SEIU officials in
California have been engaged in secret discussions with Uber and Lyft around a scheme
to exempt the two tech giants from a groundbreaking new bill in California that
would force the companies to hire their drivers as employees rather than exploit
them as independent contractors.
SEIU, in exchange for backing the companies’ political play
in the Capitol, would be designated as the companies’ official union-lite “association” for
their independent-contractor drivers, according to articles in the Los Angeles Times, New York Times and other publications.
(Johana Bhuiyan, “Treat
workers as employees? Uber, Lyft and others are scrambling for a compromise,”
Los Angeles Times, June 23,
2019. Noam Scheiber,
“Debate
Over Uber and Lyft Drivers’ Rights in California Has Split Labor,” New York
Times, June 29, 2019.)
The news has been met with outrage by drivers. Check out this tweet from Rideshare Drivers
United-LA:
We won't work with any union that's in talks with #Uber and #Lyft to accept money from them and limit our full rights as employees. We represent the direct voice of the drivers who want & deserve better. Collective bargaining and a seat at the table.@GavinNewsom should know this. https://t.co/Fiy3zbZpUr— Rideshare Drivers United - LA (@_drivers_united) June 30, 2019
What’s causing SEIU officials to leap into bed with gig
executives?
Opportunism on SEIU’s part. And desperation from the tech
execs.
California’s legislature is poised to pass a bill that would
require Uber, Lyft and other gig companies to hire their drivers as employees.
This would finally give drivers the basic legal protections that come with
employment status, including: minimum wage,
sick leave, overtime pay, meal and rest breaks, unemployment insurance, disability
insurance, workers’ compensation, parental leave, family leave and
contributions to Social Security and Medicare.
The bill was triggered by a unanimous 2018 decision by the
California Supreme Court known as the Dynamex
decision.
To save money, Dynamex -- a same-day courier service -- converted
all its employees to independent contractors. A former employee sued the
company. The case ultimately landed in the state Supreme Court, which ruled
that company executives had misclassified the workers as contractors. The court
set up a new test to determine whether workers are independent contractors or
employees.
Earlier this year, California Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez introduced Assembly Bill 5 to put this new
standard into California law. If it’s not in state law, workers’ only solution
is to sue every time a company violates the Supreme Court’s new standard. AB 5 was
approved by the Assembly by a vote of 59 to 15, and it’s now in the State Senate.
It’s sponsored by the California Labor Federation.
The bill would affect 100,000 drivers at Uber and Lyft, as
well as an estimated 1.9 million additional California workers who are currently
misclassified as independent contractors.
Tech companies are going batsh*t crazy over AB 5.
If they can no longer exploit workers as independent
contractors, their profits will decline. So they’re pulling out all the stops
to try to defeat or gut the bill… including trying to cut backroom deals with
unprincipled union officials at SEIU and the Teamsters. Here’s how the Los
Angeles Times describes it:
In recent months, Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Postmates and other companies have been in discussions with officials at two labor unions — including local chapters of the Teamsters and Service Employees International Union — over a possible legislative alternative to Assembly Bill 5, now working its way through the state Senate. The proposal, details of which are still in flux, would allow the firms to continue to treat workers as independent contractors while providing them some benefits and protections typically reserved for employees. (The California Labor Federation, which represents most of the state’s unions, remains committed to obtaining full employee status for on-demand workers.) At least two of the companies, Postmates and DoorDash, have also commissioned surveys to feel out how such a deal would play with Californians.
According to Vox,
the deal would require the tech companies to pay the unions to “advocate for
the drivers.” Sounds like a company union. (Alexia
Fernández Campbell, “Secret
meetings between Uber and labor unions are causing an uproar,” Vox, July 1, 2019.)
The New York Times
cites two unnamed people who attended a meeting of SEIU officials during the
past two weeks during which Alma
Hernandez, the executive director of the SEIU California State Council, reportedly talked about SEIU’s discussions
with the tech companies. It also cites David
Huerta, president of the United Service Workers West, as saying he “attended internal and external meetings about gig workers
with Ms. Hernández.”
Vox’s Alexia Fernández Campbell points out that the tech
companies are not just exploiting workers, they’re also shifting billions of
dollars of taxes onto the backs of regular people. She writes:
The state estimates it loses about $7 billion a year in payroll tax revenue due to worker misclassification that could be supporting schools, roads and other public services. And by avoiding unemployment insurance taxes and workers’ compensation premiums, businesses shift the burden to the state when workers get laid off, get sick or get injured on the job.
“These billion dollar companies can complain but we have to ask ourselves as taxpayers: Should we subsidize their business by subsidizing their workers?” said Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, a former labor organizer from San Diego who is author of AB 5. “That’s what happens when you don’t adequately compensate workers.”
This is not the first time that SEIU’s top officials have
been caught doing dirty deals with tech titans and gig giants. In 2017, SEIU President
Emeritus Andy Stern began
working as a highly paid consultant for tech
businesses to help them pass a law in the New York state legislature so tech
companies could continue to treat their workers as independent contractors. It’s
unclear whether Stern continues today in that consultant role.
 |
| Andy Stern and David Rolf |
Also in 2017, Stern co-authored
a proposal with a right-wing D.C. political operative calling on the
Republican-controlled U.S. Congress and White House to grant “waivers” to
states to allow them to do an end-run around federal labor laws. The waivers
would be a boon to tech companies, which are facing dozens of class-action
action lawsuits from workers alleging they’re owed millions in back pay after being misclassified as
“independent contractors.”
Stern’s proposal, entitled “How
to Modernize Labor Law” and co-authored with Eli Lehrer
(President of the right-wing “R Street Institute” in Washington DC), was published in National Affairs.
In 2018, David Rolf
(then-President of SEIU Local 775
and a member of SEIU’s International Executive Board) signed
an open letter with Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi and venture capitalist Nick Hanauer calling for the passage of
Washington state legislation that reportedly would consign gig workers to a second-class status as independent contractors.
The uber-wealthy plutocrats atop tech companies want to keep
sucking as many profits as they can from their workforce. The top three execs
at Uber and Lyft have a combined worth of over $1 billion.
Garrett Camp
-- a multi-billionaire “Tech tycoon” who co-founded Uber -- just paid a
record-breaking $72.5 million for a brand-new estate
in Beverly Hills, according to an
article published yesterday in Variety.
 |
| Uber cofounder and billionaire Garrett Camp |
“This is a perfect example of the 1% stealing from the rest of us,” Nicole Moore, a ride-share driver in Los Angeles, said of Camp’s $72.5m purchase. “Drivers are living in their cars. We’re fighting for fair wages. At least share that wealth with the people who have actually built your company.”
… “This guy is buying lavish houses with our money, our hard-earned money that they are unjustly taking from us,” added Karim Bayumi, another Los Angeles Uber driver and organizer. “It’s exploitation.”
Hey Mary Kay Henry
and Jimmy Hoffa, Jr... Your thoughts? Will
SEIU and Teamsters officials perform intimate love acts with these tech
billionaires? Or defend exploited workers against greedy corporations?
