Sore Losers Ready Two 2020 Ballot Measures for California

This has been a busy--perhaps historic--year for the legislature as it has moved to address issues of concern to Californians.

Two of those decisions are now headed to the 2020 ballot, as those who lost in the Statehouse seek to overturn AB 5, a bill aimed at redefining the role of gig economy workers, and a pair of bills (SB 276 and SB 714) regulating medical exemptions for school age vaccinations.

AB 5 codifies the California Supreme Court's Dynamex ruling, requiring many workers classified as independent contractors to be reclassified as employees, making them eligible for benefit, wage, and organizing guarantees.

While the tech industry continues to participate in negotiations with Gov. Newsom hoping for a third way, they’re not limiting their options. 

The side deal  being offered would offer workers some wage and bargaining guarantees while keeping them independent contractors.

Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash have put aside $90 million toward a ballot fight if they can't persuade lawmakers. They say the potential ballot language would include minimum pay standards included in the company's final offer to state lawmakers. 

Now Uber says it won't reclassify its drivers as employees in 2020 even if the bill is signed into law, thus creating an opening for a court battle.

Chief Legal Officer Tony West claims Uber will simply be following the law. "If challenged in court, it will make the case that it is a broader technology platform and the drivers are doing work outside the company's usual course of business.”

The Trump administration may try to ride to the rescue here, as agencies tasked with enforcing federal labor and minimum wage laws have said that Uber and other app-based drivers are "independent contractors" and not subject to the legal protections covering employees.

One non-tech industry expecting an impact from AB 5 --newspapers-- got a last minute reprieve, delaying AB 5 implementation by one year. Under definitions included in the legislation, many smaller papers would likely end home delivery. Freelancers would face a 35 article limit per year to continue as independent contractors.

Via the New York Times California Today Newsletter:

• That strikes at the heart of how many small, local newspapers operate, with residents, or local officials writing weekly columns about everything from school sports to city politics

• Troy Niday, the chief operations officer of The Santa Rosa Press Democrat, which distributes not just its own paper but national publications like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, estimated the law could accelerate the end of print delivery by five to seven years. “And it will particularly hit hard small newspapers that are already news deserts,” he said…

• ...“Keep in mind that the independent contractor model used to deliver newspapers to homes has been in place since the birth of the nation,” said Jim Ewert, the general counsel of the California News Publishers Association. “The model is not part of the gig economy. It’s not Uber and Lyft. It’s certainly not some recent invention by newspapers to circumvent labor laws in California.”

Alas, the normalization of capitalist mythology includes even those who rely upon crafting words designed to inform the populace.

As someone who has freelanced a lot over the years, I can say with some authority that getting paid is the hardest part of the craft. I know, having edited a commercial weekly, that most --if not all-- content from local officials is unpaid. 

The newspaper “boy” delivering papers disappeared decades ago, even before print circulation began to fall. The culprit --conveniently forgotten-- was largely the initial round of consolidation in the industry. Corporate bean counters eliminated largely unionized delivery driver positions and shifted to an automobile-based system, wherein low wage drivers were required to travel long distances to obtain papers. 

To be fair, another factor was shifting age demographics. There simply weren’t as many teenagers (seeking employment) as there used to be during the baby boom years.

Lost in all this back and forth about “employees” versus “contractors” is the fundamental truth is the fact that workers have lost their role in how companies are perceived as creating wealth. 

Dicing and slicing assets, running up debt, and buying back stock are modern methods for getting rich; all of which depend on devaluing labor for what gets defined as success.

It’s no wonder corporate shills are freaking out over the leftward evolution of the Democratic party. Nobody likes to think about “losing stuff,” even if they got it by nefarious means.

https://twitter.com/ewarren/status/1172153235148279808?s=20

https://twitter.com/BernieSanders/status/1172146594680057856?s=20

Employees have some protections. Contractors don’t. And it’s likely many in neither group consider their income to be a “good living.” The least we can do is right this wrong.

Teachers, who we normally think of as getting paid more than delivery persons can barely afford to put a roof over their heads.

From an August post at CBSLA:

• An analysis from Zillow found that entry-level teachers in the Los Angeles metropolitan area are spending more than 85 percent of their income on the typical rent, compared with 52 percent for mid-level teachers and just short of 40 percent for the highest-paid teachers…

• It’s a similar picture across the country. The analysis found that entry-level teachers in 49 of the 50 largest U.S. cities are spend nearly 50 percent of their income on rent. In high-income areas like San Francisco or San Jose, teachers just starting out cannot even afford the median payment on a typical home or rental.

The crappy economics of the news business these days isn’t the fault of the editors who are writing all the editorials denouncing AB 5, but instead of looking down on the people being exploited and saying “it’s the best we can do,” maybe they need to be looking up.

If people can’t make enough to live on --and I can go on for days about the evidence supporting the degradation of wages for most folks -- why shouldn’t they speak up?

***

Finally a short note about anti-vaxxers.

Anti-vaccination activists want to ask California voters to overturn two new laws that restrict medical exemptions for vaccinations. They filed requests with Attorney General Xavier Becerra yesterday to begin gathering the 623,212 signatures required to place two referenda on the statewide ballot in November 2020.

They have 90 days to collect the required signatures from registered voters. And I suspect they won’t get enough signatures. But who knows? Maybe they can win voters over by comparing AB 276 and SB 714 to actions in Nazi Germany… or saying that requiring shots for kids who attend school is a big a tragedy as 9-11… both claims I saw yesterday on social media.

I do know they’ll lose at the ballot box and in the courts. Their strange non-alliance with Scientology and militia groups won’t win them any friends, either.

From Bloomberg Law:

• Sen. Richard Pan, who wrote the two new laws as well as a 2015 law (S.B. 277) that ended vaccine exemptions based on personal beliefs, said strong vaccination laws have broad public support, and the referenda will likely fail.

• “It is the right of any Californian to file a referendum against a law, however opponents failed in their referendum against SB 277, failed in recalling me in 2016, and failed in four lawsuits, which resulted in strong rulings by the Second and Third District courts of appeal upholding the constitutionality of SB 277,” he said in a statement.

What bothers me the most about this is the waste of time and resources sucked up by this sort of tin-foil hat crusade. 

Children are in “detention camps.” Trump’s “clean up” of California’s homeless --if he’s serious-- will involve more “camps,” even as funding is cut to support affordable housing. A doomsday clock is ticking on climate change. The concept of the Rule of Law is being eroded on a daily basis by a man who claims windmills cause cancer. And these folks are squealing about losing their “freedom.”

What a pile of crapola.

***

And now, a ray of hope. You know what to do. Don’t forget….

https://twitter.com/gelliottmorris/status/1171882826536488967?s=20

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Email me at DougPorter@WordsAndDeedsBlog.com