It took eight years of pressure from labor advocates in California.

It took California Supreme Court, the California legislature, and now the California executive branch to finally bring this question to a head.

Hello. Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us, a podcast that's really excited that California might finally be forcing Uber to treat its drivers as employees.

I'm your host, Paris Marks, and today I'm joined by Sam Harnett.

Sam is a reporter covering labor and tech at KQED in the Bay Area.

He recently made a radio series called How We Got Here and hosts a podcast called The World

According to Sound.

An essay of his called Words Matter that looks at how tech journalism has a number of flaws

and how that helped to legitimize the gig economy.

We'll be published in Beyond the Algorithm qualitative insights for gig work in 2021 by Cambridge

University Press. A lot of what we'll be talking about today comes from that article and deals

with the real issues with the focus of tech journalism and how it looks at tech companies.

We also talk about the ongoing fight in

California against Uber and Lyft to make them reclassify their drivers as employees. Today, August 20th,

the day that this episode comes out, is supposed to be the day that Uber and Lyft are supposed

to finally reclassify those drivers. As of right now, on August 19th, as I record this intro, it looks like they

will actually be leaving the state instead of complying with that order, but we'll have to see what

actually happens. If you like our conversation, please leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts

and make sure to share it with any friends or colleagues you think would find it interesting.

And if you want to support the work that I put into making this podcast,

you can go to patreon.com slash Tech Won't Save Us and become a supporter. Thanks so much and enjoy the

conversation. Sam, welcome to Tech Won't Save Us. Yeah, thanks for having me on. It's great to speak with

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