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<keyword id="1880715" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Vince-Chhabria">Vince Chhabria</keyword>, a 46-year old, was appointed the first Indian-American <keyword id="142435" type="POSITION" weightage="100" keywordseo="federal-judge">federal judge</keyword> in the third largest US state California by President <keyword id="15962" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Barack-Obama">Barack Obama</keyword>. 

	The appointment was made as President Obama transformed most of the Bay Area's federal judiciary, filling 11 of the 14 full-time judgeships on the region's federal court -- the most dramatic makeover of a district court bench in the nation, mercurynews.com reported. 
 

	The Bay Area Obama judges, appointed to lifetime tenure, are a generally young, demographically diverse group that will be deciding Silicon Valley tech showdowns, civil rights challenges and major federal criminal law questions for the foreseeable future, the report said. 
 

	The 11 Obama appointees sailed through Senate confirmation hearings. 
 

	The group is ethnically diverse, with seven minority appointees, including the court's first Asian-American appointee, San Jose's Lucy Koh; first Latina, Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers; and first Indian-American, Vince Chhabria, it said.
 Chhabria was confirmed last year year to a seat in San Francisco. He once clerked for <keyword id="58853" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="100" keywordseo="US-Supreme-Court">US Supreme Court</keyword> Judge Stephen Breyer, as well as his brother, San Francisco federal judge Charles Breyer. 

	He has issued significant decisions allowing cases, inlcuding that of labour laws, against transport companies Uber and Lyft's models to proceed. 
 

	Previously in a historic moment for the Indian-Amercican community, Obama had nominated Chhabria, then 43, to serve as a federal judge in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. 
 San Francisco-born Chhabria, whose father came to the US from Mumbai on a college scholarship, is a graduate with honours from <keyword id="73593" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="100" keywordseo="University-of-California">University of California</keyword>, Berkeley (Boalt Hall) and the University of California, Santa Cruz. 

	Prior to public service, he worked in the private sector, first as an associate at Keker &amp; Van Nest and later at Covington &amp; Burling.

	 
	 
	(Image credits: Indiatimes)

Bay Area’s first Indian-American federal judge appointed by President Barack Obama

<ul class="summary-list"><li>A federal judge allowed a lawsuit against X, formerly known as Twitter, to move ahead on Friday.</li><li>X is accused of failing to pay annual bonuses promised in the lead-up to and after Elon Musk's takeover.</li></ul>A federal judge allowed a lawsuit against X, formerly known as Twitter, to move ahead on Friday. The company is accused of failing to pay staff their promised annual bonuses.The lawsuit was <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-employees-sue-unpaid-bonuses-lawsuit-elon-musk-2023-6">filed in June by Mark Schobinger,</a> the company's former head of compensation, on behalf of himself and thousands of other current and former employees.The claimants are suing the company for allegedly failing to honor verbal promises that all employees working at X as of January 1, 2023, would be paid a portion of their annual bonuses.The total amount owed exceeds $5 million, according to the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.twitterlayofflawsuit.com/_files/ugd/ebbd24_3db80b2cd5fa410782e579698e624e47.pdf">court filing</a>.In a statement shared with Business Insider, the plaintiff's attorney, Shannon Liss-Riordan, said the bonuses owed amounted to "tens of millions of dollars.""We estimate about a couple thousand employees would have been eligible for the bonuses," she added.On Friday, Judge Vince Chhabria dismissed calls from X's lawyers to throw out the case.The lawyers had argued that the company couldn't be forced to uphold verbal contracts between Schobinger and the former management.But the judge wrote that Schobinger's case "plausibly stated a breach of contract claim" under California state law."Once Schobinger did what Twitter asked, Twitter's offer to pay him a bonus in return became a binding contract under California law. And by allegedly refusing to pay Schobinger his promised bonus, Twitter violated that contract," the judge said.The lawsuit claims that management at Twitter promised employees they would be paid 50% of their 2022 annual bonus if they stayed with the company during Musk's takeover, which was finalized in October 2022.The annual bonuses are usually paid out in the first quarter of the following year, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacharyfolk/2023/12/23/elon-musks-x-breached-twitter-worker-contracts-by-refusing-bonuses-judge-rules/?sh=3c98ee56146d#:~:text=Twitter%20historically%20paid%20bonuses%20in%20the%20first%20quarter%20of%20the%20new%20year%E2%80%94usually%20March">per Forbes.</a> According to Schobinger, those payments never happened.X's lawyers argued that this verbal contract did not stand up under Texas law, where they claimed the case should be tried. But the judge ruled that the case would be governed by California law, and, regardless of state law, all claims for dismissal "failed."Schobinger quit in May and said that X "reneging on various promises it had made to employees," including its failure to pay the 2022 bonuses, was to blame, per the complaint.Chhabria's ruling on Friday adds another lawsuit to X's growing pile of legal troubles.The company has faced several lawsuits in recent months <a target="_blank" rel="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-landlord-sues-elon-musk-alleges-not-paying-rent-headquarters-2023-1">over missed payments</a> on <a target="_blank" rel="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-being-evicted-from-colorado-office-not-paying-rent-report-2023-6">rent</a> and <a target="_blank" rel="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-elon-musk-lawsuit-bill-unpaid-gift-whiskey-cheese-socks-2023-2">other</a> <a target="_blank" rel="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-twitter-unpaid-bills-lawsuit-vendor-cost-cutting-sue-2023-4">services,</a> as well as <a target="_blank" rel="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/lawsuit-against-elon-musks-twitter-takeover-dismissed-by-judge-2023-5">unsuccessful</a> suits from employees who <a target="_blank" rel="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/laid-off-twitter-staff-gender-discrimination-lawsuit-dismissed-elon-musk-2023-5">were laid off</a> <a target="_blank" rel="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-twitter-lawsuit-he-never-planned-to-pay-rent-2023-5">or quit</a> shortly after <a target="_blank" rel="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-twitter-layoffs-drop-class-action-lawsuit-severance-pay-2023-1">Musk's takeover</a>.

Elon Musk's X will go to court after failing to pay staff millions in annual bonuses

<ul class="summary-list"><li>A Bay Area Subway franchisee paid staff more than $265,000 in bounced checks, the DOL said.</li><li>Workers as young as 15 were charged "bad check" fees by their banks as a result, per the DOL.</li></ul>Staff working for a number of Subway franchise stores in California missed out on $265,000 of wages after their employer paid them in checks that bounced, the Department of Labor <a href="https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/whd/whd20230525-0" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a>.John Michael Meza, an owner and operator of Subway franchises in the San Francisco Bay Area, paid his staff at least $265,294 in checks that bounced because the accounts had insufficient funds, the department said in a press release.Workers as young as 15 had been charged "bad check" fees by their banks, the DOL said in an April lawsuit against Meza, his wife, a business associate, and his companies.Between July 26 and December 26, 2022, alone, 297 checks bounced from just one bank account belonging to one of Meza's businesses, a DOL investigator said in a declaration.Vince Chhabria, district judge at the US District Court for the Northern District of California, ordered Meza in a preliminary injunction on May 19 to repay staff the wages they are owed and reimburse employees for any bad check fees they were required to pay.The investigation by the DOL's Wage and Hour Division covered 14 franchise stores in total, but the department did not say how many had given bad checks to staff. The lawsuit does not state whether the franchisees knew the checks would bounce when they gave them to workers.The lawsuit details a number of other apparent violations by the stores. The DOL reported that the stores directed 14- and 15-year-old employees to operate dangerous equipment, including ovens, toasters, and cardboard balers, and let minors work longer shifts than allowed and at hours when they're not allowed to work.In addition, employees under the age of 16 sustained "severe burns" from operating high-temperature toasters and ovens, the DOL said. It also wrote that a 15-year-old employee injured his arm and toe after Meza's wife directed him to climb a ladder and he fell.The stores also failed to pay wages regularly, didn't compensate staff for the full hours they worked, failed to pay staff an overtime rate, and kept tips left by customers, the DOL said. They told employees to clock-in and clock-out at different stores to falsify records, too, the DOL's release said.Meza's business associate also threatened to file a false police report against two 15-year-old employees who asked for their unpaid wages, the DOL wrote in the lawsuit.<a href="https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/news/department-of-labor-obtains-injunction-against-subway-franchise-in-sonoma-c/">The Press Democrat</a> had previously reported on some of the allegations.According to the DOL, Meza interfered with its investigation by coercing employees not to cooperate with investigators and threatening minors who raised concerns or tried to exercise their legal rights."Defendants have gone to great lengths to hide their willful safety and wage violations: they direct employees to falsify time records and retaliated against, intimidated and threatened their employees to discourage them from cooperating," the DOL wrote in the lawsuit.Chhabria's preliminary injunction also forbids Meza and the other defendants from violating child-labor regulations, harassing and threatening employees, and taking retaliatory actions against workers who speak to DOL investigators.Subway and lawyers for the defendants did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment, made outside of regular working hours.Speaking to the San Francisco Chronicle, Meza's lawyer Arkady Itkin said: "Some of the violations will be remedied immediately. Other things will take longer because of the financial hardships my client is undergoing. Two years of lockdowns and back rent owed to landlords have been hard on the business."

Staff at several Subway stores in San Francisco missed out on $265,000 of wages after the franchisee gave them checks that bounced, Labor Department says

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Facebook and its lawyers have been fined $925,078 as part of an ongoing class action lawsuit.</li><li>The site shared user data with businesses including the consulting firm Cambridge Analytica.</li></ul>While Facebook's parent company, Meta, agreed in December to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-to-pay-725-million-to-settle-privacy-lawsuit-2022-12">pay $725 million to settle the Cambridge Analytica privacy lawsuit</a>, a judge on Thursday decided that wasn't quite enough to ensure the social media giant had learned its lesson for sharing user data without permission. US District Court Judge Vince Chhabria <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23607794-facebook-sanctions-order-2923?responsive=1&amp;title=1">ordered</a> Facebook and its lawyers from the high-profile firm Gibson Dunn to pay an additional $925,078.51 to the class action plaintiffs for "trying to gaslight" their users and the court about its conduct.Facebook and its lawyers, according to the judge, conducted "a sustained, concerted, bad-faith effort to throw obstacle after obstacle in front of the plaintiffs — all in an attempt to push the plaintiffs into settling the case for less than they would have gotten otherwise." "Unfortunately, this sort of conduct is not uncommon in our court system," the judge wrote. "But it was unusually egregious and persistent here."The social media giant and its lawyers delayed proceedings and withheld evidence during depositions, Chhabria wrote, refusing to disclose what user data had been collected from individual claimants, despite sharing that data with third-party businesses without their consent."All the while, Facebook and Gibson Dunn had the audacity to accuse the plaintiffs' lawyers of delaying the case, and to assert that the plaintiffs' reasonable efforts to obtain obviously relevant discovery were frivolous," the judge's <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23607794-facebook-sanctions-order-2923?responsive=1&amp;title=1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ruling</a> added. "It's almost as if Facebook and Gibson Dunn spent the better part of three years trying to gaslight their opponents, not to mention the Court."The class-action lawsuit was originally filed in 2018 after it was revealed Facebook had <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-87-million-peoples-data-taken-in-cambridge-analytica-scandal-2018-4?r=US&amp;IR=T" rel="">exposed the data of 87 million users</a> to third-party businesses, including the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica.<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/who-is-christopher-wylie-the-facebook-data-breach-whistleblower-2018-3">Christopher Wylie, a former Cambridge Analytica employee,</a> leaked details to the press about how the firm harvested the data of millions of Facebook users without their consent, using their details to target political advertising in hopes of swaying the outcome of the 2016 election. The presidential campaigns of <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/cambridge-analytica-whistleblower-christopher-wylie-facebook-data-2019-10">Donald Trump and Ted Cruz paid over $5 million each to the firm.</a> CEO <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-deposition-sec-facebook-user-data-cambridge-analytica-2022-12">Mark Zuckerberg was eventually deposed</a> about his knowledge and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/cambridge-analytica-a-guide-to-the-trump-linked-data-firm-that-harvested-50-million-facebook-profiles-2018-3">testified before a joint hearing of the Senate's Commerce and Judiciary Committees</a> regarding whether Facebook could've done something to stop the issue before it was too late.The court's nearly $1 million sanction for poor conduct during the lawsuit proceedings "is loose change for a company like Facebook, and even for a law firm like Gibson Dunn," the judge's <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23607794-facebook-sanctions-order-2923?responsive=1&amp;title=1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ruling</a> acknowledged. In 2022, the revenue general by Meta amounted to roughly 116.6 billion US dollars, according to data by <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/268604/annual-revenue-of-facebook/#:~:text=In%202022%2C%20the%20revenue%20general,for%20the%20social%20media%20company.">Statista</a>."But it's important for courts to help protect litigants from suffering financial harm as a result of their opponents' litigation misconduct," the <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23607794-facebook-sanctions-order-2923?responsive=1&amp;title=1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ruling</a> continued. "And hopefully, this ruling will create some incentive for Facebook and Gibson Dunn (and perhaps even others) to behave more honorably moving forward."Gibson Dunn lawyers listed in the suit and representatives for Facebook did not immediately respond to Insider's requests for comment.

A federal judge accused Facebook of 'gaslighting' users impacted by data breaches and fined the site and its lawyers nearly $1 million

<ul class="summary-list"><li>US Judge Vince Chhabria on Thursday accused an <keyword id="51841" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="ice">ICE</keyword> official of lying to cover up the "deliberate indifference" to the lives of immigrants at a privately-run detention center.</li><li>Over the summer, over half of those detained at the Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center contracted COVID-19. In the past two weeks, over a dozen staff members have also tested positive.</li><li>The facility in Bakersfield, California, is run by <keyword id="5742095" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="The-Geo-Group">The GEO Group</keyword>, a for-profit prison company.</li></ul>US officials and their partners in the for-profit prison industry intentionally failed to protect immigrants detained at a facility in Northern California from COVID-19, "appalling" behavior that led to a "severe and prolonged outbreak" of the coronavirus, according to a federal judge.In <a href="https://beta.documentcloud.org/documents/20419694-zepeda_rivas_et_al_v_jennings_et_al">an order</a> released Thursday, Judge Vince Chhabria of the US District Court for the Nothern District of California sided with a group of immigrant plaintiffs, backed by the American Liberties Union, who charged that officials at the Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center, privately run by The GEO Group, were grossly negligent in their approach to the pandemic. Indeed, Chhabria wrote, they "showed a deliberate indifference to the safety of the detainees."And they were dishonest about it, she said. For example, Alexander Pham, an officer with <keyword id="543442" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="US-Immigration-and-Customs-Enforcement">US Immigration and Customs Enforcement</keyword> with responsibility for the Mesa Verde facility, earlier testified to the court that all new arrivals were being subject to a 14-day quarantine "when no such quarantine existed," Chhabria wrote.Officials also "deliberately avoided testing detainees and staff for fear that the results would require them to take expensive and logistically challenging safety measures," the judge said. That inaction led to a crisis over the summer: at one point, over half of the facility's 103 detainees were infected with the coronavirus, "an outbreak that ICE and GEO made no meaningful effort to prevent and were totally unprepared to respond to."It has been an "abominable performance," Chhabria added.Neither ICE nor GEO immediately responded to a request for comment.According to ICE, there have been over 7,500 confirmed cases of COVID-19 among detained immigrants since the start of the pandemic, including 59 cases among detainees at the Mesa Verde facility; a third of the staff members there have also contracted the disease, including 15 in the past two weeks.The judge's ruling upholds a previous order requiring ICE and GEO to carry out weekly testing of staff and detainees at Mesa Verde, which is located in Bakersfield, California. It also requires facility staff to segregate detainees who have tested positive in separate dorms.Immigrants who are detained there do not think that is enough."We don't feel safe," Williams Mattias Rauda, detained since November 2018, told the <keyword id="853040" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="ACLU">ACLU</keyword>. "We all are afraid we will die here."Bree Bernwanger, an attorney with the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights in San Francisco, argues that the behavior documented by Judge Chhabria should be a lesson to President-elect Joe Biden and his team."ICE has both refused to keep people safe and repeatedly misrepresented its actions," Bernwanger said. "The new administration should take heed of the court's observation that ICE and GEO have lost the right to be trusted."Have a news tip? Email this reporter: <a href="mailto:cdavis@insider.com">cdavis@insider.com</a>

Judge denounces conduct at for-profit ICE detention facility, accuses official of lying to cover up 'deliberate indifference' to the lives of immigrants during pandemic

<ul class="summary-list"><li>President <keyword id="6354862" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="trump">Trump</keyword>'s attempts to shut down <keyword id="6762469" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="TikTok">TikTok</keyword> in the US won't affect employees getting paid, the administration said in a legal filing on Monday.</li><li>A US TikTok employee, Patrick Ryan, had sued Trump and commerce secretary Wilbur Ross over executive orders that potentially left 1,500 employees without wages.</li><li>Lawyers for Trump assured Ryan's legal team that TikTok employees would not be barred for getting paid, nor prosecuted for working for the company.</li><li>The White House is reviewing a proposed deal that would see tech giant Oracle become TikTok's "trusted tech partner" in the US, potentially avoiding both a sale and outright ban.</li></ul>President Trump's legal team conceded the first key test of his attempts to shut down TikTok or compel American oversight of the company.Patrick Ryan, a technical program manager who joined TikTok in the US in April, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tiktok-employees-sue-trump-administration-2020-8?r=US&amp;IR=TIR=T">had taken the US president and secretary of commerce Wilbur Ross to court</a>, claiming two executive orders Trump lodged against TikTok would leave the app's 1,500 US employees without a wage.The judge overseeing the case in the North California District Court, Vince Chhabria, expedited the case with a first hearing on Tuesday.But less than 24 hours before the hearing was due to take place, lawyers for the US government emailed Ryan's legal team, assuring them that Trump did not intend to enforce the executive orders in a way that would stop TikTok employees being paid.Trump's August 6 executive order had stated that Americans and US businesses would be barred from conducting transactions with the app or its parent firm ByteDance.The letter also assured Ryan and other TikTok employees worried about being criminally liable of breaching the executive order for continuing to work for TikTok that they wouldn't be prosecuted.The document, written by Jeffrey Bossert Clark, the US administration's acting assistant attorney general, was submitted to the court just before it closed at 6pm on September 14 — the last possible time before the court rose the next day."Importantly, the assurances that the government made today do not condition these points on any particular merger or any specific transaction," Ryan told Business Insider, calling the timing "auspicious"."We believe that the government conceded all our initial asks today because they saw a serious risk that the court would invalidate the entire executive order on constitutional grounds," he added.Though those assurances have been provided, Ryan's case — alongside a separate one filed against the US government by TikTok itself — continues."We are confident that the remaining issues in this case also will be litigated fully to a successful conclusion, which will be the striking of the executive order as an unconstitutional overreach by the US president," said John D Lovi of Blackstone Law Group, lead counsel for Ryan.The US government <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tiktok-oracle-partnership-trump-china-bytedance-explainer-2020-9?r=US&amp;IR=TIR=T">is reviewing a deal</a> that involves tech giant Oracle acting as TikTok's "trusted technology partner" in the US. While the details remain hazy, this does not appear to be the outright sale of TikTok in the US first floated by Trump.

The Trump administration says the TikTok order doesn't stop the app's US employees getting paid

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image">Reuters</div></div></div><ul><li>Bayer's stock climbed as much as 3% on Tuesday after a federal judge slashed a payout over its Roundup weed killer by nearly 70% to about $25 million.</li><li>A San Francisco jury determined Roundup caused a user to develop cancer and awarded him $75 million in punitive damages. The judge cut that to $20 million after deciding the original figure was "constitutionally impermissible" as it was too high relative to the $5.3 million in compensatory damages.</li><li>However, the judge said the conduct of Roundup-owner Monsanto, which Bayer acquired last year, was "reprehensible."</li><li>More than 13,000 farmers, landscapers, and home gardeners have sued Bayer and Monsanto, claiming the active ingredient in Roundup, glyphosate, is unsafe.</li><li><a href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/stocks/bayer-stock?utm_source=markets&amp;utm_medium=ingest">Watch Bayer trade live</a>.</li></ul>Shares in <a href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/stocks/bayer-stock?utm_source=markets&amp;utm_medium=ingest">Bayer</a> climbed 3% on Tuesday after a federal judge slashed the German pharmaceuticals giant's payout over its Monsanto unit's <a href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/bayer-plunges-after-jury-finds-its-roundup-weedkiller-caused-cancer-2019-3-1028044328">Roundup weed killer</a> by nearly 70% to about $25 million.A San Francisco jury determined the herbicide caused the plaintiff, Edwin Hardeman, to develop cancer and awarded him about $75 million in punitive damages. Vince Chhabria, a US district judge, cut that figure to about $20 million, determining the original amount was too high relative to the $5.3 million in compensatory damages and therefore "constitutionally impermissible," <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bayer-glyphosate-lawsuit/us-judge-slashes-roundup-jury-award-to-253-million-bayer-still-plans-to-appeal-idUSKCN1UA2CH">according to Reuters</a>."Monsanto's conduct, while reprehensible, does not warrant a ratio of that magnitude, particularly in the absence of evidence showing intentional concealment of a known or obvious safety risk," Chhabria wrote.Bayer took control of Roundup after it bought agrochemical giant Monsanto for $63 billion last summer. Hardeman claimed the weed killer caused him to develop non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a cancer that affects the immune system, after he regularly used it for more than 25 years to treat poison oak and weeds in his yard. More than 13,000 farmers, landscapers, and home gardeners have sued Bayer and Monsanto, claiming Roundup's active ingredient, glyphosate, is unsafe. The verdict and damages "conflict with both the weight of the extensive science that supports the safety of Roundup, and the conclusions of leading health regulators in the U.S. and around the world that glyphosate is not carcinogenic," Bayer said in a statement, adding that it plans to appeal.While Bayer has successfully lowered payouts, the verdicts are piling up. In August, a jury ordered Monsanto to pay $289 million after determining it failed to warn customers of the potential cancer risks of Roundup and another weed killer, Ranger Pro. The award was cut to $78.5 million on appeal, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/monsanto-hit-by-289-million-verdict-in-cancer-case-1533949524?mod=article_inline">according to the Wall Street Journal</a>.Bayer earned close to 40 billion euros ($45 billion) in revenue and 4 billion euros in operating profits last year. Its stock has tumbled by more than a third in the past year, slashing its market capitalization to about 60 billion euros.<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/intelligence/future-of-fintech?IR=T&amp;itm_source=businessinsider&amp;itm_medium=ctgr_bii&amp;itm_term=ctgr_leadgen&amp;itm_content=finance&amp;itm_campaign=future-of-fintech"></a> <div class="margin-top"> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/hidden-benefits-amazon-prime-power-user-2017-7">7 lesser-known benefits of Amazon Prime</a></h3> <div> </div> </div>

Bayer is rallying after a judge slashed a payout over its cancer-linked Roundup weed killer by $55 million

<div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right"><div class="image on-image"></div></div>There's a war brewing over what to call the Uber and Lyft drivers in this world, and "employee" might not be the answer. "I think it's not 1099 versus W-2. I think the right answer is a third class of worker," said Simon Rothman, a partner at Greylock and an investor in Sprig, which uses 1099 employees. "People are now becoming one-person companies, and they're not even working for one entity."The new economic model championed by the on-demand economy relies on a steady stream of <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/uber-lyft-business-models-and-lawsuits-2015-3">1099 contract workers</a>. They are called 1099 workers because of the IRS tax form "1099 MISC" that they fill out when hired, compared to the traditional W2 that full-time employees complete.It's a business model that's being contested in court after Boston labor rights attorney <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/shannon-liss-riordan-the-lawyer-behind-ubers-lawsuit-2015-5">Shannon Liss-Riordan sued</a> Uber and Lyft.While Rothman acknowledged that it is likely going to be the W-2 that wins out, it is still "fundamentally wrong," he said on a panel at the grand opening of <a href="https://driveshift.com/cars/san-francisco">Shift</a>'s new offices.Rothman's argument centered around the fact that many of the 1099 contractors don't have loyalty to a singular company and are instead becoming one-person companies by working for several platforms. The 2015 1099 Economy Workforce Report found that <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/new-study-shows-importance-of-cash-to-the-1099-workforce-2015-5">38 percent of the on-demand workers</a> are signed on to multiple companies at once while 13 percent said they switched companies to try to leverage the sign-up bonuses. <div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div></div></div>If you unbundle benefits from companies or substitute them on a pro-rata basis, that's when you can create a new flexible labor class that matches how the delivery drivers or house cleaners of the on-demand economy see their jobs, Rothman said. He would love to see companies start personalized healthcare that travels with you and not dependent on your employer. "I think this new class of worker has to reflect this new type of work that's being done," Rothman said. "If you decouple the benefits, if you decouple the pension so it's not tied with you, think about the control you can have, going out of the networks as you wish, controlling the what and when of your job."Rothman is not the only person thinking about the third labor class either. In Germany, as Shift's founder George Arison noted on the panel, <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/what-if-there-were-a-new-type-of-worker-dependent-contractor-1422405831">there is already a third class</a> of "dependent contractors". Even in the Lyft case, U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenhuet/2015/03/11/lyft-uber-employee-jury-trial-ruling/">said in a March decision</a> that he's not sure if Lyft drivers fit in either category of California's "outdated" employment codes."The jury in this case will be handed a square peg and asked to choose between two round holes," he wrote. "The test the California courts have developed over the 20th Century for classifying workers isn't very helpful in addressing this 21st Century problem."Rothman also saw it as an evolution of the labor system."What's happened over the last generation is that you no longer have one career with one employer, but you expect to have one employer at a time," Rothman said. "Why can't you work for 5 platforms, or 50 platforms at a time?" <div class="margin-top"> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/ubereats-uber-meals-takeout-delivery-fast-food-2015-5">Uber has a new ad that promises to change everything about the food delivery game</a></h3> <div> <div> <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="tqNHEwdTolIbwDtgvqcm5scz0fRqtZ9x" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div> </div> </div> </div>

We need a 'third class of worker' for people like Lyft and Uber drivers, says investor

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div></div></div>Both Uber and Lyft are <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/28/us-uber-lyft-workers-idUSKBN0L11BN20150128">facing lawsuits that could dramatically change both companies' business models</a>.The lawsuits, which were separately brought on by drivers for the two companies, say drivers should be reclassified as employees as opposed to independent contractors.&#xa0;On Wednesday, Uber and Lyft&#xa0;<a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/11/lyft-drivers-idUSL1N0WD2ME20150311?irpc=932">unsuccessfully argued in court that their drivers are independent contractors</a>. The judges in the cases decided the cases would have to be decided by juries.Now, US District judges Vince Chhabria and Edward Chen say juries will decide how Uber and Lyft drivers should be classified.A ruling in favor of the drivers "could significantly raise their costs beyond the lawsuits and force the companies to pay social security, workers' compensation, and unemployment insurance," Reuters reports.&#xa0;Generally, drivers&#xa0;and other independent contractors want full-time pay - or at least predictable pay - but employers have their sights set on maximizing profits.Employees are expensive for companies.&#xa0;<a href="http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Small-Businesses-&amp;-Self-Employed/Independent-Contractor-Self-Employed-or-Employee">According to the IRS</a>, for common-law employees, employers "must withhold income taxes, withhold&#xa0;and pay Social Security and Medicare taxes, and pay unemployment tax on wages paid" to full-time employees.&#xa0;The same is not necessarily true for an independent contractor.Benefits are another aspect often extended to employees but not independent contractors. And employers but not independent contractors have the right to control how a worker behaves - how to dress, for example, or specific customer-interaction protocol.&#xa0;You have more labor protections when you're an employee.&#xa0;From a company mindset, it's easy to see why a fast-growing company like Uber would favor independent contractors.But hiring laborers as employees not only makes them happy - it gives company more control over their employees. Companies can enforce a dress code or uniform, for example, with employees, or they can dictate on-duty behavior.&#xa0;In a 2013 lawsuit, a judge ruled that FedEx had&#xa0;<a href="http://www.law360.com/articles/455495/fedex-misclassified-drivers-as-contractors-judge-rules">misclassified its delivery drivers as contractors when they were really employees</a>, saying that it's&#xa0;"beyond cavil that the pickup and delivery drivers are essential to FedEx's business."Shannon Liss-Riordan, the&#xa0;same attorney who served on behalf of the 11 FedEx drivers who filed the lawsuit in 2013, is the attorney for the lawsuits drivers have filed against Lyft and Uber.As independent contractors for Lyft and Uber, drivers pay all their expenses out of pocket: gas, maintenance, insurance, and detailing, just to name a few.&#xa0;The drivers, should they win these lawsuits, could be entitled to either hourly wages or a regular salary, as well as reimbursement for the money they've spent on things like gas and insurance as drivers for Uber and Lyft.In addition, drivers would be able to organize formally. Right now, drivers - especially those unhappy with their working conditions - have <a href="https://www.facebook.com/uberdriversnetwork">informally organized by region</a>&#xa0;or in forums like <a href="http://www.uberpeople.net/">UberPeople</a>. In August, Southern California Uber drivers <a href="http://teamster.org/news/2014/08/uber-drivers-southern-california-form-association-teamsters-local-986">aligned with a local Teamsters union</a>.Lyft has argued that because drivers are in control of how often they work, they are independent contractors. Drivers have contested this classification. They see themselves as employees because they are told how to behave with customers and can be deactivated without notice from Lyft's system."Uber's whole business model is built around having other people take the risks as independent contractors. And I don't know if they can change that; it's built into their business model. It's how they're making so much money," Joseph De Wolf Sandoval, an organizer for the California App-Based Drivers Association (CADA) <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/uber-drivers-across-the-country-are-protesting-tomorrow--heres-why-2014-10">told Business Insider back in October</a>.The lawsuits, which are both seeking class-action status in San Francisco Federal Court, would apply to drivers only in California. But a ruling in favor of the drivers would set a precedent for Uber and Lyft, as well as other companies that follow the independent-contractor business model.Here's why.There has been a rise in on-demand startups recently. You may have heard it called the "1099 economy," so named for the 1099 MISC forms that employers fill out when they hire contractors, as opposed to the W2 forms companies fill out when they hire full-time employees.Uber and Lyft are chief among these on-demand companies, of course, but there are many others. Postmates, Wunwun, and TaskRabbit are delivery services. Washio and FlyCleaners do your laundry on demand. Handy and MyClean are home cleaning startups. <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/luxury-tech-startups-2015-1">The "Uber for X" category goes on, and it's seemingly endless</a>.The people who work for these companies - not the executives, but the people who do the dirty work of delivering your laundry and <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/when-on-demand-is-and-isnt-appropriate-2014-9">dropping off your bag of potato chips</a>&#xa0;- are not usually employees - they're contractors.Startups use contractors for the simple reason that they are a lot cheaper than employees. When you're an independent contractor, your employer does not have to consider paying into Social Security or withholding taxes. It saves them money.When home-cleaning startup MyClean switched from an independent-contractor model to one with full-time employees, the startup saw its labor costs go up 40%, according to Kevin Roose,&#xa0;<a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/09/silicon-valleys-contract-worker-problem.html">writing for New York magazine</a>.From a financial perspective, it makes sense why companies are clinging to the independent-contractor model. But drivers have a lot to gain from rulings in their favor. These drivers are only asking for reimbursement for their expenses. But if juries rule against Uber and Lyft, drivers stand to gain more than just lost wages. These lawsuits could change Uber and Lyft's business models entirely, increasing their labor costs.We reached out to Lyft and Uber for comment and will update this post when we hear back. <div class="margin-top"> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/iphone-power-user-hacks-apple-tricks-2015-3">5 hard-to-find iPhone tricks only power users know about</a></h3> <div> <div> <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="dzb3ZxczpW1JgYelTy6QXfo_lrpK_Xyi" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div> </div> </div> </div>

How two lawsuits could destroy Uber and Lyft's business models - and set a precedent for the rest of the sharing economy

<div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right"><div class="image on-image"></div></div>Today, the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/california-labor-commission-rules-uber-drivers-are-employees-2015-6">California Labor Commission ruled </a>that Uber and Lyft drivers are employees, not indepdendent contractors. It's not the final word in the case by any means, but it will help bolster the case for the group of drivers who have sued the companies to gain employee status in California.We interviewed the lawyer representing those drivers, Shannon Liss-Riordan, earlier this month. Here's the interview:Shannon Liss-Riordan was having dinner in San Francisco when a friend insisted he show her this life-changing app.He opened up Uber and walked her through the process: you set your location and a driver in their own car comes and picks you up. Everyone's private driver, as the company first advertised.The app would change Liss-Riordan's life, but not for the reasons her friend was thinking. Instead of being awed by its car-summoning abilities, Liss-Riordan's brain, like always, was focused on the people powering the business."I'm standing there looking at him, and he looks up at me and realizes what's going through my head. And he says 'No, don't you dare. You're going to put this company out of business, aren't you?" Liss-Riordan told Business Insider. "That was my first introduction to Uber. I didn't actually sue them until a year or more after that."Liss-Riordan, a Boston-based employment rights lawyer, waited until August 16, 2013, to be exact. She later filed a similar suit against Lyft. Both suits have since been whittled down to workers in California.At the heart of the matter is a how these companies classify their workforce.<h2 class="p1">The "1099 economy"</h2>Uber and Lyft drivers claim their drivers are independent contractors, not employees. Seen through Silicon Valley's rose-colored lenses, these are self-fulfilling entrepreneurs sitting behind the wheel, taking control of their own destinies and filling their schedules with as little or as much work as they want. <div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right"><div class="image on-image"></div></div>These folks make up the backbone of what's known as the "1099 economy," because these flexible workers fill out the tax form known as the 1099 MISC, used for freelancers and contractors, rather than a W2, used for full-time employees. They do the labor at most of the "<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/san-francisco-tech-startups-replacing-mom-2015-5">Uber for X" companies</a> that have proliferated in the last few years, particularly in the San Francisco Bay Area. By using contractors instead of employees, companies are not responsible for things like payroll taxes, job expenses, anti-discrimination protections or overtime pay. For bootstrapped startups, it's a cost-saving measure that can mean life or death. But Liss-Riordan isn't drinking the same venture-capital bought kool-aid as the startups who have built businesses around the 1099 economy. Rather, she views it as another example of companies using contract workers as a way to skirt their obligations as an employers."I don't believe this industry needs to be built on a system whereby the workers don't need to receive any of the protections that we have a society that workers need to receive," she said. "I just don't know how Uber can argue with a straight face that as a $40 billion dollar company it can't afford to insure its drivers, pay minimum wage or pay overtime, or be reimbursed for their expenses. This is not going to put Uber out of business."<h2 class="p1">What FedEx and strippers can teach Uber</h2>Liss-Riordan said she can see through Uber's smoke and mirrors because she has seen companies try to do the same thing before, whether it was FedEx misclassifying their drivers or night clubs doing the same with their exotic dancers."They try to claim that because they're providing services through an app they're somehow different from all these companies I've been suing for all these years," Liss-Riordan said. "I just don't believe that."She first started looking into employment law after she worked with outspoken lawyer and former congresswoman Bella Abzug right out of college. After graduating from Harvard Law, she went to a labor union in Boston where she ended up embroiled in wage and hour disputes. <div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div></div></div>"One case led to another and before I knew it I had spent a decade representing wait staff against restaurants and hotels and country clubs," Liss-Riordan said. One particular case even led Liss-Riordan to buy part of a pizzeria and split the ownership with the employees. The pizzeria opened in 2013 with a new name: <a href="http://thejustcrust.com/story/">The Just Crust</a>. It wasn't just wait staff that came to Liss-Riordan and her law firm, Lichten &amp; Liss-Riordan. Take the case of exotic dancers. Like Uber, the night clubs were arguing they were just a platform for dancers, despite keeping a percentage of the earnings and charging the dancers for each shift. Liss-Riordan <a href="https://medium.com/ondemand/what-strippers-can-teach-uber-1f5b15e5b427">won the case for the strippers</a>.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div></div></div>One of her most famous wins was a case against FedEx. Like Uber, it had been classifying its delivery drivers as independent contractors and not employees, even though they wore FedEx uniforms and drove trucks with the FedEx logo. A Massachusetts judged ruled in Liss-Riordan's favor, and the case has been repeated in several other states. (FedEx has now <a href="http://www.dcvelocity.com/articles/20150219-judge-rules-in-favor-of-fedex-ground-hunt-in--massachusetts-worker-classification-cases/">successfully appealed</a>, and it is back in court.)While Uber drivers don't wear uniforms or drive logo-emblazoned trucks around, they are arguably more monitored than the FedEx drivers are because of the constant rating system and the threat of termination if it drops too low, Liss-Riordan argued."Uber, like I have seen in a lot of these cases, is trying to argue that they are something different, that their drivers are something different. Just like FedEx tried to tell its drivers that. Just like strip clubs tried to tell their entertainers that," Liss-Riordan said. "But the truth is that they're not. They get in, they do the work and they're told how to do it and they have these rules they have to follow and they're evaluated on a real-time basis." <h2 class="p1">Square pegs, round holes </h2>There's no easy litmus test, though, as to determine who is an employee and who is an independent contractor. The California Department of Industrial Relations says on its website that there is "no clear definition" of the term independent contractor - signing a 1099 form doesn't mean you are one.In cases of misclassification, its up to the courts to decide. In March, two judges <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenhuet/2015/03/11/lyft-uber-employee-jury-trial-ruling/">ruled Liss-Riordan's Uber and Lyft cases will go to a trial by jury</a>. Uber had been asking for a summary judgement because it argued that it was a technology company, not a transportation company. <div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right"><div class="image on-image"></div></div>U.S. District Judge Edward Chen didn't buy it. "The idea that Uber is simply a software platform, I don't find that a very persuasive argument," he said in court.In the Lyft case, U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria said in his decision that he's not sure if Lyft drivers fit in either category of California's "outdated" employment codes."The jury in this case will be handed a square peg and asked to choose between two round holes," he wrote. "The test the California courts have developed over the 20th Century for classifying workers isn't very helpful in addressing this 21st Century problem."Liss-Riordan doesn't buy that argument though. "It's a new more convenient way to provide services," she said. "But it doesn't change anything about the basic fact that they are a company that provides a service and the workers that provide a service are under their control."<h2 class="p1">A woman versus an industry</h2>Liss-Riordan isn't out to take Uber down. Despite her friend's initial worry that she was going to put them out of business, she doesn't think she will."I think Uber will do just fine if they have to play by the rules. Silicon Valley will do just fine as well. Maybe some won't make it, but the market will figure it out," Liss-Riordan said. "It's important that we have these laws, and I still think they're good laws."If Liss-Riordan wins, it also won't mean that the positions will evaporate, although it will take some "rejiggering" of the companies business models to convert everyone to employees, she said. There are examples of on-demand companies who already hire part-time and full-time employees in what are normally contract worker positions. <div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right"><div class="image on-image"><a href="https://www.managedbyq.com/"></a></div></div>Managed By Q, a New York-based office management startup, hired a full staff of cleaners because it was looking to retain happy employees and knew it wanted a W-2 workforce. It had to build a sophisticated labor planning model to build in flexibility and different hours, especially since office cleaning is normally an off peak job, said co-founder Dan Teran at the On Demand conference. <a href="https://munchery.com/">Munchery</a>, a food delivery startup in San Francisco, hires its drivers as employees and schedules them in delivery shifts. Because they are employees, it also means it pays out overtime when needed - something it happily <a href="https://munchery.com/jobs/s0EKnN/delivery-driver/">advertises on its job page</a>."Employers across the country are providing flexibility to employees because a lot of employees are demanding it. Just because we win the case doesn't mean that will go away. It doesn't mean people will have to work on a 9-5 schedule," Liss-Riordan said. "Our point is that if you are working and you are subject to rules that employees are subject to, then you are also need to have the rights that our legislature has said employees should have as well." <div class="margin-top"> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/general-mcchrystal-manage-company-us-army-uber-2015-5">Gen. Stanley McChrystal on how Uber operates just like a special forces unit</a></h3> <div> <div> <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="UweG8ydToxKxgv97nzOpisx_MuacMgQv" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div> </div> </div> </div>

Meet the lawyer fighting to get Uber and Lyft drivers classified as employees

<div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right"><div class="image on-image"></div></div>Shannon Liss-Riordan was having dinner in San Francisco when a friend insisted he show her this life-changing app.He opened up Uber and walked her through the process: you set your location and a driver in their own car comes and picks you up. Everyone's private driver, as the company first advertised.The app would change Liss-Riordan's life, but not for the reasons her friend was thinking. Instead of being awed by its car-summoning abilities, Liss-Riordan's brain, like always, was focused on the people powering the business."I'm standing there looking at him, and he looks up at me and realizes what's going through my head. And he says 'No, don't you dare. You're going to put this company out of business, aren't you?" Liss-Riordan told Business Insider. "That was my first introduction to Uber. I didn't actually sue them until a year or more after that."Liss-Riordan, a Boston-based employment rights lawyer, waited until August 16, 2013, to be exact. She later filed a similar suit against Lyft. Both suits have since been whittled down to workers in California.At the heart of the matter is a how these companies classify their workforce.<h2 class="p1">The "1099 economy"</h2> Uber and Lyft drivers claim their drivers are independent contractors, not employees. Seen through Silicon Valley's rose-colored lenses, these are self-fulfilling entrepreneurs sitting behind the wheel, taking control of their own destinies and filling their schedules with as little or as much work as they want. <div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right"><div class="image on-image"></div></div>These folks make up the backbone of what's known as the "1099 economy," because these flexible workers fill out the tax form known as the 1099 MISC, used for freelancers and contractors, rather than a W2, used for full-time employees. They do the labor at most of the "<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/san-francisco-tech-startups-replacing-mom-2015-5">Uber for X" companies</a> that have proliferated in the last few years, particularly in the San Francisco Bay Area. By using contractors instead of employees, companies are not responsible for things like payroll taxes, job expenses, anti-discrimination protections or overtime pay. For bootstrapped startups, it's a cost-saving measure that can mean life or death. But Liss-Riordan isn't drinking the same venture-capital bought kool-aid as the startups who have built businesses around the 1099 economy. Rather, she views it as another example of companies using contract workers as a way to skirt their obligations as an employers."I don't believe this industry needs to be built on a system whereby the workers don't need to receive any of the protections that we have a society that workers need to receive," she said. "I just don't know how Uber can argue with a straight face that as a $40 billion dollar company it can't afford to insure its drivers, pay minimum wage or pay overtime, or be reimbursed for their expenses. This is not going to put Uber out of business."<h2 class="p1">What FedEx and strippers can teach Uber</h2>Liss-Riordan said she can see through Uber's smoke and mirrors because she has seen companies try to do the same thing before, whether it was FedEx misclassifying their drivers or night clubs doing the same with their exotic dancers."They try to claim that because they're providing services through an app they're somehow different from all these companies I've been suing for all these years," Liss-Riordan said. "I just don't believe that."She first started looking into employment law after she worked with outspoken lawyer and former congresswoman Bella Abzug right out of college. After graduating from Harvard Law, she went to a labor union in Boston where she ended up embroiled in wage and hour disputes. <div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div></div></div>"One case led to another and before I knew it I had spent a decade representing wait staff against restaurants and hotels and country clubs," Liss-Riordan said. One particular case even led Liss-Riordan to buy part of a pizzeria and split the ownership with the employees. The pizzeria opened in 2013 with a new name: <a href="http://thejustcrust.com/story/">The Just Crust</a>. It wasn't just wait staff that came to Liss-Riordan and her law firm, Lichten &amp; Liss-Riordan. Take the case of exotic dancers. Like Uber, the night clubs were arguing they were just a platform for dancers, despite keeping a percentage of the earnings and charging the dancers for each shift. Liss-Riordan <a href="https://medium.com/ondemand/what-strippers-can-teach-uber-1f5b15e5b427">won the case for the strippers</a>.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div></div></div>One of her most famous wins was a case against FedEx. Like Uber, it had been classifying its delivery drivers as independent contractors and not employees, even though they wore FedEx uniforms and drove trucks with the FedEx logo. A Massachusetts judged ruled in Liss-Riordan's favor, and the case has been repeated in several other states. (FedEx has now <a href="http://www.dcvelocity.com/articles/20150219-judge-rules-in-favor-of-fedex-ground-hunt-in--massachusetts-worker-classification-cases/">successfully appealed</a>, and it is back in court.)While Uber drivers don't wear uniforms or drive logo-emblazoned trucks around, they are arguably more monitored than the FedEx drivers are because of the constant rating system and the threat of termination if it drops too low, Liss-Riordan argued."Uber, like I have seen in a lot of these cases, is trying to argue that they are something different, that their drivers are something different. Just like FedEx tried to tell its drivers that. Just like strip clubs tried to tell their entertainers that," Liss-Riordan said. "But the truth is that they're not. They get in, they do the work and they're told how to do it and they have these rules they have to follow and they're evaluated on a real-time basis." <h2 class="p1">Square pegs, round holes </h2>There's no easy litmus test, though, as to determine who is an employee and who is an independent contractor. The California Department of Industrial Relations says on its website that there is "no clear definition" of the term independent contractor - signing a 1099 form doesn't mean you are one.In cases of misclassification, its up to the courts to decide. In March, two judges <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenhuet/2015/03/11/lyft-uber-employee-jury-trial-ruling/">ruled Liss-Riordan's Uber and Lyft cases will go to a trial by jury</a>. Uber had been asking for a summary judgement because it argued that it was a technology company, not a transportation company. <div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right"><div class="image on-image"></div></div>U.S. District Judge Edward Chen didn't buy it. "The idea that Uber is simply a software platform, I don't find that a very persuasive argument," he said in court.In the Lyft case, U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria said in his decision that he's not sure if Lyft drivers fit in either category of California's "outdated" employment codes."The jury in this case will be handed a square peg and asked to choose between two round holes," he wrote. "The test the California courts have developed over the 20th Century for classifying workers isn't very helpful in addressing this 21st Century problem."Liss-Riordan doesn't buy that argument though. "It's a new more convenient way to provide services," she said. "But it doesn't change anything about the basic fact that they are a company that provide a service and workers that provide a service are under their control.<h2 class="p1">A woman versus an industry</h2>Liss-Riordan isn't out to take Uber down. Despite her friend's initial worry that she was going to put them out of business, she doesn't think she will."I think Uber will do just fine if they have to play by the rules. Silicon Valley will do just fine as well. Maybe some won't make it, but the market will figure it out," Liss-Riordan said. "It's important that we have these laws, and I still think they're good laws."If Liss-Riordan wins, it also won't mean that the positions will evaporate, although it will take some "rejiggering" of the companies business models to convert everyone to employees, she said. There are examples of on-demand companies who already hire part-time and full-time employees in what are normally contract worker positions. <div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right"><div class="image on-image"><a href="https://www.managedbyq.com/"></a></div></div>Managed By Q, a New York-based office management startup, hired a full staff of cleaners because it was looking to retain happy employees and knew it wanted a W-2 workforce. It had to build a sophisticated labor planning model to build in flexibility and different hours, especially since office cleaning is normally an off peak job, said co-founder Dan Teran at the On Demand conference. <a href="https://munchery.com/">Munchery</a>, a food delivery startup in San Francisco, hires its drivers as employees and schedules them in delivery shifts. Because they are employees, it also means it pays out overtime when needed - something it happily <a href="https://munchery.com/jobs/s0EKnN/delivery-driver/">advertises on its job page</a>."Employers across the country are providing flexibility to employees because a lot of employees demanding it. Just because we win the case doesn't mean that will go away. It doesn't mean people will have to work on a 9-5 schedule," Liss-Riordan said. "Our point is that if you are working and you are subject to rules that employees are subject to, then you are also need to have the rights that our legislature has said employees should have as well." <div class="margin-top"> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/general-mcchrystal-manage-company-us-army-uber-2015-5">Gen. Stanley McChrystal on how Uber operates just like a special forces unit</a></h3> <div> <div> <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="UweG8ydToxKxgv97nzOpisx_MuacMgQv" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div> </div> </div> </div>

You Searched For "Vince Chhabria" and got 11 results

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