8 ms·

Uber seeks $7.75M settlement in California labor code class action

50 points by rayuela 10y ago

muse900 10y ago
Can someone enlighten me, what are the full working rights in the US opposed to contractors rights? I think we had the same issue in the UK, when uber drivers wanted to be classified as full time workers. Although they do work as contractors e.g no fixed timeschedule, money directly in their pockets them doing their own tax etc. Most uber drivers I talked to in London mention, that they love working whenever they want without restrictions. Well that comes with the price of not being classified as fully employed (at least for now).
- halugalugh 10y ago
  Standard Uber shill
- sleepychu 10y ago
  IANAL in the UK we have laws that protect people who are really employees but are classed as independent contractors (this also protects HMRC from bogus work arrangements to dodge tax, see IR35) if you really see Uber as offering that flexibility, that's great! If you're working 40 hours a week, every week for uber, you're an employee.
  - beaconstudios 10y ago
    that might sound great, but what about people who want to accept the trade-off that being a contractor provides? You waive your employee rights (and take up a B2B contract instead) in exchange for receiving a much larger share of your total cost of employment. It's not like HMRC misses out on tax under this arrangement, as the contractor's business pays employer taxes (plus any corp tax from cap gains) and the contractor pays their employee taxes.
    - bkor 10y ago
      It is to protect the majority of the people. I've seen a lot of cases in the news where people are forced to change into a contracting role. A lot of these 'share' companies often don't do anything to inform the tax authority what work these contractors did for them, thereby making tax evasion way too easy. If you're a contractor you really need to know what you're doing. Meaning: a lot of things you'll need to budget for because it is your responsibility. If a lot of people don't grasp that, then the problem becomes a government problem. I'm an employee and have pretty flexible working times. I don't see why I'd ever want to be a contractor where as only benefit you have more flexible working hours. That's not a change!
      - beaconstudios 10y ago
        I am a contractor, and I find a lot of benefit in working under this paradigm. I think the idea that the government should protect people from their own choices is quite an unpleasant one, as someone can always switch from a contractor back to an employee if they find it unsavoury. Benefits I enjoy from contracting: - B2B transactions mean I can retain some cash in the business for investment while paying myself a good salary. - My performance is more important to my role because I can be easily let go - I prefer to align my interests with those of my employer in this way. - Being a contractor also means being a consultant to an extent. I am trusted to bring in expertise to improve processes and I enjoy having a positive impact in this way. I agree that the ongoing issue with labour exploitation with things like zero-hours contracts, forced contracting and using apprenticeships to force lower-than-minimum wages are bad, but they don't take away from the value of contracting itself. In an attempt to address labour exploitation, IR35 and other measures are also becoming major problems for legitimate contractors too.
        falcolas 10y ago
        > I think the idea that the government should protect people from their own choices is quite an unpleasant one If the government doesn't protect people against immoral companies, who will? If an employee doesn't understand their obligations to pay extra taxes and cover their own forms of insurance, and doesn't ask for enough money up front to cover those costs, they'll go to jail and/or be bankrupt. That creates costs for taxpayers and corporations, the net loss likely higher than the cost of a bit of regulation and education. Why not educate those employees (or ensure that they can't get stiffed for a lack of education) instead of allowing them to be funneled (or scammed) into an unproductive dead end? As a taxpayer, I'd rather see them protected and productive than unproductive and bankrupt.
- wapz 10y ago
  I'm not following this particular settlement so I'm not sure if it has to do specifically with full-time employment vs contractors, but in general the main advantages of full-time are things like paid time-off (including sick leave) and medical insurance. https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/workhours/full-time https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/workhours/full-time
- elicash 10y ago
  Contractors are one of the types of workers not covered by the NLRA, so there are a variety of protections that do not include them. I'd also add that Uber's software contains many restrictions on how drivers must perform, how frequently and quickly they must respond, etc. It's not without restrictions just because they set their own hours.
- Nursie 10y ago
  In the UK some of them won those rights, because Uber had put a lot of pressure on them to work specific hours (not just through pricing but various forms of cajoling) so they were deemed to be employed.
- manarth 10y ago
  I think we had the same issue in the UK, when uber drivers wanted to be classified as full time workers. Yep, the drivers won that tribunal in 2016 [1]. Courier company City Sprint also lost a case this year, where the judge described their contractual arrangements as "contorted, indecipherable and window-dressing" [2]. HMRC are investigating parcel delivery company Hermes for similarly classifying drivers as self-employed, and there's a potential case from the GMB Union (who won the case against Uber) [2] [3]. In the UK, the gig economy isn't as simple as companies insisting "you're self-employed because we say you are". [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/28/uber-uk-tribunal-self-employed-status https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/28/uber-uk-t... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jan/06/courier-wins-holiday-pay-in-latest-key-tribunal-ruling-for-gig-economy https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jan/06/courier-win... [3] https://www.theguardian.com/law/2016/oct/20/hermes-couriers-working-status-investigated-hmrc https://www.theguardian.com/law/2016/oct/20/hermes-couriers-... [4] http://www.itv.com/news/2017-01-25/hermes-gmb-taking-legal-action-against-delivery-courier/ http://www.itv.com/news/2017-01-25/hermes-gmb-taking-legal-a...
TeMPOraL 10y ago
Love the lying headlines. The title says: "Uber Offers Drivers $1 Each to Wipe Away Labor Threats Valued in Billions" The article says: "The agreement calls for about $1.7 million to paid to drivers(...) The amount each driver gets depends on how many weeks they have actively driven for Uber." Regardless, it sounds like a joke. Unless they plan to somehow disqualify 99% of the drivers, the amount will still pretty much average into a slap in the face for a drivers. Also, as I understand the article: the settlement is for $7.75M. "The agreement calls for about $1.7 million to paid to drivers and earmarks about $2.9 million in PAGA penalties for California’s Labor and Workforce Development Agency, with the rest of the settlement sum going toward attorney fees and administration costs." Which would mean that $3.15M will go to the lawyers. I guess the lawyers are the only party that benefits from lawsuits these days.
- danieltillett 10y ago
  Has it ever been different? What we don't hear from sharks - fish are friends.
- uppercasenut 10y ago
  --"Love they lying headlines...."The agreement calls for about $1.7 million to paid to drivers" So they were off, by what, a penny? It's $1.7 million after all. Slice and dice it all you want...
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    They don't offer $1 each, they offer $1.7M to be split according to some criterion correlated with the number of "weeks they have actively driven for Uber".
    - uppercasenut 10y ago
      OK, I got it. But how much can the top person get? Maybe the company doing the math /sending checks takes $1.5 million. In short, it's a scam, like most lawsuit settlements. The lawyers get rich, the state gets some fines and the company admits no wrongdoing and does it again and again.
studentrob 10y ago
> Uber Technologies Inc. is offering its drivers an average of about a dollar apiece to dispose of alleged labor code violations that their own lawyer said might be worth billions Wow, now that is cheap.
- sleepychu 10y ago
  Wait, what? Uber's lawyer said they were worth billions?
scotty79 10y ago
> Under the 2004 law, the state keeps 75 percent of any penalties won. Attorneys for employers have nicknamed it the “bounty hunter” and “sue your boss” law because of the remaining 25 percent is a reward for the workers who bring the case. USA has strange habit of attaching money to justice. It comes up with various schemes of making money while exacting justice and gets all surprised while justice becomes way less just in the process. In european countries fine is for punishing the offender. Victim might get some help but one is not usually directly connected to the other. I feel that those money making schemes prevent from introducing better solutions because they work to some degree and the damage they do is not visible till later where it is already huge.
- beaconstudios 10y ago
  fines aren't a great way to enforce justice either in my opinion, because they incentivise finding perpetrators where there aren't any, and being heavy-handed with enforcement of the law in order to bring additional funds into the courts and police departments.
  - kakarot 10y ago
    I say we just tie people up and beat them with a cucumber until they say they're sorry
  - scotty79 10y ago
    Fines are good way to correct behavior because people generally hate loosing money. The problem starts only when that money is transferred to some other party that can influence the process in any way (even the victim, definitely police or lawers).
- ben_jones 10y ago
  My guess as an American is that it incentivizes victims to step forward, if in a somewhat self-serving way. I wouldn't be surprised if you told an average blue collar American that you won a class action lawsuit against a former employer, of if you received a court settlement in the past against the FOO company, that they'd expect you to be quite rich, or at least to have received a large amount of dough. I suspect they would have no idea that the real winners were in fact the lawyers on both sides.
fiatjaf 10y ago
Employee rights and labor laws are the main cause of unemployment everywhere, and of many related bad economic consequences.
- celticninja 10y ago
  The lack of them is the leading cause of economic inequality and poor treatment of workers everywhere.
  - fiatjaf 10y ago
    Oh, nice words without any meaning.
    - matthewmacleod 10y ago
      You just did exactly the same thing, so chill out. There's little evidence that labour laws cause unemployment. This meta-analysis (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2705499 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2705499) points out that minimum wage laws have little to no effect. Wider analyses (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1564-913X.2014.00195.x/pdf http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1564-913X.2014....) also seem to conclude that labour rights have little effect ton employment rates.
      - fiatjaf 10y ago
        As if economic arguments could be proved by statistical analysis of incomplete data.
      - fiatjaf 10y ago
        I understand that you may think I did the same thing exactly, but the point is that my words have meaning, they are not proved in my comment, but "unemployment" has a clear and distinct meaning while "economic inequality" doesn't.
        10y ago
beejiu 10y ago
> The claims by Steven Price, who sought to represent as many as 1.6 million California drivers in a class action, were brought under the state’s Private Attorneys General Act From a quick Google, the population of California is 38.8 million. I would be very surprised if 4% of the population worked for Uber.
- hfsktr 10y ago
  It would make a little more sense if you think of this going back a few years.
frankydp 10y ago
It is a curious dichotomy that the IP story of the week awarded $500mil in damages to a Corp, and this labor story effecting "1.6mil" workers is looking to settle for $7.5mil($1.7mil flagged). Assuming the class identification to be true, you would think that a wrongly classified worker would have incurred at least $100 in negatives, even if you only totaled up potential unemployment it would be more for than this amount for that subgroup. The gig economy is a wild alternate reality in my mind, where we travel back to a pre OSHA/DOL period in worker relations.

50 points by rayuela 10y ago

Can someone enlighten me, what are the full working rights in the US opposed to contractors rights? I think we had the same issue in the UK, when uber drivers wanted to be classified as full time workers. Although they do work as contractors e.g no fixed timeschedule, money directly in their pockets them doing their own tax etc. Most uber drivers I talked to in London mention, that they love working whenever they want without restrictions. Well that comes with the price of not being classified as fully employed (at least for now).

halugalugh 10y ago
Standard Uber shill
sleepychu 10y ago
IANAL in the UK we have laws that protect people who are really employees but are classed as independent contractors (this also protects HMRC from bogus work arrangements to dodge tax, see IR35) if you really see Uber as offering that flexibility, that's great! If you're working 40 hours a week, every week for uber, you're an employee.
- beaconstudios 10y ago
  that might sound great, but what about people who want to accept the trade-off that being a contractor provides? You waive your employee rights (and take up a B2B contract instead) in exchange for receiving a much larger share of your total cost of employment. It's not like HMRC misses out on tax under this arrangement, as the contractor's business pays employer taxes (plus any corp tax from cap gains) and the contractor pays their employee taxes.
  - bkor 10y ago
    It is to protect the majority of the people. I've seen a lot of cases in the news where people are forced to change into a contracting role. A lot of these 'share' companies often don't do anything to inform the tax authority what work these contractors did for them, thereby making tax evasion way too easy. If you're a contractor you really need to know what you're doing. Meaning: a lot of things you'll need to budget for because it is your responsibility. If a lot of people don't grasp that, then the problem becomes a government problem. I'm an employee and have pretty flexible working times. I don't see why I'd ever want to be a contractor where as only benefit you have more flexible working hours. That's not a change!
    - beaconstudios 10y ago
      I am a contractor, and I find a lot of benefit in working under this paradigm. I think the idea that the government should protect people from their own choices is quite an unpleasant one, as someone can always switch from a contractor back to an employee if they find it unsavoury. Benefits I enjoy from contracting: - B2B transactions mean I can retain some cash in the business for investment while paying myself a good salary. - My performance is more important to my role because I can be easily let go - I prefer to align my interests with those of my employer in this way. - Being a contractor also means being a consultant to an extent. I am trusted to bring in expertise to improve processes and I enjoy having a positive impact in this way. I agree that the ongoing issue with labour exploitation with things like zero-hours contracts, forced contracting and using apprenticeships to force lower-than-minimum wages are bad, but they don't take away from the value of contracting itself. In an attempt to address labour exploitation, IR35 and other measures are also becoming major problems for legitimate contractors too.
      - falcolas 10y ago
        > I think the idea that the government should protect people from their own choices is quite an unpleasant one If the government doesn't protect people against immoral companies, who will? If an employee doesn't understand their obligations to pay extra taxes and cover their own forms of insurance, and doesn't ask for enough money up front to cover those costs, they'll go to jail and/or be bankrupt. That creates costs for taxpayers and corporations, the net loss likely higher than the cost of a bit of regulation and education. Why not educate those employees (or ensure that they can't get stiffed for a lack of education) instead of allowing them to be funneled (or scammed) into an unproductive dead end? As a taxpayer, I'd rather see them protected and productive than unproductive and bankrupt.
wapz 10y ago
I'm not following this particular settlement so I'm not sure if it has to do specifically with full-time employment vs contractors, but in general the main advantages of full-time are things like paid time-off (including sick leave) and medical insurance. https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/workhours/full-time https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/workhours/full-time
elicash 10y ago
Contractors are one of the types of workers not covered by the NLRA, so there are a variety of protections that do not include them. I'd also add that Uber's software contains many restrictions on how drivers must perform, how frequently and quickly they must respond, etc. It's not without restrictions just because they set their own hours.
Nursie 10y ago
In the UK some of them won those rights, because Uber had put a lot of pressure on them to work specific hours (not just through pricing but various forms of cajoling) so they were deemed to be employed.
manarth 10y ago
I think we had the same issue in the UK, when uber drivers wanted to be classified as full time workers. Yep, the drivers won that tribunal in 2016 [1]. Courier company City Sprint also lost a case this year, where the judge described their contractual arrangements as "contorted, indecipherable and window-dressing" [2]. HMRC are investigating parcel delivery company Hermes for similarly classifying drivers as self-employed, and there's a potential case from the GMB Union (who won the case against Uber) [2] [3]. In the UK, the gig economy isn't as simple as companies insisting "you're self-employed because we say you are". [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/28/uber-uk-tribunal-self-employed-status https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/28/uber-uk-t... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jan/06/courier-wins-holiday-pay-in-latest-key-tribunal-ruling-for-gig-economy https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jan/06/courier-win... [3] https://www.theguardian.com/law/2016/oct/20/hermes-couriers-working-status-investigated-hmrc https://www.theguardian.com/law/2016/oct/20/hermes-couriers-... [4] http://www.itv.com/news/2017-01-25/hermes-gmb-taking-legal-action-against-delivery-courier/ http://www.itv.com/news/2017-01-25/hermes-gmb-taking-legal-a...

TeMPOraL 10y ago

Love the lying headlines. The title says: "Uber Offers Drivers $1 Each to Wipe Away Labor Threats Valued in Billions" The article says: "The agreement calls for about $1.7 million to paid to drivers(...) The amount each driver gets depends on how many weeks they have actively driven for Uber." Regardless, it sounds like a joke. Unless they plan to somehow disqualify 99% of the drivers, the amount will still pretty much average into a slap in the face for a drivers. Also, as I understand the article: the settlement is for $7.75M. "The agreement calls for about $1.7 million to paid to drivers and earmarks about $2.9 million in PAGA penalties for California’s Labor and Workforce Development Agency, with the rest of the settlement sum going toward attorney fees and administration costs." Which would mean that $3.15M will go to the lawyers. I guess the lawyers are the only party that benefits from lawsuits these days.

danieltillett 10y ago
Has it ever been different? What we don't hear from sharks - fish are friends.
uppercasenut 10y ago
--"Love they lying headlines...."The agreement calls for about $1.7 million to paid to drivers" So they were off, by what, a penny? It's $1.7 million after all. Slice and dice it all you want...
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  They don't offer $1 each, they offer $1.7M to be split according to some criterion correlated with the number of "weeks they have actively driven for Uber".
  - uppercasenut 10y ago
    OK, I got it. But how much can the top person get? Maybe the company doing the math /sending checks takes $1.5 million. In short, it's a scam, like most lawsuit settlements. The lawyers get rich, the state gets some fines and the company admits no wrongdoing and does it again and again.

studentrob 10y ago

> Uber Technologies Inc. is offering its drivers an average of about a dollar apiece to dispose of alleged labor code violations that their own lawyer said might be worth billions Wow, now that is cheap.

sleepychu 10y ago
Wait, what? Uber's lawyer said they were worth billions?

scotty79 10y ago

> Under the 2004 law, the state keeps 75 percent of any penalties won. Attorneys for employers have nicknamed it the “bounty hunter” and “sue your boss” law because of the remaining 25 percent is a reward for the workers who bring the case. USA has strange habit of attaching money to justice. It comes up with various schemes of making money while exacting justice and gets all surprised while justice becomes way less just in the process. In european countries fine is for punishing the offender. Victim might get some help but one is not usually directly connected to the other. I feel that those money making schemes prevent from introducing better solutions because they work to some degree and the damage they do is not visible till later where it is already huge.

beaconstudios 10y ago
fines aren't a great way to enforce justice either in my opinion, because they incentivise finding perpetrators where there aren't any, and being heavy-handed with enforcement of the law in order to bring additional funds into the courts and police departments.
- kakarot 10y ago
  I say we just tie people up and beat them with a cucumber until they say they're sorry
- scotty79 10y ago
  Fines are good way to correct behavior because people generally hate loosing money. The problem starts only when that money is transferred to some other party that can influence the process in any way (even the victim, definitely police or lawers).
ben_jones 10y ago
My guess as an American is that it incentivizes victims to step forward, if in a somewhat self-serving way. I wouldn't be surprised if you told an average blue collar American that you won a class action lawsuit against a former employer, of if you received a court settlement in the past against the FOO company, that they'd expect you to be quite rich, or at least to have received a large amount of dough. I suspect they would have no idea that the real winners were in fact the lawyers on both sides.

fiatjaf 10y ago

Employee rights and labor laws are the main cause of unemployment everywhere, and of many related bad economic consequences.

celticninja 10y ago
The lack of them is the leading cause of economic inequality and poor treatment of workers everywhere.
- fiatjaf 10y ago
  Oh, nice words without any meaning.
  - matthewmacleod 10y ago
    You just did exactly the same thing, so chill out. There's little evidence that labour laws cause unemployment. This meta-analysis (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2705499 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2705499) points out that minimum wage laws have little to no effect. Wider analyses (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1564-913X.2014.00195.x/pdf http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1564-913X.2014....) also seem to conclude that labour rights have little effect ton employment rates.
    - fiatjaf 10y ago
      As if economic arguments could be proved by statistical analysis of incomplete data.
    - fiatjaf 10y ago
      I understand that you may think I did the same thing exactly, but the point is that my words have meaning, they are not proved in my comment, but "unemployment" has a clear and distinct meaning while "economic inequality" doesn't.
      - 10y ago

beejiu 10y ago

> The claims by Steven Price, who sought to represent as many as 1.6 million California drivers in a class action, were brought under the state’s Private Attorneys General Act From a quick Google, the population of California is 38.8 million. I would be very surprised if 4% of the population worked for Uber.

hfsktr 10y ago
It would make a little more sense if you think of this going back a few years.

frankydp 10y ago

It is a curious dichotomy that the IP story of the week awarded $500mil in damages to a Corp, and this labor story effecting "1.6mil" workers is looking to settle for $7.5mil($1.7mil flagged). Assuming the class identification to be true, you would think that a wrongly classified worker would have incurred at least $100 in negatives, even if you only totaled up potential unemployment it would be more for than this amount for that subgroup. The gig economy is a wild alternate reality in my mind, where we travel back to a pre OSHA/DOL period in worker relations.