The ballot counting in the United States seemed to go on forever last week but one depressing election result was quickly known.
California voters supported Proposition 22, which exempts Uber, Lyft and other gig companies from new state labour laws that require them to treat their workers as employees eligible for benefits.
It’s a truly terrible outcome for gig workers in California and, quite possibly, everywhere else as well. This win will embolden Uber, Lyft and the like to push for concessions in other jurisdictions.
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has already said the company will make it a priority to “loudly advocate” for laws like Prop. 22 “across the U.S. and the world.”
These companies are brazenly trying to make the future of work into something that creates corporate profits for them by denying workers the basic rights that come with being treated as employees. We need politicians in Canada to step up and be equally bold in advocating for workers and the right to a decent job.
Right now, people who work for ride-hailing and food-delivery companies in this country are considered independent contractors, not employees as they should be. That’s largely because of outdated labour laws that never contemplated the possibility of a transportation company like Uber arguing that it’s really a technology company so drivers aren’t core to its business.
Court cases and union drives are starting to make positive inroads on the status quo. But it’s long past time that provincial governments took control by updating labour laws to ensure employees are treated as such with benefits, including minimum wage, unemployment insurance and paid sick days.
And they need to do it before these companies focus their attention and dollars on permanently enshrining their vision in our laws. They spent an astonishing $200 million U.S. to influence the vote and override the will of California lawmakers.
“Prop. 22 represents the future of work in an increasingly technologically driven economy,” a spokesperson for the campaign said.
If that were true, it would be a terrible thing. But it isn’t inevitable, particularly in Canada if the public demands better for workers and provincial governments strengthen labour laws.
These companies like to hide behind their apps, claiming they’re a new and special kind of business, but we should not be fooled. What they’re doing is exploiting loopholes to save money and that’s an old game. It’s something low-wage workers in areas from cleaning services and nail salons to construction and trucking have long faced.
The difference is how public these global ride-hailing and delivery firms have been in arguing that employees are a drain on profits. They’ve brought these employment loopholes, traditionally used in jobs that people don’t think much about, into the open.
The coronavirus pandemic has laid waste to our economy and exposed deep inequalities in our communities. It has shown how frayed our social safety net has become and how much is wrong with the labour market.
The use of poorly paid, part-time personal support workers and temp agency staff in long-term-care homes, for example, undermined the precautions that could have kept seniors in those homes safer and indeed alive. And on the front lines of essential services, from food production to grocery stores, too many people had no sickness benefits, making it difficult for them to stay home when ill and increasing the risks for everyone.
The pandemic has shown how low-paid, precarious work isn’t just bad for the people who hold down those jobs, but for society as a whole. By the same token, the conditions of work in the gig economy matter should matter to us all.
It can’t be left up a few companies who have landed on an exploitative business model to decide what the future of work looks like. That’s a government responsibility and governments need to take it seriously — before it’s too late.
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/2020/11/09/taking-advantage-of-workers-must-not-be-the-future-of-work.html
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