Two days after a San Francisco judge ruled that Uber and Lyft must classify their drivers as employees and not contractors, Uber’s CEO stated that the service might shut down in California for months.
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra filed the lawsuit in San Francisco Superior Court. It alleged that Uber and Lyft violated AB5, which mandates that gig workers be classified as full employees in order to receive benefits.
Uber and Lyft say they plan to appeal the judge’s ruling. They also have another route of overturning the decision when the state’s voters will be faced with Proposition 22, a ballot initiative that exempts app-based drivers from AB5.
Beccera was not moved by Uber’s threat, telling reporters that “Any business model that relies on short-changing workers in order to make it probably shouldn’t be anywhere, whether California or otherwise.”
