The U.S. National Labor Relations Board on Tuesday made it more difficult for companies to treat workers as independent contractors rather than employees, handing workers in the gig economy and other industries a potential path to join unions.
Here in Minnesota we had a bill that would have set a minimum wage for rideshare drivers. Uber threatened to stop operating in greater Minnesota (outside the Twin Cities metro area) and to hike rates in the metro if the bill passed. There’s a lot of disabled people who rely on rideshare apps, and greater Minnesota already feels ignored and if they can’t get an Uber that’s going to make things worse. So Governor Walz vetoed the bill. Uber is going to make whatever threats it has to in order to stop bills that help their workers, CA is a much larger market though so that kind of restricts what threats are financially reasonable for them to follow through on.
Here in Minnesota we had a bill that would have set a minimum wage for rideshare drivers. Uber threatened to stop operating in greater Minnesota (outside the Twin Cities metro area) and to hike rates in the metro if the bill passed. There’s a lot of disabled people who rely on rideshare apps, and greater Minnesota already feels ignored and if they can’t get an Uber that’s going to make things worse. So Governor Walz vetoed the bill. Uber is going to make whatever threats it has to in order to stop bills that help their workers, CA is a much larger market though so that kind of restricts what threats are financially reasonable for them to follow through on.