Either way, Article 11 of Prop 22 has a severability clause. If they take away the 7/8th supermajority clause, it shouldn't affect the rest of Prop 22.
Edit: Looks like the California Supreme Court has denied their petition - https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/03/ca-supreme-court-denies-la...
This is a clear example of how the unions really control California.
Here are some fun incorrect varieties:
* Prop 22 needs 7/8 of legislators to vote against to repeal
* Prop 22 needs 7/8 of Californian voters to vote against to repeal
* Prop 22 needs 7/8 of Californians to modify
And now, this profound version
* Californian legislators can pass laws that require 7/8 majorities to repeal and AB5 is one of them
And it's actually a good thing, without that clause it would be totally impossible for the legislative to amend or repeal the proposition.
This boggles my mind about initiatives in California. In other states with popular initiatives, the People pass laws on the same footing as the Legislature; they just do so through the ballot box. The elected Legislature still has the authority to modify those same laws (though most states require a "cooling off" period of a year or two before a passed initiative can be modified, and even then a supermajority in the Legislature can still do it).
A popular initiative being sacrosanct and inviolable absent a second initiative seems wrong to me. Why does a populist law get to stand more firm than one passed by the elected representatives of the people?
I expect you know the answer to this. Just look at what happened with the restoration of voting rights to felons in Florida: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felony_disenfranchisement_in_F...
65% of Floridian voters chose to restore voting rights to felons; the Florida legislature chose to add additional restrictions to that restoration that were not in the original proposition, effectively preventing the restoration that Floridians had chosen.
Your answer is right there in the declaration of independence: "to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed". Rather than going through the legislative process, the idea is that some things should be decided by the people directly.
The original intent of ballot initiatives (propositions) was to try to nullify special interest power over the legislature. If you think AB5 was special-interest legislation (it very clearly was) this might be the exact intended use of the ballot initiative process. For the popular vote to nullify what the special interest-controlled legislature wanted. And it worked.
An entirely separate question is what kind of questions should be decided by direct democracy in the first place. I think California goes too far in this regard, but I don't think the right answer is "none". Regardless of one's political beliefs, I think something on the scale of Brexit was put to the electorate in a direct vote, and probably with reason.
Isn't that exactly what you should expect from a democrat state though? (i.e. democracy = popular vote; republic = elected representatives)
China, Russia, USA, France and Switzerland are all republics: two are dictatorships, two are representative democracies, and one is a direct democracy. Canada, UK, Japan and Belgium are all constitutional monarchies, and all of them are considered democratic. Saudi Arabia and Qatar are monarchies, but certainly not democratic.
Democracy is a scale, probably better used as an adjective: the more democratic, the more power is wielded by the people.
Because the people only vote once in two years and the reps vote all the time. Because the people need to collect 50k signatures and usually more and the reps need zero. This is obvious.
This is only partially true. Props are not amendable or repealable by default, but the 7/8 majority is a completely arbitrary and an unprecedentedly high burden to put on this. It is so high that it basically only exists so that people can argue that it is technically amendable or repealable while it being nearly impossible in practice. Prop 22 could have easily set a more reasonable cutoff like 2/3 even 3/4.
source: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/11/california-passes-assembly-b...
Also in the legislative world there is a huge difference between 61-16 and what would be a 68-9 requirement to meet a 7/8 cutoff. The goal for these cutoffs should be to make it difficult to achieve, not practically impossible.
No, it's not an unprecedentedly high burden. You just admitted that the default burden is much higher!
That wasn't my position. My position is that a 88% threshold in practice might as well be 101% and it is dishonest to include it and pretend like it is the near equivalent of 70%.
My comment on the pedantry was mostly on the fact that a lack of threshold is a null value and not equivalent to 101%. A null value is not larger than 88%. This 88% value is higher than previous propositions that have included a threshold and is therefore "unprecedentedly high".
I don't follow the logic. If there were no exemptions or carveouts, it would be even harder to claim that the licensures were beneficial.
You have an earlier comment on HN where you sharply criticized police unions, teachers unions, and even Google employees' early attempts at unionization/collective actions.
Did you previously have a more favorable view of those unions/actions which AB5 made you rethink?
Edit: typo
In other words, I'm pushing down a path of simple, broad based, WORKERS rights, rather than pushing down union rights. Workers rights helps everyone.
Some on my list if interested:
1) Raising minimum wage - with a geo cost of living factor.
2) Absolutely raising minimum wage to be exempt from overtime - this is a no brainer and criminal that it is not higher.
3) Consider ending employer based healthcare and replacing with universal offerings covering part time, poorly paid and basically everyone (still using private insurance is fine).
4) Dramatically simplifying retirement plan choices, limiting the top hat, nonqualified deferred and other plan types that execs use to take huge amounts tax free, and trade that for better benefits on lower end of income scale.
5) Being much more aggressive about classes of work with clear worker abuse. So while uber makes the news, the door to door sales kids being sexually harassed, stuck far from home, ripped off, told to scam others etc etc - I've been very active in some of these abusive industries to try and get some more accountability into them - which would be TRIVIAL to do if anyone had any backbone - but it's MUCH easier to beat up on amazon. Not to get into sob stories, but whole classes of folks are just trampled on without any consequence, and it would not be hard to clean up substantially (elderly, young etc etc).
There is a lot more - but yes, AB5 and before that the removal of reserve accounts for schools (also union backed) along with the tendency to keep horrendous workers on at all costs (police, medical malpractice situations, teachers etc) soured me on unions a bit unfortunately.
I don't care much about existing unions and their motives, only that I support drivers that want to unionize on their own. This isn't too relevant to AB5 specifically but in general, I am not against what someone wants to organize out of volition. Whether we agree on the reality of unions or not, we can see the whole gig economy needs something to protect the vulnerable. I don't trust private corporations to self-regulate but the crowd has spoken the other way via Prop 22.
I don't know if it's right but neither P22 or AB5 really solves the gig economy issues moving forward.
One of the interesting language aspects of this debate are the differences between people who call it the labor market and people who call it labor rights. I read a great book on the history of the labor movement in the US (sorry I've forgotten the title it was a long time ago) and there was a great discussion between the point of view that governments manage rights and companies manage markets.
All of the following conditions must be met in order for the worker to be classified as a contractor. (A) that the worker is free from the control and direction of the hiring entity in connection with the performance of the work, both under the contract for the performance of the work and in fact; (B) that the worker performs work that is outside the usual course of the hiring entity’s business; and (C) that the worker is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation, or business of the same nature as the work performed.
AB5 - union drafted, is an absolute unworkable travesty.
A key tell - for a "principled" law - they had to keep on adding so many carveouts and exceptions (and there are lots missed still).
I know folks - who are actively trying to do the right thing - tearing their hair out over AB5.
AB5 has really soured me on some of the labor rights stuff. AB5 is in no way a model solution - I hope other states can come up with more practical approaches - with some thought to the folks who just want a simple way to do the right thing without endless carveouts and classification arguments.