CA voters: Press REJECT on the gig company ballot initiative!

If you haven’t seen the ads already, you will soon: Gig economy corporations are trying to win a CA ballot initiative this year that would give them total control over regulating their industry.

And Instacart, Postmates, DoorDash, Uber, and Lyft have already poured $110 million into the campaign.

That amount of money buys a lot of misleading messaging...so you can expect to see a ton of ads claiming their goal is to create higher pay standards in the industry.

But if they wanted to pay us more money, they could just pay us more money. What their law actually does is lock in low pay as the standard.

The companies are counting on CA voters to just tap “accept.” But this ballot measure would have dramatic impacts on workers & customers — so voters need to be informed. Scroll down to learn more...and then pledge to vote NO by signing your name here.

The “Protect App-Based Drivers & Services” initiative does create some new rules — but it’s in exchange for locking in gig workers’ status as contractors, even if companies don’t give them the flexibility and freedom they’re supposed to.

Gig companies are attempting to win these regulations for themselves in response to AB-5, recently passed legislation in California designed to make them reclassify their workers as employees. They’re running this ballot measure to get out of following the new law, which would cost them a lot of money they don’t want to spend.

There are lots of different opinions about the laws that have been passed for gig workers in CA so far. Some workers prefer to be classified as independent contractors. But none of us prefer being underpaid & unheard.

No matter where we stand on issues like employee classification, we can all agree on one thing: letting gig companies spend $110 million to write the laws for themselves is not the solution.

Because when we let them write the laws, these are the kinds of shady policies they come up with:

Underpayment of expenses

The initiative says they’d be paying expenses on top of a set minimum wage rate. But the law would lock in an atrociously low 30-cent-per-mile rate for expenses. That’s about half of the established IRS rate of 57.5 cents, which reflects the actual cost of driving a vehicle. And that difference really adds up. Based on the miles Instacart & DoorDash drivers put in for each active job, that underpayment could mean a difference of around $3.50/hour.

Even if mileage expenses were fully covered, the companies are leaving out all the other costs gig workers cover for them — like our data costs or additional taxes we pay as contractors.

Jobs that don’t meet minimum pay standards

What’s more, not every job would need to meet that pay standard — companies would only be required to meet it across an entire “earnings period” of up to two weeks.

So if you get a few high-paying jobs, they can balance it out by sending you low ones for the rest of the week. Or they can send you only jobs that fall far below the standard, and then add some extra pay to get up to the minimum guarantee. What that means is that this is effectively not a pay floor — it’s a pay ceiling.

Independent contractors…minus the independence

The initiative would automatically classify app-based workers as independent contractors as long as companies meet some bare-minimum standards: not assigning shifts, deactivating them for rejecting offers, or keeping them from working for other apps or jobs.

That’s a pretty low bar to meet — in fact, it’s what the companies say they’re doing already.

And it means companies could exercise control in all kinds of other ways, without having to provide the freedom independent contractor status is meant to provide.

Preempting changes to the law

And, oh yeah — the initiative has a few built-in fail-safes in case workers want to fight for better laws:

• It bans cities in California from passing any new laws for gig workers.

• It prevents laws that would recognize worker organizations.

• It prevents workers from filing class actions.

• And it builds in an impossibly high requirement of a 7/8ths vote from the California Legislature to change any component of the law.

In other words: the laws they want to pass would permanently lock in a vast underpayment of time and mileage, and make it effectively impossible to pass new laws for gig workers at the local or state level...ever.

Why gig workers are pressing REJECT — and how you can help

If gig companies wanted to “Protect App-Based Drivers,” they’d be protecting their drivers — by paying them what they’re worth.

But while they pour millions of dollars into their campaign, Instacart is paying workers an average of just $7.66/hour after expenses, and DoorDash has cut pay down to an astonishingly low $1.45/hour. Years of tip theft, subminimum wages, and black-box algorithms make it clear: these companies aren’t looking to protect anything but their own bottom line.

That’s why gig workers across California are coming together to cut through the misleading messaging.

Different people may have different opinions about the right approach to setting standards for the gig economy...but we can all agree it shouldn’t be up to the companies to decide on their own.

If you think workers should have a say, pledge to vote NO & reject the gig company-backed ballot initiative this November. Sign your name at the link here to show your commitment & learn how you can help ensure workers, not CEOs, can fight for the changes we need to see.