Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is taking on the companies that make up the “gig economy” — though they provide the jobs, and services, that are increasingly popular among the young, “progressive” Americans who are the core of Warren’s support.
On Thursday, Uber started transporting passengers from LAX, cutting into taxi drivers’ opportunities and prompting taxi drivers to slam the ride-sharing company for lax security procedures.
California State Assembly member Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego), a former political consultant and labor lawyer, wants the authority to push “gig workers” into collective bargaining and unionization.
With the rise of Uber, Airbnb, and TaskRabbit, there’s a sinking suspicion that the traditional 9-5 job is being replaced by flexible, independent contract work. But, despite the existence of multiple billion-dollar Silicon Valley startups hiring an army of independent contract workers, economists have had difficulty finding any evidence that Americans were more likely to be self-employed.
The sharing economy that has revolutionized crowd-sourced taxi services and overnight room stays is launching Los Angeles County’s first “bike share” in the People’s Republic of Santa Monica.
Airbnb saw a major victory on Tuesday night when 55% of voters in San Francisco voted against Proposition F, a measure that sought to regulate short-term rentals in the bustling city.
Early election results show that San Franciscans voted overwhelmingly to reject a law limiting Airbnb in the city.
Protestors stormed the headquarters of multibillion dollar lodging startup Airbnb on Monday in San Francisco, one day before Bay Area residents cast their votes either in favor of or against Proposition F–the “Airbnb initiative,” a measure that seeks to regulate short-terms rentals in the city.
U.S. District Judge Edward Chen, a Barack Obama appointee, granted class action status to a lawsuit claiming Uber Technologies Inc. illegally classifies its on-call drivers as independent contractors, rather than employees with rights and benefits.
Uber’s low-cost service, UberX, reduces drunk driving deaths all over California and may be responsible for a drop in DUIs on NYE.
California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) Chief Administrative Law Judge Robert Mason recommended that ride-sharing service Uber be suspended from operating in California for 30 days and fined $7.3 million for wilfully violating its 2013 CPUC settlement by failing to provide data proving that Uber and its California drivers do not discriminate on the basis of ethnicity, neighborhood or medical disability in picking up passengers.
“Millennials” are suddenly realizing that government is something other than “the name we give to the things we choose to do together,” as former U.S. Rep. Barney Frank said. On the contrary, government is often the name we give to what one group of people does to another group by force of law.
In what may the most expensive employee labor claim in history, the California Labor Commission ruled Wednesday that an Uber California drivers is an “employee,” rather than an “independent contractor.” Uber could potentially be on the hook to pay about $200 million in employee taxes and benefits for 2014 alone.
Only three countries in the world have no listings in the extensive AirBnB online inventory: North Korea, Syria and Iran. But if State Senator Mike McGuire (D-Healdsberg) gets his way, maybe you can add a state, California, to the list.
In response to San Francisco’s new vacation-rental law to allow unlimited short-term rentals when a host is present, a powerful group of unions, landlords, housing activists and traditional hotels are preparing a November ballot initiative to severely constrict Airbnb and other “sharing economy” companies’ ability to help individuals secure short–term rentals from part or all of their homes or apartments.