Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart and Postmates spent more than $ 200 million campaigning for Proposition 22, the most expensive electoral measure in California history, successfully convincing voters that they could not adequately pay and protect their workers if they were obliged to classify them as full-time employees – at least, not without reducing the service or substantially increasing the price you would pay.
But now the dust has settled, every gig economy company who supported Prop 22 raised those prices anyway. Instacart was the last to join the bait today, according to the San Francisco ChronicleCarolyn Said’s, who previously told us in January exactly how much some of these companies are charging Californians for worker benefits: $ 1- $ 2 per meal with Uber, $ 1.50 with Grubhub, up to $ 1.50 per trip with Lyft and an additional raise 3% per order with Instacart (for a total of 8 percent, although it does not yet apply to the company’s “Express” subscription plan). Postmates is charging up to $ 2.50 extra per order, our sister site Eater reported.
Instacart threatened to raise prices if they lost Prop 22.
Now that they have won, they are creating them anyway.
Gig corporations are not ashamed.
We cannot let them spread this horrible law to other states. pic.twitter.com/FAF9LJ91yA
– Gig Workers Rising (@GigWorkersRise) February 19, 2021
Instead of paying their workers, the gig companies injected $ 200 million to approve proposal 22, claiming that the legal protections for workers would force them to increase costs and pass them on to customers. Well, guess what? They did it anyway. It is honestly disgusting at this point. https://t.co/tMH2jBjWPE
– California Labor Federation (@CaliforniaLabor) December 14, 2020
Just to be clear, these companies explicitly pressured voters to support Proposition 22 to avoid higher prices. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said publicly that prices would increase by 20 to 40 percent in major California cities, such as San Francisco and Los Angeles, and even twice as much in smaller cities. In the official California Voter Guide, which accompanied ballots, project advocates warned that there would be “significantly higher consumer prices” if Proposal 22 was not approved.
Companies like Uber and Lyft have succeeded in part because of these scary tactics and by calling on voters to help workers get more protections and higher wages in this way, rather than potentially jeopardizing their jobs. (It probably didn’t hinder the fact that app companies bombard drivers and passengers with messages using their own apps, which triggered a lawsuit by drivers who claimed Uber was intimidating them.)
But there is still an open question as to whether Prop 22 is really helping workers, regardless of how much more we are paying to make it happen. The Guardian reported yesterday that some drivers claim that pay has fallen and that employment has become less reliable.
In the UK, Uber has just lost a five-year legal battle today over a similar problem, which will give workers a guaranteed minimum wage, paid holidays and other protections (although they are not necessarily “employees”). But here in the United States, where Prop 22 was successful, it opened the door for other parts of the country to potentially replace many regular employees with contractors. Bloomberg has a good article for you to read about what that future will look like, for better or for worse.