What exactly is sane about figuring out how to make 200,000 contractors full-time employees inside of a week? I don't think there's a company in the world that could pull that off.
If a company says, "hey, we're a marketplace" and a court says, "actually, you're not" then the company has to figure out how to adapt. There's change and an emotional toll to the drivers in that scenario whether they become employees or not.
> What exactly is sane about figuring out how to make 200,000 contractors full-time employees
There is no requirement for them to be made full-time employees, just employees, and even if the law was unclear before the Dynamex decision, they've had the requirement under that decision for almost 2.5 years. And they've known about it, because they've been actively lobbying to change it, lobbying for Dynamex to be legislatively reversed, lobbying for an exception when it was clear that instead of reversing it the legislature planned to codify it in AB5 and also lobbying against AB5, and finally funding a ballot referendum to repeal AB5. All of that says that they understood the rule, and how it applied to them, for quite a long time.
California Assembly Bill 5 was signed into law last September and was clearly a "Going to Happen" event for at least a year prior.
There's no surprise here. Uber had plenty of time to figure out how to deal with this. And they did: they aren't dummies, this was their plan. Their considered decision was that it was in the best interests of their shareholders to play brinksmanship games with their employees' livelihoods instead of make a good faith effort to comply with state law.
Rulebreaking is, after all, part of the corporate culture at Uber, and it always has been.
> California Assembly Bill 5 was signed into law last September and was clearly a "Going to Happen" event for at least a year prior.
And, on top of that, merely (as relevant to Uber and Lyft; it also added some exceptions that aren't relevant to them) codified the rule the California Supreme Court handed down in Dynamex on April 30, 2018; so the “one week” is off by about 121 weeks or so.
If Uber shareholders thought that they were walking away from all revenue in the state of California their shares would tank. We all know this is brinksmanship. I know it. You know it. They aren't leaving CA. The goal here is to get the "other side" to blink and adjust the rules so they can continue to operate. But at the end of the day Uber isn't abandoning the California ride share market to its competitors. Be real.
Uber is using their weight to get what they want, because they know we want them to continue offering service. This is actually quite a bit like having a raise negotiation at work. I don't see their goals as evil, either, simply at odds with the state.
Their shareholders likely suspect California will capitulate. Though it is hard to do research over whether their drivers actually want this, generally the information I see indicates they'd prefer to remain contractors. Yes, some of this is paid for by Uber. I imagine some of the content I read was also paid for by the opposition. But it seems like no matter how you cut it, the drivers generally want to remain contractors, and definitely do not want ~their livelihood~ an income source threatened either way in the midst of a pandemic.
It’s still a negotiation tactic. Would shareholders be happy if the entire business model changed? There are other freelancers that aren’t happy with the laws.
In the sentence to which I replied, the antecedent to "that" (in "That’s a perfectly logical thing to do") was not "negotiating" it was "leaving the state".
I genuinely can't follow your point. These goalposts are moving too fast, sorry.
If a company says, "hey, we're a marketplace" and a court says, "actually, you're not" then the company has to figure out how to adapt. There's change and an emotional toll to the drivers in that scenario whether they become employees or not.