California’s vote to classify Uber and Lyft drivers as contractors has emboldened other employers to eliminate salaried positions—and has become a cornerstone of bigger plans to “Uberize” the U.S. workforce.
Neal Kwatra, MPS Founder, weighed in. To read the full article, click here.
The companies will still struggle to pass laws that resemble Prop 22 in New York and other blue states without union support. “You can’t just copy-and-paste what happened in California,” says Neal Kwatra, a political consultant in New York who’s worked for unions, Uber, and Governor Andrew Cuomo. Their California win gives the companies momentum, but the lack of a ballot-referendum option in states such as New York makes it tougher to turn mountains of cash into a law quite so directly. In December, New York’s Supreme Court upheld rulings by the state’s unemployment insurance appeals board that declared a group of Uber drivers to be employees entitled to full jobless benefits. To get what they want through the legislature, Kwatra says, the companies will need to build a coalition that Democrats feel comfortable embracing.
