Column: Uber, Lyft’s attempt to gut labor law for their own benefit hits a roadblock in Massachusetts

Following their profitable effort to gull California voters into endorsing their technique of exploiting their drivers and discipline staff, Uber, Lyft and different gig corporations expanded their marketing campaign to intestine labor protections into different states.

That included Massachusetts, the place the businesses managed to get two measures resembling California’s Proposition 22 licensed for the state poll. On Tuesday, the state’s Supreme Judicial Courtroom threw them out.

The excessive court docket’s reasoning was much like that of Choose Frank Roesch of Alameda County Superior Courtroom, who dominated Proposition 22 unconstitutional in August: The Massachusetts initiatives had been overly grasping, and designed to confuse voters about their actual objective.

Certainly, the Massachusetts justices wrote, they themselves discovered untangling the obscure language of the proposed poll measures to be “no easy process.”

The gig corporations say they’ll now attempt to persuade the state Legislature to enact the provisions they tried to sneak previous the voters.

“We hope the Legislature will stand with the 80% of drivers who need flexibility and to stay impartial contractors whereas gaining access to new advantages,” Conor Yunits, a spokesperson for Flexibility & Advantages for Massachusetts Drivers, the marketing campaign group for the gig corporations, informed me by e-mail. That’s not a promising possibility, as we’ll clarify.

Politicians in different states, equivalent to New York, are exhibiting much less willingness to bow all the way down to the businesses’ assertions that their enterprise fashions are good for shoppers and staff alike.

Fares are rising in some cities, partly as a result of as public corporations, somewhat than venture-funded startups, Uber and Lyft are below higher strain to start out exhibiting income. (Neither firm has ever turned a dime of revenue.) Organized labor can be responding extra aggressively to the risk the businesses pose to the well-being of their staff.

Right here’s the background to the gig corporations’ poll campaigns.

By spending a stupefying $205 million — the most important sum spent on a poll initiative in American historical past — the gig corporations managed to influence California voters in 2020 that Proposition 22 could be a boon for his or her drivers and supply staffers.

The measure designated these staff as impartial contractors, overturning rulings by state regulators and judges that they had been staff entitled to all the advantages of employment. These embrace additional time pay, staff compensation and unemployment advantages, the peace of mind of a residing wage and the precise to unionize.

As a substitute, the businesses had been in a position to preserve a enterprise mannequin that entails sticking the employees with bills that usually are paid by employers, equivalent to gasoline, insurance coverage and maintenance of their autos.

The businesses maintained of their marketing campaign that the employees obtained one thing extra beneficial in return — “flexibility” to set their very own work schedules. Because it occurs, quickly after Proposition 22 handed, Uber began withdrawing among the flexibility choices it had granted drivers to win their assist in the course of the initiative marketing campaign, and even took steps that drivers stated decreased their revenue.

Then got here Roesch’s ruling. He noticed that the state Structure requires poll initiatives to be restricted to a single “topic.”

The measure’s personal textual content recognized its topic, in Roesch’s phrases, to be “defending the chance for Californians to drive their automobiles on an impartial contractor foundation, to supply the drivers with sure minimal welfare requirements, and to set minimal client safety and security requirements.”

The initiative, nevertheless, contains language that “obliquely and not directly” prevents drivers and supply staff from unionizing, which is “not a acknowledged objective of the laws,” Roesch discovered. As a substitute, “it seems solely to guard the financial pursuits of the community corporations in having a divided, ununionized workforce.”

Roesch additionally discovered that the measure infringes on the Legislature’s proper, granted by the state Structure, to set staff’ compensation guidelines, equivalent to figuring out which staff are eligible.

“The proposition was grasping, it tried to cement the businesses’ enterprise mannequin and to remove all rights of staff on this sector,” Veena Dubal, a professor at UC Hastings Faculty of the Legislation and a longtime critic of the gig corporations, informed me after Roesch dominated. “We’ve by no means seen an initiative attempt to do what this initiative tried to do.”

The businesses are interesting Roesch’s ruling, however Proposition 22 stays in impact pending motion by the appeals court docket.

This brings us again to Tuesday’s motion by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Courtroom, which utilized to certifications by state Atty. Gen. Maura Healey of two virtually an identical poll measures modeled on Proposition 22.

The unanimous determination written by Justice Scott Kafker cited a Massachusetts rule much like California’s, {that a} poll measure will need to have just one topic. The court docket discovered that the proposed initiatives had two unrelated objectives, “one in all which is buried in obscure language on the finish.”

The declared objective, Kafker noticed, was to cement in place the designation of gig drivers as impartial contractors. The hid objective, nevertheless, was to immunize the businesses from lawsuits by individuals who had been injured by drivers — say by assaults or in visitors accidents.

Usually, the using firm could be responsible for the actions of its staff whereas on the job; the proposals would totally take away that legal responsibility by stating that the drivers had been appearing on their very own.

Proposals “that bury separate coverage choices in obscure language heighten issues that voters shall be confused, misled, and disadvantaged of a significant selection,” Kafker wrote. Voters “might not even bear in mind” of what they’re voting on. That was precisely what occurred right here, he wrote.

As for the businesses’ efforts to acquire a legislative answer, indications are that the Democratic-controlled state Legislature is popping extra hostile to the concept.

When the businesses tried to achieve admission to the state Democratic conference earlier this month, they encountered sturdy opposition from tons of of delegates, together with Healey, a candidate for governor; and all of the candidates looking for nominations for lieutenant governor, lawyer common and state auditor. The celebration already had voted to oppose the poll initiatives.

In her function as lawyer common, furthermore, Healey has sued Uber and Lyft, charging that by misclassifying their drivers as impartial contractors, they’re violating Massachusetts wage and hour legal guidelines.

The businesses’ success with Proposition 22 is starting to seem like a Pyrrhic victory: It opened the eyes of officers outdoors California to what actually is at stake within the corporations’ efforts to intestine employment legislation for their very own curiosity. That may’t be the end result they had been hoping for.