A driver makes use of the Uber app to drop off a passenger in London.
Chris J. Ratcliffe | Bloomberg by way of Getty Pictures
Shares of Uber and Lyft traded decrease within the premarket Monday after a California courtroom dominated that Prop 22, a poll measure that exempted gig employees from state labor legislation, was unconstitutional.
Uber was down greater than 3.2% in premarket buying and selling, whereas Lyft dipped almost 3.4%.
Alameda County Superior Court docket Choose Frank Roesch wrote in a ruling late Friday that Proposition 22 is unconstitutional as “it limits the facility of a future Legislature to outline app-based drivers as employees topic to employees’ compensation legislation.” That makes the complete poll measure “unenforceable.”
California voters accredited Proposition 22 by a majority vote in November. The poll measure successfully exempted a number of gig financial system firms from the state’s just lately enacted legislation, Meeting Invoice 5, which had aimed to make their employees into full-time workers.
Prop 22 proposed employees for app-based meals supply and ridesharing firms ought to stay contractors, and be entitled to sure advantages and protections, like minimal earnings.
The transfer is a blow to gig financial system firms, together with Lyft, Uber, Instacart and DoorDash, which spent greater than $200 million to assist the poll in an effort to take care of their present enterprise fashions. Classifying drivers as contractors permits the businesses to keep away from the pricey advantages related to employment, corresponding to unemployment insurance coverage.
A coalition representing the businesses mentioned it plans to attraction. The companies have began to fund a measure to place the same poll earlier than Massachusetts voters subsequent yr.
— CNBC’s Lauren Feiner contributed to this report.
