an accident while driving for Lyft and needed surgery on his shoulder. He couldn’t work for eight months, and because he is not an employee, he did not get worker’s compensation. His oldest daughter had to drop out of college and go to work to help the family pay the bills.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That was something that really got to my heart,” Castellanos says, “I was probably just one case in thousands like me.” He decided drivers like him had to be employees to get basic protections like guaranteed minimum wage and workers compensation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An Uber spokesperson says the company changed the pop up recently to be more informational and give drivers an option to close it. Also, the spokesperson said that the pop up should have only appeared one time when drivers go offline.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But drivers sometimes log off when they switch between all different apps they work for, which means they could have to click through the pop up repeatedly. Castellanos estimates that he was seeing it 25 or 30 times a day.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Uber isn’t the only company using workers to spread pro-Proposition 22 messages to consumers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last week, \u003ca href=\"https://www.vice.com/en/article/7kp5yq/instacart-asked-its-gig-workers-to-distribute-propaganda-that-would-hurt-them\">Instacart asked workers through the app\u003c/a> to put pro-Proposition 22 stickers in customers’ orders at a Bay Area store. \u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2020/10/16/21520005/doordash-prop-22-gig-workers-ab5-apps\">DoorDash is providing free pro-Proposition 22 food delivery bags\u003c/a> to restaurants, which workers then have to use to bring food to customers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11842965\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1200px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11842965\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Prop-22-Bags.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"1200\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Prop-22-Bags.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Prop-22-Bags-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Prop-22-Bags-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Prop-22-Bags-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Prop-22-Bags-1104x1104.jpg 1104w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Prop-22-Bags-912x912.jpg 912w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Prop-22-Bags-550x550.jpg 550w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/10/Prop-22-Bags-470x470.jpg 470w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">One of the millions of pro-Proposition 22 delivery bags that DoorDash sent to restaurants, and that gig workers have to use to deliver food to customers. \u003ccite>(DoorDash)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Stanford law professor William Gould says all three of these instances could be violating the protected speech of workers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If ever there was compelled speech, and an interference with a right of freedom of speech, which is protected in California for private sector workers, this is it,” Gould said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Federally these workers have little protection. Since the Supreme Court protected the speech of corporations as if they were people in its 2010 Citizens United decision, companies have had far more ability to \u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/07/politics-at-work-employee-mobilization-lobbying\">mobilize their workers toward particular political goals\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However what these gig companies have made workers do “could be in violation of California \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=1101&lawCode=LAB\">labor code sections 1101 and 1102\u003c/a>,” said David Levine, a law professor at UC Hastings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those sections prevent an employer from attempting to control or direct the political activities or affiliations of their employees. The gig companies contend their workers are actually contractors not employees – which means they would not be protected by these sections of the labor code.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, that very employment status is the central issue at stake with Proposition 22 – and if it passes, gig companies would have a much easier time having workers distribute political materials.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In response to the assertion that distributing these materials infringed on freedom of speech, a spokesperson for the Yes on Prop. 22 campaign said “Each company is communicating with their customers in various ways because of the high stakes in this election.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After backlash online, Instacart is no longer asking workers to add stickers to orders. But DoorDash is continuing to send pro-Prop. 22 delivery bags to restaurants. The company says it has sent more than 4 million of the bags to over 600 restaurants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Update: \u003c/em>\u003cem>A spokesperson for DoorDash says more than 4 million bags have been requested by restaurants, but that the company has only sent out around 150 thousand.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "chefs-and-venture-capitalists-hope-to-make-money-on-home-cooked-food",
"title": "Chefs — And Venture Capitalists — Hope To Make Money on Home-Cooked Food",
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"headTitle": "Chefs — And Venture Capitalists — Hope To Make Money on Home-Cooked Food | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>Selling the food you cook in your own kitchen is only totally legal in one county in California: Riverside.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But that isn’t stopping venture capitalists from trying to cash in on home-cooked food elsewhere in the state, especially now, with the COVID-19 pandemic keeping many people away from restaurants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Two years ago, California lawmakers passed \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180AB626\">Assembly Bill 626\u003c/a>, allowing counties to legalize the sale of home-cooked foods. At the time, local food advocates feared the new rules would draw the attention of venture capitalists — the investors responsible for launching once-tiny companies like Uber and Lyft.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re worried about the Uberization of home-cooked food,” Christina Oatfield, a lawyer and a local food advocate, told KQED at the time. “We’re worried that these gig economy tech companies are going to really come to dominate the home-made food sector.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Oatfield said the success of gig economy companies like Uber and Lyft, that quickly accumulate power and then cut workers’ wages, serve as a cautionary tale.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It is the monopoly strategy that these tech startups take that is so concerning,” Oatfield said. “Because once they have that monopoly, they are so powerful they effectively control the market.”[aside tag=\"food\" label=\"More Food Coverage\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once it gets to that point, she added, you no longer have empowered people with their own businesses, you have gig workers working for companies that call the shots.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Safeguarding Home Kitchens\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Backers of AB 626, authored by Assemblymember Eduardo Garcia, D-Coachella, tried to build in protections to prevent venture capital takeover of home-cooked food. The law requires local regulations and forbids the use of third-party delivery apps such as DoorDash and Uber Eats for food that is cooked at home. If a cook uses a commercial kitchen, they can still deliver through these services.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Matt Jorgensen, who co-founded Josephine, a \u003ca href=\"https://thespoon.tech/josephine-a-sharing-economy-marketplace-for-home-cooking-shuts-down/\">now defunct startup\u003c/a> that created an online platform for home cooks to sell their own food, had a hand in crafting the bill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We want cooks to be the owners of their own data (and) customer relationships — to be the face of their home restaurant, not to become low-wage gig workers subject to the whims of a new type of profit-maximizing platform,” Jorgensen said in a recent interview with KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, two years later, a growing number of companies — including the popular Los Angeles-based startup \u003ca href=\"https://www.dishdivvy.com/\">DishDivvy\u003c/a> — are building websites and apps to capitalize on the nascent home-cooking market. Those efforts are ongoing, even though the sale of home-cooked hot meals is still not allowed in any county except Riverside.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other counties in the state have not agreed on rules and regulations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another one of those companies is \u003ca href=\"https://www.shef.com/\">Shef\u003c/a>, a startup based in the Bay Area that was founded by a former Facebook employee and technology adviser to President Barack Obama. In August, venture capitalists pumped $8.8 million into the tiny company, which got its start two years ago, right around the time AB 626 was approved by the state Legislature.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even $8.8 million is a lot of money for the home-cooked food business, says Caleb Zigas, the executive director of \u003ca href=\"https://lacocinasf.org/\">La Cocina\u003c/a>, a nonprofit that for the last 15 years has been helping San Francisco chefs launch their own businesses.[pullquote size=\"large\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Christina Oatfield, attorney and food advocate\"]“We’re worried about the Uberization of home-cooked food.”[/pullquote]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Zigas thinks the infusion of venture capital will push these companies to try to exploit home cooks instead of working with them to create sustainable, independent businesses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When you get venture-backed money, where return is the goal and particularly massive return, no matter how genuinely interested you are principally, the service you are offering is going to be weakened as a result,” Zigas said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even though La Cocina has a long track record of helping women and people of color start businesses, Zigas says they’ve never received anything remotely close to the influx of cash just handed to Shef. That kind of funding, he says, would be enough to run La Cocina for 10 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Under the Table\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Then there is the question of whether these food platforms are breaking the law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shef is operating in the Bay Area, and DishDivvy is operating in Los Angeles. Neither area has local regulations that allow chefs to cook and sell hot meals from their home. Cooks can only sell certain goods like jams and candies that were\u003ca href=\"http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/eh/food/CottageFoodOperation.htm\"> legalized under the California Homemade Food Act, which came into effect in 2013.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chefs can make hot meals in commercial kitchens. On its website, DishDivvy says it performs a kitchen inspection for everyone on the platform. A spokesperson for Shef says its cooks should be using commercial kitchens, but it doesn’t require proof for them to be on the website.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Given how expensive and scarce commercial kitchens are in the Bay Area, Zigas says he is doubtful that every cook on the Shef site is actually using one. The branding of both Shef and DishDivvy suggests that the food comes from a chef’s home, not from an industrial kitchen. The food is advertised as “home-cooked,” not “commercial kitchen-cooked.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Critics like Oatfield see this move to operate in places without local regulations as another page taken from the venture-capital playbook, and one that was very successful for Lyft and Uber. “That’s the typical Silicon Valley approach to business,” she says. “You don’t wait for something to become legal.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As with Uber and Lyft, there is a layer of protection when it comes to liability. And like drivers for Uber and Lyft, Shef and DishDivvy do not consider those on the site to be employees. They may be facilitating something on their websites that might be illegal, but they have a degree of separation from the chefs on its “platform.” If health inspectors want to crack down, they will be going after small, independent cooks, a group that’s largely women and people of color.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Cooking Clean\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>The founder of a third home-cooking platform, called \u003ca href=\"https://foodnome.com/\">Foodnome\u003c/a>, says he’s trying to do things differently than competitors like Shef and DishDivvy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We set about to do this in the right way, in the legal way,” Akshay Prabhu, the company’s CEO, said. “We value putting the cooks first.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Foodnome only operates in Riverside County, for now, where home-cooked food is legal. It also does not partner with third-party delivery apps like Doordash and Uber Eats.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/foodnome/status/1115346366136442882\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The company is now trying to expand outside of Riverside without compromising its principles. It’s backing home-cooked food regulations in Alameda County, San Francisco and elsewhere. And its competitors, DishDivvy and Shef, are also pushing those legalization efforts forward.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Unlike on the other websites, chefs on Foodnome, like Keion Taylor, make and sell their food at home, just like the website advertises.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Taylor, who goes by Chef KT, cooks Cajun-inspired fare in the town of Menifee. In a region where fast food dominates, he says, his customers often drive 20 or 30 minutes to pick up his po’boys and crispy buttermilk chicken strips.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“People tell me like, ‘Hey man, this is the best po’boy hands down I’ve ever had, and I’m from Louisiana,’ ” he said. “And I am like, ‘Get out of here!’ ”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Taylor decided to become a chef after working in the military for 15 years. But while attending Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Pasadena, his instructors warned him how little he’d make as a line cook. Knowing he wouldn’t be able to support his family on $12 or $13 an hour, he decided to try and make it on his own.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Business is booming during the pandemic, Taylor says, and he hopes he can continue to sustain himself. He’s betting that Foodnome has his best interests at heart and that he never has to become a gig worker for some app.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I haven’t worked for nobody else in over 10 years,” Taylor says. “I never wanted to be stuck doing the same thing over and over again.”\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Selling the food you cook in your own kitchen is only totally legal in one county in California: Riverside.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But that isn’t stopping venture capitalists from trying to cash in on home-cooked food elsewhere in the state, especially now, with the COVID-19 pandemic keeping many people away from restaurants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Two years ago, California lawmakers passed \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180AB626\">Assembly Bill 626\u003c/a>, allowing counties to legalize the sale of home-cooked foods. At the time, local food advocates feared the new rules would draw the attention of venture capitalists — the investors responsible for launching once-tiny companies like Uber and Lyft.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re worried about the Uberization of home-cooked food,” Christina Oatfield, a lawyer and a local food advocate, told KQED at the time. “We’re worried that these gig economy tech companies are going to really come to dominate the home-made food sector.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Oatfield said the success of gig economy companies like Uber and Lyft, that quickly accumulate power and then cut workers’ wages, serve as a cautionary tale.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It is the monopoly strategy that these tech startups take that is so concerning,” Oatfield said. “Because once they have that monopoly, they are so powerful they effectively control the market.”\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once it gets to that point, she added, you no longer have empowered people with their own businesses, you have gig workers working for companies that call the shots.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Safeguarding Home Kitchens\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Backers of AB 626, authored by Assemblymember Eduardo Garcia, D-Coachella, tried to build in protections to prevent venture capital takeover of home-cooked food. The law requires local regulations and forbids the use of third-party delivery apps such as DoorDash and Uber Eats for food that is cooked at home. If a cook uses a commercial kitchen, they can still deliver through these services.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Matt Jorgensen, who co-founded Josephine, a \u003ca href=\"https://thespoon.tech/josephine-a-sharing-economy-marketplace-for-home-cooking-shuts-down/\">now defunct startup\u003c/a> that created an online platform for home cooks to sell their own food, had a hand in crafting the bill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We want cooks to be the owners of their own data (and) customer relationships — to be the face of their home restaurant, not to become low-wage gig workers subject to the whims of a new type of profit-maximizing platform,” Jorgensen said in a recent interview with KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, two years later, a growing number of companies — including the popular Los Angeles-based startup \u003ca href=\"https://www.dishdivvy.com/\">DishDivvy\u003c/a> — are building websites and apps to capitalize on the nascent home-cooking market. Those efforts are ongoing, even though the sale of home-cooked hot meals is still not allowed in any county except Riverside.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other counties in the state have not agreed on rules and regulations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another one of those companies is \u003ca href=\"https://www.shef.com/\">Shef\u003c/a>, a startup based in the Bay Area that was founded by a former Facebook employee and technology adviser to President Barack Obama. In August, venture capitalists pumped $8.8 million into the tiny company, which got its start two years ago, right around the time AB 626 was approved by the state Legislature.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even $8.8 million is a lot of money for the home-cooked food business, says Caleb Zigas, the executive director of \u003ca href=\"https://lacocinasf.org/\">La Cocina\u003c/a>, a nonprofit that for the last 15 years has been helping San Francisco chefs launch their own businesses.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Zigas thinks the infusion of venture capital will push these companies to try to exploit home cooks instead of working with them to create sustainable, independent businesses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When you get venture-backed money, where return is the goal and particularly massive return, no matter how genuinely interested you are principally, the service you are offering is going to be weakened as a result,” Zigas said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even though La Cocina has a long track record of helping women and people of color start businesses, Zigas says they’ve never received anything remotely close to the influx of cash just handed to Shef. That kind of funding, he says, would be enough to run La Cocina for 10 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Under the Table\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Then there is the question of whether these food platforms are breaking the law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shef is operating in the Bay Area, and DishDivvy is operating in Los Angeles. Neither area has local regulations that allow chefs to cook and sell hot meals from their home. Cooks can only sell certain goods like jams and candies that were\u003ca href=\"http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/eh/food/CottageFoodOperation.htm\"> legalized under the California Homemade Food Act, which came into effect in 2013.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chefs can make hot meals in commercial kitchens. On its website, DishDivvy says it performs a kitchen inspection for everyone on the platform. A spokesperson for Shef says its cooks should be using commercial kitchens, but it doesn’t require proof for them to be on the website.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Given how expensive and scarce commercial kitchens are in the Bay Area, Zigas says he is doubtful that every cook on the Shef site is actually using one. The branding of both Shef and DishDivvy suggests that the food comes from a chef’s home, not from an industrial kitchen. The food is advertised as “home-cooked,” not “commercial kitchen-cooked.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Critics like Oatfield see this move to operate in places without local regulations as another page taken from the venture-capital playbook, and one that was very successful for Lyft and Uber. “That’s the typical Silicon Valley approach to business,” she says. “You don’t wait for something to become legal.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As with Uber and Lyft, there is a layer of protection when it comes to liability. And like drivers for Uber and Lyft, Shef and DishDivvy do not consider those on the site to be employees. They may be facilitating something on their websites that might be illegal, but they have a degree of separation from the chefs on its “platform.” If health inspectors want to crack down, they will be going after small, independent cooks, a group that’s largely women and people of color.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Cooking Clean\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>The founder of a third home-cooking platform, called \u003ca href=\"https://foodnome.com/\">Foodnome\u003c/a>, says he’s trying to do things differently than competitors like Shef and DishDivvy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We set about to do this in the right way, in the legal way,” Akshay Prabhu, the company’s CEO, said. “We value putting the cooks first.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Foodnome only operates in Riverside County, for now, where home-cooked food is legal. It also does not partner with third-party delivery apps like Doordash and Uber Eats.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>The company is now trying to expand outside of Riverside without compromising its principles. It’s backing home-cooked food regulations in Alameda County, San Francisco and elsewhere. And its competitors, DishDivvy and Shef, are also pushing those legalization efforts forward.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Unlike on the other websites, chefs on Foodnome, like Keion Taylor, make and sell their food at home, just like the website advertises.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Taylor, who goes by Chef KT, cooks Cajun-inspired fare in the town of Menifee. In a region where fast food dominates, he says, his customers often drive 20 or 30 minutes to pick up his po’boys and crispy buttermilk chicken strips.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“People tell me like, ‘Hey man, this is the best po’boy hands down I’ve ever had, and I’m from Louisiana,’ ” he said. “And I am like, ‘Get out of here!’ ”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Taylor decided to become a chef after working in the military for 15 years. But while attending Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Pasadena, his instructors warned him how little he’d make as a line cook. Knowing he wouldn’t be able to support his family on $12 or $13 an hour, he decided to try and make it on his own.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Business is booming during the pandemic, Taylor says, and he hopes he can continue to sustain himself. He’s betting that Foodnome has his best interests at heart and that he never has to become a gig worker for some app.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"info": "A one-hour radio program to hear celebrated writers, artists and thinkers address contemporary ideas and values, often discussing the creative process. Please note: tapes or transcripts are not available",
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"airtime": "SUN 1pm-2pm, TUE 10pm, WED 1am",
"meta": {
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"source": "City Arts & Lectures"
},
"link": "https://www.cityarts.net",
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}
},
"closealltabs": {
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"order": 1
},
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"title": "Code Switch / Life Kit",
"info": "\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em>, which listeners will hear in the first part of the hour, has fearless and much-needed conversations about race. Hosted by journalists of color, the show tackles the subject of race head-on, exploring how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and more.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em>, which will be in the second part of the hour, guides you through spaces and feelings no one prepares you for — from finances to mental health, from workplace microaggressions to imposter syndrome, from relationships to parenting. The show features experts with real world experience and shares their knowledge. Because everyone needs a little help being human.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/lifekit\">\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />",
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"id": "commonwealth-club",
"title": "Commonwealth Club of California Podcast",
"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
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"source": "Commonwealth Club of California"
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5jb21tb253ZWFsdGhjbHViLm9yZy9hdWRpby9wb2RjYXN0L3dlZWtseS54bWw",
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"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Forum-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"order": 9
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM5NTU3MzgxNjMz",
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"meta": {
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"source": "WNYC"
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/freakonomics-radio/id354668519",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/WNYC-Podcasts/Freakonomics-Radio-p272293/",
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},
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"id": "fresh-air",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=214089682&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"info": "A live production of NPR and WBUR Boston, in collaboration with stations across the country, Here & Now reflects the fluid world of news as it's happening in the middle of the day, with timely, in-depth news, interviews and conversation. Hosted by Robin Young, Jeremy Hobson and Tonya Mosley.",
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"hidden-brain": {
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"info": "Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.",
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"airtime": "SUN 7pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "NPR"
},
"link": "/radio/program/hidden-brain",
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"how-i-built-this": {
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"title": "How I Built This with Guy Raz",
"info": "Guy Raz dives into the stories behind some of the world's best known companies. How I Built This weaves a narrative journey about innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists—and the movements they built.",
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"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
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"link": "/radio/program/how-i-built-this",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/how-i-built-this-with-guy-raz/id1150510297?mt=2",
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"hyphenacion": {
"id": "hyphenacion",
"title": "Hyphenación",
"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Hyphenacion_FinalAssets_PodcastTile.png",
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"order": 15
},
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"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/2p3Fifq96nw9BPcmFdIq0o?si=39209f7b25774f38",
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},
"jerrybrown": {
"id": "jerrybrown",
"title": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Political-Mind-of-Jerry-Brown-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
"meta": {
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"order": 18
},
"link": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
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},
"latino-usa": {
"id": "latino-usa",
"title": "Latino USA",
"airtime": "MON 1am-2am, SUN 6pm-7pm",
"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/latinoUsa.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://latinousa.org/",
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},
"link": "/radio/program/latino-usa",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=79681317&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510016/podcast.xml"
}
},
"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Marketplace-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.marketplace.org/",
"meta": {
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"source": "American Public Media"
},
"link": "/radio/program/marketplace",
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},
"masters-of-scale": {
"id": "masters-of-scale",
"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
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"meta": {
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"rss": "https://rss.art19.com/masters-of-scale"
}
},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
"tagline": "A podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids",
"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mindshift-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED MindShift: How We Will Learn",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/mindshift/",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 12
},
"link": "/podcasts/mindshift",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
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}
},
"morning-edition": {
"id": "morning-edition",
"title": "Morning Edition",
"info": "\u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> takes listeners around the country and the world with multi-faceted stories and commentaries every weekday. Hosts Steve Inskeep, David Greene and Rachel Martin bring you the latest breaking news and features to prepare you for the day.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3am-9am",
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"onourwatch": {
"id": "onourwatch",
"title": "On Our Watch",
"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/On-Our-Watch-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 11
},
"link": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5ucHIub3JnLzUxMDM2MC9wb2RjYXN0LnhtbD9zYz1nb29nbGVwb2RjYXN0cw",
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},
"on-the-media": {
"id": "on-the-media",
"title": "On The Media",
"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm-3pm, MON 12am-1am",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/onTheMedia.png",
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"meta": {
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"source": "wnyc"
},
"link": "/radio/program/on-the-media",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/on-the-media/id73330715?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/On-the-Media-p69/",
"rss": "http://feeds.wnyc.org/onthemedia"
}
},
"pbs-newshour": {
"id": "pbs-newshour",
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"info": "Analysis, background reports and updates from the PBS NewsHour putting today's news in context.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3pm-4pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/PBS-News-Hour-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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},
"link": "/radio/program/pbs-newshour",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/pbs-newshour-full-show/id394432287?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/PBS-NewsHour---Full-Show-p425698/",
"rss": "https://www.pbs.org/newshour/feeds/rss/podcasts/show"
}
},
"perspectives": {
"id": "perspectives",
"title": "Perspectives",
"tagline": "KQED's series of daily listener commentaries since 1991",
"info": "KQED's series of daily listener commentaries since 1991.",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Perspectives_Tile_Final.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/perspectives/",
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"order": 14
},
"link": "/perspectives",
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