Without getting into the merits of the whole are ride hail drivers employees thing, I do have close experience with AB5.
AB5 - union drafted, is an absolute unworkable travesty.
A key tell - for a "principled" law - they had to keep on adding so many carveouts and exceptions (and there are lots missed still).
I know folks - who are actively trying to do the right thing - tearing their hair out over AB5.
AB5 has really soured me on some of the labor rights stuff. AB5 is in no way a model solution - I hope other states can come up with more practical approaches - with some thought to the folks who just want a simple way to do the right thing without endless carveouts and classification arguments.
Under AB5, a truck driver delivering orange juice is treated differently than a truck driver delivering milk. AB5 is trash.
Either way, Article 11 of Prop 22 has a severability clause. If they take away the 7/8th supermajority clause, it shouldn't affect the rest of Prop 22.
A constitution that allows a 7/8ths supermajority clause is fertile ground for corrupt and insane laws like AB5. A party in Congress with a slight majority can pass a law that will be forever practically impossible to change. They effectively forced in a constitutional amendment.
This is a clear example of how the unions really control California.
Sorry to interrupt your soapbox, but the law passed with the 7/8 supermajority clause was Prop 22 - which was loudly and explicitly opposed by the unions "who control California" and who supported the original AB5 law that it superseded.
It’s worth mentioning that many props don’t allow the legislature to override them period, even with a unanimous vote. The 7/8ths rule, while unusual, is less extreme than not allowing any vote at all. It’s essentially an “oops we drafted the prop wrong and accidentally banned wages” get out of jail free card.
In addition to the other reply, the supermajority clause can only be added to ballot propositions not legislation from the legislative (california doesn't have a Congress).
And it's actually a good thing, without that clause it would be totally impossible for the legislative to amend or repeal the proposition.
> And it's actually a good thing, without that clause it would be totally impossible for the legislative to amend or repeal the proposition.
This boggles my mind about initiatives in California. In other states with popular initiatives, the People pass laws on the same footing as the Legislature; they just do so through the ballot box. The elected Legislature still has the authority to modify those same laws (though most states require a "cooling off" period of a year or two before a passed initiative can be modified, and even then a supermajority in the Legislature can still do it).
A popular initiative being sacrosanct and inviolable absent a second initiative seems wrong to me. Why does a populist law get to stand more firm than one passed by the elected representatives of the people?
> A popular initiative being sacrosanct and inviolable absent a second initiative seems wrong to me. Why does a populist law get to stand more firm than one passed by the elected representatives of the people?
65% of Floridian voters chose to restore voting rights to felons; the Florida legislature chose to add additional restrictions to that restoration that were not in the original proposition, effectively preventing the restoration that Floridians had chosen.
I think the whole initiative process is horrible. But.
Your answer is right there in the declaration of independence: "to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed". Rather than going through the legislative process, the idea is that some things should be decided by the people directly.
The original intent of ballot initiatives (propositions) was to try to nullify special interest power over the legislature. If you think AB5 was special-interest legislation (it very clearly was) this might be the exact intended use of the ballot initiative process. For the popular vote to nullify what the special interest-controlled legislature wanted. And it worked.
An entirely separate question is what kind of questions should be decided by direct democracy in the first place. I think California goes too far in this regard, but I don't think the right answer is "none". Regardless of one's political beliefs, I think something on the scale of Brexit was put to the electorate in a direct vote, and probably with reason.
The problem is that California very frequently gets into situations where there's a legislative supermajority on the opposite side of the issue from the general public. Just this cycle, AB5 passed the Assembly with 76%, and ACA 5 (the subject of Prop 16) passed with 81%. If the legislature were allowed to repeal ballot propositions, they'd do it in a heartbeat, and the will of the voters would not end up being expressed.
Direct democracy = popular vote, representative democracy = elected representatives.
China, Russia, USA, France and Switzerland are all republics: two are dictatorships, two are representative democracies, and one is a direct democracy. Canada, UK, Japan and Belgium are all constitutional monarchies, and all of them are considered democratic. Saudi Arabia and Qatar are monarchies, but certainly not democratic.
Democracy is a scale, probably better used as an adjective: the more democratic, the more power is wielded by the people.
It's not a terrible idea for a law by referendum to require a higher legislative bar for repeal, as other replies have pointed out. But you do bring up a good point. Maybe the supermajority requirement should phase out after a certain number of years (in addition to a cooling off period).
> Why does a populist law get to stand more firm than one passed by the elected representatives of the people?
Because the people only vote once in two years and the reps vote all the time. Because the people need to collect 50k signatures and usually more and the reps need zero. This is obvious.
>And it's actually a good thing, without that clause it would be totally impossible for the legislative to amend or repeal the proposition.
This is only partially true. Props are not amendable or repealable by default, but the 7/8 majority is a completely arbitrary and an unprecedentedly high burden to put on this. It is so high that it basically only exists so that people can argue that it is technically amendable or repealable while it being nearly impossible in practice. Prop 22 could have easily set a more reasonable cutoff like 2/3 even 3/4.
It's worth point out that AB5 passed 61-16 in the state house, a 79 percent yay vote. So with your proposed 3/4 supermajority it could still be overruled by the legislature. And of course this means 2/3 is even less of a hurdle.
AB5 versus Prop 22 is not a binary choice. It is possible to work on compromises between the two and not everyone who voted for one would inherently be against the other and vice versa.
Also in the legislative world there is a huge difference between 61-16 and what would be a 68-9 requirement to meet a 7/8 cutoff. The goal for these cutoffs should be to make it difficult to achieve, not practically impossible.
Sure, if you want to be pedantic. However the specific 7/8 number was unprecedentedly high compared to numbers used in previous propositions to the extent that it probably shouldn't have even been included in a honest piece of legislation.
Why? That objection is surreal -- you're taking the position that there's nothing wrong with a 101% threshold, and there's nothing wrong with a 70% threshold, but an 88% threshold goes too far? Too far in what direction? "Numbers you can mention aloud in polite company"?
> you're taking the position that there's nothing wrong with a 101% threshold, and there's nothing wrong with a 70% threshold, but an 88% threshold goes too far?
That wasn't my position. My position is that a 88% threshold in practice might as well be 101% and it is dishonest to include it and pretend like it is the near equivalent of 70%.
My comment on the pedantry was mostly on the fact that a lack of threshold is a null value and not equivalent to 101%. A null value is not larger than 88%. This 88% value is higher than previous propositions that have included a threshold and is therefore "unprecedentedly high".
A similar issue can be found in occupational licensure laws. Carve outs for everyone, and they keep coming. There is a serious effort underway to require a license for florists, interior designers, and hair braiders, and the exemptions and carve outs have gotten so bad that it’s hard to justify these licenses as beneficial to protect the public.
They exempt larger licensed professions. For example, you can’t get a license requirement for anything in healthcare without exempting doctors, nurses, and other licensed professions. The carve outs protect other license holders, perpetuating the myth that only a license holding person is qualified. Thus it waters down to a license and market exclusivity for one specific group, but it exempts the rest of the licensed establishment so that the effect is simply market protectionism.
> AB5 has really soured me on some of the labor rights stuff.
You have an earlier comment on HN where you sharply criticized police unions, teachers unions, and even Google employees' early attempts at unionization/collective actions.
Did you previously have a more favorable view of those unions/actions which AB5 made you rethink?
Good question - I was actually initially doing work to support certain unionization efforts. However, unions really have some tough structural issues that risk impacting perceived benefits of protecting workers rights.
In other words, I'm pushing down a path of simple, broad based, WORKERS rights, rather than pushing down union rights. Workers rights helps everyone.
Some on my list if interested:
1) Raising minimum wage - with a geo cost of living factor.
2) Absolutely raising minimum wage to be exempt from overtime - this is a no brainer and criminal that it is not higher.
3) Consider ending employer based healthcare and replacing with universal offerings covering part time, poorly paid and basically everyone (still using private insurance is fine).
4) Dramatically simplifying retirement plan choices, limiting the top hat, nonqualified deferred and other plan types that execs use to take huge amounts tax free, and trade that for better benefits on lower end of income scale.
5) Being much more aggressive about classes of work with clear worker abuse. So while uber makes the news, the door to door sales kids being sexually harassed, stuck far from home, ripped off, told to scam others etc etc - I've been very active in some of these abusive industries to try and get some more accountability into them - which would be TRIVIAL to do if anyone had any backbone - but it's MUCH easier to beat up on amazon. Not to get into sob stories, but whole classes of folks are just trampled on without any consequence, and it would not be hard to clean up substantially (elderly, young etc etc).
There is a lot more - but yes, AB5 and before that the removal of reserve accounts for schools (also union backed) along with the tendency to keep horrendous workers on at all costs (police, medical malpractice situations, teachers etc) soured me on unions a bit unfortunately.
The unions now are so different than what they used to be and the typical reported events is clearly not favoring their antics. As a political entity, they're not as great as they could be. As a labor organization, far from ideal but it's one of those things I would like to have the option of joining.
I don't care much about existing unions and their motives, only that I support drivers that want to unionize on their own. This isn't too relevant to AB5 specifically but in general, I am not against what someone wants to organize out of volition. Whether we agree on the reality of unions or not, we can see the whole gig economy needs something to protect the vulnerable. I don't trust private corporations to self-regulate but the crowd has spoken the other way via Prop 22.
I don't know if it's right but neither P22 or AB5 really solves the gig economy issues moving forward.
One of the interesting language aspects of this debate are the differences between people who call it the labor market and people who call it labor rights. I read a great book on the history of the labor movement in the US (sorry I've forgotten the title it was a long time ago) and there was a great discussion between the point of view that governments manage rights and companies manage markets.
AB5 was in response to the Dynamex ruling, which threw out the Borello test used to determine whether workers are employees or contractors. The California Supreme Court created a new standard that all workers are presumed to be employees and the burden is on the employer to prove workers are contractors under the ABC test. If AB5 didn't pass, the vast majority of workers would be considered employees.
All of the following conditions must be met in order for the worker to be classified as a contractor. (A) that the worker is free from the control and direction of the hiring entity in connection with the performance of the work, both under the contract for the performance of the work and in fact; (B) that the worker performs work that is outside the usual course of the hiring entity’s business; and (C) that the worker is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation, or business of the same nature as the work performed.
AB5/2257 were so ridiculous in practice, I couldn't bring myself to agree with the principle they stood for. And aside from that, if a party can sue over a proposition saying that it unconstitutionally hobbles the legislature from doing its job, doesn't that defeat the notion of propositions in general? That's the whole point of propositions.
The ABs had a list of exceptions a mile long, I suppose put there by the labor interests that wrote the bill. I didn't see why some of these contractors aren't equally exploited and subject to the whim of big evil corporations. What did it matter then, to carve out one more exception for Lyft/Uber drivers to join this list?
A commercial fisherman is less worthy of being protected than a Lyft or Uber driver? You've got to be kidding me.
(B) Songwriters, lyricists, composers, and proofers.
(C) Managers of recording artists.
(D) Record producers and directors.
(E) Musical engineers and mixers engaged in the creation of sound recordings.
(F) Musicians engaged in the creation of sound recordings, subject to the below.
(G) Vocalists
(H) Photographers working on recording photo shoots, album covers, and other press and publicity purposes.
(I) Independent radio promoters.
(J) Any other individual engaged to render any creative, production, marketing, or independent music publicist services related primarily to the creation, marketing, promotion, or distribution of sound recordings or musical compositions.
(A) Film and television unit production crew
(B) Publicists who are not independent music publicists.
(a) A person or organization who is licensed by the Department of Insurance
(b) A physician and surgeon, dentist, podiatrist, psychologist, or veterinarian
(c) lawyer, architect, landscape architect, engineer, private investigator, or accountant.
(d) A securities broker-dealer or investment adviser
(e) A direct sales salesperson
(f) A manufactured housing salesperson
(g) A commercial fisher working on an American vessel.
Pretty much this. Regardless of how you feel about Uber/Lyft drivers' ability to access benefits, if the bill that does it has this many exemptions, you should oppose it on that basis alone.
The long exemption list is a naked method of making sure that AB5 only targets its intended victims — Uber and Lyft, without actually having to mention them by name. If this law is generally a good idea, then why should it have required any exemptions at all?
The ethical version of AB5 would have been to have California (and the broader US) move have a single payer healthcare system, paid for by taxes, as it already is for a huge portion (but not all) of the population. That way, everyone gets access to health care, and everyone pays for it.
But that's hard to do, so California's cynical lawmakers "solve" the problem by passing the buck in a much simpler way: pass regulation to target their scapegoats du jour (as an assemblyperson, I get _my_ healthcare from the state, but it's _those guys_ who are bad! yeah!) with laser precision through special carveouts. Thus AB5 is born.
For those of us who are not familiar with California's proposition system, have there been others like this that have been successfully challenged in court?
A big example would be Prop 8. After courts ruled there was a constitutional right for gay marriages, a slim majority voted to pass an amendment to the state constitution banning gay marriage. This was ruled unconstitutional by a federal court. It was really weird because at the time, gay marriage was not a constitutional right nationally, so the federal courts were essentially ruling "gay marriage doesn't need to be allowed in your state, but if it is, you can't take away the right".
Sort of OT, but it's interesting to consider that on the net, Prop 187 might have actually been a positive thing for non Americans: better benefits for immigrants will generally lead to further restrictions on immigration, since the cost per immigrant goes up (and people complain about "immigrants stealing American tax dollars").
Sure, having benefits is nice, but most illegal immigrants aren't coming to the US for the benefits, so if their options are "less are allowed, but the ones that are allowed get benefits", and "more are allowed, but no benefits", almost all non-Americans would chose the second (because America even without benefits would be a massive increase in their quality of life [0]).
[0] - Or it wouldn't be a increase in quality of life, in which they wouldn't come either way. I just have a hard time thinking of many people (compared to the size of the "always better" and "always worse" groups) whose quality of life in America without benefits would be worse relative to their home country, but better than their home country if given benefits (those that are normally given to Americans) in America.
59-41 is an 18% swing, and would be considered an overwhelming majority in most political endeavors. Both modern and contemporaneous accounts of that particular election refer to the results as such, but feel free to attach whatever modifier you wish.
Idk. For me, if I had 20 friends, and 12 agreed to do something, I wouldn’t say they “overwhelmingly agree”. I’d just say a majority. But politics is on a much bigger scale.
Your friends are more likely to agree with you (and each other) on things because that's one of the reasons you're friends. I can think of very few things, other than the basics like "murder is bad", that 58% of the general public agrees on.
Perhaps I'm misinterpreting your reference to "commentors", but it looks to me like an insinuation of the sort that the HN guidelines ask people not to post:
"Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data."
You've done that sort of thing more than once before. Please don't. If you think you're seeing evidence of abuse, obviously we want to know about that and will take a look if you let us know. But cheap accusations of manipulation are one of the worst, most widespread toxins degrading this place, so please omit those.
- Why so we can go back to political carveouts of AB5?
- Why are you ok with only these freelancers being allowed in California? "Recording arts, music, performing arts. landscape architecture, translation of documents, copy editing and illustrations, registered professional forestry
real estate appraising ,home inspections , insurance underwriting inspections, auditing, and risk management and loss control, manufactured housing sales, international and cultural exchange services, competition judging, digital content and feedback aggregation, master class performance." https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/ab2257-not-much-better-tha...
So you are ok with California government deciding who can and can't be a freelancer?
I think AB5 was/is bad news as well but prop 22 shifted the calculus badly against people who have little control over their sources of income. I feel you are arguing from a false dichotomy.
Unfortunately, it seems that it does have to be one or the other. AB5 was itself special-interest legislation, with a huge list of exemptions to support the Assembly's favored business models.
AB5 - union drafted, is an absolute unworkable travesty.
A key tell - for a "principled" law - they had to keep on adding so many carveouts and exceptions (and there are lots missed still).
I know folks - who are actively trying to do the right thing - tearing their hair out over AB5.
AB5 has really soured me on some of the labor rights stuff. AB5 is in no way a model solution - I hope other states can come up with more practical approaches - with some thought to the folks who just want a simple way to do the right thing without endless carveouts and classification arguments.