Lyft AB5 Response
Research / Product Design / Lorem ipsum
Lyft AB5 Response
In 2020 the California Supreme Court ruled in favor of workers for a document delivery company called Dynamex Operations West that were seeking employment status.
The drivers for the delivery service first brought their case over a decade ago, arguing that they were required to wear the company’s uniform and display its logo, while providing their own vehicles and shouldering all the costs associated with the deliveries.
Rolls and responsibilities
1 General Council
3 Lawyers
1 GM
13 PMs
4 EMs
2 TPMs
2 PMMs
5 UXResearchers
1 UXWriter
19 Designers
80% of Engineering
According to AB5, to hire an independent contractor, businesses must prove the following (my take is below in italics):
* (A) that the worker is free from the control and direction of the hirer in connection with the performance of the work, both under the contract for the performance of such work and in fact.
* Uber and Lyft set the rates, deactivate you if you fall below a 4.6 star rating and have lowered rates over the past 5 years and replaced them with Quest bonuses that tell you when and where you have to drive. I would say they fail this one.
* (B) that the worker performs work that is outside the usual course of the hiring entity’s business
* Uber and Lyft’s business is to get passengers from Point A to Point B like a taxi and drivers are the ones who get riders from Point A to Point B, so I would say they also fail this one.
* (C) that the worker is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation, or business of the same nature as the work performed for the hiring entity.
* Around 22% of drivers work more than 40 hours a week for Uber and Lyft so this might be one that they’re sort of ok on.
In order to hire an independent contractor, you must meet all of the requirements in the ABC test. So if AB5 passes in its current form, it’s a good bet that Uber and Lyft would have to designate all of their drivers in California as employees instead of independent contractors.
The Driver team set out to create a completely new business model and product for Drivers that complies with the AB5 ruling in the case Prop 22 does not pass. This effort included 14 work streams, 20+ specs, 24 designers, research and overall 600 people total working on the effort to deliver a new solution that meets the new law by November 2020.
The process was a different one in that the primary users were not only Drivers, but Riders and most importantly lawyers!! In order to meet everyone’s demands, the team worked closely with PM’s to design solutions that met legal requirements per feature area.
Once we had a strong case for meeting regulatory goals, we stitched the features together in a user centered end to end journey to test the hypothesis and success rates for Drivers.
However, because of privacy concerns most users were not from CA and provided feedback as if the product was a new company.
In addition, the team provided guidance for the Prop 22 campaign ballot research and content strategy in collaboration with Uber, Doordash, Instacart, Postmates, Technet and The Internet Association.
This process helped the team identify the best possible solutions to meet the legal requirements. This project is pending the outcome of Prop 22 which is scheduled to be on the November ballot in CA.
