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‘Those in Power Won’t Give Up Willingly’: Veena Dubal and Meredith Whittaker on the Future of Organizing Under Prop 22
Workers can build solidarity and fight back against ‘anti-democratic, corporate law-making’
This op-ed was co-authored by Veena Dubal.
California voters, overwhelmed by a deluge of gig-company-sponsored misinformation over several months, voted in favor of Proposition 22, which eradicates basic labor protections for the state’s most vulnerable workers.
The law — a wholesale elimination of basic workers’ rights across an entire sector — has the potential to spread across the country and to other industries.
Authored and supported by Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart, and Postmates, Prop 22 creates a third category of low-rights workers for “transportation network companies” and “delivery network companies.” The law ensures that these workers, who lack the independence of true independent contractors, have no access to a time-based wage floor, unemployment insurance, workers’ compensation, sick leave, or state-mandated health insurance. It also creates significant barriers to unionization. And just to be sure it sticks, the gig companies that authored Prop 22 made it nearly impossible to change, requiring a…
