In a surprising deal that was somewhat brokered by Gavin Newsom, Uber and Lyft are going to let their 800,000 California rideshare drivers unionize and get collective bargaining rights, though drivers can still refuse to join the union.

According to the union group SEIU California, there are now 800,000 rideshare drivers in the state, and that’s one out every 24 California workers who are at least sometimes gig drivers. And Uber and Lyft have traditionally been notoriously resistant to giving them minimum wage guarantees or any form of job benefits.

You may recall the 2019 political battles over the gig worker benefits bill AB5, which Lyft and Uber fought against tooth and nail. And they effectively got AB5 overturned, for their companies, at least, with that Prop 22 measure in 2020 that let the rideshare companies classify their drivers as independent contractors who are exempt from any requirements for employee benefits.

So it’s kind of a shock to see the Friday breaking news that both Lyft and Uber are allowing their California drivers to unionize, according to the Chronicle. While the idea comes from a state Assembly bill called AB1340 that Uber and Lyft both initially opposed, Governor Gavin Newsom managed to negotiate some concessions to get the two companies on board.

“This is a historic agreement between workers and business that only California could deliver,” Newsom said in a Friday morning statement. “Labor and industry sat down together, worked through their differences, and found common ground that will empower hundreds of thousands of drivers while making rideshare more affordable for millions of Californians.”

But notably, food delivery drivers for apps like Doordash and Instacart are not included in the new arrangement. And it appears one of Newsom’s concessions he offered Lyft and Uber was to lower the insurance requirements that rideshare drivers have to carry.

Uber’s California head of public policy Ramona Prieto said in the same statement that the deal is “a compromise that lowers costs for riders while creating stronger voices for drivers — demonstrating how industry, labor, and lawmakers can work together to deliver real solutions that reflect how people live, work, and move today.”

It is fair to be cynical when an Uber executive tells you that any move the company made is going to “lower costs.” On top of that, drivers are allowed to refuse joining the union. So it’s also fair to be cynical whether these unionized drivers would have much power, because Uber and Lyft could simply hand more gigs to the non-unionized drivers, and replace the drivers cheaply if faced with the threat of any kind of strike.

“Anything that effectively promotes the right to organize for ride share workers is good public policy,” Stanford Law professor and former National Labor Relations Board chair William Gould told the Chronicle. But he added, “The fact that they have fought tooth and nail against protection for their own workers and now support this makes me have more than a measure of skepticism.”

It’s also unclear how benefits would be applied across a gig driver workforce where some are in the union and others are not. And who knows what kinds of benefits these drivers would ask for in collective bargaining. This is a different kind of unionization than we are generally used to seeing.

But it’s still something of a win for drivers. Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas chimed in on the press release, declaring “While Trump is stripping workers of bargaining rights and rolling-back protections, California is fighting for lower prices and empowering working families. What a way to celebrate Labor Day weekend.”

Related: Uber Actually Turned a Profit For the First Time Since Going Public Five Years Ago [SFist]

Image: SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - AUGUST 27: A sign in favor of a union for rideshare drivers sits on a car's windshield during a protest outside of Uber headquarters on August 27, 2019 in San Francisco, California. Dozens of Uber and Lyft drivers staged a protest outside of Uber headquarters in support of California assembly bill 5 and to organize a union for rideshare drivers. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)