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posted by janrinok on Wednesday January 01 2020, @03:21AM   Printer-friendly
from the goes-for-popcorn dept.

Uber sues California to block gig-worker law going into effect this week:

Ride-hailing service Uber filed a lawsuit Monday against the state of California, alleging a landmark gig-worker law set to go into effect is unconstitutional. The lawsuit seeks to block AB 5, which has the potential to upend gig economy companies such as Uber and Lyft.

The complaint, which also lists Postmates as a plaintiff, argues that the law unfairly targets workers and companies in the on-demand economy, treating them differently than traditional employees and threatening their flexibility.

In September, California became the first state to pass a law aimed at protecting gig worker rights, which forces Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Postmates and other gig economy companies reclassify their workers as employees. Using independent contractors allows the companies to shift many costs to the workers.

The lawsuit says the law arbitrarily exempts dozens of occupations, including direct salespeople, travel agents, grant writers, commercial fishermen and construction truck drivers, among others.

"There is no rhyme or reason to these nonsensical exemptions, and some are so ill-defined or entirely undefined that it is impossible to discern what they include or exclude," says the complaint (see below), which was filed in a Los Angeles federal court.

Postmates and Uber v State of California on Scribd


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 01 2020, @05:52AM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 01 2020, @05:52AM (#938139)

    The problem is the laws we have written created this mess.

    Want health insurance? Oh you need to be full time. Well just work people 35 a week and you do not have to offer anything.

    Whole classes of employees are basically pulled out of the law that protects others.

    The imbalances in law has created this 'part time gig' thing in the first place.

    But if we just add more laws we can fix it! Pinky-swear!

  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 01 2020, @02:56PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 01 2020, @02:56PM (#938215)

    What caused this is insufficient taxes on corporations and the wealthy. The main reason for the nickling and diming of employees is that the money they don't spend on the workers gets to go to the management and owners of the company. If there were a progressively higher tax rate on such people that went up to 90% at some point, you'd magically see that the companies don't go bankrupt when they pay their workers for the work they're doing.

    Adding more laws is what you're left with when the federal government refuses to tax the billionaires appropriately. It's slightly better than nothing, but it would be far more effective to start taxing their wealth up above the $10m mark and remove a bunch of the incentive to cheat the workers in the first place. There's no valid reason for anybody having more than $10m in personal assets. And the only reason for anybody to have more than that is that some businesses are just capital intensive, but that's businesses. A person has no reason to have more than that.

    • (Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Wednesday January 01 2020, @04:09PM (3 children)

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 01 2020, @04:09PM (#938245) Journal

      If there were a progressively higher tax rate on such people that went up to 90% at some point, you'd magically see that the companies (which have now moved to other countries) don't go bankrupt when they pay their workers (who now work in other countries) for the work they're doing.

      This has been tried before, genuinely tried before, and reversed because it was a terrible idea. Even the Nordic countries don't do it anymore.

      Further, what in the world are these governments doing that would justify a 90% income tax? They're clearly not protecting the rich person's assets since they're stealing it as fast as they can.

      • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 01 2020, @06:03PM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 01 2020, @06:03PM (#938302)

        When we tried it in the US it gave us the greatest economic expansion the country has ever seen and one of the largest economic expansions of all time. What do you think the tax rates were like during the '50s and '60s? Here's a hint, the top rate was that high.

        Secondly, I realize that you're retarded, but for god's sake, could you make it less obvious. The government isn't stealing anything, they're placing a disincentive to the ultrarich to protect against the ultrarich stealing from everybody else. Or do you honestly believe that a billionaire is several thousand times more efficient than regular workers?

        Lastly, just because you choose to remain ignorant on such matters, doesn't change reality. We've had tiered taxes with much higher rates during points when the economy was doing it's best. The tax rates kick in at various income thresholds and people could avoid hitting them by planning their taxes. You make it sound like the government is just stealing from random people because they can.

        • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 01 2020, @07:14PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 01 2020, @07:14PM (#938326)

          fuck you, you fucking authoritarian piece of shit. tax is theft.

        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 02 2020, @12:53AM

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday January 02 2020, @12:53AM (#938438) Journal

          When we tried it in the US

          The obvious rebuttal - tax loopholes. For example, the US government has made huge shifts in the tax rate of the highest income bracket without changing taxes (and income taxes) collected as a fraction of GDP (see second and third graphs from here [mises.org]).