Joined by Pete Buttigieg, Drivers Blockade Roadway Outside Uber Headquarters

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https://gizmodo.com/joined-by-pete-buttigieg-drivers-blockade-roadway-outs-1837627356

Joined by Pete Buttigieg, Drivers Blockade Roadway Outside Uber Headquarters
Bryan Menegus
Yesterday 4:35PM


To a steady beat of whistles, car horns, and “AB5 and a union!” hundreds of rideshare drivers amassed outside Uber’s corporate headquarters in San Fransisco this afternoon. For over an hour, Market Street has slowed to a crawl, choked by the cars of for-hire vehicle drivers.

The Market Street shutdown is just the latest stop in a three-day protest caravan across California advocating for the passage of the aforementioned Assembly Bill 5. Introduced by Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez in January, AB5 is seen by proponents as a kill-shot against the gig economy practice of classifying workers as independent contractors. It’s a convenient arrangement for companies like Uber and Lyft, which don’t have to provide benefits like health insurance and overtime pay, while passing fuel and vehicle wear costs onto drivers themselves.

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Joining these workers was, surprisingly, South Bend mayor and Democratic nominee hopeful Pete Buttigieg. “Where I come from ‘gig’ is another word for job,” Mayor Pete said in front of the rideshare giant’s front door. “That means you deserve a minimum wage. That means you deserve protections from workplace and sexual harassment. That means you deserve overtime protections. And yes that means you deserve a union,” the mayor assured drivers. The speech, of course, comes at a time when other Democratic presidential candidates are working to court the votes of unions across the country, with Sanders by far rolling out the most expansively pro-labor plan. In recent polls Buttigieg has sunk to a distant sixth place among the crowded Democratic field.

The caravan is timed around an important vote this Friday, where AB5, which already cleared California’s House of Representatives in July, will come before the state’s Senate Appropriations Committee. If successful, it will still require one more vote in the state senate to pass, though momentum appears to be building broadly against technology companies which have grown rich during the current period of deepening inequality in the country.