California has set a path toward unionization for Uber and Lyft drivers.

From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech.

I'm Novosawa.

California, home to ride-hailing giants, Uber and Lyft, has enacted a law requiring the companies to collectively bargain with their drivers.

Drivers need the new law because they're technically independent contractors, which means no federally protected labor rights like employees get.

So the new state law could be a game changer.

To help us sift through the details, we reached out to Levi-Sumagai, a reporter with the new

site, CalMatters.

What labor experts say is this is sort of a form of sectoral bargaining where one sector

is given the chance to bargain with their industry.

So it works in some instances, fast food workers, for example, in California, one $20 minimum wage

because of sectoral bargaining. So I think, you know, what what unions hope is that 800,000 Uber and

Lyft drivers in California, you know, that they are able to win some new perks or improve their

conditions. What are the national implications of this? Because a lot of times we do see that as

California goes, because it is such an large economy, so goes the rest of the nation. Could we see that here? Could we see, you know, sectoral bargaining that could have an impact nationally?

So in Massachusetts last year, Uber and Lyft drivers did win the right to unionize. So California is the second to allow that.

The Uber and Lyft drivers in New York also have a pretty strong, like a group that tries to bargain for them, even though there is no sort of official law in New York.

So now that Massachusetts and California have given bright hailing drivers the ability to unionize,

it could happen elsewhere, that's for sure.

So what can we see going ahead?

Because based on how things have progressed in Massachusetts, which is extremely slowly,

they're still in the process of trying to unionize. There are multiple, multiple steps that still

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