As Election Day nears, California voters are being bombarded with ads featuring smiling Black and brown faces championing Proposition 22, the initiative by Uber Technologies Inc., Lyft Inc. and other gig companies that seeks to exempt them from a state law requiring them to treat drivers and delivery workers as employees.
Outside Uber’s (UBER) headquarters in San Francisco on Thursday, however, hundreds of Black and brown workers from throughout the state converged for a No on 22 protest, with drivers being joined by other union members, such as janitors, nurses and teachers, as well as elected officials. They want gig companies to stop exploiting workers, and from using the initiative to lock in “a caste system that will have recourse for generations to come,” said Cherri Murphy, a Lyft driver and Gig Workers Rising organizer, as she addressed other protesters.
A majority of gig workers in California are minorities and immigrants, studies and the gig companies themselves say, and the companies have spent a record amount — more than $190 million — supporting the proposition and publicizing the support of different groups in the Golden State, including civil-rights organizations.
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