In 2020, voters approved Proposition 22, a ballot initiative that exempted Uber and other app platforms from labor law and allowed them to keep classifying their workers as contractors instead of employees. The measure included a promise that drivers would have an appeals process.

Rideshare Drivers United, a drivers group that says it has about 20,000 members in California, said Monday that because Uber has violated Prop. 22 by not delivering on all its promises, it should not be allowed to continue to assert that its drivers are independent contractors. 

“Uber has not met the conditions to take advantage of Prop. 22,” Shannon Liss-Riordan, a Massachusetts-based lawyer who has challenged Uber and other gig companies for years and is representing the California group, told CalMatters.

Many deactivated drivers report that they struggle to appeal their cases. They say they are initially sent to sites where they appear to be talking with bots, then eventually reach agents who are working from a script and appear to be in another country. Rarely do they reach people who are empowered to truly help them, they say. 

Liss-Riordan said at a news conference in San Francisco that she is seeking a declaration from the court saying that the company is violating the law it wrote, which she said should help drivers who are pursuing individual arbitration of their cases. 

“We’re going to seek back pay and other damages for them if they were unfairly deactivated, and we’re also going to be seeking their rights under the labor code,” she said.

Among the promises of Prop. 22: guaranteed minimum earnings of 120% of minimum wage for active ride or delivery time; health care stipends for those who qualify; occupational accident insurance and accidental death insurance; and “mandatory contractual rights and appeal processes,” according to the initiative’s text. The text does not specify what the requirements for an appeals process should be.

Devins Baker said he has driven for Uber and Lyft in the Bay Area for eight years and was deactivated by Uber right before Christmas in 2024. 

He told CalMatters that he thinks Uber deactivated him after he had to brake hard to avoid hitting a person who darted across the freeway, causing his passenger — who was not wearing a seatbelt — to fall out of his seat. 

“I don’t know because we never find out which passenger complained,” Baker said, adding that he thinks some people report drivers to try to get a free ride from Uber.

Baker got emotional during the news conference, saying he is trying to “keep it together” and is scrambling to find other ways to make money so he will not become homeless.  

Uber spokesperson Ramona Prieto called Liss-Riordan an “opportunistic trial lawyer” in an email to CalMatters and said the company will “fight this publicity stunt in court.” Prieto said the company provides drivers with a clear appeals process, and pointed to a company blog post from last week that explains what drivers can expect when they challenge deactivations. 

‘It has turned my life upside down’

Another deactivated driver from the Bay Area, Mirwais Noory, said Uber kicked him off the app in November 2024 over what the company said were safety concerns. He said he tried to show Uber dashcam video to plead his case, to no avail.

Getting deactivated caused financial hardship as he tries to support four children, he said. He has found work as a security guard since then, and now occasionally drives for Lyft. 

“I’m the only one with income,” Noory told CalMatters. “It has turned my life upside down.”

Jason Munderloh, chair of the Bay Area chapter of Rideshare Drivers United, said at the news conference: “Once they’re deactivated, there is no unemployment insurance (because drivers are not considered employees). This leads to poverty and desperation.”

“The minute someone joins RDU, their first concern is pay and the second is deactivations,” Nicole Moore, president of Rideshare Drivers United, told CalMatters ahead of the news conference.

Uber, a multibillion-dollar company based in San Francisco, was the lead backer of the $205 million Prop. 22 campaign that was also funded by DoorDash, Lyft, Instacart and Postmates. Uber spent a total of $59.5 million in cash and in-kind contributions, and Postmates — which Uber bought in a deal that was completed in 2020 — spent $13.3 million.

The lawsuit filed Monday in San Francisco Superior Court is the latest of many legal challenges against Prop. 22, which CalMatters has found has no state agency assigned to enforce it. The state Supreme Court upheld the gig-work law in 2024.

The plaintiffs also allege Uber deactivates drivers based on grounds not specified in its “Platform Access Agreement,” and that the company does not provide drivers with enough information about their earnings to determine that they are receiving 120% of minimum wage.

Separately, Uber is facing a lawsuit by the state Justice Department and the cities of San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego over thousands of wage-theft claims that predate Prop. 22. A trial for that lawsuit as well as a similar one against Lyft is scheduled for December 2027.

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The complaint from the National Labor Relations Board claims that Amazon is a so-called “joint employer” of drivers employed by the contractor, Battle Tested Strategies (BTS), and used a series of illegal tactics to discourage union activities at a facility in Palmdale, California.

BTS drivers voted to join the International Brotherhood of Teamsters union last year, becoming the first Amazon delivery contractors to unionize.

The NLRB in the complaint, which was issued on Monday, said Amazon broke the law by terminating its contract with BTS after the drivers unionized without first bargaining with the Teamsters.

The board in August had said that it had found merit to the union’s claims that Amazon exerts control over BTS drivers and should be considered their employer under federal labor law. The NLRB at the time said it would issue a complaint unless Amazon settled the case.

Last month, the board said it planned to issue a second complaint involving a different group of Amazon drivers.

Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The company has said in the past that it does not have enough control over drivers’ working conditions to be considered their joint employer.

Joint employment has been one of the most contentious U.S. labor issues over the last decade, and the NLRB’s standard for determining when companies qualify as joint employers has shifted numerous times since the Obama administration. Business groups favor a test that requires direct and immediate control over workers, while unions and Democrats back a standard that covers indirect forms of control.

The case will be heard by an administrative judge in Los Angeles, who is scheduled to hold an initial hearing next March. The judge’s decision can be reviewed by the five-member NLRB, whose rulings can be appealed to federal court.

A ruling that Amazon is a joint employer under federal labor law could be applied in cases involving other Amazon contractors and force the company to bargain with drivers’ unions.

The board, meanwhile, is facing claims by a growing number of companies, including Amazon, that its structure and in-house enforcement proceedings violate the U.S. Constitution.

Amazon has filed a lawsuit against the board seeking to block it from deciding whether the company must bargain with a union representing workers at a New York City warehouse. A federal appeals court on Monday temporarily blocked the NLRB from ruling while it reviews Amazon’s claims.

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NEW YORK (AP) — Several SpaceX employees who were fired after circulating an open letter calling out CEO Elon Musk’s behavior have filed a complaint accusing the company of violating labor laws.

The complaint, made Wednesday to the National Labor Relations Board, details the aftermath of what allegedly happened inside SpaceX after employees circulated the letter in June, which, among other things, called on executives to condemn Musk’s public behavior on Twitter — including making light of allegations he sexually harassed a flight attendant — and hold everyone accountable for unacceptable conduct.

The letter was sent weeks after a media report surfaced that Musk paid $250,000 to the flight attendant to quash a potential sexual harassment lawsuit against him. The billionaire has denied the allegations.

Employees in their letter urged SpaceX to uniformly enforce its policy against unacceptable behavior and commit to a transparent process for responses to claims of misconduct. A day later, Paige Holland-Thielen and four other employees who participated in organizing the letter were fired, according to the filing, which was made by Holland-Thielen to a regional NLRB office in California. Four additional employees were fired weeks later for their involvement in the letter.

A company spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Musk, who is the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and is currently running Twitter, prefers to do things his own way even if that means running afoul of rules and regulations. He’s currently in a defiant fight with Civil Rights department, a California regulator that is suing Tesla for rampant racial discrimination.

Some view Musk’s management style as autocratic and demanding, as evidenced by a recent email he sent to Twitter staff giving them until Thursday evening to decide whether they want to remain a part of the business. Musk wrote that employees “will need to be extremely hardcore” to build “a breakthrough Twitter 2.0″ and that long hours at high intensity will be needed for success.

A number of engineers also said on Twitter they were fired last week after saying something critical of Musk, either publicly on Twitter or on an internal messaging board for Twitter employees.

In a statement, Holland-Thielen said as a woman engineer at SpaceX, she experienced “deep cultural problems” and comforted colleagues who had experienced similar issues.

“It was clear that this culture was created from the top level,” she said.

Still, she said part of what she liked about the company was that any person could escalate issues to leadership and be taken seriously.

“We drafted the letter to communicate to the executive staff on their terms and show how their lack of action created tangible barriers to the long term success of the mission,” Holland-Thielen said. “We never imagined that SpaceX would fire us for trying to help the company succeed.”

The firings coincide with Musk’s $44 billion buyout of Twitter. Around the same time, the billionaire used a sexual term to make fun of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates’ belly and also posted a poop emoji during an online discussion with then-Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal.

After terminating the first set of employees, SpaceX allegedly interrogated dozens of others over the next two months in private meetings, telling them they couldn’t disclose those conversations to anyone else due to attorney-client privilege, according to the complaint. Four additional employees who helped draft or share the letter were fired in July and August, the filing said, adding up to nine terminations in total.

“Management used this ‘ends justifies the means’ philosophy to turn a blind eye to the ongoing mistreatment, harassment, and abuse reported by my colleagues, much of which was directly encouraged and inspired by the words and actions of the CEO,” said Tom Moline, who was also fired from SpaceX after organizing the letter.

Jeffery Pfeffer, a professor who specializes in organizational behavior at Stanford University’s business school, said that the allegations were hardly a surprise given Musk’s leadership style at Twitter. Musk’s success at companies like Tesla and SpaceX have created what he labeled as hubris under the false notion that it was “all about individual genius.”

“Powerful people get to break the rules. They don’t think they are bound by the same conventions as other people,” Pfeffer said, criticizing Musk’s behavior. He said it showed the arrogance of Musk, one of the world’s richest men: “Why would he think he is a mere mortal?”

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On Oct. 12, 2003, five days after California voters decided he should be ousted from the governorship, Gray Davis signed Senate Bill 796 , a valuable gift to the labor unions, attorneys and other groups that supported him during the recall election.

The measure created the Private Attorneys General Act , which opened the door to lawsuits against employers for alleged violations of state laws governing wages and working conditions.

California is the only state with such a law and nearly two decades later, PAGA, as it’s known, is the subject of a potential ballot measure and new skirmishes in the Legislature while the U.S Supreme Court weighs whether it should be erased because it conflicts with federal law.

Davis was able to sign SB 796, despite the Oct. 7, 2003 recall vote, because he remained governor until the election results were certified and successor Arnold Schwarzenegger took office five weeks later.

At the time, only the state’s Department of Industrial Relations was authorized to investigate labor law complaints and issue fines. Unions and employment attorneys contended that the state agency was overworked and that employers could easily escape penalties by requiring their workers, as a condition of employment, to agree that any disputes be subjected to arbitration rather than legal action. PAGA authorizes lawsuits even when employees have agreed to subject disputes to arbitration.

Over the 18 years since PAGA became law, thousands of cases have been filed and many settled, but the state Chamber of Commerce and other business groups contend that while it has been a lucrative source of fees for lawyers , workers have seen few economic benefits.

The current “job killer” list issued by the Chamber of Commerce includes two bills that would expand PAGA. One, Senate Bill 1044 , would allow employees to refuse to work if they consider it unsafe to do so. The other, Senate Bill, 1162 , would require employers to file detailed reports on their workers’ salaries, broken down by ethnicity, gender and other criteria.

Business groups have filed an initiative ballot measure to repeal PAGA. Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court last week heard oral arguments on a lawsuit that could doom PAGA because it allows suits even when employees have signed arbitration agreements.

The case, Viking River Cruises, Inc. v. Moriana , stems from a suit filed by Angie Moriana, a former sales representative for Viking, alleging that the cruise line violated California labor law, even though she had signed an arbitration agreement.

Moriana’s suit not only applies to her case but other Viking employees, thus creating the potential for large awards of damages. State courts ruled for Moriana and the state Supreme Court refused to hear the case because it had already declared, in a 2014 ruling , that PAGA rendered arbitration agreements unenforceable. However, the U.S. Supreme Court had overturned the state Supreme Court in that case, so Viking took its argument to the federal court.

Viking, backed by the Chamber of Commerce and other business interests, argues that PAGA violates the 1925 Federal Arbitration Act, which sanctions arbitration as an alternative to lawsuits in business disputes.

During last week’s oral arguments, members of the Supreme Court’s conservative majority said little , while liberal justices seemed to side with Moriana’s and California’s contention that PAGA is a legitimate tool. If PAGA is overturned, the immediate effect would be on California, the only state with such a law, but if PAGA survives, it could spark efforts to enact similar laws in other blue states where labor unions have strong political power.

Dan Walters | Contributed

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