Hi, I'm Dan Permac and welcome to Axios Recap, brought to you by the American Beverage

Association. Today's Tuesday, November 10th. U.S. COVID cases are way up, tech stocks are down,

and we're focused on the future of the gig economy. In the fog of last week's presidential election, you might have missed that California

voters were also asked the different question.

Whether gig economy workers should be treated as employees or as independent contractors.

By margin of about 58 to 42, they chose independent contractors. Why it matters is that this basically

codifies the gig economy model in California, where companies like Lyft and Uber and DoorDash and

Instacart are all based. Had this measure lost, then we might have seen labor organizers

try to dismantle the contractor model in other states. Three things to know. First, this ballot

measure was called Prop 22 and was bankrolled by hundreds of millions of dollars from gig economy

companies, many of which argued that doing business in California would simply become too expensive

if they had to treat their drivers as employees. Two, Prop 22 doesn't quite go back to business as usual.

Gig economy workers will get some new benefits, like 20% above minimum wage when they're doing

so-called engaged work, plus access to some occupational accident and medical insurance.

But overall, it's not too much more.

3. Prop 22 can be overturned by the state legislature, but they need a seven-eighths

majority, so don't expect it to change.

The bottom line is that gig economy companies won, progressive labor organizers lost, and we

still haven't had a real national debate on how to treat this burgeoning class

of U.S. worker.

In 15 seconds, we'll go deeper with Lyft co-founder and president John Zimmer.

But first, this.

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