Uber and Lyft are at war with the state of California after a judge ruled last month that ride-hailing companies, like other businesses, should be subject to a new law that classifies their workers as employees rather than independent contractors.
优步和Lyft与加利福尼亚州发生冲突，此前法官上个月裁定，叫车公司与其他公司一样，应受新法律的约束，该法律将其工人归为雇员，而不是独立承包商。
Instead of complying with the ruling, which would fundamentally change how the companies operate and make its workers eligible for protections and benefits, Uber and Lyft have floated the idea of becoming franchises and have also threatened to shut down completely. Their preference, though, is that a compromise of sorts be instated by a California ballot initiative called Proposition 22: They want to keep their workers categorized as independent contractors but provide them with a handful of benefits.
相反，与执政，这将fundamenta 升 LY改变企业的运作，并让本国工人享有的保护和福利的遵守，尤伯杯和Lyft浮起成为的想法专营权 ，并已还威胁要完全关闭。 不过，他们的首选是通过名为“第22号提案”的加利福尼亚州投票倡议来恢复某种妥协：他们希望将自己的工人归为独立承包商，但要给他们带来一些好处。
Uber and Lyft say they’ve created a new type of work that deserves new rules. Their opponents say that what these companies have created is an app for an old type of work — employment — and that they only want new rules because it is less expensive than following the existing rules, which guarantee employees protections like minimum wage, overtime, and the right to form a union.
优步和Lyft说，他们创造了一种值得新规则的新型作品。 他们的反对者说，这些公司创建的应用程序是用于旧工作类型的应用程序 -就业-并且他们只想要新的规则，因为它比遵循现有规则的成本更低，该规则可以保证员工的保护，例如最低工资，加班和成立工会的权利。
California residents will vote on the ballot initiative in November, but we already know how the debate around it is likely to shape up. That’s because Proposition 22 is a mishmash of old ideas that have already been well-hashed by think tanks, advocacy groups, labor advocates, and other attempts at legislation.
加州居民将在11月对投票倡议进行投票，但是我们已经知道围绕该投票的辩论将如何形成。 这是因为第22号提案是旧思想的杂乱无章，这些思想已经被智囊团，倡导团体，劳工倡导者和其他立法尝试很好地掩盖了。
By the middle of the past decade, a debate was brewing over the business model of companies like Handy, Postmates, Lyft, and Uber. Workers in the United States who are classified as employees are entitled to benefits and labor protections. Independent contractors are not.
由中间过去十年中，辩论是在酝酿类似的Handy，Postmates，Lyft和尤伯杯公司的商业模式。 在美国，被归类为雇员的工人有权享受福利和劳动保护。 独立承包商不是。
“Gig economy” companies had put their workers in the less expensive no-rights bucket, arguing that their apps created freelancing jobs because workers could decide when to work. But these companies also managed workers, via those apps, in ways that felt employee-like: The workers had little power to negotiate the terms of their contracts or control which jobs they took. Meanwhile, a solution for addressing this conundrum was making the rounds in academic circles: A third category of workers — neither employee nor independent contractor, but something in the middle and still entitled to some protections.
“零工经济”公司将其工人置于价格较低廉的无权利交易桶中，认为他们的应用程序创造了自由职业，因为工人可以决定何时上班。 但是这些公司还通过这些应用程序以感觉像员工的方式来管理工人：工人几乎没有权力谈判合同条款或控制自己从事的工作。 同时，解决这个难题的解决方案正在学术界四处巡回：第三类工人-既不是雇员也不是独立承包商，而是中间的一些人，仍然有权获得一些保护。
Former National Labor Relations Board Chair Wilma Liebman says she supported the idea at the time, thinking of how a third category of workers operates in countries such as Canada and Germany. This category had rights beyond those of independent contractors, giving drivers in Canada, for example, the right to collective bargaining. A Wall Street Journal article quoted her as favorable to the idea.
国家劳动关系委员会前主席威尔玛·利伯曼(Wilma Liebman)表示，当时她支持这一想法，并考虑到第三类工人如何在加拿大和德国等国家开展业务。 该类别的权利超出独立承包商的权利，例如，给予加拿大的司机集体谈判权。 《 华尔街日报》(Wall Street Journal)的 一篇文章引用了她对该想法的看法。
Then Liebman started getting calls from Uber-like companies — they liked it, too. But learning more about their interest made her start to rethink her support.
然后，利勃曼开始接到类似Uber的公司的电话-他们也很喜欢。 但是，更多地了解他们的兴趣使她开始重新考虑自己的支持。
“What I quickly realized,” Liebman says, “was they were interested in [a third category of workers] not in the way that I was interested in it, but as a way to immunize the platform if they were to provide a range of benefits.”
利勃曼说：“我很快意识到，他们是不是对[第三类工人]感兴趣，不是我对它感兴趣的方式，而是一种免疫平台的方式，如果他们要提供一系列好处。”
About a year after the Wall Street Journal article was published, Handy, a house cleaning and handyman services company created a proposal that would do just that. The company passed around a draft of New York State legislation that would create a deal of sorts: If “gig economy” companies opted into the program, they agreed to divert 2.5% of every transaction into a benefit account that workers could use to purchase health insurance or other benefits. In exchange, workers — even past workers who no longer did anything for the company — would be designated as independent contractors. They would, in other words, be immune from lawsuits challenging their workers’ status — and laws like the one recently passed in California.
《 华尔街日报》的文章发表大约一年后，房屋清洁和杂工服务公司Handy提出了一项解决方案。 该公司通过了纽约州立法草案，该草案将产生各种交易：如果“零工经济”公司选择加入该计划，则他们同意将每笔交易的2.5％转移到工人可以用来购买医疗的福利帐户中。保险或其他福利。 作为交换，工人(甚至是过去不再为公司做任何事情的工人)将被指定为独立承包商。 换句话说，他们将不受诉讼挑战其工人地位的诉讼-以及最近在加利福尼亚通过的法律。
Considering that federal and state payroll taxes alone cost employers about 12% of payroll, this 2.5% commitment would require much less investment from Handy — the target of many employee misclassification lawsuits — than would classifying its workers as employees. “The amount of money that’s supposed to be put into these portable benefit funds seems so meager,” Larry Engelstein, executive vice president of 32BJ Service Employees International Union (SEIU), told Reuters at the time. “The actual benefit a worker is getting hardly warrants what the worker is giving up.”
考虑到仅联邦和州的工资税就花费了雇主约12％的工资，因此2.5％的承诺将比Handy(许多员工分类错误诉讼的目标)所需的投资少得多，而Handy将其工人分类为雇员。 32BJ服务员工国际联盟(SEIU)的执行副总裁拉里·恩格斯坦(Larry Engelstein)当时对路透社表示 ：“本来应该用于这些便携式福利基金的资金似乎微不足道”。 “工人获得的实际利益几乎不能保证该工人所放弃的。”
“The right path forward would be to say let’s put a solution in place, try it out, and see if it works.”
“正确的前进道路是说让我们制定一个解决方案，尝试一下，看看它是否有效。”
The legislation never made it to the New York State Assembly floor. But the company did end up pursuing (and in some cases passing) laws in several states that preemptively categorized its workers as independent contractors, with no benefits guaranteed.
这项立法从未在纽约州议会席位上通过。 但是该公司最终确实在几个州奉行(并在某些情况下通过)法律，这些法律先行地将其工人归类为独立承包商，但没有任何保证。
Proposition 22 is built on the same concepts as the Handy proposal, such as a third category of employment. That idea was most recently proposed in the United States by Alan Krueger, an economist, and Seth Harris, a former deputy secretary of labor under the Obama administration, in a 2015 white paper proposing a “dependent worker” category. Another is “portable benefits,” or benefits that could be detached from a traditional job, with companies paying toward workers’ benefits depending on how much they work and regardless of their employee status. That idea has been championed by the Aspen Institute and U.S. Senator Mark Warner, who has advocated for funding portable benefits pilot programs, but has many variations. In the Handy proposal, “portable benefits” meant companies diverting a small percentage of wages into a benefits account, but more ambitious proposals have advocated for portable benefits systems capable of funding a robust safety net.
提议22建立在与方便提议相同的概念上，例如第三类就业。 经济学家艾伦·克鲁格(Alan Krueger)和奥巴马政府前劳工部副部长塞思·哈里斯(Seth Harris)最近在美国提出了这一想法， 该白皮书在2015年的白皮书中提出了“依赖工人”类别 。 另一个是“便携式福利”，或者是可以与传统工作分离的福利，公司根据工人的工作量和雇员身份来支付工人的福利。 阿斯彭研究所 ( Aspen Institute)和美国参议员马克·沃纳(Mark Warner) 倡导这种想法，后者曾主张为便携式福利试点计划提供资金 ，但存在许多差异。 在Handy提议中，“可享受的利益”是指公司将一小部分工资分配到一个利益帐户中，但是更具雄心的提议却提倡使用能够为强大的安全网提供资金的便携式利益系统。
If Proposition 22 were to pass when it comes to a vote in November, it would, like the “dependent worker” paper suggested, force companies to provide occupational accident insurance and ban them from discriminating against drivers. And like previous portable benefits proposals, Proposition 22 would require companies to pay drivers some benefits. Those who complete an average of at least 15 hours of “engaged time,” for instance, would earn a health care subsidy.
如果提案11月在11月份投票通过，它将像“依赖工人”文件中所建议的那样，迫使公司提供职业事故保险，并禁止他们歧视驾驶员。 像以前的便携式福利提议一样，第22号提案将要求公司向驾驶员支付一些福利。 例如，那些平均花费至少15个小时的“参与时间”的人将获得医疗保健补贴。
Back in 2015 and 2016, both Krueger and Harris’ “dependent worker” proposal and Handy’s draft legislation also suggested that companies should be protected from lawsuits alleging that providing some benefits is evidence they are acting as employers and therefore should classify their workers as employees. The Uber- and Lyft-backed ballot initiative does the same. It designates drivers as independent contractors “notwithstanding any other provision of law.” It also goes as far as to mandate that companies provide safety and sexual harassment training, both of which would arguably improve their services, but could also, without Proposition 22, be used as evidence that workers are being misclassified.
早在2015年和2016年，克鲁格和哈里斯的“受雇工人”提案以及汉迪的立法草案还建议保护公司免受诉讼的侵害，这些指控称提供某些利益是他们作为雇主的证据，因此应将其工人归为雇员。 由Uber和Lyft支持的投票倡议也是如此。 “尽管有其他法律规定，”它仍将驾驶员指定为独立承包商。 它甚至规定公司必须提供安全和性骚扰培训，这可以改善他们的服务，但如果没有第22号提案，也可以用作证明工人被错误分类的证据。
Whether you call it a third category of workers, portable benefits, or Proposition 22, carving out a special rulebook for how a certain set of companies treats its workers depends upon the idea that the work they provide is meaningfully different from employment and freelancing. And this question is at the heart of both the old and new debates.
不管您是将其称为第三类工人，随身福利还是22号提案，针对某组公司如何对待其工人制定专门的规则手册，取决于他们提供的工作与就业和自由职业明显不同的想法。 这个问题是新旧辩论的核心。
In their 2015 paper, Harris and Krueger argued that Uber and Lyft, and companies like them, did not meet the definition of either independent contractors or employees for a variety of reasons. They wrote:
哈里斯和克鲁格在2015年的论文中指出，出于各种原因，Uber和Lyft以及像他们这样的公司都没有达到独立承包商或员工的定义。 他们写：
On the one hand, independent workers have the ability to choose when to work, and whether to work at all. They may work with multiple intermediaries simultaneously, or conduct personal tasks while they are working with an intermediary. It is thus impossible in many circumstances to attribute independent workers’ work hours to any employer. In this critical respect, independent workers are similar to independent businesses. On the other hand, the intermediary retains some control over the way independent workers perform their work, such as by setting their fees or fee caps, and they may “fire” workers by prohibiting them from using their service. In these respects, independent workers are similar to traditional employees.
一方面，独立工作者有能力选择何时工作以及是否要工作。 他们可以同时与多个中介机构合作，或者在与中介机构合作时执行个人任务。 因此，在许多情况下，不可能将独立工人的工作时间分配给任何雇主。 在这个关键方面，独立工人类似于独立企业。 另一方面，中间人保留了对独立工人执行工作方式的某些控制权，例如通过设置其费用或费用上限，并且他们可能通过禁止工人使用其服务来“解雇”工人。 在这些方面，独立工人类似于传统员工。
In a response to Harris and Krueger, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) wrote a paper noting that Uber drivers cannot keep their apps open and reject rides without being penalized by Uber for having a low acceptance rate. It also noted that Uber operates a “guaranteed earnings” program that keeps track of work time and basically functions like a minimum wage. “We disagree with the proposal to deny minimum-wage and overtime protections to Uber drivers and see no need for a third employment status,” the paper concluded.
在对Harris和Krueger的回应中，经济政策研究所(EPI) 发表了一篇论文，指出Uber驾驶员无法保持其应用程序打开并拒绝乘车，除非Uber因接受率低而受到处罚。 它还指出，Uber实施了“保证收入”计划，该计划会跟踪工作时间，并且基本起着最低工资的作用。 该文件总结说：“我们不同意拒绝向优步司机提供最低工资和加班保护的提议，并且认为不需要第三份工作身份。”
Harris declined to comment on Proposition 22. Krueger died in 2019.
哈里斯拒绝评论第22号提案。克鲁格于2019年去世。
In today’s version, Proposition 22 makes the case that flexibility is what makes Uber and Lyft drivers unlike employees. “Recent legislation has threatened to take away the flexible work opportunities of hundreds of thousands of Californians, potentially forcing them into set shifts and mandatory hours, taking away their ability to make their own decisions about the jobs they take and the hours they work,” the proposal states. This is disingenuous: No law prevents employers from giving their employees flexibility. Employers may choose, however, to schedule shifts or set mandatory hours, and in a court petition, Uber argued that it would need to do so in order for the time drivers spend on the app to be “economically productive for Uber.”
在今天的版本中，提案22证明了灵活性是Uber和Lyft司机与员工不同的原因。 “最近的立法威胁要剥夺成千上万加利福尼亚人的灵活工作机会，有可能迫使他们陷入固定的轮班和强制性工作时间，剥夺了他们对所从事的工作和工作时间做出自己的决定的能力，”提案指出。 这是不诚实的：没有法律阻止雇主给予雇员灵活性。 但是，雇主可以选择安排轮班时间或设置强制性的工作时间，Uber在法庭请愿书中认为，这样做必须使驾驶员在应用程序上花费的时间“对Uber产生经济效益”。
If Proposition 22 passes, drivers will be entitled to a “minimum earnings guarantee” equal to 120% of the California minimum wage. This isn’t quite the same as a minimum wage, because only the time when a driver actually had a passenger in the car would count as work — not time between trips, which one analysis suggests accounts for 33% of a driver’s time. In other words, what Uber and Lyft call an hour of “engaged time” might actually represent 90 minutes of a driver’s actual time. Uber and Lyft would be required to pay an hourly “minimum wage” per hour of engaged time, not real time.
如果提案22通过，司机将有权获得等于加利福尼亚最低工资120％的“最低收入保证”。 这与最低工资并不完全相同，因为只有驾驶员实际在车上载有乘客的时间才算作工作，而不是两次旅行之间的时间， 一项分析表明，这段时间占驾驶员时间的33％。 换句话说，Uber和Lyft所说的一个小时的“接合时间”实际上可能代表驾驶员实际时间的90分钟。 Uber和Lyft将被要求每小时按小时支付“最低工资”，而不是实时。
Which brings us to another old debate: Whether “waiting time” counts as work. The EPI paper cited a 1940 Supreme Court decision that noted, “Readiness to serve may be hired, quite as much as service itself,” as well as cases in which on-call firefighters and forestry workers were considered to be “working” even as they awaited a blaze, for example. It argues that drivers should fall into the same category:
这使我们陷入了另一个古老的争论：“等待时间”是否算是工作。 EPI的文件援引了1940年最高法院的一项决定，其中指出：“可以聘请准备服务的人，与服务本身一样多”，以及在值班的消防员和林业工作者被认为“工作”的情况下，例如，他们等待着大火。 它认为驱动程序应该属于同一类：
If [a driver] does not turn off the app, she cannot “go to her traditional job, undertake another moneymaking activity, drive her children to school, or park by the side of the road and take a nap.” Given that she has to monitor the app and respond to pings within 15 seconds, none of those activities is a realistic possibility.
如果[驾驶员]没有关闭该应用程序，则她将“无法继续从事传统工作，从事其他赚钱活动，开车送孩子去上学或在路边停车并小睡”。 考虑到她必须监视该应用程序并在15秒内响应ping，因此这些活动均不现实。
Second, while she can refuse customers or wait until after she has completed her personal activities to accept a ride request, she cannot do so without adverse consequences, including possible termination. She has to respond to requests within 15 seconds or lower her acceptance rate, and a lower acceptance rate can foreclose Uber’s guaranteed pay rate and lead to deactivation.
其次，尽管她可以拒绝客户或等到完成个人活动后才能接受乘车请求，但她不能这样做，而不会带来不利后果，包括可能的解雇。 她必须在15秒内响应请求或降低接受率，而较低的接受率可能会使Uber的保证薪水率丧失，并导致停用。
The EPI suggested that in the case of a driver with two apps turned on, the one with which they ultimately accept the job should be required to pay for the waiting time.
EPI建议，在驾驶员打开两个应用程序的情况下，应该要求驾驶员最终接受该应用程序来支付等待时间。
Taking into account unpaid waiting time, unreimbursed expenses while waiting, taxes, and other costs of the independent contractor classification, UC Berkeley’s Ken Jacobs and Michael Reich have calculated the value of the pay package proposed by Proposition 22 as $5.64 per hour. (Other estimates based on different assumptions, such as only counting time with a passenger in the car as work, have concluded Uber currently pays drivers as much as $23 per hour.)
伯克利加州大学的肯·雅各布斯 ( Ken Jacobs)和迈克尔·里希 ( Michael Reich)考虑到未付的等候时间，等待时未偿还的费用，税金和其他独立承包商分类的费用， 计算出提案22提议的薪酬方案的价值为每小时5.64美元。 ( 基于不同假设的其他估算 ，例如仅计算与汽车乘客的工作时间，得出的结论是，Uber当前每小时向驾驶员支付高达23美元的费用。)
Even if the value of Proposition 22’s protections to drivers turns out to be low, says Arun Sundararajan, a professor at NYU Stern School of Business and the author of The Sharing Economy, Proposition 22 is a good starting point. “The right path forward would be to say let’s put a solution in place, try it out, and see if it works,” Sundararajan says. “And if it turns out that the floor that the solution is creating is too low, let’s introduce new legislation that raises this floor based on data.”
纽约大学斯特恩商学院教授， 《共享经济》的作者阿伦·桑达拉然(Arun Sundararajan)说，即使22号提案对驾驶员的保护价值很低，《 22号提案》也是一个很好的起点。 Sundararajan说：“正确的前进道路是说让我们制定一个解决方案，尝试一下，看看它是否可行。” “而且，如果事实证明该解决方案正在创建的下限过低，那么我们就可以引入新的立法来根据数据提高该下限。”
That could be a difficult change to bring forward. Proposition 22 notably goes the opposite way of Harris and Krueger’s recommendation that “dependent workers” should have a right to organize, instead requiring that any law seeking to grant that right be made as an amendment, with seven-eighths of the legislature’s approval.
这可能是很难进行的改变。 提案22与哈里斯和克鲁格(Harris and Krueger)的建议相反，后者建议“从属工人”应具有组织权，而不是要求任何寻求授予该权利的法律都应经立法机关八分之八的批准予以修正。
In the end, the debate once again comes down to whether Uber and Lyft drivers are doing work that is meaningfully different than work that has previously existed. Sundararajan, like most supporters of the ballot initiative, believes that drivers aren’t employees and that the restraints on flexibility created by algorithms that incentivize and punish certain behaviors don’t amount to management. “It is more fluid. It is more flexible. It is more ad hoc,” he says of working for Uber and Lyft, compared to a job at a factory. “It does allow you in one hour to take a job from three different platforms. It’s hard for me to wrap my head around the idea that this is just like any other employment. It’s not.” From his perspective, Proposition 22 would give drivers more rights than they currently have as nonemployees.
最后，辩论再次归结为Uber和Lyft驾驶员是否在做与以前已经存在的工作有显着不同的工作。 像大多数投票倡议的支持者一样，Sundararajan认为，司机不是雇员，激励和惩罚某些行为的算法对灵活性的限制并不构成管理。 “这更加流畅。 它更加灵活。 与在工厂工作相比，他说：“这是临时的。” “它确实使您在一小时内就可以从三个不同的平台从事工作。 对我来说，这很难像其他工作一样。 不是。” 从他的角度来看，第22号提案将赋予驾驶员比其目前作为非雇员更多的权利。
In California, where Uber and Lyft drivers have already been determined to be employees under the new law, passing the ballot initiative would reduce the rights drivers currently have.
在加利福尼亚州，根据新法律，Uber和Lyft司机已被确定为雇员，通过投票倡议将减少司机目前拥有的权利。
“Why is it that you reject the other aspects of employment status?” Liebman says of the list of benefits outlined in Proposition 22. “What is it that applies to other employers in the state of California that is so threatening? It’s kind of a technology mindset that thinks you’re just in another universe.”
“为什么您拒绝就业状况的其他方面？” 利勃曼谈到了第22号提案中概述的福利清单。“对加利福尼亚州其他如此受到威胁的雇主有什么用？ 这是一种技术心态，认为您只是在另一个世界中。”
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