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California reached a union deal with tech giants

66 points by markerz

by w10-1

1 subcomments

Article could use a good summary.
Title is misleading: no company has made any deal with any union. This is legislation to reduce insurance coverage in exchange for limited rights to unionize.
This is per-sector negotiation, affecting all rideshare companies, with qualified unions (that seem to only include SEIU) over wages, leaves, dismissals, and health insurance but not fares, that reduces uninsured insurance coverage from $1M to 300K (thus shifting the burden to drivers and passsengers).
Uber sought the deal after recent court rulings showed prop 22 (costing $100M's) wasn't the complete bar they'd hoped against the unions. SEIU may have gotten the deal in exchange for supporting prop 50 (redistricting to counter Texas). Governor Newsom is eager to play middleman-advocate for both business and labor.

by korse

3 subcomments

The tech giants only capitulated because they think that there is a reasonable chance physical drivers will be unnecessary in the near future, thus making all of this a moot point.
This wouldn't have happened before Waymo's demonstrable successes.

by canada_dry

0 subcomment

Guessing the stats will show lower than $1M typical claims for rideshare accidents.
But... I wouldn't want to be an outlier i.e. serious injuries. That would require suing the driver that has few/no assets.
Uber/Lyft sure as hell ain't going to let you sue them for a dime.

by JumpCrisscross

1 subcomments

“California lawmakers announced the agreement in late August, paving a path for ride-hailing drivers to unionize as labor wanted, in exchange for the state drastically reducing expensive insurance coverage mandates protested by the companies.”
What did the insurance cover? (Also, were AV insurance standards also reduced for Uber and Lyft?)

by jameslk

1 subcomments

by thisisnotauser

0 subcomment

by selinkocalar

2 subcomments

Labor agreements in tech are soooo difficult to monitor. How do you collectively bargain around stock options, or remote work policies, or the pace of AI automation? The traditional labor playbook doesn't really apply here.

by guywithahat

4 subcomments

Lets not forget the hometown of the UAW was Flint, MI. Detroit used to be the richest city in the US by a very significant margin; now most car factories aren't even in Michigan. People may claim otherwise but good employees don't want to work for unions because it limits career growth and innovation, while companies don't want to deal with an adversarial unit within the company. Any private sector unionization is bad, even if this is just going after rideshare drivers now.