5 ms·
Back in the old days, when we actually manufactured clothing in this country, there was this concept of "piece work". You weren't paid by the hour, but instead
by PhantomGremlin 9y ago
Back in the old days, when we actually manufactured clothing in this country, there was this concept of "piece work". You weren't paid by the hour, but instead by your work output. E.g. if you were performing some sewing step on a blouse, such as adding buttons, you might be paid $0.25 per blouse for that work step.
Of course employers tried to cheat, by setting the per-piece rate very low. You had to process many pieces to get a reasonable wage.
The Federal government was forced to step in. They required monitoring of all this activity so that "all employees, including piece work employees, earn at least the minimum wage."[1]
If only the people running the sweatshops in the old days thought to call their people "contractors" instead of "employees". They could have avoided most of the pesky regulation.
I'm being sarcastic. Clearly those people were employees under any reasonable definition. Same should apply here. This whole gig economy crap has gotten totally out of hand.
Fundamentally, an Instacart worker only has flexibility of when to work. The rest is more-or-less predetermined. Should that person be a contractor instead of an employee because he has his choice of the order in which to traverse the supermarket aisles? Should that person be a contractor because he has his choice of which streets to drive on from store to destination?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piece_work#Minimum_wage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piece_work#Minimum_wage
- themagician 9y agoIt’s precisely BECAUSE the law hasn’t caught up that most of these exist the way that they do at all. Instacart, Postmates, Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, etc. all make profit on the gap between what they pay and what the regulated equivalent pays. Their big competitive advantage is just lower costs by completely ignoring the law. We talk about “innovation” but then these services mostly operate on not paying employees, insurance, benefits, licensing, etc. If I stop paying taxes and declare my consultancy a religion does that make my innovative? I’m instantly 40% more profitable than the next guy. You can “donate” via a mobile app too! It’s not a payment, it’s a donation. Please note the donation must be as it states on the invoic... err, donation services document.
- rileymat2 9y agoWith respect to Uber, the user experience is far better than a taxi cab. I would pay taxi cab prices for its level of service.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago> Their big competitive advantage is just lower costs by completely ignoring the law This is disingenuous. Uber started out with Uber Black, which was attractive because of its customer service. UberX was only launched in response to Lyft. Airbnb skirted some necessary hotel laws, and many unnecessary ones. Agree on Postmates and other delivery services.
- zajd 9y agoAll of them ignored the law. If Uber was just Uber Black you might have a point.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago> If Uber was just Uber Black you might have a point Uber launched Uber Black, and not UberX, because it was convinced a ride-sharing service would be shut down by authorities. When Lyft failed to be shut down, Uber panicked and responded. Next to this ambiguity are several cities' track records of racist, horrible cab drivers fully embracing their state-sponsored monopolies.
- matz1 9y agoif the government really care of it's citizen, they should do it directly, by providing low cost/free basic necessity or basic income, etc. This way their citizen is not "forced" to work with these company you deemed "exploitative"
- tertius 9y agoBasic income has to come from somewhere. Being forced to work i.e. be productive is very psychologically important. Now being forced to be a slave is a different story. What needs to happen here is for the government to step in when I crime is being committed. I.e. an employee is being paid less than promised.