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The main thing the so called gig-economy brings to the table is a regression in workers rights and benefits. That's the core. That's the profits. I can't unders

• ars 9y ago
  > is a regression in workers rights and benefits. But, it also brings an expansion in available jobs, and much greater flexibility in deciding when to work. For a LOT of people, those are worthwhile tradeoffs. > of some smartphone app having been created. Piecework (which is basically what this is), long long long predates the smartphone.
  • jeremyjh 9y ago
    Piece rate workers are employees,and full time workers are not exempt. A subset of them (locals who work only during harvest season, and kids, basically) are exempt from overtime status and minimum wage. https://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs12.pdf https://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs12.pdf
  • eropple 9y ago
    It is absolutely, positively, incontrovertibly full-stop dishonesty to throw up the smokescreen of "oh they're choosing the 'gig economy' because of flexibility!". They're "choosing the 'gig economy'" 'cause there's no real jobs. The choice being made is between that and unemployment, not that and full-time work. "Flexibility" is what it's called when PR flacks, from their actual-full-time jobs (but, ha ha, not for long, the bell tolls for thee too), have to hide the hatchet job they do to the poor. It's not some "but fairings!" situation--it's a systemic attack on people.
    • longerthoughts 9y ago
      >They're "choosing the 'gig economy'" 'cause there's no real jobs. The choice being made is between that and unemployment, not that and full-time work. This may very well be the more common case but it's not responsible to generalize either way. If you have evidence to support your claim please share.
      • lovich 9y ago
        I know when I was told to go home at 31.5 hours every week it wasn't by my choice. The months it took to scrape together enough money to get a car and interview at non retail jobs also wasn't really a choice unless you count "give up and be homeless" as a reasonable option
    • smallgovt 9y ago
      The vitriol and blanket generalizations are neither helpful nor accurate. It's an indisputable fact that these gig economy jobs provide more flexibility in the form of being able to choose your hours of work. Is this flexibility a critical motivation to accepting work? For some people, yes. For others, no. Is unemployment a critical motivation to accepting this type of work? For some people, yes. For others, no. You want to paint this as black and white when the reality is only SOME of the workforce is faced with unemployment as the only alternative. My question to you is: Do you know what fraction of gig workers would actually otherwise be unemployed? If I had to guess, it's a small minority.
    • ars 9y ago
      > They're "choosing the 'gig economy'" 'cause there's no real jobs. Unemployment is historically low right now. Yet, tons of people are still choosing gig work. So there is something about it that people value. You can't just say there are no other jobs, because that's just not true.
    • 111_1_111 9y ago
      > cause there's no real jobs This is a flat-out lie. How can you complain about "full-stop dishonesty" and then make a preposterous claim like this? People choose to work in "gig-economy" jobs because the conditions are better for them than in other jobs they could get. By throwing up legal hurdles to gig-economy jobs as you seem to be advocating, you are only hurting workers.
• jstanley 9y ago
  Corollary to that is that it makes work available where previously it was uneconomical to employ somebody.
  • cbcoutinho 9y ago
    How is that the case when looking at ridesharing services? Using uber instead of a cab takes away work from one and gives it to another by undercutting them. As much as it's 'creating work' for a lyft driver, it's also taking someone else's job. I don't mean to defend the cab industry herr, but it's not like this work wasn't being done elsewhere.
    • function_seven 9y ago
      Sure, in dense metros like NYC you can say each Uber/Lyft is replacing a cab ride. I won't argue with you there. But in the suburbs, using a cab was not a normal thing to do, but using Uber or Lyft is. Maybe I'm being too anecdotal, but I can only think of a couple of rides (out of dozens) where I would have called a cab had Lyft not been available. Trying to get a cab ride from my house to a random place 15 miles away was a nightmare. Bad dispatch, no-show drivers, etc. Never really bothered after a few bad experiences, just designated a driver instead.
      • cbcoutinho 9y ago
        I would totally agree with you there regarding getting to/from a random place. Getting to downtown from where I grew up was a cool half hour drive, and no cab would dare giving you a ride down there. In that way, Uber definitely added value to anyone who didn't want to park downtown for an evening. I just assumed that that was not the majority of ride-sharing usage, where most of the action was in NYC/LA where cab-usage was already relatively high.
    • Trundle 9y ago
      There are plenty of rides happening with Uber/Lyft now that just wouldn't have happened at all previously, not just gone to a taxi.
• colechristensen 9y ago
  It's an exchange. The freedom of the gig economy vs. the loss of rights and benefits. If it's worth it for you take it, if not, don't.
  • eropple 9y ago
    Sure. It's an exchange. It's an exchange designed to consign the poor into being ever poorer. But hey--you get your food delivered for two bucks and you never have to talk to a person. So that's great. The "gig economy" is designed to break employment. It's designed to turn people who already are living hand-to-mouth or worse into always-available scutworkers for the upper class and the (smaller than one would expect) middle class that serves them in ways the participants in that "gig economy" cannot. But you can choose to not do it! And when, obviously and inexorably, that becomes the game in town available to vast swaths of the working poor, what then? There aren't even any workhouses anymore. Scrooge can't even offer that whatabout. Most people may not have much of a choice about feeding themselves (ourselves) or their (our) kids into the thresher, but the people who do can have the minimal decency not to oh-but-it's-fine about it. And that includes most people on HN.
    • smallgovt 9y ago
      It's neither accurate nor constructive to make it seem like there's an evil villain in these companies who's ACTIVELY designing/rigging the system to screw over the poor. The reality is that these companies are just being driven by profits. And, one way to maximize profits is to minimize costs by offering fewer benefits to workers. This outcome has a lot more to do with capitalism as a whole than the gig economy. If you are a proponent for worker's rights and mandated benefits then by all means argue for that. But, please don't make it seem like there's some evil person on the other side that you're seeking justice against. That doesn't exist.
      • eropple 9y ago
        There are villains in this. They're the people who exploit, who maximize profits on the backs of the poor instead of treating their employees like human beings and trying to not grind them into powder. Maybe capitalism has problems and it's not just the "gig economy"? This is creeping towards an epiphany--maybe choosing to participate in capitalism at a high level rather than mitigate its excesses makes you complicit? Maybe you own what you do and when what you do hurts people, you own that harm and that hurt? Yes, this does characterize many HN-sanctioned heroes. Too bad. Maybe they should instead be decent. Nobody forced these companies to exist. If you can't do business without bloodying the poor who are your "human resources," maybe you shouldn't do business.
• peterjlee 9y ago
  Who are the "wilfully accepting" people you speak of? I think most people aren't accepting nor rejecting anything. Someone is hungry and now they have food delivered. Someone doesn't have a job and now they have a delivery job. It's a win-win situation in a short-term micro scale and people are just responding to short-term incentives. It may have a bad effect in the long term but hungry/unemployed people don't have time to think about that and middleman-apps are making good profit exploiting that.
• dragonwriter 9y ago
  > The main thing the so called gig-economy brings to the table is a regression in workers rights and benefits In the present regulatory environment, sure; one could argue that that environment is using employers as a vehicle for general social services in a way which is undesirable and reduces employment, economic output, and well being especially for the poor. Moving the basic protections to public benefit schemes with appropriate tax support might be a better option. E.g., UBI instead of minimum wage, universal (single-payer or mandatory and subsidized default minimum coverage) healthcare instead of employer-mandated insurance, etc.
  • eropple 9y ago
    > In the present regulatory environment, sure In almost any likely regulatory environment we are likely to see in the next decade, and definitely in absolutely any regulatory environment that the the-poors-are-revolting HN zeitgeist has any influence on forming. I realize I am not telling you anything that you, specifically, don't know. (And I don't think you are the type to approve of those environments.) But having that out there provides important caveats for your "might be"'s. The problem exists and the problem is real and bad people are using it to hurt people and while I know you know the difference, underlining that "might be" might be doesn't erase what is.
  • jahaja 9y ago
    I'd like to point out that the difference between contractor and employee is even larger in Europe since more rights have been fought through to the same "Everyone will become unemployed!" cries of capital during the whole 20th century.
• woolvalley 9y ago
  If you work at a typical retail store or do pizza delivery, what kind of benefits do you receive? Do you actually receive a usable healthcare plan working at a typical US retail operation? If america had universal health care like the rest of the developed world, would anyone really care about this stuff that much?
  • eropple 9y ago
    Probably not. But we don't, so we care.
  • hkmurakami 9y ago
    Iirc many fast food places will try to limit your hours so you don't qualify for benefits.
  • aidenn0 9y ago
    It varies from state to state, but the two main protections that employees get but contractors don't are unemployment and minimum wage. There are others as well, which stems from the fact that for the most part the law considers contractors to be entities negotiating on equal footing with their customers (i.e. those who would otherwise be considered employers), whereas employees are required to have certain protections.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• stale2002 9y ago
  Taxi drivers working as contractors is not something that started when the App was invented. They have been working as contractors, for companies, for decades. Maybe you think the law should be changed, but situations like this have been established and determined for a very long time.
• kelnos 9y ago
  There's a trade off, though. It might not be the right one just yet, but it's there. Gig economy workers have much more flexibility to set their own hours, schedule, and what jobs they want to do than traditional employees do. Really the only problem here, and the only reason why there are lawsuits, is that these workers aren't being paid enough. I really doubt any of these people care whether they're classified as employees or contractors; they just want to feel like they're making enough money to support themselves (plus take care of self-employment taxes and healthcare costs) without feeling like to do so they need to work themselves to the bone. If these jobs provided a decent standard of living, I don't think these issues would exist at all.
  • jahaja 9y ago
    My entire point was that the fact that they are not paid enough - including the loss of rights and benefits which translates to labor costs - is a feature not a bug. The core feature. I have no idea why there is this insistence on some kind of "benefit of the doubt" ad infinitum.