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Why would a law have to be passed for the drivers to organize?
by wehadfun 11y ago
Why would a law have to be passed for the drivers to organize?
- darkstar999 11y agoDid you read the article? "Uber has two potential legal arguments against the measure if it passes. The first is that federal law reigns supreme when it comes to organizing, rendering a city ordinance on the subject essentially null and void. The second is that collective bargaining by independent contractors would amount to illegal price-fixing under antitrust law." and "the only way organizing by Uber drivers could be legal is under a so-called state action exemption from antitrust law."
- toomuchtodo 11y agoWow, so Uber is even more evil then I thought. They fight for legislation to classify their workers as independent contractors, which then ties those workers' hands in organizing, thereby forcing those workers to accept wages below the minimum wage if they have no other options available. They're the Silicon Valley equivalent of Walmart.
- darkstar999 11y ago1. Nobody is forced to work for Uber. 2. Uber isn't the first company by any stretch of the imagination that employes a workforce of contractors. There is nothing "evil" about that. It's supply and demand. Everyone can drive, so why should Uber pay more wages than they have to? The law will dictate the minimums they can pay.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago> Nobody is forced to work for Uber. Nobody is forced to prostitute themselves, rob or steal, etc. But heh, fuck social safety nets ya know? If they existed, both Walmart and Uber would have to pay real wages. > Uber isn't the first company by any stretch of the imagination that employes a workforce of contractors. There is nothing "evil" about that. It's supply and demand. Everyone can drive, so why should Uber pay more wages than they have to? The law will dictate the minimums they can pay. That's right, the law will. Good luck Uber.
- ryanlol 11y agoNobody is forced to do any of those things, you always have to choose.
- toomuchtodo 11y agoThe measure of a civilization is how it treats its weakest members.
- darkstar999 11y agoWe have social security, unemployment insurance, medicare/medicaid, and on and on. You want part-time workers to be paid full time. How is that fair for the employer? There is no good answer to the part-time work problem. If the supply of workers outpaces the demand for work, the employer will hire part time. It's simple economics.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago> We have social security, unemployment, medicare/medicaid, and on and on. None of which are sufficient compared to proper first world countries (ie anywhere developed outside of the US). > You want part-time workers to be paid full time. How is that fair for the employer? There is no good answer to the part-time work problem. A government doesn't exist for your business interests; it exists to take care of its citizens. If you can operate your business in such an environment, great. If you can't, tough. Quality of life is a more important measure than your exit strategy or next quarter results.
- mason240 11y agoAble bodied independent workers are by far not our societies weakest members.
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- lalos 11y agoUber drivers usually have a car loan so their hands are tied and they are convinced to start Uber-ing after being seduced by the 500 dollar signing bonus. At least this is what they mention when we talk about why they still do it if they don't like it. One driver told me he couldn't wait to pay off his loan and go back to being a taxi driver and have time to spend with his family.
- knfrlkewnf 11y agoThey're putting people out of work by shuttering taxi businesses which traditionally pay a liveable wage and replacing it with something that pays drivers a pittance while directing all the profits to a small handful of people. If they're destroying jobs at neighboring competitors, then yes, some people will be forced to work for them. You're probably going to post something about the lump of labor, but consider this: demand for jobs is inelastic. When have you ever seen a company prevented from doing business because their wages were too low? As long as there is a job opening, there will be people competing with each other to fill it since we have significantly more people than we do jobs, thanks to our capital-intensive economy.
- Paul-ish 11y ago> Nobody is forced to work for Uber. Some people have invested themselves in Uber based on the pay, which has since dropped. This has happened to people such as Mr. Creery from the article. Imagine you get hired for a job for some amount of money, pull up your roots and relocate. Then 3 months after you get there they drop your pay down by half. What a pain. Would you have taken the job if you knew that were going to happen? Probably not. And now you have a large switching cost to get away from this job if you have to move again. Unionized workers can in theory negotiate to mitigate those kinds of scenarios.
- alkonaut 11y ago1. Let's just assume that unqualified work will always be attractive and that. 2. If you are a big employer you have a big workforce that can, and should be able to wield some power as a collective. The idea here is that a company can't magically dodge having a powerful group of employees by not employing them. Paying as much as you have to means you pay the legal minimum wage, if the workforce as a collective thinks that is ok. Otherwise you pay more.
- calvinbhai 11y agocertainly. But, once you have ploughed in your savings and buy a car with a high interest loan based on glittery promises made by Uber, you are forced to work for Uber, like a slave, because you have to pay off the loan. Ask any uber driver who fell for the deal Uber has with Santander for sub prime loans.
- ThomPete 11y ago1. No and soon no one will be required to work at uber once they automate the car fleet. So sure in theory you are right. But that's hardly the most informative perspective to see this in. Many people have to take what they can get. 2. No but thats not really what they are. They are working as contractors but being treated as employees. For example they can't set their own price, they aren't allow to choose their own car, they can't subcontract which is the conditions employees normally are subject to. On the other hand they don't get ex. healthcare and have to maintain all expenses themselves. Uber works because it's managed to disrupt legislation. Sometimes thats great or necessary and the taxi medallion system surely are broken. But to ignore some of the deeper issues with the kind of disruption Uber is doing is simply ignoring some of the deeper issues of technology. And just as we are fine with companies being able to lobby for their legislated privileges so should the drivers be allowed to organize.
- andrewflnr 11y agoHow would Uber drivers ever be anything other than independent contractors?
- toomuchtodo 11y agoIRS classification rules.
- dcosson 11y agoFrom your comment below, I don't quite get your characterization of Uber and Walmart as evil. If anyone's evil, isn't it the government for not providing useful safety nets? The companies are just going along with the market rates at which their employees/contractors are willing to work.
- toomuchtodo 11y agoHalf credit. There are companies that don't act in sociopathic ways attempting to maximize profits at worker expense (Costco comes to mind). At the same time, yes, its the government's fault for not increasing the minimum wage and strengthening social safety nets, which can unfortunately be influenced by corporate interests using lobbying after the Citizen's United supreme court ruling.
- prostoalex 11y agoAre you comparing a smaller chain that caters to upper-middle-class (and higher) sectors and relies on membership fees and bulk purchases (with high average receipts) to a large (#1 globally) chain that caters to all income levels, places its stores in lower-income neighborhoods, does not rely on membership fees, and has smaller average receipts? http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2013-08-27/why-walmart-will-never-pay-like-costco http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2013-08-27/why-walmart... By that measure I heard that Thomas Keller pays its workers an excellent wage, while McDonald's not so much. Therefore we should shut down McDonald's outlets and replace them with Thomas Keller restaurants.
- lackbeard 11y agoThey don't want to just organize. The city has laws which protect employees from being fired for attempting to unionize, but those laws don't apply to contractors. They want the law to be changed to cover contractors so they can have that protection. That's my understanding of the situation, which is tenuous. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong. It's mind-blowing, the amount of words written about this, yet there is no clear explanation of what exactly is going on.
- jessriedel 11y agoThe same reason it's currently illegal for doctors to form a union and set prices.
- kefka 11y agoSo, that solution is to keep the pricing hidden, and then give you a "Surprise" bill after the fact. Sure flies against the idea of "Informed Consent". "Else I'd not have done that procedure...." Edit: From the downvotes, I assume that people have issues with knowing medical pricing? That seems really backwards.
- xsmasher 11y agoLabor law generally outlaws discrimination, spying on, or termination of employees based on union membership. Seattle seems to be using its authority to regulate transportation services to extend these protections to drivers regardless of whether they are employees or contractors.
- dheera 11y agoWhat part of a "union" can possibly be made illegal in the first place? It seems to me that freedom of speech and freedom of assembly are sufficient conditions to implicitly allow freedom of unions, since a union is really just a bunch of people assembling and speaking to each other of their own accord.
- pc86 11y ago1A: "Congress shall make no law..."[0] The First Amendment just says that Congress can't do it, not that a private company you're not being forced to work for can't. To that point, you can be fired for attempting to unionize in certain circumstances. Seattle is just trying to explicitly extend that protection to contractors. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bill_of_Rights#First_Amendment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bill_of_Rights#F...
- dheera 11y agoI see. This is a helpful explanation. Thanks!
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]