A California judge said the November voting measure that allowed Uber Technologies Inc., Lyft Inc. and DoorDash Inc. continuing to treat their drivers as independent contractors is inapplicable and unconstitutional.
The companies, which spent more than $ 200 million to approve proposal 22 in November, said they would appeal the ruling.
Businesses don’t need to immediately change the way they do business, but Friday’s ruling adds a wrinkle to their efforts to preserve their self-employed models and serves as a setback in their long-running fight against California law in the center of the sentence. .
Uber and other companies are in a global tug-of-war with regulators about whether and how to grant more benefits such as paid sick leave and health insurance to workers in the so-called concert economy, where apps distribute individual tasks to a group of people who are generally considered independent contractors.
California sued the companies last year, saying they violated the state’s so-called concert law because none of them reclassified their drivers as employees after the statute went into effect in 2020. a high-stakes legal battle that culminated in Proposition 22., in which companies asked state voters to exempt them from the law.