Full time drivers already enjoyed benefits under California law. While Prop 22 talked about giving benefits, that’s not what the law does in practice at all. In fact, it actually removes protections. The key to this surprising revelation is that Uber et al wrote proposition so that only when you’re actively driving do the minutes count towards the amount you need to gain the benefit. In other words, to get the 25 hours of engaged time, you need to be available for 40+ hours. That’s a full time job.

To make this a concrete example, consider a DoorDash driver. They get an order to drive to a restaurant. Clock starts, they get 15 minutes. The order isn’t ready, so they’re waiting for another 15 minutes, but the clock is stopped. Then they drive to your house, which takes another 15. A 45 minute task, but only 30 minutes counts. “But they’re not working when they’re waiting!” DoorDash cries. But they’re not free to leave, because then they’d lose the entire payout and get blackballed. It’s just a process inefficiency. If the driver worked for the restaurant, they’d still get paid while waiting.

The original law that Prop 22 replaced, addressed this down time, and because of this, Prop 22 was written.

While there maybe reasonable arguments to be made about how gig work is different from full time and traditional contractor work, the most damning part of Prop 22 for me was the 7/8s majority needed to amend the new law. That’s just bullshit.

Did you even read the wording of the prop?

What you are describing is completely wrong. It's incredible how short sighted people get when they want to go all out and lash at the "evil" gig economy companies. Like really, the wording is publicly available for you to read.

Engaged time is time from accepting the gig, to the time the gig ends. Waiting is included. That's it.

However, what isn't covered (and this is especially pertinent for ride sharing) is the time between ending a job and taking the next job.

While I wouldn't expect anything like full-time pay, Uber/Lyft et. al. still get a benefit of having drivers on call (lower wait times for their customers). I personally would have liked to see some compensation (within reason) for time spent on call but not on a ride. Not sure how easy it would be to make both a fair and reasonably un-cheatable system, but its something that should have been considered.

They essentially do this at times with their bonuses, for example to setup a new geo area or to ensure rides in a certain area.

However if you incentive being on call no matter what, you get drivers driving to the mountains to get their guaranteed pay.

This is correct. Although it's also true that drivers may have to spend quite a bit of time waiting for a job to become available, which doesn't count as engaged time.