For Immediate Release
August 27, 2020
Contact: Mike Roth, 916-813-1554
Misleading “Study” Paid for By Lyft Doesn’t Change the Truth: Prop 22 Slashes Wages for Drivers
Independent Review Shows Under Prop 22, Drivers’ “Earning Guarantee” Would be Less than HALF California’s Minimum Wage
Sacramento, CA – The UC Berkeley Labor Center has debunked yet another “study” funded by Lyft to prop up the companies’ deceptive ballot measure that would permanently cut wages and block drivers from the benefits they deserve like paid sick leave and unemployment insurance. The tactic is more of the same from companies that have built their business model on threats, shutdowns, and exploiting their drivers.
The study in question, now being used by the app companies to lure voters into giving them a special exemption from the law, relies on out-of-state data from Seattle to lie about what Prop 22 would do to California driver’s wages. Here are the facts: Under Prop 22, drivers would lose all rights to California’s legal minimum wage and benefits like sick pay, unemployment insurance and workers compensation. An independent study using a California dataset shows that drivers could earn as little as $5.64 an hour under the app companies’ measure - far less than the state minimum wage.
“The tens of thousands of drivers who are leading this campaign to defeat Prop 22 are tired of being trapped in a game where Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash hold all the cards,” said Mike Roth, spokesman for the No on Prop 22 campaign. “These app companies can spend millions on bogus studies, but they can’t change the truth: Prop 22 will permanently lock the 70% of drivers who work more than 30 hours a week into jobs that pay far below the legal minimum wage.”
Ken Jacobs and Michael Reich of the UC Berkeley Labor Center skewer the study, saying it “rests on evidence that is not relevant for California” by using information from Seattle, Washington - a dataset that fails to reflect how drivers across the entire state of California, would be impacted by Prop 22.
“How much drivers are paid on average does not tell us what share of drivers’ earn less than the minimum wage, and how much drivers would benefit from employee status,” writes Jacobs and Reich, pointing out a key flaw of the app company study - which falsely treats the average earnings of drivers in Seattle as the guaranteed minimum for drivers under Prop 22.
Read the UC Berkeley Labor Center’s breakdown of every flaw in the misleading Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash “study” by clicking here.
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