https://www.siliconvalley.com/2020/08/05/uber-and-lyft-sued-for-unpaid-wages-by-california-labor-commissioner-over-driver-classification/

California opened a new front in its battle against Uber and Lyft over their classification of drivers as contractors instead of employees, with the state’s labor commissioner on Wednesday filing suit against the two companies.

The San Francisco ride-hailing firms decided from the start of their operations to “misclassify” their drivers “as a means of unlawfully depriving these workers of a host of statutory protections applicable to employees, in direct contravention of California law,” according to the separate but nearly identical lawsuits filed in state court in Alameda County claimed.