Lyft and Uber to cease operations in Minneapolis after new minimum wage law | CNN Business:
Lyft and Uber will stop offering services in Minneapolis on May 1 after the city council overrode the mayor’s veto of a minimum wage for rideshare drivers.
The city council on Thursday voted 10-3 in favor of the override, allowing rideshare drivers to be paid the local minimum wage of $15.57 an hour.
And now all Lyft and Uber drives in Minneapolis are unemployed. Hard to see who’s helped by this vote.
Instead, they should pass laws that allow gig economy workers to more readily unionize and negotiate for themselves. It’s not that minimum wage laws are bad per se—in fact, they’re both necessary and good—but when government involves themselves directly in labor negotiations it must do so with a degree of care. Wildly tipping the scales like this is unhelpful to everyone.
(This is also another example of just how easy it is for to government to spend or control other people’s money.)