7 ms·

Uber drivers consider legal action

28 points by rb2e 11y ago

blisterpeanuts 11y ago
The drivers who would rather be employees--which Uber claims are a small minority--might be better off finding a traditional job with a livery service. The whole point of Uber and its ilk, or so I thought, was to "crowd-source" transportation using ride sharing. It's not "sharing" if they're employees. Amazon Flex is going to crowd-source deliveries by engaging tens of thousands of individuals to drop off packages in their neighborhoods. Does that mean Amazon must automatically hire tens of thousands of employees, with all the paperwork and overhead, even if some of them only deliver an occasional package? This whole approach probably needs to be hashed out in the courts, but my gut feeling is that some people are wanting to have their cake and eat it too--the ease and flexibility of self-employment combined with the benefits of full time employment.
- throwaway2048 11y ago
  uber drivers are not meaningfully self employed, but its of great advantage to uber to pretend they are. It is uber that is trying to "have its cake and eat it".
  - paulgb 11y ago
    At least in NYC, most of the drivers I talk to drive for multiple services (e.g. Via during rush hour, Uber on weekends). This is probably less the case in cities where Uber is more dominant though.
    - throwaway2048 11y ago
      people can hold more than one job and still be employees
      - enjo 11y ago
        Uber drivers can hold more than one job doing exactly the same thing. They are free to pick up rides or not on whatever schedule they want. They bring their own equipment to the job. They've always seemed to meet the definition of contractor to me (I know a certain court in California disagrees). * edit: Having just now read the article, it seems like Uber has some sort of minimum hour requirement, which would definitely change the equation quite a bit.
        facetube 11y ago
        IRS: "You are not an independent contractor if you perform services that can be controlled by an employer (what will be done and how it will be done). This applies even if you are given freedom of action. What matters is that the employer has the legal right to control the details of how the services are performed."
      - bpodgursky 11y ago
        How could you expect every company they drive for (concurrently) to simultaneously pay them the same hourly ( > minimum) wage? I can't see any outcome with "employee" status that would let drivers continue to drive for two services at the same time. This would add a HUGE barrier to entry for new companies in this market -- I would argue it's hugely anti-competitive, given the critical-mass you need for a ridesharing service to work. And could easily result in lower effective hourly wages for drivers, if they spend more time idling around.
        throwaway2048 11y ago
        You can't effectively work for anyone else while you are "on call" with uber because that would mean you would eventually have to decline too many ride requests, which would result in uber banning you. Combine that with the fact uber has on-call-hours minimums, and one can see although the hours may be more flexible, the workers are very much not independant. A critical component of being an (actual) contractor is the peicemeal basis of it, without further, unconnected obligation.
- lumberjack 11y ago
  It's not sharing anyway you look at it. Carpooling networks do exist but Uber is not one of them.
  - ionforce 11y ago
    What's the difference between a carpooling network with a high amount of usage versus Uber?
    - TillE 11y ago
      It's literally not "carpooling" unless the driver was already headed in that direction. Nobody "carpools" all day for money. That's just someone being paid to drive a car.
- adrusi 11y ago
  This is simply not what Uber does. Uber has never actually been a ride sharing service. A carpooling service is a ride sharing service. A real ride sharing service doesn't have drivers and riders where the riders pay the drivers. Don't drink the kool-aid, all of Uber's "ride sharing" and "crowd sourcing" and "sharing economy" nonsense is just marketing and legal stunts. They are essentially an online sweatshop a la mechanical turk for driving. I don't hate Uber, I think that on an ethical level it's probably superior to traditional taxi companies who entrap their drivers by paying for their taxi license (they lobby to make these very expensive) and then paying the drivers poorly until it's time to renw the license. But Uber is not a magical wonderful silicon valley company that's going to fix all the problems with taxis by disrupting it with some sharing economy. Uber is a company that found a loophole in the law that would allow it to create a global taxi service that isn't legally a taxi service, and this loophole involves drivers giving up a lot of legal protections.
  - VincentEvans 11y ago
    Your explanation strikes a nerve and certainly makes me "hate Uber".
- celticninja 11y ago
  the issue in play seems to be the right to paid time off, these workers say they are working 60-70 hours per week for UBER and should therefore accrue paid time off. This appears to be the crux of the matter. If they are successful the only solution for UBER will be to reduce driver hours so their accrued time off is not too much. Of course this means needing more drivers to cover the hours not being worked.
miguelrochefort 11y ago
That clearly is the future of employment. Better get used to it now.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  That's both a humorous and short sighted statement. Uber isn't a magical "unicorn". It could be gutted by regulation overnight.
  - miguelrochefort 11y ago
    I made no claim about the "magic unicorn"-ness of Uber. I simply despise regulation and entitlement.
    - toomuchtodo 11y ago
      > I simply despise regulation and entitlement. And I like civilization, which has a foundation partially of regulation and entitlements. Perhaps Somalia is more to you're liking?
- icebraining 11y ago
  Most taxi drivers were already independent contractors / self-employed. Uber didn't bring anything new in this matter.
  - miguelrochefort 11y ago
    I'm glad you're aware.
rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
We need a third class of employment, the employee-contractor. It is one thing for independent contractors to provide a service for a company without necessarily being employed by the company, like a software consultant, but when a business cannot exist without so-called independent contractors (unless they're hired outright), then they ought to be responsible for some of the cost, such as gasoline or repairs, but at the same time, their contract can be canceled at any time by the employer. That gives the employer flexibility and the employer-contractors stability.
throwaway049 11y ago
BBC headline is a little misleading. According to the article, legal action has already been taken. Cases have been submitted to the London Central Employment Tribunal.
nns 11y ago
For someone wanting to start an on-demand service, what would be the correct way to design their app so that you could meaningfully link requester to providers?
- BukhariH 11y ago
  I think if you have a bidding model where the requester can select bids from providers then your 100% safe. However, that being said this is ridiculous! Having employees would completely change what Uber is about. Uber is a platform not a taxi company. Uber drivers right now can: * choose their own schedules * turn down customers they don't want * just stop working with Uber with no notice All things that most employees can't do.
  - amyjess 11y ago
    > turn down customers they don't want Actually, they can't. If you reject more than a certain percentage of customers, Uber bans you from the platform. Some Uber drivers have taken to getting around this by accepting the request and then fraudulently cancelling with "rider requested cancel" as the reason. When Uber started cracking down on that, a bunch of entitled fraudsters threw a fit and claimed Uber was using "intimidation tactics": http://therideshareguy.com/uber-deactivated-a-bunch-of-drivers-as-an-intimidation-tactic/ http://therideshareguy.com/uber-deactivated-a-bunch-of-drive... That was the moment when I learned how many drivers are actively out to screw over everyone else: both Uber and the customers. So whenever I see Uber drivers protesting or threatening legal action, I laugh at them.
  - gagege 11y ago
    The third one is true of any job in the US as far as I know.
  - lhc- 11y ago
    At least in the US, most employees can do the latter two. Turning down customers will probably get you fired though, which is pretty much the same as will happen with Uber.
  - will_brown 11y ago
will_brown 11y ago
Always with the employee/contractor issue... It has always been my prediction that there is a legal action lurking in the shadows that will ultimately be the undoing of the ~$50B unicorn, but employee/contractor is not it (these can be resolved moving forward with jurisdiction specific revisions to driver agreements and tweaks to the actual process to ensure compliance on a jurisdictional basis). However, the legal action to ruin the company? My guess is a class action of drivers who have been arrested/criminally charged while serving as UBER drivers. Moreover, I believe such a case would open up a can of worms including: 1. UBER recruiting/paying bonuses to drivers to leave counties where ride sharing is legal to drive in counties where ride sharing is illegal, subsequently resulting in criminal charges; and 2. UBER's payment of criminal defense counsel for said drivers (which on its face may not seem problematic, but I would be willing to bet not a single lawyer paid by UBER to represent the drivers ever once advised the drivers they may have civil causes of action against UBER).
zeveb 11y ago
They existed and fed themselves before Uber existed; they freely chose to join Uber as contractors; now they want to break the contract they have and be employees. How does this seem right?
- zajd 11y ago
  Because it's illegal for companies like Uber to treat contractors like employees and then not classify them that way. > He added that the ways in which Uber controlled its drivers - including the provision of initial training, guides as to which routes to take and requirements for minimum hours - meant they were not just self-employed.
- aikah 11y ago
  > They existed and fed themselves before Uber existed; they freely chose to join Uber as contractors; now they want to break the contract they have and be employees. How does this seem right? What's wrong with fighting for ones rights and interests ? corporations do that all the time. It's not like people should just submit and shut their mouth. If they feel Uber is cheating them well, they should sue Uber.
  - SilasX 11y ago
    What caused you to characterize anyone as opposing "fighting for one's interests"? The issue here is that someone is claiming that it violates their rights but keep doing it. Is there a case of a corporation that thinks a certain deal is bad but keeps making it? "Doctor, it hurts when I do this ..."
    - aikah 11y ago
      > The issue here is that someone is claiming that it violates their rights but keep doing it. Keep doing what? drivers have the right to sue , period. And they should do exactly that if it benefits them, they owe no servitude to Uber which wouldn't exist if not for these drivers that do all the actual work.
- jackgavigan 11y ago
VincentEvans 11y ago
Does anyone else consider 20% (soon 25%) cut excessive? Personally i think driving for Uber is nearly pointless - the costs of operating a vehicle make this occupation very unattractive. But i think the 20% rent makes it even worse. Many of legal problems Uber faces could be avoided if they simply charged drivers a fixed subscription fee to be "listed" with the service. 100$/month? 10$/day? I don't know, but i can't shake the feeling that this service is crap work and it has a lot to do with greed.
- zacharycohn 11y ago
  It's not excessive compared to how much most taxi drivers have to pay, every day, to lease their cars...
  - VincentEvans 11y ago
    Ah, relative good deed! "The other guys are even worse" value offering :) Like the mob "protection" racket.
  - celticninja 11y ago
    it is if you look at the UK market, in the UK most drivers own their own cars and they hire a radio from the taxi company at a daily rate. They then keep the fares themselves. As with UBER you have to provide your own vehicle, there is no radio so you have to provide your own smartphone too. And as their pricing indicates they will take a greater cut from new drivers. That will continue to increase if they are successful in putting other taxi firms out of business. i.e once they remove the competition (or minimise the sufficiently) there will be no alternative but for drivers to pay uber a 45% fee for each ride.
    - zacharycohn 11y ago
      Uh, no. You don't have to provide your own smartphone.
- VincentEvans 11y ago
  To expand on this thought - i have thought exactly the same when reading another post on HN about HomeJoy folding - most of the comments discussed how cleaning contractors were cutting out the middleman by offering a discount to the homeowner to cancel the transaction with HomeJoy and deal with the contractor directly. And back then i thought exactly the same thing - why don't they offer the service as referral subscription? Then there would be no reason for contractors to try to cut out the middleman. It seems so obvious, what am i missing?
dheera 11y ago
I'm not sure about "paid time off". It's not a salaried job in the first place -- you work as little or as much as you want, and take vacation whenever and however much you want. However, give them a time/distance-wise wage increase to get to an equilibrium point where most drivers are generally happy in life with the amount of unpaid time they can feasibly take off.

28 points by rb2e 11y ago

The drivers who would rather be employees--which Uber claims are a small minority--might be better off finding a traditional job with a livery service. The whole point of Uber and its ilk, or so I thought, was to "crowd-source" transportation using ride sharing. It's not "sharing" if they're employees. Amazon Flex is going to crowd-source deliveries by engaging tens of thousands of individuals to drop off packages in their neighborhoods. Does that mean Amazon must automatically hire tens of thousands of employees, with all the paperwork and overhead, even if some of them only deliver an occasional package? This whole approach probably needs to be hashed out in the courts, but my gut feeling is that some people are wanting to have their cake and eat it too--the ease and flexibility of self-employment combined with the benefits of full time employment.

throwaway2048 11y ago
uber drivers are not meaningfully self employed, but its of great advantage to uber to pretend they are. It is uber that is trying to "have its cake and eat it".
- paulgb 11y ago
  At least in NYC, most of the drivers I talk to drive for multiple services (e.g. Via during rush hour, Uber on weekends). This is probably less the case in cities where Uber is more dominant though.
  - throwaway2048 11y ago
    people can hold more than one job and still be employees
    - enjo 11y ago
      Uber drivers can hold more than one job doing exactly the same thing. They are free to pick up rides or not on whatever schedule they want. They bring their own equipment to the job. They've always seemed to meet the definition of contractor to me (I know a certain court in California disagrees). * edit: Having just now read the article, it seems like Uber has some sort of minimum hour requirement, which would definitely change the equation quite a bit.
      - facetube 11y ago
        IRS: "You are not an independent contractor if you perform services that can be controlled by an employer (what will be done and how it will be done). This applies even if you are given freedom of action. What matters is that the employer has the legal right to control the details of how the services are performed."
    - bpodgursky 11y ago
      How could you expect every company they drive for (concurrently) to simultaneously pay them the same hourly ( > minimum) wage? I can't see any outcome with "employee" status that would let drivers continue to drive for two services at the same time. This would add a HUGE barrier to entry for new companies in this market -- I would argue it's hugely anti-competitive, given the critical-mass you need for a ridesharing service to work. And could easily result in lower effective hourly wages for drivers, if they spend more time idling around.
      - throwaway2048 11y ago
        You can't effectively work for anyone else while you are "on call" with uber because that would mean you would eventually have to decline too many ride requests, which would result in uber banning you. Combine that with the fact uber has on-call-hours minimums, and one can see although the hours may be more flexible, the workers are very much not independant. A critical component of being an (actual) contractor is the peicemeal basis of it, without further, unconnected obligation.
lumberjack 11y ago
It's not sharing anyway you look at it. Carpooling networks do exist but Uber is not one of them.
- ionforce 11y ago
  What's the difference between a carpooling network with a high amount of usage versus Uber?
  - TillE 11y ago
    It's literally not "carpooling" unless the driver was already headed in that direction. Nobody "carpools" all day for money. That's just someone being paid to drive a car.
adrusi 11y ago
This is simply not what Uber does. Uber has never actually been a ride sharing service. A carpooling service is a ride sharing service. A real ride sharing service doesn't have drivers and riders where the riders pay the drivers. Don't drink the kool-aid, all of Uber's "ride sharing" and "crowd sourcing" and "sharing economy" nonsense is just marketing and legal stunts. They are essentially an online sweatshop a la mechanical turk for driving. I don't hate Uber, I think that on an ethical level it's probably superior to traditional taxi companies who entrap their drivers by paying for their taxi license (they lobby to make these very expensive) and then paying the drivers poorly until it's time to renw the license. But Uber is not a magical wonderful silicon valley company that's going to fix all the problems with taxis by disrupting it with some sharing economy. Uber is a company that found a loophole in the law that would allow it to create a global taxi service that isn't legally a taxi service, and this loophole involves drivers giving up a lot of legal protections.
- VincentEvans 11y ago
  Your explanation strikes a nerve and certainly makes me "hate Uber".
celticninja 11y ago
the issue in play seems to be the right to paid time off, these workers say they are working 60-70 hours per week for UBER and should therefore accrue paid time off. This appears to be the crux of the matter. If they are successful the only solution for UBER will be to reduce driver hours so their accrued time off is not too much. Of course this means needing more drivers to cover the hours not being worked.

miguelrochefort 11y ago

That clearly is the future of employment. Better get used to it now.

toomuchtodo 11y ago
That's both a humorous and short sighted statement. Uber isn't a magical "unicorn". It could be gutted by regulation overnight.
- miguelrochefort 11y ago
  I made no claim about the "magic unicorn"-ness of Uber. I simply despise regulation and entitlement.
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    > I simply despise regulation and entitlement. And I like civilization, which has a foundation partially of regulation and entitlements. Perhaps Somalia is more to you're liking?
icebraining 11y ago
Most taxi drivers were already independent contractors / self-employed. Uber didn't bring anything new in this matter.
- miguelrochefort 11y ago
  I'm glad you're aware.

rm_-rf_slash 11y ago

We need a third class of employment, the employee-contractor. It is one thing for independent contractors to provide a service for a company without necessarily being employed by the company, like a software consultant, but when a business cannot exist without so-called independent contractors (unless they're hired outright), then they ought to be responsible for some of the cost, such as gasoline or repairs, but at the same time, their contract can be canceled at any time by the employer. That gives the employer flexibility and the employer-contractors stability.

throwaway049 11y ago

BBC headline is a little misleading. According to the article, legal action has already been taken. Cases have been submitted to the London Central Employment Tribunal.

nns 11y ago

For someone wanting to start an on-demand service, what would be the correct way to design their app so that you could meaningfully link requester to providers?

BukhariH 11y ago
I think if you have a bidding model where the requester can select bids from providers then your 100% safe. However, that being said this is ridiculous! Having employees would completely change what Uber is about. Uber is a platform not a taxi company. Uber drivers right now can: * choose their own schedules * turn down customers they don't want * just stop working with Uber with no notice All things that most employees can't do.
- amyjess 11y ago
  > turn down customers they don't want Actually, they can't. If you reject more than a certain percentage of customers, Uber bans you from the platform. Some Uber drivers have taken to getting around this by accepting the request and then fraudulently cancelling with "rider requested cancel" as the reason. When Uber started cracking down on that, a bunch of entitled fraudsters threw a fit and claimed Uber was using "intimidation tactics": http://therideshareguy.com/uber-deactivated-a-bunch-of-drivers-as-an-intimidation-tactic/ http://therideshareguy.com/uber-deactivated-a-bunch-of-drive... That was the moment when I learned how many drivers are actively out to screw over everyone else: both Uber and the customers. So whenever I see Uber drivers protesting or threatening legal action, I laugh at them.
- gagege 11y ago
  The third one is true of any job in the US as far as I know.
- lhc- 11y ago
  At least in the US, most employees can do the latter two. Turning down customers will probably get you fired though, which is pretty much the same as will happen with Uber.
- will_brown 11y ago

will_brown 11y ago

Always with the employee/contractor issue... It has always been my prediction that there is a legal action lurking in the shadows that will ultimately be the undoing of the ~$50B unicorn, but employee/contractor is not it (these can be resolved moving forward with jurisdiction specific revisions to driver agreements and tweaks to the actual process to ensure compliance on a jurisdictional basis). However, the legal action to ruin the company? My guess is a class action of drivers who have been arrested/criminally charged while serving as UBER drivers. Moreover, I believe such a case would open up a can of worms including: 1. UBER recruiting/paying bonuses to drivers to leave counties where ride sharing is legal to drive in counties where ride sharing is illegal, subsequently resulting in criminal charges; and 2. UBER's payment of criminal defense counsel for said drivers (which on its face may not seem problematic, but I would be willing to bet not a single lawyer paid by UBER to represent the drivers ever once advised the drivers they may have civil causes of action against UBER).

zeveb 11y ago

They existed and fed themselves before Uber existed; they freely chose to join Uber as contractors; now they want to break the contract they have and be employees. How does this seem right?

zajd 11y ago
Because it's illegal for companies like Uber to treat contractors like employees and then not classify them that way. > He added that the ways in which Uber controlled its drivers - including the provision of initial training, guides as to which routes to take and requirements for minimum hours - meant they were not just self-employed.
aikah 11y ago
> They existed and fed themselves before Uber existed; they freely chose to join Uber as contractors; now they want to break the contract they have and be employees. How does this seem right? What's wrong with fighting for ones rights and interests ? corporations do that all the time. It's not like people should just submit and shut their mouth. If they feel Uber is cheating them well, they should sue Uber.
- SilasX 11y ago
  What caused you to characterize anyone as opposing "fighting for one's interests"? The issue here is that someone is claiming that it violates their rights but keep doing it. Is there a case of a corporation that thinks a certain deal is bad but keeps making it? "Doctor, it hurts when I do this ..."
  - aikah 11y ago
    > The issue here is that someone is claiming that it violates their rights but keep doing it. Keep doing what? drivers have the right to sue , period. And they should do exactly that if it benefits them, they owe no servitude to Uber which wouldn't exist if not for these drivers that do all the actual work.
jackgavigan 11y ago

VincentEvans 11y ago

Does anyone else consider 20% (soon 25%) cut excessive? Personally i think driving for Uber is nearly pointless - the costs of operating a vehicle make this occupation very unattractive. But i think the 20% rent makes it even worse. Many of legal problems Uber faces could be avoided if they simply charged drivers a fixed subscription fee to be "listed" with the service. 100$/month? 10$/day? I don't know, but i can't shake the feeling that this service is crap work and it has a lot to do with greed.

zacharycohn 11y ago
It's not excessive compared to how much most taxi drivers have to pay, every day, to lease their cars...
- VincentEvans 11y ago
  Ah, relative good deed! "The other guys are even worse" value offering :) Like the mob "protection" racket.
- celticninja 11y ago
  it is if you look at the UK market, in the UK most drivers own their own cars and they hire a radio from the taxi company at a daily rate. They then keep the fares themselves. As with UBER you have to provide your own vehicle, there is no radio so you have to provide your own smartphone too. And as their pricing indicates they will take a greater cut from new drivers. That will continue to increase if they are successful in putting other taxi firms out of business. i.e once they remove the competition (or minimise the sufficiently) there will be no alternative but for drivers to pay uber a 45% fee for each ride.
  - zacharycohn 11y ago
    Uh, no. You don't have to provide your own smartphone.
VincentEvans 11y ago
To expand on this thought - i have thought exactly the same when reading another post on HN about HomeJoy folding - most of the comments discussed how cleaning contractors were cutting out the middleman by offering a discount to the homeowner to cancel the transaction with HomeJoy and deal with the contractor directly. And back then i thought exactly the same thing - why don't they offer the service as referral subscription? Then there would be no reason for contractors to try to cut out the middleman. It seems so obvious, what am i missing?

dheera 11y ago

I'm not sure about "paid time off". It's not a salaried job in the first place -- you work as little or as much as you want, and take vacation whenever and however much you want. However, give them a time/distance-wise wage increase to get to an equilibrium point where most drivers are generally happy in life with the amount of unpaid time they can feasibly take off.