| From | Harold Meyerson, The American Prospect <[email protected]> |
| Subject | Half a Win for Uber and Lyft Drivers |
| Date | September 2, 2025 8:44 PM |
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In California, the ride-hailing companies agree to unions—for a priceView this email in your browser [link removed]
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****SEPTEMBER 2, 2025****
**On the
**Prospect **website**
[link removed]
Unions Are Shrinking Nationwide—But Not in California [link removed]
Organizing in the Golden State is holding strong, showing what’s possible even as Trump 2.0 makes the fight harder.
**BY MARK KREIDLER** [link removed] [link removed]
[link removed]
There’s No More Business as Usual in Washington [link removed]
The country is rapidly devolving into rule by an unpopular despot. The Democrats who blind themselves to this are causing great harm.
**BY DAVID DAYEN** [link removed]
[link removed]
The Shifting Anti-Monopoly Landscape [link removed]
Fights over data centers and music venues show that resisting corporate power will have to go local in the age of Trump.
**BY RON KNOX** [link removed]
****Meyerson on TAP****
**Half a Win for Uber and Lyft Drivers**
**In California, the ride-hailing companies agree to unions—for a price**
Despite Donald Trump’s unprecedented war on unions, there remain ways, **as I noted yesterday,** [link removed] that Blue states—states with Democratic trifecta governments—can fight back on workers’ behalf. Last week, **California did just that** [link removed],, as the Democratic-dominated state government helped craft a deal that would permit Uber and Lyft drivers to form unions and bargain collectively with those companies. As had not been the case before, Uber and Lyft signed on to the deal.
This was the second such effort on the part of the state’s government. In 2019, the legislature passed and Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 5, which declared Uber and Lyft drivers to be what they’d always appeared to be: employees of those companies, not independent contractors, and therefore covered by statues like the state’s minimum wage law and eligible to unionize if they so desired.
But shortly after Newsom signed the bill, Uber and Lyft poured millions of dollars into a ballot measure exempting them from the new law and permitting them to keep treating their drivers as independent contractors. Claiming that their ballot measure, Proposition 22 on the November 2020 ballot, would actually increase drivers’ incomes, and throwing more than $100 million behind that spurious claim, the companies prevailed, as the measure won the support of 59 percent of an understandably confused electorate.
California courts upheld most of Proposition 22’s restrictions but left intact just enough workers’ rights so that there remained, at least in theory, a way that drivers might still be legally able go union. It required threading a needle in which they remained independent contractors, thereby limiting what their union could do. Even so, there was no reason why Uber and Lyft would agree to that.
Last week, however, talks between the companies, the state’s largest union (SEIU), and members of the legislature and the governor’s office produced a deal. Both the companies and the union agreed to the terms of a bill that would keep the drivers classified as independent contractors (and therefore not under the jurisdiction of the soon-to-be Trumpified and hence, anti-union National Labor Relations Board) but would recognize their right to bargain collectively with those two companies. At a time when Trump’s unilateral abrogation of contracts with federal workers has already reduced the number of union members in the United States by roughly half a million, this bill could potentially bolster union ranks by a similar number.
There were two reasons for Uber’s and Lyft’s about-face. The first was a pledge from Newsom and legislative leaders to enact a separate bill being pushed by the two companies alongside the one granting drivers collective bargaining rights. That bill will effectively repeal the requirement that the companies cover each of their drivers with a million-dollar insurance policy (less any amount that the drivers take out on themselves); instead, it reduces that requirement to just $60,000 per driver—a mammoth savings for the two companies.
This kind of deal is not without precedent in American labor relations. The Las Vegas hotel and casino local union, whose organizing chops are legendary, didn’t manage to unionize every hotel on the Vegas “Strip” solely through those chops, persuasive though they were. At a time when Steve Wynn was building the first generation of truly mega-hotels on the Strip in the 1990s, the Vegas local’s national union (HERE) agreed to line up the labor movement to join the hotels in lobbying for changes to tax codes that would enable very high rollers from abroad (in those days, Saudi oil sheiks, among others) to keep more of their winnings. Wynn and his fellow owners knew that a sizable share of their income came from these foreign gamblers, and sought that change to the tax laws to ensure the high rollers would keep coming, and spending, and losing.
[link removed]
No union has more effectively mobilized rank-and-file workers in unionization campaigns that the Vegas local (Culinary Local 226), but their lobbying effort on the hotels’ behalf convinced a critical number of Democrats to vote for the tax law change. That effort helped persuade Wynn not to oppose the local’s organizing at his hotels, which soon came to dominate the Strip and set a norm for labor relations there (which the local’s massive mobilizations of members have compelled the hotels to honor in the years since).
The second reason for the two companies’ reversal is the limitations that the bill granting the drivers collective bargaining rights imposes on those drivers. As they will still be classified as independent contractors, they would likely run afoul of antitrust laws that forbid collective action from such contractors.
Accordingly, the bill does not explicitly grant drivers the right to strike—which, of course, is what ultimately underlies all worker power. They do, however, gain the right to bargain—minus an explicit right to strike, a kind of halfway house to full worker rights, but a considerable gain over no rights at all. While some unions have been cool to this form of semi-empowerment, SEIU has campaigned for it not just in California, but also in Massachusetts, where they backed a successful ballot measure last year that established a similar path to unionization for the drivers there. Both laws require a percentage of drivers—10 percent in California, 25 percent in Massachusetts—to apply to a (presumably friendly) state agency for union recognition. Other states with trifecta Democratic control of government might follow this course as well.
In a sense, the bill is part of an emerging blue-state response to the neutering of federal labor law, which has been well underway since Trump regained the presidency. As the National Labor Relations Act granted collective bargaining rights only to most kinds of private-sector workers, Democratic-controlled states have often granted those rights to groups of workers left out of the NLRA: public employees (in the 1960s and ’70s), farm workers (in California in the ’70s) and domestic workers (who won wage and hour standards in a number of blue states during the past decade). Independent contractors such as the Uber and Lyft drivers clearly fall outside the NLRA’s jurisdiction, too; the obstacles to their unionizing have been antitrust laws and the kinds of election campaigns that Uber and Lyft have waged against that eventuality. The two California bills—which are both scheduled to come up for a vote in the next two weeks—presumably overcome both those obstacles: the one SEIU promoted by charting a path for independent contractor collective bargaining minus the leverage of a strike threat; the one Uber and Lyft sought by offsetting their increased labor costs through a massive reduction in what they have to set aside for insurance. Not a deal made in heaven, but a deal nonetheless.
**~ HAROLD MEYERSON**
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The American Prospect, Inc., 1225 I Street NW, Suite 600, Washington, DC xxxxxx, United States
[link removed]
****SEPTEMBER 2, 2025****
**On the
**Prospect **website**
[link removed]
Unions Are Shrinking Nationwide—But Not in California [link removed]
Organizing in the Golden State is holding strong, showing what’s possible even as Trump 2.0 makes the fight harder.
**BY MARK KREIDLER** [link removed] [link removed]
[link removed]
There’s No More Business as Usual in Washington [link removed]
The country is rapidly devolving into rule by an unpopular despot. The Democrats who blind themselves to this are causing great harm.
**BY DAVID DAYEN** [link removed]
[link removed]
The Shifting Anti-Monopoly Landscape [link removed]
Fights over data centers and music venues show that resisting corporate power will have to go local in the age of Trump.
**BY RON KNOX** [link removed]
****Meyerson on TAP****
**Half a Win for Uber and Lyft Drivers**
**In California, the ride-hailing companies agree to unions—for a price**
Despite Donald Trump’s unprecedented war on unions, there remain ways, **as I noted yesterday,** [link removed] that Blue states—states with Democratic trifecta governments—can fight back on workers’ behalf. Last week, **California did just that** [link removed],, as the Democratic-dominated state government helped craft a deal that would permit Uber and Lyft drivers to form unions and bargain collectively with those companies. As had not been the case before, Uber and Lyft signed on to the deal.
This was the second such effort on the part of the state’s government. In 2019, the legislature passed and Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 5, which declared Uber and Lyft drivers to be what they’d always appeared to be: employees of those companies, not independent contractors, and therefore covered by statues like the state’s minimum wage law and eligible to unionize if they so desired.
But shortly after Newsom signed the bill, Uber and Lyft poured millions of dollars into a ballot measure exempting them from the new law and permitting them to keep treating their drivers as independent contractors. Claiming that their ballot measure, Proposition 22 on the November 2020 ballot, would actually increase drivers’ incomes, and throwing more than $100 million behind that spurious claim, the companies prevailed, as the measure won the support of 59 percent of an understandably confused electorate.
California courts upheld most of Proposition 22’s restrictions but left intact just enough workers’ rights so that there remained, at least in theory, a way that drivers might still be legally able go union. It required threading a needle in which they remained independent contractors, thereby limiting what their union could do. Even so, there was no reason why Uber and Lyft would agree to that.
Last week, however, talks between the companies, the state’s largest union (SEIU), and members of the legislature and the governor’s office produced a deal. Both the companies and the union agreed to the terms of a bill that would keep the drivers classified as independent contractors (and therefore not under the jurisdiction of the soon-to-be Trumpified and hence, anti-union National Labor Relations Board) but would recognize their right to bargain collectively with those two companies. At a time when Trump’s unilateral abrogation of contracts with federal workers has already reduced the number of union members in the United States by roughly half a million, this bill could potentially bolster union ranks by a similar number.
There were two reasons for Uber’s and Lyft’s about-face. The first was a pledge from Newsom and legislative leaders to enact a separate bill being pushed by the two companies alongside the one granting drivers collective bargaining rights. That bill will effectively repeal the requirement that the companies cover each of their drivers with a million-dollar insurance policy (less any amount that the drivers take out on themselves); instead, it reduces that requirement to just $60,000 per driver—a mammoth savings for the two companies.
This kind of deal is not without precedent in American labor relations. The Las Vegas hotel and casino local union, whose organizing chops are legendary, didn’t manage to unionize every hotel on the Vegas “Strip” solely through those chops, persuasive though they were. At a time when Steve Wynn was building the first generation of truly mega-hotels on the Strip in the 1990s, the Vegas local’s national union (HERE) agreed to line up the labor movement to join the hotels in lobbying for changes to tax codes that would enable very high rollers from abroad (in those days, Saudi oil sheiks, among others) to keep more of their winnings. Wynn and his fellow owners knew that a sizable share of their income came from these foreign gamblers, and sought that change to the tax laws to ensure the high rollers would keep coming, and spending, and losing.
[link removed]
No union has more effectively mobilized rank-and-file workers in unionization campaigns that the Vegas local (Culinary Local 226), but their lobbying effort on the hotels’ behalf convinced a critical number of Democrats to vote for the tax law change. That effort helped persuade Wynn not to oppose the local’s organizing at his hotels, which soon came to dominate the Strip and set a norm for labor relations there (which the local’s massive mobilizations of members have compelled the hotels to honor in the years since).
The second reason for the two companies’ reversal is the limitations that the bill granting the drivers collective bargaining rights imposes on those drivers. As they will still be classified as independent contractors, they would likely run afoul of antitrust laws that forbid collective action from such contractors.
Accordingly, the bill does not explicitly grant drivers the right to strike—which, of course, is what ultimately underlies all worker power. They do, however, gain the right to bargain—minus an explicit right to strike, a kind of halfway house to full worker rights, but a considerable gain over no rights at all. While some unions have been cool to this form of semi-empowerment, SEIU has campaigned for it not just in California, but also in Massachusetts, where they backed a successful ballot measure last year that established a similar path to unionization for the drivers there. Both laws require a percentage of drivers—10 percent in California, 25 percent in Massachusetts—to apply to a (presumably friendly) state agency for union recognition. Other states with trifecta Democratic control of government might follow this course as well.
In a sense, the bill is part of an emerging blue-state response to the neutering of federal labor law, which has been well underway since Trump regained the presidency. As the National Labor Relations Act granted collective bargaining rights only to most kinds of private-sector workers, Democratic-controlled states have often granted those rights to groups of workers left out of the NLRA: public employees (in the 1960s and ’70s), farm workers (in California in the ’70s) and domestic workers (who won wage and hour standards in a number of blue states during the past decade). Independent contractors such as the Uber and Lyft drivers clearly fall outside the NLRA’s jurisdiction, too; the obstacles to their unionizing have been antitrust laws and the kinds of election campaigns that Uber and Lyft have waged against that eventuality. The two California bills—which are both scheduled to come up for a vote in the next two weeks—presumably overcome both those obstacles: the one SEIU promoted by charting a path for independent contractor collective bargaining minus the leverage of a strike threat; the one Uber and Lyft sought by offsetting their increased labor costs through a massive reduction in what they have to set aside for insurance. Not a deal made in heaven, but a deal nonetheless.
**~ HAROLD MEYERSON**
Follow Harold Meyerson on Twitter [link removed]
[link removed]
To receive this newsletter directly in your inbox, click here to subscribe [link removed]
**Click to Share This Newsletter**
[link removed]
[link removed]
[link removed]
[link removed]
[link removed]
The American Prospect, Inc., 1225 I Street NW, Suite 600, Washington, DC xxxxxx, United States
Copyright (c) 2025 The American Prospect. All rights reserved.
To manage your newsletter preferences, use our preference management page [link removed].
To unsubscribe from all American Prospect emails, including newsletters, follow this link to unsubscribe [link removed].
Sent to: [email protected]
Unsubscribe [link removed]
The American Prospect, Inc., 1225 I Street NW, Suite 600, Washington, DC xxxxxx, United States
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