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LINK The 21st-Century Road to Serfdom Runs Through Silicon Valley

"When California’s Proposition 22 passed late last year, its immediate dangers were already widely understood. The measure, which effectively allows companies like Uber and Lyft to create a new employment category that is neither employee nor independent contractor, seems certain to make gig-economy work even more precarious than it already is — the state’s rideshare workers being stripped of basic rights and benefits like overtime pay, sick leave, and eligibility for unemployment insurance (not to mention the ability to form a union). Their wages, meanwhile, are also destined to drop: one estimate from the UC Berkeley Labor Center suggesting that hourly pay for gig drivers may sink as low as $5.64 an hour, a sum more or less equivalent in real terms to the minimum wage when Harry Truman was president.

The circumstances surrounding the initiative itself were also pretty Orwellian, the companies including a proviso in the measure’s fine print that will make it practically impossible to undo — its repeal requiring no less than seven-eighths of all votes in the state legislature. Between this, a misleading ad campaign, and a marketing offensive upward of $200 million, it’s no exaggeration to say that multibillion dollar corporations are now just buying laws and rewriting the labor code to suit their own bottom lines."

WilliamCharles 8 Apr 8
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