Readers React: An Uber driver is an ‘employee’? Only in California.

To the editor: The state Labor Commissioner’s office’s ruling that an Uber driver is an employee is another example of a disturbing anti-business trend in California. (“Uber worker ruling highlights the legal troubles of a ‘sharing economy,’” June17)

Only here can someone who works only when he wants and is able to tell his “employer” that he will be gone for days, weeks or months at a time (whether to pursue an acting career or otherwise) be able to quit and then recover the “expenses” that his pay was set high enough to compensate for.

The law needs to change to recognize that free adult citizens don’t need to be protected from themselves by a politicized state agency, largely beholden to unions, which now seem intent on discouraging even more companies from doing business in an already hostile business climate.

R.W. Novotny, Long Beach

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