Uber, Lyft may owe California employees billions of dollars

From LevagsCalmness

This story was originally published by CalmattersS Register about their ballots.

Uber and Lyft drivers today gathered in three city halls in California today, paying attention to a long -standing lawsuit against companies over thousands of claims to theft of salaries that can cost billions of dollars.

The trial filed jointly by the Ministry of Justice of the State, the cities in San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego and drivers who had private lawyers are looking for a pay and damage to the Uber and Lyft drivers who have worked for the companies from 2016 to 2020 Applications as independent contractors, not employees. Public agencies are already in negotiations on mediation and settlement with companies, court documents show.

The trial claims that Uber and Lyft drivers were covered by Bill 5 of the Assembly, a law that came into force in January 2020, which would require the concerts of concerts to classify their workers as employees. According to this law, which should have been back, drivers would be entitled to a minimum wage, resting and rest, unemployment benefits and others.

Gig Companies have never adhered to AB 5. Instead, they have spent more than $ 200 million to make a 22 ballot offer, promising a higher pay and better benefits for concert workers. It passed in November 2020 with 58% of the vote, which allowed companies to continue to classify their drivers and couriers, who move as independent contractors with some advantages, but not full employment rights.

The lawsuit is an effort to hold Uber and Lyft responsible for the precipice. 22 ERA. RideShare Drivers UNITED, a group of concert workers, organizes 5,000 drivers to file individual claims for salaries at the Labor Committee in 2020. This led to the trial that consolidated these claims with these claims by the city lawyers of San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego and with other plaintiffs who have filed similar claims in accordance with The Law on General LawyersS

RideShare Drivers UNITED estimates that 5,000 drivers are due at least $ 1.3 billion based on unpaid waiting and reimbursement time rather than meet the basic time standards for minimum wage and damage. The group also estimates that about 250,000 drivers can be eligible during the period covered by the case and, if so, companies can owe tens of billions of dollars.

Uber and Lyft would not comment on the settlement negotiations, nor the driver’s group’s estimates for what they owe to the drivers. Uber spokesman Zahid Arab said that California’s voters “spoke” and that “we are looking forward to putting these years on the elderly behind us.”

It is not clear how many drivers who have filed the claims still work for Uber and Lyft; There is a high turnover in the work of the concert. But Nicole Moore, president of RideShare United drivers, said he was talking regularly with drivers who were driving in the last decade.

“What is devastating is to hear where they are in your life because of these policies,” Moore said. “No one has held (companies) responsible. This is the state of the state to do so.”

Moore added that prop. 22 has largely failed to improve the salaries and conditions of drivers and that it hopes every agreement will include new advantages that its group has supported. These include a tariff that pays drivers at least $ 1.75 per mile and 60 cents per minute, similar to what the New York drivers have, plus the creation of a system that requires simply a cause for “deactivation” or kicked off the applications.

“The voters were presented with support 22 as a good policy for drivers and passengers,” Moore said. “It was the biggest fraud.” One example she quoted: Prop. 22 promised to pay the workers at concerts 120% of the minimum wage, but this is based on “active” time and does not include time that they spend in anticipation of ride or delivery.

The companies said the law increased the wage of workers at an average of $ 34.46 a “active hour” in California, but research last year by W. Berkeley Berkeley, who took into account the costs of drivers throughout their shift, found that the average dollars were $ 13.09, and for the employees.

After the Supreme Court in California supported support 22 Last year, Calfatters wrote about how the law, supported by the industry, influenced the concerts of the concerts and examined hundreds of their sustainable complaints to the state about salaries, benefits and working conditions. The biggest difference from the previous measure: now There is no state agency responsible for the complaints of the concertsBecause their independent status as a contractor means that the Labor Commissioner has no jurisdiction.

The rallies organized by RideShare United drivers today – the biggest of which was in front of the Los Angeles City Hall, where drivers chanted “We want fair salaries and want them now” – go out in front of the planned Uber Mediation session on Monday. The next lift session is scheduled for April 8.

The San Francisco City Prosecutor’s Office said only mediation was confidential. The other claimants in the case – Los Angeles and San Diego’s city lawyers, the State Commissioner for Labor and the Ministry of Justice – did not respond to requests for comment.

If an agreement is not reached and the case goes into a trial, the state expects to begin in 2026, as per Trial On the website of the Labor Commissioner.

Vena Dubal, a law professor at UC Irvine, who studies the effects of technology on workers, said the union between the state and the cities was remarkable because in her research she encountered government officials who were “frightened” to take over Uber and other concert companies. “I imagine that these are very difficult negotiations (between) a government agency involved in resources against the very well restored Uber team,” she said.

Dubal also said that the Labor Commissioner and other civil servants are probably weighing the possibility of a long legal battle with Uber and Lyft against agreeing to an agreement.

“The reality is that these are immigrant workers who need money in their pockets earlier than later,” Dubal said.

This article was Originally Published on CalMatters and was reissued under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Noderivatives License.