What It Means to Legally Deny Network Workers Their Status as Workers
- K.C. Adams -
Imperialist network
companies force their social irresponsibility
into California law
Hundreds
of thousands of California workers involved in
the rideshare and
package delivery industry have been declared
non-workers in law. Yet,
in contradiction with their imperialist
definition, the oligarchs
holding political power have also forced terms
of employment, a
state-dictated collective agreement, on the
so-called "non-workers."
Needless to say, the rideshare and delivery
"non-workers" had no say or
control over their dictated terms of employment
nor the chance to give
their specific collective or individual approval
or disapproval. They
have however shown their rejection of the
dictate in Prop 22,
demonstrating and organizing against it and
continuing now despite its
passage.
 Five imperialist
network companies involved in transporting
people and delivering prepared food have forced
into law a declaration that is anti-worker,
irrational in content and profoundly
irresponsible.
The
five network companies financed and pushed into
California law
Proposition 22 to avoid their social
responsibility to pay payroll fees
for workers' compensation for work-related
injury and illness,
unemployment insurance and company-paid health
care insurance agreeable
to the workers themselves, and to evade various
state mandated legal
norms on minimum wages, sick pay, overtime and
holidays. The legal
definition as "non-workers" also makes it more
difficult for network
company workers to organize into their own
collectives to defend their
rights and to legally negotiate terms of
employment, within collective
agreements with their employers. As the workers'
demands bring out,
these include increased wages, compensation for
all work, and efforts
to protect the environment and the public,
including better COVID-19
protections for them and passengers.
The five network companies at the forefront of
pushing social irresponsibility and drafting
government legislation are Uber, Lyft,
Instacart, Postmates and DoorDash. That the
state of California would even allow itself to
be manipulated into denying its social
responsibility to protect its people and agree
to powerful private interests dictating law
speaks volumes about the necessity for
democratic renewal, empowerment of the
people and a new pro-social direction for the
economic, political and social affairs of the
state and country.
California is home to a large array of
imperialist network companies such as Google and
others employing millions of workers. Those
workers are members of the modern socialized
workforce. Whether they sell their capacity to
work to others or even to themselves as
cooperatives they are socialized workers who
require civilized norms of employment befitting
the modern socialized productive forces over
which they must have a say and control.
 By denying
rideshare and delivery workers their status as
workers, the imperialists are denying the
reality of the modern workplace as it presents
itself and the necessity at this time for
equilibrium in the relations of production. They
are denying that workplace injury and illness is
commonplace; they are denying that periodic
unemployment occurs from either a general or
localized economic crisis such as the pandemic;
they are denying that the rich oligarchs who are
driven by their aim for maximum private profit
ever abuse their employees and that workers must
unite to defend their rights and have as a
minimum the legal right to do so. They are
denying that the socialized forces of production
are the only institutions from which working
people can acquire a living and find a means of
subsistence and are consequently forced to sell
their capacity to work to live; they are denying
that in general the imperialist economy consists
of a social relation between working people who
sell their capacity to work to those who own and
control the socialized means of
production.
By
doing so, the imperialists have brought to the
fore two projects that
the working class is taking up: one, the
organizing of workers into
powerful independent collectives that defend the
rights of all and the
right of workers to a say and control over their
terms of employment.
The independent organizations of the rideshare
and delivery drivers as
well as the many that have formed as part of the
fight for equality,
justice and accountability, are examples in this
direction. Two, the
necessity to organize for democratic renewal to
overcome the current
tyrannical rule of private interests and bring
into being a genuine
government of the empowered people, by the
empowered people and for the
empowered people.
This article was published in
Number 82 - December 3, 2020
Article Link:
What It Means to Legally Deny Network Workers Their Status as Workers - K.C. Adams
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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