After a yearslong battle for worker rights that pulled the governor’s office and state legislators into the fray, Uber and Lyft drivers in California are on the doorstep of having their own union to negotiate with the rideshare giants.
Can they win contracts?
That answer isn’t nearly as clear.
At a celebratory news conference Tuesday, organizers of the California Gig Workers Union announced they’ve crossed the threshold of worker support needed in order to be certified by the state’s Public Employment Relations Board to represent Uber and Lyft drivers. That certification, expected to be finalized in early September, affects roughly 800,000 California rideshare drivers who could then be covered by collective bargaining.
“With our people power, we must fight for working conditions we all deserve,” David Green, president and executive director of the Service Employees International Union Local 721, told cheering onlookers at the local’s Los Angeles office. A trio of SEIU locals form the foundation of the California Gig Workers Union. (Disclosure: SEIU is a financial supporter of Capital & Main).
But as corporate giants Amazon, Starbucks and Trader Joe’s have repeatedly demonstrated, it is possible for workers to unionize and still find themselves stonewalled when it comes to bargaining for wages, job protections and improved work conditions. In some cases, that pushback involves classic union-busting techniques, along with stalling patterns intended to foul negotiations.
The organizers of the California rideshare union have done some heavy lifting to get to this point. The challenge now: making it all the way to a contract.
Uber and Lyft have spent years and hundreds of millions of dollars trying to fend off organizing efforts by their California workers, many of whom drive for both services. It’s fair to wonder how committed they’ll be to negotiating a full contract.
Asked for comment by Capital & Main, Ramona Prieto, Uber’s head of public policy and communications, provided an emailed statement referencing the 2025 state legislation that cleared the way for rideshare drivers to unionize.
“This certification [of the union] is the next step in delivering on AB 1340, a historic compromise that gives drivers a pathway to representation while preserving the independence and flexibility they’ve consistently said they value the most,” Prieto’s statement said. “We look forward to our work ahead with the California Gig Workers Union and the state.”
The company said it had no further comment.
“As this new process moves forward, we’re committed to engaging in good faith,” said CJ Macklin, Lyft’s director of communications. “Lyft does well when drivers do well, and we’ll stay focused on helping drivers succeed while keeping rideshare affordable and dependable for everyone who counts on it.”
If the two companies follow those upbeat comments with fruitful negotiations, it will mark a turn away from the stalling tactics of other large corporations facing newly formed unions. It may also owe to California’s involvement at the state level in this process.
The compromise Prieto referred to was the result of negotiations among Uber, Lyft and SEIU California, the umbrella organization for the local unions that have organized the rideshare drivers.
That deal was brokered significantly by California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Assembly Bill 1340 gave drivers the right to organize, while a companion piece of legislation in the state Senate substantially reduced the amount of insurance that Uber and Lyft are required to carry for underinsured drivers, lowering their expenses.
None of the legislation recognizes drivers as employees of the rideshare companies — a hill on which Uber and Lyft executives have been willing to die. Those companies, along with app-based food delivery services, poured more than $200 million into a successful 2020 effort to pass Proposition 22 in order to get themselves exempted from having to classify their workers as employees.
Now, they’ll have to deal with a union representing the rideshare drivers, which in itself is a major accomplishment. And under the provisions of AB 1340, the state Public Employment Relations Board is not only the body that certifies the union, but has the authority to intervene if either side feels that the other is intentionally avoiding good-faith negotiations.
Other companies, Amazon and Starbucks prominent among them, have taken advantage of the fact that their workers have to file unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board, which has been re-formed by President Donald Trump as a reliably antilabor body. For rideshare drivers in California, going directly to the state board could in theory lead to quicker resolution of negotiating issues.
Negotiations certainly could become complicated. According to a 2024 study by the UC Berkeley Labor Center, rideshare drivers in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area averaged $7.12 an hour in median net earnings before tips.
“The life of a driver is very difficult,” Margarita Peñalosa, who drives for both Uber and Lyft, said during Tuesday’s news conference. “We put thousands of dollars into our cars and spend tens of thousands of miles on the road, and we work eight, 10, 12 or more hours seven days a week just to make ends meet. But drivers are getting a smaller slice of the pie every day. This is a shame.”
There is nothing in the state legislation that forces Uber or Lyft to come to a contract agreement with any union. Such is not the nature of labor negotiations.
AB 1340, authored by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Berkeley), requires the parties to bargain in good faith — but if the companies refuse to do so, the remedy for that is an unfair labor practice charge, which takes time to resolve. As the pro-labor Economic Policy Institute demonstrated in a lengthy examination of corporate tactics, Starbucks, Amazon and Trader Joe’s (among others) have taken full advantage of that labor-complaint time gap to repeatedly stall negotiations.
Amazon workers in a Staten Island warehouse voted to unionize in 2022; they’ve yet to achieve a contract. Unionized Starbucks workers staged an unfair labor practice strike in November 2025 that stretched as far as February of this year at some locations, but no store has yet reached a labor agreement despite its union winning elections at nearly 700 U.S. locations. (Under the terms of their organization, each Starbucks store that is unionized must negotiate separately for its own contract.)
“Starbucks has returned to the bargaining table, but its behavior hasn’t improved,” April Verrett, president of SEIU, with which Starbucks Workers United is affiliated, said via email.
Those companies may provide a road map for Uber and Lyft to either slow-play or avoid coming to an agreement with the California Gig Workers Union. On the other hand, the state-level involvement that is part of this process may put guardrails in place that keep negotiations pushing forward. Massachusetts rideshare drivers have organized under a similar state law, and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker signed the same kind of legislation earlier this month.
Ultimately, it’s up to the California Gig Workers Union, once it’s up and running, to marshal its new members and prompt the opening of contract talks.
“We are not disposable,” said Peñalosa. “We have a voice, and Uber and Lyft have to listen to us.” The coming months will tell if that’s true.
