Without getting into the merits of the whole are ride hail drivers employees thing, I do have close experience with AB5.
AB5 - union drafted, is an absolute unworkable travesty.
A key tell - for a "principled" law - they had to keep on adding so many carveouts and exceptions (and there are lots missed still).
I know folks - who are actively trying to do the right thing - tearing their hair out over AB5.
AB5 has really soured me on some of the labor rights stuff. AB5 is in no way a model solution - I hope other states can come up with more practical approaches - with some thought to the folks who just want a simple way to do the right thing without endless carveouts and classification arguments.
Under AB5, a truck driver delivering orange juice is treated differently than a truck driver delivering milk. AB5 is trash.
Either way, Article 11 of Prop 22 has a severability clause. If they take away the 7/8th supermajority clause, it shouldn't affect the rest of Prop 22.
A constitution that allows a 7/8ths supermajority clause is fertile ground for corrupt and insane laws like AB5. A party in Congress with a slight majority can pass a law that will be forever practically impossible to change. They effectively forced in a constitutional amendment.
This is a clear example of how the unions really control California.
Sorry to interrupt your soapbox, but the law passed with the 7/8 supermajority clause was Prop 22 - which was loudly and explicitly opposed by the unions "who control California" and who supported the original AB5 law that it superseded.
It’s worth mentioning that many props don’t allow the legislature to override them period, even with a unanimous vote. The 7/8ths rule, while unusual, is less extreme than not allowing any vote at all. It’s essentially an “oops we drafted the prop wrong and accidentally banned wages” get out of jail free card.
In addition to the other reply, the supermajority clause can only be added to ballot propositions not legislation from the legislative (california doesn't have a Congress).
And it's actually a good thing, without that clause it would be totally impossible for the legislative to amend or repeal the proposition.
> And it's actually a good thing, without that clause it would be totally impossible for the legislative to amend or repeal the proposition.
This boggles my mind about initiatives in California. In other states with popular initiatives, the People pass laws on the same footing as the Legislature; they just do so through the ballot box. The elected Legislature still has the authority to modify those same laws (though most states require a "cooling off" period of a year or two before a passed initiative can be modified, and even then a supermajority in the Legislature can still do it).
A popular initiative being sacrosanct and inviolable absent a second initiative seems wrong to me. Why does a populist law get to stand more firm than one passed by the elected representatives of the people?
> A popular initiative being sacrosanct and inviolable absent a second initiative seems wrong to me. Why does a populist law get to stand more firm than one passed by the elected representatives of the people?
65% of Floridian voters chose to restore voting rights to felons; the Florida legislature chose to add additional restrictions to that restoration that were not in the original proposition, effectively preventing the restoration that Floridians had chosen.
I think the whole initiative process is horrible. But.
Your answer is right there in the declaration of independence: "to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed". Rather than going through the legislative process, the idea is that some things should be decided by the people directly.
The original intent of ballot initiatives (propositions) was to try to nullify special interest power over the legislature. If you think AB5 was special-interest legislation (it very clearly was) this might be the exact intended use of the ballot initiative process. For the popular vote to nullify what the special interest-controlled legislature wanted. And it worked.
An entirely separate question is what kind of questions should be decided by direct democracy in the first place. I think California goes too far in this regard, but I don't think the right answer is "none". Regardless of one's political beliefs, I think something on the scale of Brexit was put to the electorate in a direct vote, and probably with reason.
The problem is that California very frequently gets into situations where there's a legislative supermajority on the opposite side of the issue from the general public. Just this cycle, AB5 passed the Assembly with 76%, and ACA 5 (the subject of Prop 16) passed with 81%. If the legislature were allowed to repeal ballot propositions, they'd do it in a heartbeat, and the will of the voters would not end up being expressed.
Direct democracy = popular vote, representative democracy = elected representatives.
China, Russia, USA, France and Switzerland are all republics: two are dictatorships, two are representative democracies, and one is a direct democracy. Canada, UK, Japan and Belgium are all constitutional monarchies, and all of them are considered democratic. Saudi Arabia and Qatar are monarchies, but certainly not democratic.
Democracy is a scale, probably better used as an adjective: the more democratic, the more power is wielded by the people.
It's not a terrible idea for a law by referendum to require a higher legislative bar for repeal, as other replies have pointed out. But you do bring up a good point. Maybe the supermajority requirement should phase out after a certain number of years (in addition to a cooling off period).
> Why does a populist law get to stand more firm than one passed by the elected representatives of the people?
Because the people only vote once in two years and the reps vote all the time. Because the people need to collect 50k signatures and usually more and the reps need zero. This is obvious.
>And it's actually a good thing, without that clause it would be totally impossible for the legislative to amend or repeal the proposition.
This is only partially true. Props are not amendable or repealable by default, but the 7/8 majority is a completely arbitrary and an unprecedentedly high burden to put on this. It is so high that it basically only exists so that people can argue that it is technically amendable or repealable while it being nearly impossible in practice. Prop 22 could have easily set a more reasonable cutoff like 2/3 even 3/4.
It's worth point out that AB5 passed 61-16 in the state house, a 79 percent yay vote. So with your proposed 3/4 supermajority it could still be overruled by the legislature. And of course this means 2/3 is even less of a hurdle.
AB5 versus Prop 22 is not a binary choice. It is possible to work on compromises between the two and not everyone who voted for one would inherently be against the other and vice versa.
Also in the legislative world there is a huge difference between 61-16 and what would be a 68-9 requirement to meet a 7/8 cutoff. The goal for these cutoffs should be to make it difficult to achieve, not practically impossible.
Sure, if you want to be pedantic. However the specific 7/8 number was unprecedentedly high compared to numbers used in previous propositions to the extent that it probably shouldn't have even been included in a honest piece of legislation.
Why? That objection is surreal -- you're taking the position that there's nothing wrong with a 101% threshold, and there's nothing wrong with a 70% threshold, but an 88% threshold goes too far? Too far in what direction? "Numbers you can mention aloud in polite company"?
> you're taking the position that there's nothing wrong with a 101% threshold, and there's nothing wrong with a 70% threshold, but an 88% threshold goes too far?
That wasn't my position. My position is that a 88% threshold in practice might as well be 101% and it is dishonest to include it and pretend like it is the near equivalent of 70%.
My comment on the pedantry was mostly on the fact that a lack of threshold is a null value and not equivalent to 101%. A null value is not larger than 88%. This 88% value is higher than previous propositions that have included a threshold and is therefore "unprecedentedly high".
A similar issue can be found in occupational licensure laws. Carve outs for everyone, and they keep coming. There is a serious effort underway to require a license for florists, interior designers, and hair braiders, and the exemptions and carve outs have gotten so bad that it’s hard to justify these licenses as beneficial to protect the public.
They exempt larger licensed professions. For example, you can’t get a license requirement for anything in healthcare without exempting doctors, nurses, and other licensed professions. The carve outs protect other license holders, perpetuating the myth that only a license holding person is qualified. Thus it waters down to a license and market exclusivity for one specific group, but it exempts the rest of the licensed establishment so that the effect is simply market protectionism.
> AB5 has really soured me on some of the labor rights stuff.
You have an earlier comment on HN where you sharply criticized police unions, teachers unions, and even Google employees' early attempts at unionization/collective actions.
Did you previously have a more favorable view of those unions/actions which AB5 made you rethink?
Good question - I was actually initially doing work to support certain unionization efforts. However, unions really have some tough structural issues that risk impacting perceived benefits of protecting workers rights.
In other words, I'm pushing down a path of simple, broad based, WORKERS rights, rather than pushing down union rights. Workers rights helps everyone.
Some on my list if interested:
1) Raising minimum wage - with a geo cost of living factor.
2) Absolutely raising minimum wage to be exempt from overtime - this is a no brainer and criminal that it is not higher.
3) Consider ending employer based healthcare and replacing with universal offerings covering part time, poorly paid and basically everyone (still using private insurance is fine).
4) Dramatically simplifying retirement plan choices, limiting the top hat, nonqualified deferred and other plan types that execs use to take huge amounts tax free, and trade that for better benefits on lower end of income scale.
5) Being much more aggressive about classes of work with clear worker abuse. So while uber makes the news, the door to door sales kids being sexually harassed, stuck far from home, ripped off, told to scam others etc etc - I've been very active in some of these abusive industries to try and get some more accountability into them - which would be TRIVIAL to do if anyone had any backbone - but it's MUCH easier to beat up on amazon. Not to get into sob stories, but whole classes of folks are just trampled on without any consequence, and it would not be hard to clean up substantially (elderly, young etc etc).
There is a lot more - but yes, AB5 and before that the removal of reserve accounts for schools (also union backed) along with the tendency to keep horrendous workers on at all costs (police, medical malpractice situations, teachers etc) soured me on unions a bit unfortunately.
The unions now are so different than what they used to be and the typical reported events is clearly not favoring their antics. As a political entity, they're not as great as they could be. As a labor organization, far from ideal but it's one of those things I would like to have the option of joining.
I don't care much about existing unions and their motives, only that I support drivers that want to unionize on their own. This isn't too relevant to AB5 specifically but in general, I am not against what someone wants to organize out of volition. Whether we agree on the reality of unions or not, we can see the whole gig economy needs something to protect the vulnerable. I don't trust private corporations to self-regulate but the crowd has spoken the other way via Prop 22.
I don't know if it's right but neither P22 or AB5 really solves the gig economy issues moving forward.
One of the interesting language aspects of this debate are the differences between people who call it the labor market and people who call it labor rights. I read a great book on the history of the labor movement in the US (sorry I've forgotten the title it was a long time ago) and there was a great discussion between the point of view that governments manage rights and companies manage markets.
AB5 was in response to the Dynamex ruling, which threw out the Borello test used to determine whether workers are employees or contractors. The California Supreme Court created a new standard that all workers are presumed to be employees and the burden is on the employer to prove workers are contractors under the ABC test. If AB5 didn't pass, the vast majority of workers would be considered employees.
All of the following conditions must be met in order for the worker to be classified as a contractor. (A) that the worker is free from the control and direction of the hiring entity in connection with the performance of the work, both under the contract for the performance of the work and in fact; (B) that the worker performs work that is outside the usual course of the hiring entity’s business; and (C) that the worker is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation, or business of the same nature as the work performed.
AB5 - union drafted, is an absolute unworkable travesty.
A key tell - for a "principled" law - they had to keep on adding so many carveouts and exceptions (and there are lots missed still).
I know folks - who are actively trying to do the right thing - tearing their hair out over AB5.
AB5 has really soured me on some of the labor rights stuff. AB5 is in no way a model solution - I hope other states can come up with more practical approaches - with some thought to the folks who just want a simple way to do the right thing without endless carveouts and classification arguments.