We agree with Dubal that winning collective bargaining power at Uber and Lyft will depend on the continuation of the kind of solidarity actions that Dubal describes. But in our view, a fundamental reshaping of labor law will also be necessary. Even if an “uncompromised” version of California AB5 passes, that won’t get us there.
I share Dubal’s worries about Uber and Lyft’s proposed “workers’ associations” and agree about the indispensable role played by independent, exclusive-representative unions. But I am more open to the possibility that we ought not necessarily reject workers’ associations of the sort being contemplated in the California debates.
The “gig economy” is one place where organizing outside of traditional trade unions is undoubtedly happening in surprising and perhaps unexpected ways. For example, on May 8, 2019, a group of independent app-based drivers in Los Angeles called the LA Rideshare Drivers United organized and launched an unprecedented international picket and work stoppage against Uber…
The CEOs of the two top-competing gig firms—Uber and Lyft—penned a June 12, 2019 OpEd in the San Francisco Chronicle in which they claim that after over six years of local, state, federal, and international law-breaking, ignoring the concerns of drivers, and viciously fighting any efforts to achieve living wage and benefits, they are ready…
This is Part III of a conversation between David H. Webber and Michael McCarthy on the prospect of combating neoliberal corporate governance through the shareholder activities of workers’ pension funds.
This is Part II of a conversation between David H. Webber and Michael McCarthy on the prospect of combating neoliberal corporate governance through the shareholder activities of workers’ pension funds.
This is Part I of a conversation between David H. Webber and Michael McCarthy on the prospect of combating neoliberal corporate governance through the shareholder activities of workers’ pension funds.
As has been widely reported, the U.S. Department of Labor issued an “opinion letter” yesterday concluding that an unnamed “virtual marketplace company” does not employ the workers who make the company viable. Instead, the letter finds that these workers are independent contractors. The letter is flawed in multiple ways. As Sharon will explain, deciding a major…
Anderson’s analysis is insufficiently attentive to the structural realities of the “fissured workplace.”
Concepts like “freedom” and “exploitation” are grounded in material reality–as historically embedded attempts to express attitudes about certain institutional arrangements
Three potential strategies the labor movement could adopt to combat private domination at work.
Technology and automation are key forces spinning workers away from from powerful, resourceful firms into the cracks of the fissured workplace.
Some reflections on practical lessons that labor law practitioners and academics might draw from Elizabeth Anderson’s work.
This post opens a symposium on Elizabeth Anderson’s Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don’t Talk about It).
Contracts is more than an area of law; it is a key piece of the vision we lawyers bring to many other areas of law. The 1L Contracts course supplies a foundation-stone of the “pre-analytic vision” with which lawyers will eventually think about many other things, including labor relationships. Labor regulation as such is addressed…
