7 ms·

Nice big fat red herring. Health care as a discussion point in the contractor vs. employee topic is relevant for only one country on the planet. The important

• burlesona 7y ago
  The definition of a contractor is in fact the opposite. Employees have to obey the hours and other conditions set by the employer. However, a business is not allowed to set such terms for a contractor - in general the rule is you can tell a contractor what you want done and what you’ll pay but you can’t tell them how or when to do it. I think what the OP was getting at is perhaps US centric, but basically Uber would be a lot better gig if you could be an Uber driver and have good health coverage (because it was a social service). At that point the argument would only be about fair wages, which is an easier case to make.
  • maeln 7y ago
    Honestly, being a contractor in this situation do suck. Normally, especially in B2B, contractor have at least a bit of power to negotiate with their client. Sometimes a lot, sometimes not so much, but in the case of a Uber driver, you have no power over Uber. They want to terminate/not renew your contract because they didn't like you for some reason ? They can. With no extra fee to pay. So imagine if they find out you are part of a Union or participated in a Uber-strike. As a Uber driver, you have no negotiation power over them. You only power is to go see a competitor, which has the same problem and are not numerous anyway. Then, there is also the fact that as a "personal" contractor, if you get sick, you are fucked. You car has a problem ? Deal with it with your own money. You have no minimum salary, no paid vacation, no sick day, no protection of any kind. Whatever happen to you, Uber don't care, you are just one of their many contractor. The status of employee brings a lot of protection that worker all over the world had to fight for. This type of unipersonnal contractor just bring us back to early 1900 worker status, and we should never accept that.
  • tstrimple 7y ago
    This is only true of contractors in high skill roles. Sure, most of us on HN could demand a rate which compensates for the lack of worker protections and additional overhead (on the worker side) of being a contractor. Uber drivers cannot. Contractors for low skill work is exclusively a means to avoid the overhead of having an employee and all the worker protections that entails. The "contractor" has no negotiating power, and no protections normally given to employees. For the Uber "contractors" it's the worst of both worlds while Uber get to have their cake and eat it too.
  • deminature 7y ago
    >basically Uber would be a lot better gig if you could be an Uber driver and have good health coverage Haven't heard about it in a while, but this is a goal of the current CEO: http://fortune.com/2018/10/04/uber-driver-benefits-insurance/ http://fortune.com/2018/10/04/uber-driver-benefits-insurance...
• legulere 7y ago
  Also in Germany you are not insured publicly when you are self-employed.
  • flatfilefan 7y ago
    You have a choice between public and private insurance. And you can very well be publicly insured should you desire so (for a cost). It’s just that if you don’t have an employer you pay full medical insurance premium (not half). But should you get bankrupt you will get the public medical insurance benefits for free again.
  • denzil_correa 7y ago
    This is not true. > Even if you are self-employed, you can also decide whether you wish to be insured via the statutory health insurance scheme or through a private fund. http://www.bamf.de/EN/Willkommen/BankenVersicherungen/Sozialversicherung/sozialversicherung-node.html http://www.bamf.de/EN/Willkommen/BankenVersicherungen/Sozial...
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  • johannes1234321 7y ago
    Self-employed you can be in a public health insurance. Depending on income you might switch to private though. More relevant: self-employed don't pay into social security. Thus unemployment money and retirement have to be paid differently.
• geezerjay 7y ago
  > The important benefits of having a job as opposed to gigging can be summarized as "the employer should not have complete power over the employee". That's also a big fat red herring. The clients of a service are not employers of the contractor, and just because a contractor decides to invest some of his time to provide a service through ads posted on a job board that connects clients and service providers it does not mean that the job board suddenly becomes an employer.
  • TeMPOraL 7y ago
    And this is a really bad and misleading comparison. Since when do job boards choose contractors for you? Since when job boards set the terms for the contractors? Since when they set prices for both you and contractors? From the point of view of the customer, Uber looks like a taxi service, not a "taxi drivers phonebook in an app". It's done like this on purpose, but it should go both ways. You shouldn't get to pretend you're a company when it comes to benefits, but suddenly present yourself as network of "independent" contractors where it comes to drawbacks.
  • moate 7y ago
    You stop being a job board and start being a contractor for contractors when you begin to set terms for the contractors who appear on your list. If UBER wants to be a job board, then they need to allow the contractors to set their own prices, drive whatever cars they want, and generally be as exceptional or terrible as the individual drivers want to be. You don't hire a taxi, you "get an Uber". Everything about their branding is "giant private taxi service". They're not a job board. They're an employer shirking their responsibilities to their employees.
• ehnto 7y ago
  That is a stretch, drivers can leave at any time. They can even quit and look for other kinds of work. I don't disagree that it is playing out poorly, but that's because the driving market is a duopoly that was running at a VC funded loss for years to set a customer price that ultimately doesn't work out for the drivers. If instead fares were reasonable and the market competitive then a driver could switch to another platform when terms got worse. Some people even drive for multiple companies at once. In other gig/freelance scenarios the markets work themselves out, but often suffer from a globalized work force pushing rates way down. In the driver situation, the prices are local, so there is no excuse for the market not to work itself out unless the drivers are not excercising their freedoms or they have no other platform with better circumstances, to which they could find other types of work. It isn't that easy I know, but you have the choice to look and try.
  • blub 7y ago
    You're confusing poorly paid contractors with highly paid and sought contractors. The latter can indeed leave at any time and be fine. Perhaps take a sabbatical at the sea side. The former will have their livelihood threatened if they make use of that flexibility, hence they have in reality no flexibility at all. They dance to the tune of Uber, Amazon and other bullies.
    • ShrinkingWild 7y ago
      Surely they "dance to the tune" because in reality their work just isn't worth enough to allow them that freedom of choice? That's hardly Ubers fault and I don't see why Uber should have to suffer to make up for that.
      • blub 7y ago
        The state sets lower limits to what work should be worth, in order to avoid unpleasant social outcomes, such as worker abuse. It also sets a minimum of benefits companies should offer, in order to fulfil their side of the social contract - being allowed to safely do business and have access to capital, workers, etc. If Uber, or any other company invents a type of work which cannot be compensated according to those rules, then they do not have a viable business and will go bankrupt or be fined out of existence. In practice, they've managed to find enough loopholes to survive, while making the lives of many of their employees miserable.
• ohashi 7y ago
  The article is about a US ruling and an American company. It seems relevant.
• _Codemonkeyism 7y ago
  In Germany there is regulation about "Scheinselbständigkeit" meaning you are not really a contractor because you only have one customer for example. This is mostly a good thing but problematic with e.g. consulting where you have perhaps only one customer for some time. It was created to prevent exploitation but on the other scale limits high income people and consultancies, which was not the goal.
  • mcv 7y ago
    Same thing in Netherland. There's constantly attempts to cut down on "schijnzelfstandigheid", which results in me having to jump through lots of hoops because I do long projects for big clients, on-site, as part of a team. But I make my own business decisions. But when PostNL wants to fire all their mail deliverers and rehire them as independent contractors, they can. When I asked why, it turned out the main difference was that they are replaceable and I'm not: if they're unable to deliver mail at a certain day, they can get a friend to do it for them. When I'm ill, I can't send someone else to do my job. It's a stupid rule. It's the exact reason why I have power over my work situation and they don't, yet somehow it's the reason why their situation is allowed and I constantly need to prove myself (though I haven't had any trouble so far).
    • _Codemonkeyism 7y ago
      I think there should be a lower limit for this to be in effect, e.g. below 50k EUR/y or 100k EUR/y.
      • mcv 7y ago
        That's certainly been an option that's been considered. Not sure what the current status of that is. The main downside is that it gives a very arbitrary barrier. And maybe it should be hourly rate rather than yearly revenue, because a client might have no idea what a contractor's year looks like. You don't want clients to be forced into additional commitments until they've hired you for enough hours.
  • sbuttgereit 7y ago
• Sharlin 7y ago
  > Health care as a discussion point in the contractor vs. employee topic is relevant for only one country on the planet. Even in countries with single-payer healthcare, full-time employees may be eligible to a better healthcare deal via their employer than a temp worker, never mind a contractor.
  • thefringthing 7y ago
    In Canada, white collar jobs often come with some extra supplemental health insurance, but it's not a huge deal for most people. I think I get half of dental costs covered, for instance. It's not literally life or death the way it is in the US's evil system.