California Clears Path for Gig Unions

In October, California lawmakers passed a bill allowing rideshare drivers to unionize. Under the law, a unionization election can be triggered when just 10 percent of the state’s rideshare drivers submit forms expressing preference for a union—and a union can be certified with support from as little as 30 percent of active drivers.

This is a new tactic from union-friendly lawmakers, but the end result is likely to be the same: less flexibility for the very workers who say flexibility is what keeps them in these jobs.

This saga began in 2018, when the California Supreme Court adopted the so-called ABC test for delivery couriers, a far stricter standard for classifying workers as independent contractors. Lawmakers expanded the test to all sectors through the now-infamous Assembly Bill (A.B.) 5 law, making it dramatically harder for Californians to continue working as contractors.

The fallout to A.B. 5 was swift and overwhelming, and backlash followed. In 2020, California’s electorate overturned the law’s application to gig work by voting to approve Proposition 22. 

The defeat of A.B. 5 should have settled the question, but lawmakers have simply changed tactics.

Under the new law, any certified union would get a one-year challenge-free window within which all ridesharing companies in the state must bargain with it in good faith—effectively creating a form of sectoral bargaining, which is rare in U.S. labor law. Gig companies accepted this approach as less bad than reclassification, but the result will likely still be the same for companies and workers.

While theoretically better than forcible reclassification, unionizing gig workers would still reduce worker flexibility and autonomy and raise costs for the platforms. Sectoral bargaining by necessity requires uniform standards across an entire industry, which is most doable with traditional employment models, such as in the fast-food arena, where California has already introduced aspects of sectoral bargaining in recent years.

Sector-wide negotiations would force a one-size-fits-all approach, pushing platforms toward standardized schedules and undermining the log-in-anytime flexibility gig workers typically enjoy. 

Elements of this shift are already visible in places that have enacted other one-size-fits-all rules for gig work, such as minimum wage mandates. After New York City passed a minimum-wage mandate for rideshare drivers in 2019, Uber and Lyft began locking drivers out of their accounts to manage the fallout. A 2023 law extending the minimum wage to app-based delivery workers produced similar results: driver deactivations and a waitlist, as platforms tried to manage sharply increased labor costs.

This impacts real people. Consider a single mom who wants to log a few rides on a weeknight when she unexpectedly gets a window of free time. If platforms adopt regimented schedules, she may be blocked from logging in when both she—and potential riders—could benefit.

A major concern following California’s adoption is that this model will almost certainly spread to other states. California has a track record of exporting its labor-policy experiments: After A.B. 5’s passage, several states pursued their own restrictive ABC tests.  

This could even become a bipartisan push. Given Republicans like Vice President J.D. Vance and Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.) embracing organized labor, others on the right could be moved to support gig worker unionization.

It’s also clear that the political left will not be content to merely stop at unionization. Progressives like former California assemblymember (and sponsor of A.B. 5) Lorena Gonzalez (D–San Diego) have described unionization as “a step forward” but not “the limit of what’s possible.” Teamster President Sean O’Brien—whose GOP-convention speech highlighted Republicans’ shift toward unions—has dismissed a similar Massachusetts unionization effort for gig workers, saying it supports “greedy corporations that want to deny full employment rights to workers.”

Gig-worker unionization isn’t full reclassification—but it pushes the system toward the same endgame.