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The gig economy is quietly undermining a century of worker protections

284 points by bsg75 8y ago

zwkrt 8y ago
It isn't doing it quietly, it's running around yelling in the streets banging pots and pans. Outside the bay area I have never had an Uber driver that did not drive as their full-time job. (Actually my most strange memory of San Jose was being driven by a dad going to pick up his son from school.) But what's someone to do if their other option is not to work at all? My mom used to work two jobs in the early 2000s, and it was always a struggle because so many retail jobs (or at least retail managers) will intentionally randomize schedules, such that even if you are working 30h/week you can't hold another position because in any given week the schedules are likely to overlap. The gig economy is a weaponized response to this variability IMO.
- smsm42 8y ago
  > But what's someone to do if their other option is not to work at all? So, let's imagine all wishes of Uber opponents came true and Uber doesn't exist anymore. What does it mean for that "someone" - back to "no work at all", right? Do you think that change improved his situation? > so many retail jobs (or at least retail managers) will intentionally randomize schedules Why? What advantage does it provide to them? Also, isn't retail job the very one that has centuries of protections and, as the topic article claims, must survive and serve as a model while Uber jobs must be gone?
  - onlyrealcuzzo 8y ago
    A lot of worker protections are reserved for full-time employees -- like healthcare, breaks, paid sick leave. In theory, you don't have to give full-time employees vacation time, but in practice most full-time employees get vacation time, and very few part time employees do. That's part of the Under-employed crisis in the US. When people talk about worker protections, they're not talking about part-time work. Additionally, very few full-time employees have anything remotely like a randomized schedule. The medical industry is the only industry AFAIK that resembles randomized schedules at all. Yet this is VERY common in part time work.
    - smsm42 8y ago
      > That's part of the Under-employed crisis in the US. Let's imagine, again, the wishes of the progressive forces came true and the part-time jobs are banned forever, together with gigs and side jobs and contracting and interning and whatever it is that is not 100% full-time fixed steady job - all other ways to get employment is verboten. Would you think people that are now working part-time jobs would be better or worse off? If, say, someone is a mother working part-time because she needs time to take care of the kid (and she doesn't mind giving up vacation time for being able to actually spend time with the kid when she needs it) - would she better off losing the part-time job or being required to work full-time and hire a full-time (remember, no part-time jobs anymore!) nanny or give the child to the mass-warehousing facility for kids while she is working? Would the person who has a side gig because his main job does not provide enough income be better off losing that gig? Would we be better off is we solve the crisis by destroying the part-time employment?
  - zwkrt 8y ago
    1. We are agreeing, not sure why the argumentative tone. 2. If you have 10 employees, late shift only twice a week, only 3 of them are trained to open the store, and employees constantly swapping hours, it can be hard to provide consistent hours for everyone. "Intentionally randomize" could have been restated as "regularly unstable"
    - smsm42 8y ago
      I am still not getting the last part. I understand that if small number of employees only can take care of a vital function, then they must be carefully scheduled so that the vital function is covered all the time. How exactly randomizing is achieving this? If I planned it, I'd say randomizing is the worst method ever to achieve it, so I wonder what I am still missing - what advantage the employer gains in randomizing the hours? I can't see any.
      - StanislavPetrov 8y ago
        Low-wage employers often don't generate or issues schedules far in advance. The longer they wait to issue a schedule the more flexibility the employer has. Often this involves giving shorter but more frequent shifts to keep workers who work 4 or 5 days a week from accruing enough hours to be consider a full-time workers (and qualifying for benefits).
        smsm42 7y ago
        What you have described sounds logical, but it's not randomizing. It's giving out shifts by specific and well-defined criteria (maybe unethical or undesired by the worker, but hardly random).
patrickaljord 8y ago
On the other hand, while worker protections had their use a century ago, they have increased cost of labour by a lot, making many low skilled workers unemployable (the very people they were supposed to protect). I've talked to many gig workers and they all told me that without these jobs, they would have nothing. Sure, we can start imposing strong "protections" on the gig economy, but these jobs would just disappear and those workers would be out of jobs again. No one plans a career on doing gigs their whole life, but for many it's a better source of revenue than just being unemployed and they feel less stuck in unemployment and more accomplished than they used to, which is better for moral and making them want to improve their skills/get back in the labour force.
- zwkrt 8y ago
  If the current way we structure our economy and society is failing large swaths of people, gigs might be a good stop gap, but how many people can be gigified before the whole thing breaks? What is the acceptable percent of people for whom it is ok that they will never have healthcare?
  - patrickaljord 8y ago
    Not sure how this is related to healthcare. I'm from France where everybody has healthcare and the gig economy is still huge. In the US you could either go single payer like France or full private/free market but obligatory like in Switzerland or the Netherlands. Either way, this is not related to the gig economy. The US has a problem where an oligopoly of insurances are trying to keep a bad status quo.
    - zwkrt 8y ago
      Sorry if I was unclear. My point is that gig workers in the US and other people of transient employment status do not generally consider themselves to have access to healthcare, even though they technically do through the accumulation of unpayable debt.
      - 8y ago
spunker540 8y ago
One of the interesting aspects of the gig economy (speaking mostly about ride-sharing) is sure the pay may be bad and the hours may be bad for certain regions/areas/drivers. But Uber and Lyft don't impose any sort of requirements. You can work exactly when and how much you want to work. That in and of itself is a huge win for workers. Part of the problem is Uber and Lyft also don't limit how many drivers drive at any given time, which results in some inefficiencies (which are mostly just felt by the drivers). If there are too many drivers on the road, fares go down which is good for everyone but the drivers: Uber will keep taking it's cut; riders get cheap fares quickly. I think the fact that people can drive 15 hrs a week if that fits their childcare schedule or drive 60 hrs of week to pay for a vacation is incredibly valuable.
- eterm 8y ago
  "freedom not to work" is not a freedom it's a threat.
  - everdev 8y ago
    It can be a freedom for some people. People raising kids might love to work a couple days a week a couple months of the year (to match the school schedule). Many of them would never consider a 9-5 FTE job.
    - eterm 8y ago
      Part time employment is very different from 'unpredictable hours with no certainty and poor workers' rights' which is what much of the gig economy actually is. Part time employment with flexible working hours is a good thing, but that's not a benefit that the gig economy delivers, in fact quite the opposite. An unregulated wage economy suppresses wages to the point that workers must work ever increasing hours to make a living wage. If that stops being the case, there will be someone willing to work a little longer for a little less. This feeds into a cycle where wages are suppressed right down to the point where to make a living wage you actually have to be working all the time. Far from gaining control to "set your own hours" you actually get pressured into more and more hours. Contrast to regulated industries where you are either salaried, or supply is restricted so that workers can genuinely earn and set their own schedules without feeling like they'll lose out by taking any breaks. Describing the gig economy as some kind of workers' nirvana is just deceptive and wrong.
techrich 8y ago
that’s the point of the gig economy, the big corps that run the world. don’t want to have to pay worker protections. pension contribution, sick pay. pain holiday, it cuts down on their bottom line. better if everyone is a contractor they can get rid off.
formalsystem 8y ago
My take is that gig economies are a band aid solution over the fact that a large fraction of the workforce needs to retrain itself in tech. I'm optimistic about universal basic income to help people get started but let's be real tech is gonna be a huge pie and I find comments like there's no way a truck driver can learn how to program extremely cynical. Relative to a 1,000 years ago any human today is a technological genius so we shouldn't underestimate humans.
- barbecue_sauce 8y ago
  I am of the opinion anybody can learn to program, but there is not an infinite demand for developers. In fact, more probably already exist than necessary. Any jobs that can't be filled are probably more the result of hiring inefficiencies than anything else. Also, software development as a discipline is filled with highly (and formally) educated people. A lot of the non-traditional (non-computer science) developers at least come from a math/science/engineering background. Even if you have the skills, these people will not allow their ranks to be sullied by the "unwashed masses" who didn't "work as hard" as they did. (Quotations to indicate these are not my personal thoughts, but I am not quoting a specific source).
- theoh 8y ago
  "Tech" is not going to provide jobs for people who previously did manual or clerical work. It's intrinsically geared towards automating away those classes of labour, without any guaranteed provision of a one-for-one replacement of 'old' jobs with tech jobs. I would be surprised if the level of technical skills of the population increases over the next few years. There's really no reason to expect that it should.
  - FartyMcFarter 8y ago
    Yeah, it's pretty ridiculous to expect a one-to-one replacement. Let's imagine a large bank that closes down 1000 branches with 10 employees each, due to online banking becoming more prevalent. Does this mean that the bank suddenly (or ever) needs 10,000 extra developers working on their online banking? Not even close!
- 8y ago
mruts 8y ago
The gig economy is exactly what the world needs: flexible, fungible work that provides opportunities to people who might not otherwise be able to get full-time jobs. College students, mothers, elderly, etc. Anyone who needs tremendous flexibility in their schedules. This is a great thing and I’m not sure what all the hate is about.
- eterm 8y ago
  That's what it should be, and what proponents say it is. But the reality is that established fulltime jobs are being supplied by "the gig economy" creating a class of worker who previously would work full time but now work similar jobs doing mostly similar hours but without the protection they previously had. If full time jobs are being replaced by ZH contracts to fill the same role, it's not workers' who benefit, it's companies.
  - mruts 8y ago
    Could you give examples besides taxi drivers (who are a terrible example of full-time work)?
    - eterm 8y ago
      Absolutely, there are plenty[1]. A lot of previously minimum wage employees have been 'converted' to ZH contracts in particular: * Care home assistants and other social care * Retail staff * Food manufacturing * Farm labour * Package and food delivery * Food service industry (restaurant staff) And many, many others. Most of the gig economy is not facilitated through tech companies and apps like uber or deliveroo but instead managed and provisioned through outsourcing companies. Huge swathes of the low-knowledge service economy have been replaced by these zero-hour contracts which characterise the "gig" economy. The workers have a very asymmetric relationship where the work-provider is generally free to offer or not very short-term contracts or 'gigs' while the worker is generally pressured to accept everything else risk being effectively black-balled by the work-provider. This is typically all done through a third party provider and further increases the 'distance' between the worker and the actual service being provided. This has really damaging long term effects for both the worker and the business. Outsourcing isn't particular new but the rate at which 'zero-hour' contracts and the wider gig economy has been alarming. It has gone from less than 1% to double-digit percentages of workers in some sectors on ZH contracts. I believe that any such outsourcing is damaging, a worker who works for (and not even employed by) a third party outsourcing company is unlikely to feel the same pride than a direct employee, but more concerning is that domain expertise is not kept and nutured within the company but instead diluted. There is less opportunity for knowledge sharing across domains if different job roles within the workplace are not just siloed but actually fulfilled by different outsourcing companies. Having a sense of shared ownership and an opportunity for casual knowledge sharing between different parts of a business is essential for 'eureka' type moments to bring breakthroughs in improvements to ways of working or problem solving. In the outsourcing model people are seen a merely a resource to be managed. It doesn't matter who is turning up to do that role as long as someone does. Zero hours and the gig economy stretches this to breaking point. Both ends of the equation lose stabilty. The business no longer has stability of knowing which employees will be around next week, so is therefore less likely to invest in upskilling, and the workers don't have the stability of knowing if they'll be offered any hours the following week so lack the stability to make long term decisions. The accountants back at head offices of course see it as a win/win. The busiess, e.g. a restaurant no longer has to worry about whether they'll have to recruit for staff at short notice because of high turnover, because it's a different company's problem to find and supply the staff and the reduced risk that brings, and not directly employing staff reduces the overhead of managing payroll or even if they are managing the contracts reduces some tax overhead (e.g. employers NI contributions). You might not recognise this as the 'gig economy', especially if you work in an "at will" state in the USA, but in the UK these zero-hour contracts are a large part of what we see as the gig economy because it differs so much to the established rights that we enjoy as employees. In fact legislators worked hard to establish new "workers' rights" to increase rights for workers without needing full employee rights so workers at least get some protection. All of this also contributes to lower social mobility. The ability for someone to climb up from the lowest 'rung' of an organisation was a rare but treasured part of corporations. Many older companies have such stories as part of their folklore. But in the outsourced gig economy, what were the bottom rungs of the ladder are no longer there, and instead provisioned by a third party. There's no ladder any more, the workers are kept at arms length from the management. [1] https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/articles/contractsthatdonotguaranteeaminimumnumberofhours/mar2017 https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwor...
deleted 8y ago
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jimrhods23 8y ago
You can replace 'gig economy' with 'contractor'. The idea of contracting has been around for many years before Uber and Lyft and is different than the worker rights you get when you are a full-time employee. I also don't see it replacing anything. Every company isn't going the gig route. It's just not practical. "They were not employees and so had no health insurance, workers’ compensation protections, employer contributions to Social Security and payroll taxes, paid time off, family leave protections, discrimination protections, or unemployment insurance benefits" This was never part of the deal. I don't get any of this selling my items on Ebay either. "Sometimes, this gig work also requires an initial outlay of capital. (My own neighbor just traded in her old vehicle for a new car, taking on thousands of dollars in debt so that she can make extra money driving for Lyft." So no actual research before diving in and buying a new car? Not a smart move and not Lyft's problem. "Platform algorithms are designed to downgrade those who aren’t always available, making it ever-harder to pick up gigs" As a Lyft customer, would it make sense to have someone pick me up that may not even be there? That would be a horrible customer experience. "Uber, for example, offers email communications to drivers, a service that is not nearly as responsive as the taxi cab dispatcher, say" Was this article written by the Taxicab unions? You can regulate and force companies like Lyft to make all of the drivers employees, pay them a good wage, and give them benefits. But, this will cut the workforce significantly because the bar will be much higher to become a driver. Many of the people driving now will be out of work. “The disruption offered by the sharing economy is simply a hustle.” It really depends on your goals. The gig economy allows more people to make less money. Just like any market, there will be a small percentage making the most money, some in the middle, and some making a small amount. Do you think the workers now would rather make a little bit of money or none? Assuming every current worker will just be converted to a full time employee with benefits is not realistic.
purplezooey 8y ago
One might ask the question, why do these worker protections exist in the first place? There are good reasons. We've been undermining many things like this lately: vaccines, the EPA, anti-trust laws, voting rights. It will be our undoing.
bsenftner 8y ago
Any "quiet" on this front is due to the advertising power to suppress articles examining the extreme worker inequality present in the gig economy.
jacquesm 8y ago
I take issue with the word 'quietly'. The gig economy is pretty much designed to do an end-run around worker protections, starting off by denying the workers so much as an employment agreement. The difference is all the more striking in countries that had above average worker protections in place. A large contributing factor here is that due to the internet's international nature it is very well possible that the enabler is in a jurisdiction that is entirely different from the one where the work is carried out. Free-market fanatics see this all as a good thing but I'm really not happy with this rapid return to piece-work, which was outlawed in favor of hourly rates and minimum wages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piece_work https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piece_work
- patrickaljord 8y ago
  > Free-market fanatics see this all as a good thing but I'm really not happy with this rapid return to piece-work, which was outlawed in favor of hourly rates and minimum wages. Piece work is making a comeback because of the failure of the alternatives. Insisting that we should keep on with the same rigide system despite its obvious failing is the real fanaticism here. Doesn't mean piece work should be the norm, it just means both have their place and completely outlawing one or the other seem like a big mistake. None of these two are going away as they are both needed.
  - rhizome 8y ago
    The fanaticism is in employers hunting for ways not to pay for any time not directly coupled to revenue. With gig work, this is tracked down to the millisecond.
    - patrickaljord 8y ago
      Only employers who have very low skilled workers do so, for two reasons, one is that skilled workers have more power to negotiate better deals, the other reason is that these gig companies operate on thin margins, in fact most of them operate on loss so every dime that can be saved is worth it. They only survive because they are subsidized by billionaires investors. Eventually most of them will either go bankrupt or find a way out of their loss at which point they will be able to increase their workers salaries (as it is a good thing for productivity and attract more talents). There's a lot of animosity against "evil employers" or "lazy workers" but it usually is a bit more complex than these simple dichotomies.
ghobs91 8y ago
And just like it did in the early 1900s, the government will again adapt with new regulations that take the gig economy into account.
hedora 8y ago
Universal health care would drastically improve the situation by removing a big percentage of the competitive advantage of gig companies. More generally, regulation is needed that removes all financial incentives to prefer gig workers and contractors over full time employees. This would be good for both gig workers (better benefits), and full time workers (less wage pressure from competition from workers with unsustainable compensation).
- allendoerfer 8y ago
  The way universal healthcare is implemented in Germany, it does not undermine the gig economy by itself. Freelancing where the employer does not pay for healthcare is still possible and also removes the need to pay minimum wage. It comes down to stricter rules around employment. Gig-Employers are risking to get sued by there defacto employees and them being granted employment status, which then makes them entitled to receive minimum wage, healthcare, pension payments etc. even in hindsight. So a "gig" has to be exactly that, it cannot be an actual job.
  - wongarsu 8y ago
    To elaborate on this: In Germany if you are a contractor but all your contracts amount to effectively working like an employee for a single company it can be ruled that you are an employee. There are obviously exceptions, like seasonal work, and the system can be gamed. But trying to game the system means you can't keep your good workers because you can only contract them for so long before offering employment.
tenaciousDaniel 8y ago
Is there any gig economy app that simply creates a marketplace (like Craigslist)? This seems like it would be far preferable, because otherwise you're just asking people to be an employee without any employee protection. In a marketplace system, these people aren't employees; they're owners of their own business.
- JoshTriplett 8y ago
  > Is there any gig economy app that simply creates a marketplace TaskRabbit and similar.
  - tenaciousDaniel 8y ago
    I disagree. Task Rabbit places demands on their providers, such as requiring them to respond within a particular time frame. If any such demand is placed on you, you are an employee.
    - JoshTriplett 8y ago
      A big part of the point of a marketplace of contractors would be to do some form of vetting. Contracts can have standardized terms. People may want insurance or other protection. Contracts are more than just "X pays Y, Y does work for X". A marketplace making a requirement that contractors on their platform must respond to messages within N hours doesn't inherently make the contractors into employees. "We don't list people unless they meet these requirements" serves as a major selling point. "We list anyone who shows up" makes for a noisy, lower-value marketplace.
thejerz 8y ago
> The gig economy is quietly undermining a century of worker protections An economy is an inanimate object; it can't #{active_verb} something. This may sound nitpicky, but: language carries meaning; language influences perception; and, in this case, language ascribes blame. Insofar as Ameirica is concerned, the contractors working for gig apps, like Uber or Postmates, have chosen not to exercise their rights to worker protections. Even as contractors, giggers have a legal right to unionize, collectively bargain, and form a cartel to demand better compensation. These people have chosen not to. That's not to say organizing is "easy" -- especially when you're living paycheck-to-paycheck -- it's not. But, to the degree that contractors are upset enough to act, organizing is feasible and achievable.[1] Self-organization is the free-market solution to a person feeling exploited or trampled upon by his boss. No government intervention is required. Given that the right to exercise collective bargaining is a choice, and afaik the majority of giggers do not collectively bargain, the rational conclusion is that these gig contractors aren't upset enough about the terms of their gig to take action. [1] https://drivers-united.org/ https://drivers-united.org/
- Data_Junkie 8y ago
  Blaming the victims.Call it what it is what it has all way been, people with advantages taking advantage of people and then blaming them for being them. Nothing new.
- rhizome 8y ago
  An economy is an inanimate object; it can't #{active_verb} something. This may sound nitpicky, but: language carries meaning; language influences perception; and, in this case, language ascribes blame. Fine: the gig business model is undermining.
- toyg 8y ago
  > the contractors working for gig apps, [...] have chosen not to exercise their rights It's sad to see this sort of propaganda on HN. Gig workers choose to take up a gig job in alternative to starvation, in most cases. There are big socioeconomic problems undermining the misguided notion that it might be a rational choice, in the overwhelming majority of cases. This is why the State, in a modern society, is supposed to step in and forbid employers from taking advantage of workers. These are lessons that were first learnt in the XIX and early XX century.
Proven 8y ago
It's undermining labor unions and ever-meddling State.
username223 8y ago
> The disruption offered by the "sharing economy" is simply a hustle. I would say "an evil" rather than "a hustle." Paying a few programmers six figures to write an app that commands lots of other people to work for less than minimum wage as "independent contractors" is evil. Calling it "sharing" or "tech" doesn't make it smell more sweet. Labor laws may not be perfect, but they have been built from centuries of experience, and sometimes blood[1,2]. It's a shame to see them being successfully ignored by a handful of morally bankrupt programmers. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fi... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_massacre
DoreenMichele 8y ago
They were not employees and so had no health insurance The gig economy casts light on the fact that America fundamentally fails to take care of its citizens in this important metric. Gig work would be less problematic in the US if we didn't expect employers to provide healthcare. My life works at all when it shouldn't because of gig work. There are myriad issues making my life challenging, from serious health issues to sexism and classism. I get aggravated when I see people who are part of the problem in that regard vilifying the gig work that has allowed me to survive, problem solve, get back into housing etc. Certainly, there are abuses. We should strive to make gig work a more positive thing generally. But we should also strive to not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
LanceH 8y ago
The first of the worker protections it is undermining is the protection from competition from those that aren't invited to participate.
umvi 8y ago
Before Uber/Lyft existed, I never took a taxi. It was just prohibitively expensive compared to buses/walking. If Uber is forced by the government to provide all drivers with a living wage and health coverage, I imagine I'd immediately stop using the service since it would become prohibitively expensive again, just like the old system.
- zaarn 8y ago
  I'd rather prefer a society that values someone being able to live comfortably of their work over you being able to get a cheap taxi with the least amount of effort.
  - savanaly 8y ago
    Before Uber and Lyft came along, did we have either?
    - zaarn 8y ago
      So why does that mean we should prefer the worse option? Uber and Lyft enable the exploitation of self employed workers, that shouldn't be allowed.
anonymous5133 8y ago
If you read the theories or Karl Marx, his theories are pretty accurate in terms of explaining why people work "gig jobs" even though worker protections are basically non-existent. Marx basically described a class of people as being the "industrial reserve army of the unemployed"...obviously these are people who are either unemployed or unemployed. For these people, they are basically going to fight for whatever job they can get because having a terrible job is better than no job at all. Thus, as long as this class exists, people will work terrible jobs without much ability to fight back. It is also important to note that the industrial reserve army of the unemployed exists for each relevant skill set. For obvious hard to get skillets....the reserve army is basically non-existent. It also explains why all of these "gig economy" type startups almost entirely focus on services that are low-skill by nature. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyrhoHtSkzg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyrhoHtSkzg
- smsm42 8y ago
  If Uber drivers are supposedly all unemployed and so poor they have to grab any terrible job they can find, how can they afford those nice cars I'm seeing? I am employed in high-tech and I've been in Uber cars better than mine numerous times. People driving didn't look desperately hungry either.
  - telchar 8y ago
    What, you've never heard of debt?
    - smsm42 8y ago
      I heard of debt. I actually made and paid off some. Turns out, those debt distributors (some people call them "banks") actually care about getting their money back and require proof of income and employment before they give you that sweet debt.
erlangNewb 8y ago
It undermines protections but allows execution of projects that wouldn't otherwise be possible for such a small budget. My company would not exist without the Fiverr contractors i paid early on, hiring devs was a no go. My fiverr devs are efficient and they all negotiate their rate. My specs are clean and actually complete enough to deliver working code that I hook into my existing platform. I'm pretty sure the fiverr devs I pay are making more per hour than they would full time. One difference is that they probable dont have time to bullshit with coworkers or surf reddit half the day.
- ilaksh 8y ago
  How much did you pay them and for what tasks? Do you think your fivers paid taxes or had health insurance?
smsm42 8y ago
What we are having here is an experiment. There are two classes of jobs, which provide nearly the same service - e.g. driving people from one place to another. One set of jobs has "century of worker protection", the other does not. People seem to flock to the second one, even though it requires certain level of investment and skill (owning a car, knowing how to drive, having reasonably clean driving record, being personally nice to clients, etc.) and offers no guarantees. Moreover, they don't just lukewarmly think about maybe trying it out - they rush to do it so eagerly that companies organizing it make billions, despite all efforts of various governments to suppress and limit their business. It looks dangerously like something people want to participate in... The obvious conclusion that people seem to be making in that the second class of jobs is evil and must be destroyed, and only the first class of jobs - clearly leaving a huge unsatisfied need from both producers and consumers of the service - should be allowed to exist.
- StanislavPetrov 8y ago
  Worker protections are expensive and come with industry regulation. Corporations have figured out that they can simply shift their business model to the "second class of job" and ignore regulations and worker protections. The companies organizing it rake billions while the workers make less than a living wage and often rely on public subsidies to survive, which is effectively a subsidy for these corporations who rake in billions off the backs of these workers.
  - smsm42 7y ago
    If you ban these jobs, would people that subsist on job+subsidy consume more public subsidies or less? Note that you assumed these people are very poor and have no alternative jobs. Now you have taken away their only (albeit low) income they had. Would it lead to consuming more of public subsidies or less? Would absence of taxes paid by corporations make providing these subsidies easier or harder?
naveen99 8y ago
I wonder if they’ll make a non-immigration visa for gig workers similar to the seasonal farm workers program... basically let the current farm workers have the option of driving a taxi instead. Just require that they only work half the year and go back to their country for the other half (stay seasonal).
carapace 8y ago
I just mentioned this the other day in a thread about Uber: https://www.ianwelsh.net/the-market-fairy-will-not-solve-the... https://www.ianwelsh.net/the-market-fairy-will-not-solve-the...? > Here is the thing about Uber and Lyft (and much of the “sharing economy”). > They don’t pay the cost of their capital. > The wages they pay to their drivers are less than the depreciation of the cars and the expense of keeping the drivers fed, housed, and healthy. They pay less than minimum wage in most markets, and, in most markets, that is not enough to pay the costs of a car plus a human. > These business models are ways of draining capital from the economy and putting them into the hands of a few investors and executives. They prey on desperate people who need money now, even if the money is insufficient to pay their total costs. Drivers are draining their own reserves to get cash now, but, hey, they gotta eat and pay the bills.
Wh1skey 8y ago
Working conditions a century ago were very different than they are today. Worker protections were initiated to balance the scales between employees and employers. Since then, living conditions have improved ten-fold. The gig economy is an effective solution that supports both employees and employers. The economy would be performing less optimally without it.
RickJWagner 8y ago
Question for Hacker News readers outside the USA: Is the gig economy global? Do these forces exist elsewhere?
teslaberry 8y ago
this is why california liberal culture is a giant deception for facism. never trust any politics of a californian. they are so ensconced in their bubble they can never have a clue how brainwashed they are unless they grew up somewhere else , or grew up in a rural part of california or are military. the group think of your averaage Los Angelino is stunning. It's not that they are stupid , it's that they have zero ability to think for themselves. none.
samantha_thomas 8y ago
What exactly is a gig? Is it burner jobs or perhaps a one-day job give or take? I'm curious to know more except I've never had any odd jobs in my life.
reilly3000 8y ago
Gig work and mortgage underwriting are pretty incompatible. Access to financing to own property is one of the most secure ways to build at least modest wealth in the long term. Permanent renting and perpetual unpredictability in income doesn’t buy much freedom at all.
enterx 7y ago
Worker protection comes from the deductions from the salary of their own or the salaries of other workers. Workers pay to be protected. Minimum wage is a total hoax and another topic. But bear in mind that most of the minimum wage workers do not pay this protection at all and still enjoy it. There should be no difference in taxation of the gig vs regular wage payouts. a dollar here is equal to a dollar there.

284 points by bsg75 8y ago

It isn't doing it quietly, it's running around yelling in the streets banging pots and pans. Outside the bay area I have never had an Uber driver that did not drive as their full-time job. (Actually my most strange memory of San Jose was being driven by a dad going to pick up his son from school.) But what's someone to do if their other option is not to work at all? My mom used to work two jobs in the early 2000s, and it was always a struggle because so many retail jobs (or at least retail managers) will intentionally randomize schedules, such that even if you are working 30h/week you can't hold another position because in any given week the schedules are likely to overlap. The gig economy is a weaponized response to this variability IMO.

smsm42 8y ago
> But what's someone to do if their other option is not to work at all? So, let's imagine all wishes of Uber opponents came true and Uber doesn't exist anymore. What does it mean for that "someone" - back to "no work at all", right? Do you think that change improved his situation? > so many retail jobs (or at least retail managers) will intentionally randomize schedules Why? What advantage does it provide to them? Also, isn't retail job the very one that has centuries of protections and, as the topic article claims, must survive and serve as a model while Uber jobs must be gone?
- onlyrealcuzzo 8y ago
  A lot of worker protections are reserved for full-time employees -- like healthcare, breaks, paid sick leave. In theory, you don't have to give full-time employees vacation time, but in practice most full-time employees get vacation time, and very few part time employees do. That's part of the Under-employed crisis in the US. When people talk about worker protections, they're not talking about part-time work. Additionally, very few full-time employees have anything remotely like a randomized schedule. The medical industry is the only industry AFAIK that resembles randomized schedules at all. Yet this is VERY common in part time work.
  - smsm42 8y ago
    > That's part of the Under-employed crisis in the US. Let's imagine, again, the wishes of the progressive forces came true and the part-time jobs are banned forever, together with gigs and side jobs and contracting and interning and whatever it is that is not 100% full-time fixed steady job - all other ways to get employment is verboten. Would you think people that are now working part-time jobs would be better or worse off? If, say, someone is a mother working part-time because she needs time to take care of the kid (and she doesn't mind giving up vacation time for being able to actually spend time with the kid when she needs it) - would she better off losing the part-time job or being required to work full-time and hire a full-time (remember, no part-time jobs anymore!) nanny or give the child to the mass-warehousing facility for kids while she is working? Would the person who has a side gig because his main job does not provide enough income be better off losing that gig? Would we be better off is we solve the crisis by destroying the part-time employment?
- zwkrt 8y ago
  1. We are agreeing, not sure why the argumentative tone. 2. If you have 10 employees, late shift only twice a week, only 3 of them are trained to open the store, and employees constantly swapping hours, it can be hard to provide consistent hours for everyone. "Intentionally randomize" could have been restated as "regularly unstable"
  - smsm42 8y ago
    I am still not getting the last part. I understand that if small number of employees only can take care of a vital function, then they must be carefully scheduled so that the vital function is covered all the time. How exactly randomizing is achieving this? If I planned it, I'd say randomizing is the worst method ever to achieve it, so I wonder what I am still missing - what advantage the employer gains in randomizing the hours? I can't see any.
    - StanislavPetrov 8y ago
      Low-wage employers often don't generate or issues schedules far in advance. The longer they wait to issue a schedule the more flexibility the employer has. Often this involves giving shorter but more frequent shifts to keep workers who work 4 or 5 days a week from accruing enough hours to be consider a full-time workers (and qualifying for benefits).
      - smsm42 7y ago
        What you have described sounds logical, but it's not randomizing. It's giving out shifts by specific and well-defined criteria (maybe unethical or undesired by the worker, but hardly random).

patrickaljord 8y ago

On the other hand, while worker protections had their use a century ago, they have increased cost of labour by a lot, making many low skilled workers unemployable (the very people they were supposed to protect). I've talked to many gig workers and they all told me that without these jobs, they would have nothing. Sure, we can start imposing strong "protections" on the gig economy, but these jobs would just disappear and those workers would be out of jobs again. No one plans a career on doing gigs their whole life, but for many it's a better source of revenue than just being unemployed and they feel less stuck in unemployment and more accomplished than they used to, which is better for moral and making them want to improve their skills/get back in the labour force.

zwkrt 8y ago
If the current way we structure our economy and society is failing large swaths of people, gigs might be a good stop gap, but how many people can be gigified before the whole thing breaks? What is the acceptable percent of people for whom it is ok that they will never have healthcare?
- patrickaljord 8y ago
  Not sure how this is related to healthcare. I'm from France where everybody has healthcare and the gig economy is still huge. In the US you could either go single payer like France or full private/free market but obligatory like in Switzerland or the Netherlands. Either way, this is not related to the gig economy. The US has a problem where an oligopoly of insurances are trying to keep a bad status quo.
  - zwkrt 8y ago
    Sorry if I was unclear. My point is that gig workers in the US and other people of transient employment status do not generally consider themselves to have access to healthcare, even though they technically do through the accumulation of unpayable debt.
    - 8y ago

spunker540 8y ago

One of the interesting aspects of the gig economy (speaking mostly about ride-sharing) is sure the pay may be bad and the hours may be bad for certain regions/areas/drivers. But Uber and Lyft don't impose any sort of requirements. You can work exactly when and how much you want to work. That in and of itself is a huge win for workers. Part of the problem is Uber and Lyft also don't limit how many drivers drive at any given time, which results in some inefficiencies (which are mostly just felt by the drivers). If there are too many drivers on the road, fares go down which is good for everyone but the drivers: Uber will keep taking it's cut; riders get cheap fares quickly. I think the fact that people can drive 15 hrs a week if that fits their childcare schedule or drive 60 hrs of week to pay for a vacation is incredibly valuable.

eterm 8y ago
"freedom not to work" is not a freedom it's a threat.
- everdev 8y ago
  It can be a freedom for some people. People raising kids might love to work a couple days a week a couple months of the year (to match the school schedule). Many of them would never consider a 9-5 FTE job.
  - eterm 8y ago
    Part time employment is very different from 'unpredictable hours with no certainty and poor workers' rights' which is what much of the gig economy actually is. Part time employment with flexible working hours is a good thing, but that's not a benefit that the gig economy delivers, in fact quite the opposite. An unregulated wage economy suppresses wages to the point that workers must work ever increasing hours to make a living wage. If that stops being the case, there will be someone willing to work a little longer for a little less. This feeds into a cycle where wages are suppressed right down to the point where to make a living wage you actually have to be working all the time. Far from gaining control to "set your own hours" you actually get pressured into more and more hours. Contrast to regulated industries where you are either salaried, or supply is restricted so that workers can genuinely earn and set their own schedules without feeling like they'll lose out by taking any breaks. Describing the gig economy as some kind of workers' nirvana is just deceptive and wrong.

techrich 8y ago

that’s the point of the gig economy, the big corps that run the world. don’t want to have to pay worker protections. pension contribution, sick pay. pain holiday, it cuts down on their bottom line. better if everyone is a contractor they can get rid off.

formalsystem 8y ago

My take is that gig economies are a band aid solution over the fact that a large fraction of the workforce needs to retrain itself in tech. I'm optimistic about universal basic income to help people get started but let's be real tech is gonna be a huge pie and I find comments like there's no way a truck driver can learn how to program extremely cynical. Relative to a 1,000 years ago any human today is a technological genius so we shouldn't underestimate humans.

barbecue_sauce 8y ago
I am of the opinion anybody can learn to program, but there is not an infinite demand for developers. In fact, more probably already exist than necessary. Any jobs that can't be filled are probably more the result of hiring inefficiencies than anything else. Also, software development as a discipline is filled with highly (and formally) educated people. A lot of the non-traditional (non-computer science) developers at least come from a math/science/engineering background. Even if you have the skills, these people will not allow their ranks to be sullied by the "unwashed masses" who didn't "work as hard" as they did. (Quotations to indicate these are not my personal thoughts, but I am not quoting a specific source).
theoh 8y ago
"Tech" is not going to provide jobs for people who previously did manual or clerical work. It's intrinsically geared towards automating away those classes of labour, without any guaranteed provision of a one-for-one replacement of 'old' jobs with tech jobs. I would be surprised if the level of technical skills of the population increases over the next few years. There's really no reason to expect that it should.
- FartyMcFarter 8y ago
  Yeah, it's pretty ridiculous to expect a one-to-one replacement. Let's imagine a large bank that closes down 1000 branches with 10 employees each, due to online banking becoming more prevalent. Does this mean that the bank suddenly (or ever) needs 10,000 extra developers working on their online banking? Not even close!
8y ago

mruts 8y ago

The gig economy is exactly what the world needs: flexible, fungible work that provides opportunities to people who might not otherwise be able to get full-time jobs. College students, mothers, elderly, etc. Anyone who needs tremendous flexibility in their schedules. This is a great thing and I’m not sure what all the hate is about.

eterm 8y ago
That's what it should be, and what proponents say it is. But the reality is that established fulltime jobs are being supplied by "the gig economy" creating a class of worker who previously would work full time but now work similar jobs doing mostly similar hours but without the protection they previously had. If full time jobs are being replaced by ZH contracts to fill the same role, it's not workers' who benefit, it's companies.
- mruts 8y ago
  Could you give examples besides taxi drivers (who are a terrible example of full-time work)?
  - eterm 8y ago
    Absolutely, there are plenty[1]. A lot of previously minimum wage employees have been 'converted' to ZH contracts in particular: * Care home assistants and other social care * Retail staff * Food manufacturing * Farm labour * Package and food delivery * Food service industry (restaurant staff) And many, many others. Most of the gig economy is not facilitated through tech companies and apps like uber or deliveroo but instead managed and provisioned through outsourcing companies. Huge swathes of the low-knowledge service economy have been replaced by these zero-hour contracts which characterise the "gig" economy. The workers have a very asymmetric relationship where the work-provider is generally free to offer or not very short-term contracts or 'gigs' while the worker is generally pressured to accept everything else risk being effectively black-balled by the work-provider. This is typically all done through a third party provider and further increases the 'distance' between the worker and the actual service being provided. This has really damaging long term effects for both the worker and the business. Outsourcing isn't particular new but the rate at which 'zero-hour' contracts and the wider gig economy has been alarming. It has gone from less than 1% to double-digit percentages of workers in some sectors on ZH contracts. I believe that any such outsourcing is damaging, a worker who works for (and not even employed by) a third party outsourcing company is unlikely to feel the same pride than a direct employee, but more concerning is that domain expertise is not kept and nutured within the company but instead diluted. There is less opportunity for knowledge sharing across domains if different job roles within the workplace are not just siloed but actually fulfilled by different outsourcing companies. Having a sense of shared ownership and an opportunity for casual knowledge sharing between different parts of a business is essential for 'eureka' type moments to bring breakthroughs in improvements to ways of working or problem solving. In the outsourcing model people are seen a merely a resource to be managed. It doesn't matter who is turning up to do that role as long as someone does. Zero hours and the gig economy stretches this to breaking point. Both ends of the equation lose stabilty. The business no longer has stability of knowing which employees will be around next week, so is therefore less likely to invest in upskilling, and the workers don't have the stability of knowing if they'll be offered any hours the following week so lack the stability to make long term decisions. The accountants back at head offices of course see it as a win/win. The busiess, e.g. a restaurant no longer has to worry about whether they'll have to recruit for staff at short notice because of high turnover, because it's a different company's problem to find and supply the staff and the reduced risk that brings, and not directly employing staff reduces the overhead of managing payroll or even if they are managing the contracts reduces some tax overhead (e.g. employers NI contributions). You might not recognise this as the 'gig economy', especially if you work in an "at will" state in the USA, but in the UK these zero-hour contracts are a large part of what we see as the gig economy because it differs so much to the established rights that we enjoy as employees. In fact legislators worked hard to establish new "workers' rights" to increase rights for workers without needing full employee rights so workers at least get some protection. All of this also contributes to lower social mobility. The ability for someone to climb up from the lowest 'rung' of an organisation was a rare but treasured part of corporations. Many older companies have such stories as part of their folklore. But in the outsourced gig economy, what were the bottom rungs of the ladder are no longer there, and instead provisioned by a third party. There's no ladder any more, the workers are kept at arms length from the management. [1] https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/articles/contractsthatdonotguaranteeaminimumnumberofhours/mar2017 https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwor...

deleted 8y ago

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jimrhods23 8y ago

You can replace 'gig economy' with 'contractor'. The idea of contracting has been around for many years before Uber and Lyft and is different than the worker rights you get when you are a full-time employee. I also don't see it replacing anything. Every company isn't going the gig route. It's just not practical. "They were not employees and so had no health insurance, workers’ compensation protections, employer contributions to Social Security and payroll taxes, paid time off, family leave protections, discrimination protections, or unemployment insurance benefits" This was never part of the deal. I don't get any of this selling my items on Ebay either. "Sometimes, this gig work also requires an initial outlay of capital. (My own neighbor just traded in her old vehicle for a new car, taking on thousands of dollars in debt so that she can make extra money driving for Lyft." So no actual research before diving in and buying a new car? Not a smart move and not Lyft's problem. "Platform algorithms are designed to downgrade those who aren’t always available, making it ever-harder to pick up gigs" As a Lyft customer, would it make sense to have someone pick me up that may not even be there? That would be a horrible customer experience. "Uber, for example, offers email communications to drivers, a service that is not nearly as responsive as the taxi cab dispatcher, say" Was this article written by the Taxicab unions? You can regulate and force companies like Lyft to make all of the drivers employees, pay them a good wage, and give them benefits. But, this will cut the workforce significantly because the bar will be much higher to become a driver. Many of the people driving now will be out of work. “The disruption offered by the sharing economy is simply a hustle.” It really depends on your goals. The gig economy allows more people to make less money. Just like any market, there will be a small percentage making the most money, some in the middle, and some making a small amount. Do you think the workers now would rather make a little bit of money or none? Assuming every current worker will just be converted to a full time employee with benefits is not realistic.

purplezooey 8y ago

One might ask the question, why do these worker protections exist in the first place? There are good reasons. We've been undermining many things like this lately: vaccines, the EPA, anti-trust laws, voting rights. It will be our undoing.

bsenftner 8y ago

Any "quiet" on this front is due to the advertising power to suppress articles examining the extreme worker inequality present in the gig economy.

jacquesm 8y ago

I take issue with the word 'quietly'. The gig economy is pretty much designed to do an end-run around worker protections, starting off by denying the workers so much as an employment agreement. The difference is all the more striking in countries that had above average worker protections in place. A large contributing factor here is that due to the internet's international nature it is very well possible that the enabler is in a jurisdiction that is entirely different from the one where the work is carried out. Free-market fanatics see this all as a good thing but I'm really not happy with this rapid return to piece-work, which was outlawed in favor of hourly rates and minimum wages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piece_work https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piece_work

patrickaljord 8y ago
> Free-market fanatics see this all as a good thing but I'm really not happy with this rapid return to piece-work, which was outlawed in favor of hourly rates and minimum wages. Piece work is making a comeback because of the failure of the alternatives. Insisting that we should keep on with the same rigide system despite its obvious failing is the real fanaticism here. Doesn't mean piece work should be the norm, it just means both have their place and completely outlawing one or the other seem like a big mistake. None of these two are going away as they are both needed.
- rhizome 8y ago
  The fanaticism is in employers hunting for ways not to pay for any time not directly coupled to revenue. With gig work, this is tracked down to the millisecond.
  - patrickaljord 8y ago
    Only employers who have very low skilled workers do so, for two reasons, one is that skilled workers have more power to negotiate better deals, the other reason is that these gig companies operate on thin margins, in fact most of them operate on loss so every dime that can be saved is worth it. They only survive because they are subsidized by billionaires investors. Eventually most of them will either go bankrupt or find a way out of their loss at which point they will be able to increase their workers salaries (as it is a good thing for productivity and attract more talents). There's a lot of animosity against "evil employers" or "lazy workers" but it usually is a bit more complex than these simple dichotomies.

ghobs91 8y ago

And just like it did in the early 1900s, the government will again adapt with new regulations that take the gig economy into account.

hedora 8y ago

Universal health care would drastically improve the situation by removing a big percentage of the competitive advantage of gig companies. More generally, regulation is needed that removes all financial incentives to prefer gig workers and contractors over full time employees. This would be good for both gig workers (better benefits), and full time workers (less wage pressure from competition from workers with unsustainable compensation).

allendoerfer 8y ago
The way universal healthcare is implemented in Germany, it does not undermine the gig economy by itself. Freelancing where the employer does not pay for healthcare is still possible and also removes the need to pay minimum wage. It comes down to stricter rules around employment. Gig-Employers are risking to get sued by there defacto employees and them being granted employment status, which then makes them entitled to receive minimum wage, healthcare, pension payments etc. even in hindsight. So a "gig" has to be exactly that, it cannot be an actual job.
- wongarsu 8y ago
  To elaborate on this: In Germany if you are a contractor but all your contracts amount to effectively working like an employee for a single company it can be ruled that you are an employee. There are obviously exceptions, like seasonal work, and the system can be gamed. But trying to game the system means you can't keep your good workers because you can only contract them for so long before offering employment.

tenaciousDaniel 8y ago

Is there any gig economy app that simply creates a marketplace (like Craigslist)? This seems like it would be far preferable, because otherwise you're just asking people to be an employee without any employee protection. In a marketplace system, these people aren't employees; they're owners of their own business.

JoshTriplett 8y ago
> Is there any gig economy app that simply creates a marketplace TaskRabbit and similar.
- tenaciousDaniel 8y ago
  I disagree. Task Rabbit places demands on their providers, such as requiring them to respond within a particular time frame. If any such demand is placed on you, you are an employee.
  - JoshTriplett 8y ago
    A big part of the point of a marketplace of contractors would be to do some form of vetting. Contracts can have standardized terms. People may want insurance or other protection. Contracts are more than just "X pays Y, Y does work for X". A marketplace making a requirement that contractors on their platform must respond to messages within N hours doesn't inherently make the contractors into employees. "We don't list people unless they meet these requirements" serves as a major selling point. "We list anyone who shows up" makes for a noisy, lower-value marketplace.

thejerz 8y ago

> The gig economy is quietly undermining a century of worker protections An economy is an inanimate object; it can't #{active_verb} something. This may sound nitpicky, but: language carries meaning; language influences perception; and, in this case, language ascribes blame. Insofar as Ameirica is concerned, the contractors working for gig apps, like Uber or Postmates, have chosen not to exercise their rights to worker protections. Even as contractors, giggers have a legal right to unionize, collectively bargain, and form a cartel to demand better compensation. These people have chosen not to. That's not to say organizing is "easy" -- especially when you're living paycheck-to-paycheck -- it's not. But, to the degree that contractors are upset enough to act, organizing is feasible and achievable.[1] Self-organization is the free-market solution to a person feeling exploited or trampled upon by his boss. No government intervention is required. Given that the right to exercise collective bargaining is a choice, and afaik the majority of giggers do not collectively bargain, the rational conclusion is that these gig contractors aren't upset enough about the terms of their gig to take action. [1] https://drivers-united.org/ https://drivers-united.org/

Data_Junkie 8y ago
Blaming the victims.Call it what it is what it has all way been, people with advantages taking advantage of people and then blaming them for being them. Nothing new.
rhizome 8y ago
An economy is an inanimate object; it can't #{active_verb} something. This may sound nitpicky, but: language carries meaning; language influences perception; and, in this case, language ascribes blame. Fine: the gig business model is undermining.
toyg 8y ago
> the contractors working for gig apps, [...] have chosen not to exercise their rights It's sad to see this sort of propaganda on HN. Gig workers choose to take up a gig job in alternative to starvation, in most cases. There are big socioeconomic problems undermining the misguided notion that it might be a rational choice, in the overwhelming majority of cases. This is why the State, in a modern society, is supposed to step in and forbid employers from taking advantage of workers. These are lessons that were first learnt in the XIX and early XX century.

Proven 8y ago

It's undermining labor unions and ever-meddling State.

username223 8y ago

> The disruption offered by the "sharing economy" is simply a hustle. I would say "an evil" rather than "a hustle." Paying a few programmers six figures to write an app that commands lots of other people to work for less than minimum wage as "independent contractors" is evil. Calling it "sharing" or "tech" doesn't make it smell more sweet. Labor laws may not be perfect, but they have been built from centuries of experience, and sometimes blood[1,2]. It's a shame to see them being successfully ignored by a handful of morally bankrupt programmers. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fi... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_massacre

DoreenMichele 8y ago

They were not employees and so had no health insurance The gig economy casts light on the fact that America fundamentally fails to take care of its citizens in this important metric. Gig work would be less problematic in the US if we didn't expect employers to provide healthcare. My life works at all when it shouldn't because of gig work. There are myriad issues making my life challenging, from serious health issues to sexism and classism. I get aggravated when I see people who are part of the problem in that regard vilifying the gig work that has allowed me to survive, problem solve, get back into housing etc. Certainly, there are abuses. We should strive to make gig work a more positive thing generally. But we should also strive to not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

LanceH 8y ago

The first of the worker protections it is undermining is the protection from competition from those that aren't invited to participate.

umvi 8y ago

Before Uber/Lyft existed, I never took a taxi. It was just prohibitively expensive compared to buses/walking. If Uber is forced by the government to provide all drivers with a living wage and health coverage, I imagine I'd immediately stop using the service since it would become prohibitively expensive again, just like the old system.

zaarn 8y ago
I'd rather prefer a society that values someone being able to live comfortably of their work over you being able to get a cheap taxi with the least amount of effort.
- savanaly 8y ago
  Before Uber and Lyft came along, did we have either?
  - zaarn 8y ago
    So why does that mean we should prefer the worse option? Uber and Lyft enable the exploitation of self employed workers, that shouldn't be allowed.

anonymous5133 8y ago

If you read the theories or Karl Marx, his theories are pretty accurate in terms of explaining why people work "gig jobs" even though worker protections are basically non-existent. Marx basically described a class of people as being the "industrial reserve army of the unemployed"...obviously these are people who are either unemployed or unemployed. For these people, they are basically going to fight for whatever job they can get because having a terrible job is better than no job at all. Thus, as long as this class exists, people will work terrible jobs without much ability to fight back. It is also important to note that the industrial reserve army of the unemployed exists for each relevant skill set. For obvious hard to get skillets....the reserve army is basically non-existent. It also explains why all of these "gig economy" type startups almost entirely focus on services that are low-skill by nature. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyrhoHtSkzg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyrhoHtSkzg

smsm42 8y ago
If Uber drivers are supposedly all unemployed and so poor they have to grab any terrible job they can find, how can they afford those nice cars I'm seeing? I am employed in high-tech and I've been in Uber cars better than mine numerous times. People driving didn't look desperately hungry either.
- telchar 8y ago
  What, you've never heard of debt?
  - smsm42 8y ago
    I heard of debt. I actually made and paid off some. Turns out, those debt distributors (some people call them "banks") actually care about getting their money back and require proof of income and employment before they give you that sweet debt.

erlangNewb 8y ago

It undermines protections but allows execution of projects that wouldn't otherwise be possible for such a small budget. My company would not exist without the Fiverr contractors i paid early on, hiring devs was a no go. My fiverr devs are efficient and they all negotiate their rate. My specs are clean and actually complete enough to deliver working code that I hook into my existing platform. I'm pretty sure the fiverr devs I pay are making more per hour than they would full time. One difference is that they probable dont have time to bullshit with coworkers or surf reddit half the day.

ilaksh 8y ago
How much did you pay them and for what tasks? Do you think your fivers paid taxes or had health insurance?

smsm42 8y ago

What we are having here is an experiment. There are two classes of jobs, which provide nearly the same service - e.g. driving people from one place to another. One set of jobs has "century of worker protection", the other does not. People seem to flock to the second one, even though it requires certain level of investment and skill (owning a car, knowing how to drive, having reasonably clean driving record, being personally nice to clients, etc.) and offers no guarantees. Moreover, they don't just lukewarmly think about maybe trying it out - they rush to do it so eagerly that companies organizing it make billions, despite all efforts of various governments to suppress and limit their business. It looks dangerously like something people want to participate in... The obvious conclusion that people seem to be making in that the second class of jobs is evil and must be destroyed, and only the first class of jobs - clearly leaving a huge unsatisfied need from both producers and consumers of the service - should be allowed to exist.

StanislavPetrov 8y ago
Worker protections are expensive and come with industry regulation. Corporations have figured out that they can simply shift their business model to the "second class of job" and ignore regulations and worker protections. The companies organizing it rake billions while the workers make less than a living wage and often rely on public subsidies to survive, which is effectively a subsidy for these corporations who rake in billions off the backs of these workers.
- smsm42 7y ago
  If you ban these jobs, would people that subsist on job+subsidy consume more public subsidies or less? Note that you assumed these people are very poor and have no alternative jobs. Now you have taken away their only (albeit low) income they had. Would it lead to consuming more of public subsidies or less? Would absence of taxes paid by corporations make providing these subsidies easier or harder?

naveen99 8y ago

I wonder if they’ll make a non-immigration visa for gig workers similar to the seasonal farm workers program... basically let the current farm workers have the option of driving a taxi instead. Just require that they only work half the year and go back to their country for the other half (stay seasonal).

carapace 8y ago

I just mentioned this the other day in a thread about Uber: https://www.ianwelsh.net/the-market-fairy-will-not-solve-the... https://www.ianwelsh.net/the-market-fairy-will-not-solve-the...? > Here is the thing about Uber and Lyft (and much of the “sharing economy”). > They don’t pay the cost of their capital. > The wages they pay to their drivers are less than the depreciation of the cars and the expense of keeping the drivers fed, housed, and healthy. They pay less than minimum wage in most markets, and, in most markets, that is not enough to pay the costs of a car plus a human. > These business models are ways of draining capital from the economy and putting them into the hands of a few investors and executives. They prey on desperate people who need money now, even if the money is insufficient to pay their total costs. Drivers are draining their own reserves to get cash now, but, hey, they gotta eat and pay the bills.

Wh1skey 8y ago

Working conditions a century ago were very different than they are today. Worker protections were initiated to balance the scales between employees and employers. Since then, living conditions have improved ten-fold. The gig economy is an effective solution that supports both employees and employers. The economy would be performing less optimally without it.

RickJWagner 8y ago

Question for Hacker News readers outside the USA: Is the gig economy global? Do these forces exist elsewhere?

teslaberry 8y ago

this is why california liberal culture is a giant deception for facism. never trust any politics of a californian. they are so ensconced in their bubble they can never have a clue how brainwashed they are unless they grew up somewhere else , or grew up in a rural part of california or are military. the group think of your averaage Los Angelino is stunning. It's not that they are stupid , it's that they have zero ability to think for themselves. none.

samantha_thomas 8y ago

What exactly is a gig? Is it burner jobs or perhaps a one-day job give or take? I'm curious to know more except I've never had any odd jobs in my life.

reilly3000 8y ago

Gig work and mortgage underwriting are pretty incompatible. Access to financing to own property is one of the most secure ways to build at least modest wealth in the long term. Permanent renting and perpetual unpredictability in income doesn’t buy much freedom at all.

enterx 7y ago

Worker protection comes from the deductions from the salary of their own or the salaries of other workers. Workers pay to be protected. Minimum wage is a total hoax and another topic. But bear in mind that most of the minimum wage workers do not pay this protection at all and still enjoy it. There should be no difference in taxation of the gig vs regular wage payouts. a dollar here is equal to a dollar there.