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In early 2020, thousands of drivers, led by Southern California advocacy group Rideshare Drivers United, filed claims with the state against Uber and Lyft. They alleged that businesses treat them illegally as independent contractors and owed more than $1.3 billion in wages, costs and damages.
The state is currently set to begin negotiations for settlement with the major passenger carrier. And the drivers want the California Attorney General and the Secretary of Labor to consider their demands during the closure association.
According to RideShare Drivers United, anyone who actively drove Uber and Lyft between 2016 and 2020 could be subject to a potential settlement with probably more than 250,000 drivers.
To push their demands, drivers plan to meet Wednesday morning outside Los Angeles City Hall and in San Diego and San Francisco, asking the state to promote a settlement agreement that will recover all wages and damages, and establish additional wages and workplace protection for drivers.
“Our top priority is to get back the stolen money,” said Nicole Moore, president of RideShare Drivers United, referring to wage theft claims. “The only way they can trade any of that money is to get a fair standard.”
Moore said the settlement will help establish a rate card that will pay drivers a minimum of $1.75 per mile and 60 cents per minute.
The planned protests come before the scheduled mediation session with Uber on Monday. The session with Lyft is scheduled for April 8th.
The company did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The negotiations include not only the California Secretary of Labor, where the driver filed his wage claim, but also the state attorney general. Joining counsels for the city of Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco, they sued Uber and Lyft to force businesses to quickly classify drivers as employees, accusing them of dodging local and state pay taxes.
Drivers who were misclassified as independent contractors during the covered period were denied reimbursed for overtime, meals, breaks and mileage, the lawsuit said.
These claims, like several other private cases, were combined into cases coordinated in San Francisco Superior Court, allowing one judge to determine all matters in one place.
Uber and Lyft accused California officials of wasting wage claims time and resources, claiming that the majority of California drivers want to work as independent contractors rather than employees, and that the state’s enforcement efforts will curb industry growth.
The coordinated lawsuit was suspended, but Uber and Lyft have launched ultimately unsuccessful attempts to prevent the state from enforcing wage and time laws, claiming that arbitration agreements with individual drivers prevent the state from doing so.
In November 2020, voters approved Proposal 22, a voting initiative backed by Uber, Lyft, Doordash and other gig economy companies. The measure exempts businesses from the provisions of state labor laws, allowing drivers of rides and delivery services to be classified as free contractors, rather than as employees.
The voting initiative was upheld last year by the state Supreme Court.
Drivers for Uber and Lyft say working conditions and salaries have been declining in recent years.
Yasha Timenovich, 48, a Lyft driver who started driving in 2014, works 12 hours a day, seven days a week, but says he still struggles to achieve his goals.
A Hollywood resident said drivers will gain increasingly smaller shares due to “meaningless” and “inconsistent” fees while riders and delivery companies are raising prices for customers.
Earlier this week, for a ride where passengers paid $54.99, Timenovic made $24.15 after deducting $29.34 in “commercial auto insurance and other expenses,” $0.10 in “tax and government fees,” and $0.10 in Lyft’s revenues.
“How do they justify this?” he said. “What’s left for me?”
San Diego-based Uber driver Karen Vandenberg, 64, said he might have previously made $250 in a day before deducting gas and other expenses. But to do that today, she may have to work for a few days. Due to car issues, she had to replace the car’s transmission twice in 2023, which expelled her for several months, costing her a total of around $10,000.
“It was a long time my car went out,” Vandenberg said. “I sat there because I didn’t have the money to pay for another transmission. Not only that, there’s constant oil changes and brake changes and tire changes and gas.”
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