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Good. If your path to ritches involves circumventing laws to protect workers in order to pay them less and undercut the competition, then basically you are the

by Neil44 10y ago

Good. If your path to ritches involves circumventing laws to protect workers in order to pay them less and undercut the competition, then basically you are the reason these laws exist.

Shivetya 10y ago
Okay, but I am trying to figure out how you exploit people who voluntarily work for you. They know what they will get paid and what is expected. If anything this protects the established taxi services more than benefiting any worker. Effectively they had probably pushed some people out of the ability to work for Uber
- lsiebert 10y ago
  Because they work for them, they aren't independent contractors engaging in a negotiated business deal.
- EliRivers 10y ago
  Exploitation of voluntary workers has a long, long history. It's basically the reason why unions came into existence, and employment laws. For example, in times of high unemployment, I could tell my workers that if they want to keep their jobs, they will work unpaid overtime, or take a pay cut, or give me a blow job, or work without adequate safety gear. These kind of Hobson's choices are real things that really happen. I frequently see a less explicit exploitation of voluntary workers in companies; when a company encourages a culture of long hours and not taking holidays, they're getting extra hours for free from their voluntary employees (take your holidays, people).
UK-AL 10y ago
Basically every other taxi driver firm also employees self-employed drivers.
- muse900 10y ago
  Yes a lot of them, although you have to sign a proper employment form. And you can't turn off your phone whenever or work for other companies as well. You have a proper schedule. Uber works differently. The driver chooses when and how many hours he wants to work and when to pick a ride. If what was decided above applies for every uber employee its not gonna go down pretty well cause : Uber is going to become one more minicab agency, where it employees people with a schedule and its price is going to go up by a lot. Customers won't benefit and drivers won't either. Most of the drivers I've spoken to and I use Uber a lot have told me that the job is not as great or the pay depending on the amount of time they work and if they are actually renting a car or having a car on lease or own it, the thing that everyone told me is that they get to work whenever they want and thats awesome about it. Apply rules to the Uber is gonna force rules to be applied to drivers as well and thats not gonna go well.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - mattmanser 10y ago
    Uber is no cheaper than normal taxis in the UK, so the prices won't be going up by a lot. We already had pretty great, cheap, taxi coverage in the UK. Not sure where you got that impression. For me, in the UK, the selling points are that it's easy to use the app, you don't have to muck around with cash and the cars, at the moment, are new. Oh, and that I can abuse the fact that I'm relatively rich compared to the plebs to jump the queue with surge pricing. Very un-british of me.
    - katpas 10y ago
      That might depend on the city but in London I've found a black cab is normally a minimum 30% more than an uber. For longer journeys it can jump to double the price. Uber surge could equalise it.
      - mattmanser 10y ago
        Black cabs are always more expensive than callable taxis, that's the way it works in the UK. You're comparing limes to lemons. Similar, but different and differently priced. There's different rules between the two, that's why the black cabs tried to get a ruling saying that booking an uber was like hailing a taxi rather than booking it. Many other taxi companies in the UK now have apps too and are pretty much the same price as Uber as far as I can tell in all the trips I've taken in Nottingham.

by Neil44 10y ago

Good. If your path to ritches involves circumventing laws to protect workers in order to pay them less and undercut the competition, then basically you are the reason these laws exist.

Shivetya 10y ago

Okay, but I am trying to figure out how you exploit people who voluntarily work for you. They know what they will get paid and what is expected. If anything this protects the established taxi services more than benefiting any worker. Effectively they had probably pushed some people out of the ability to work for Uber

lsiebert 10y ago
Because they work for them, they aren't independent contractors engaging in a negotiated business deal.
EliRivers 10y ago
Exploitation of voluntary workers has a long, long history. It's basically the reason why unions came into existence, and employment laws. For example, in times of high unemployment, I could tell my workers that if they want to keep their jobs, they will work unpaid overtime, or take a pay cut, or give me a blow job, or work without adequate safety gear. These kind of Hobson's choices are real things that really happen. I frequently see a less explicit exploitation of voluntary workers in companies; when a company encourages a culture of long hours and not taking holidays, they're getting extra hours for free from their voluntary employees (take your holidays, people).

UK-AL 10y ago

Basically every other taxi driver firm also employees self-employed drivers.

muse900 10y ago
Yes a lot of them, although you have to sign a proper employment form. And you can't turn off your phone whenever or work for other companies as well. You have a proper schedule. Uber works differently. The driver chooses when and how many hours he wants to work and when to pick a ride. If what was decided above applies for every uber employee its not gonna go down pretty well cause : Uber is going to become one more minicab agency, where it employees people with a schedule and its price is going to go up by a lot. Customers won't benefit and drivers won't either. Most of the drivers I've spoken to and I use Uber a lot have told me that the job is not as great or the pay depending on the amount of time they work and if they are actually renting a car or having a car on lease or own it, the thing that everyone told me is that they get to work whenever they want and thats awesome about it. Apply rules to the Uber is gonna force rules to be applied to drivers as well and thats not gonna go well.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- mattmanser 10y ago
  Uber is no cheaper than normal taxis in the UK, so the prices won't be going up by a lot. We already had pretty great, cheap, taxi coverage in the UK. Not sure where you got that impression. For me, in the UK, the selling points are that it's easy to use the app, you don't have to muck around with cash and the cars, at the moment, are new. Oh, and that I can abuse the fact that I'm relatively rich compared to the plebs to jump the queue with surge pricing. Very un-british of me.
  - katpas 10y ago
    That might depend on the city but in London I've found a black cab is normally a minimum 30% more than an uber. For longer journeys it can jump to double the price. Uber surge could equalise it.
    - mattmanser 10y ago
      Black cabs are always more expensive than callable taxis, that's the way it works in the UK. You're comparing limes to lemons. Similar, but different and differently priced. There's different rules between the two, that's why the black cabs tried to get a ruling saying that booking an uber was like hailing a taxi rather than booking it. Many other taxi companies in the UK now have apps too and are pretty much the same price as Uber as far as I can tell in all the trips I've taken in Nottingham.