Since their introduction into the marketplace barely more than a decade ago, ride-sharing apps have dramatically changed the transportation industry and furnished many benefits to drivers and consumers.
By enabling drivers to set their own hours and furnish transportation services in vehicles they already own, ride-sharing firms like Uber and Lyft make it possible for far more people in far more places to earn a living or supplement their incomes as drivers than would have been economically feasible in the past. Compared to customers of traditional taxi companies, ride-sharing firm customers are typically able to get where they are going faster. They are also much more likely to be able to get a ride late at night, in a relatively low-population density region, or in a low-income neighborhood.
Society as a whole is also clearly benefiting from the spread of ride-sharing services. For example, there is a growing body of evidence that the ready availability of such services reduces car accidents by helping impaired car owners get home without driving themselves. One recent study found that the four boroughs of New York City (excluding Staten Island) have “experienced a 25% to 35% decrease in alcohol-related car accidents since the inception of Uber, as compared to other locations where the company doesn’t operate.”
But the apparent boost to public safety and other benefits of ride-sharing companies mean little to two small but powerful constituencies in American public life: Big Labor and its puppet politicians.
They detest Uber, Lyft, and other such companies simply because their drivers are independent contractors, rather than payroll employees, for which reason they are not vulnerable under federal law to union monopoly bargaining, nor to paying forced union dues as a condition of keeping their jobs.
In 2019, acting at union lobbyists’ behest, Sacramento lawmakers and Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom rubber-stamped A.B. 5, legislation seeking to rob 1.5 million independent contractors in California of their workplace freedoms. This anti-Right to Work scheme reclassified independent contractors, including truck owner-operators, therapists, artists, musicians and writers, and many other service providers, in addition to ride-share drivers, as unionizable “employees.”
The results so far have been disastrous. In industry after industry, restrictions put in place for freelancers have led to layoffs. Independent contractors’ protests became so intense that union-label Golden State politicians ultimately concluded they had no choice but to exempt journalists, “hair stylists, real estate agents, insurance agents, lawyers, accountants, doctors and dentists,” along with many other types of service providers, from A.B. 5.
Unfortunately, at this writing, ride-share drivers and other service providers in California, such as family therapists, physical and occupational therapists, and speech pathologists, remain subject to A.B. 5 tyranny. Even more unfortunately, union-boss lackey politicians inside the D.C. Beltway are poised, if they gain control (as many pundits expect) of the White House as well as both chambers of Congress next year, to foist an A.B.5-like regime on independent contractors and consumers nationwide, despite the ongoing debacle in California.
This February, pro-forced unionism Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s House of Representatives green-lighted omnibus labor legislation including provisions that would reclassify independent contractors nationwide as “employees,” and thus pave the way for them to be corralled into unions.
Moreover, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, who led President Trump in virtually every national poll going into today’s election, is publicly pledging to federalize A.B. 5 if he is elected. Biden’s running mate, California Sen. Kamala Harris, is actually a co-sponsor of the Senate version of Pelosi’s bill.
If union strategists’ dream comes true on Election Day and Big Labor politicians go on to take the reins of the executive and legislative branches of the U.S. government come January, grass-roots Right to Work activists will do everything we can to block legislation like H.R.2474 and S.1306 from becoming law. But our victory will be far from guaranteed.
Federalization of A.B.5 will certainly result in substantial losses of freedom and opportunities for millions of Americans who have chosen to support themselves and their families through independent contract work. And sadly, judging by data furnished in a growing number of studies, it will also lead to increases in drunk-driving deaths across the country.
Mark Mix is president of the National Right to Work Committee.
