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Increasing benefits and worker protections also increases the cost of hiring employees. This is widely understood. In countries where employees have extensive b

Increasing benefits and worker protections also increases the cost of hiring employees. This is widely understood. In countries where employees have extensive benefits and protections like France, employers are very picky about which employees they hire because it will be difficult or expensive to fire them if they turn out to be poor workers. Hence, and unemployment rate over twice that of the US. The ease of entering and exiting the gig economy is one of its most valuable aspects. What other kinds of jobs can you set your own hours, and join and quit largely at whim? If Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, etc. all now have to consider their contractors employees then they will have to start setting hours. If they have to give their workers the same benefits as employees, then it will be financially unsustainable to let them set their own hours. People who depended on Uber for flexible employment will not be able to continue working. This seems like political posturing that's going to hurt the majority of employees if it passes.

Leszek 7y ago
Germany has similar workers' rights and protection from firing, yet it has a lower unemployment rate.
- mseidl 7y ago
  Plus in Germany, you have what's called a probezeit, or probationary time. It can't be longer than one year, but it's a time where either party can end the work contract if it's not working out.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- erikpukinskis 7y ago
  Don’t German companies penalize you for quitting sometimes?
- manfredo 7y ago
  Its still easier to fire employees in Germany than in France from what I understand. Germany also has also averaged roughly half the yearly population growth rate as compared to France for the last several decades (even dipping into the negatives for several years). So the supply of labor is more constrained.
- cinquemb 7y ago
  Not that I think employment rate means much (look at japan's very low employment rate compare to their economic growth since 1989, its very low [2.4% now]), but their unemployment rate for April came in at 4.9%, whereas in the US was at 3.6%.
  - pgeorgi 7y ago
    https://data.oecd.org/chart/5A9X https://data.oecd.org/chart/5A9X is the harmonized unemployment rate for Germany and the USA, which they define as: "Harmonised unemployment rates define the unemployed as people of working age who are without work, are available for work, and have taken specific steps to find work. The uniform application of this definition results in estimates of unemployment rates that are more internationally comparable than estimates based on national definitions of unemployment. This indicator is measured in numbers of unemployed people as a percentage of the labour force and it is seasonally adjusted. The labour force is defined as the total number of unemployed people plus those in civilian employment." (https://data.oecd.org/unemp/harmonised-unemployment-rate-hur.htm https://data.oecd.org/unemp/harmonised-unemployment-rate-hur...)
    - cinquemb 7y ago
      I'm just reporting what the German statistical office reports (https://m.investing.com/economic-calendar/german-unemployment-rate-142 https://m.investing.com/economic-calendar/german-unemploymen...). Besides, harmonized or not, doesn't explain the economic weakness in Germany over the past decade compared to the US.
      - pgeorgi 7y ago
        > I'm just reporting what the German statistical office reports ... which is meaningless when you compare it to the official US statistics (as you did) because they count things differently. The harmonization helps make the numbers comparable in the first place.
        cinquemb 7y ago
- freeflight 7y ago
  Those German worker rights, and strong ties between companies and unions were supposedly among the reasons why Walmart failed in Germany: “They didn’t understand that in Germany, companies and unions are closely connected,” Mr. Poschmann said. “Bentonville didn’t want to have anything to do with unions. They thought we were communists.” [0] [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/02/business/worldbusiness/02walmart.html https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/02/business/worldbusiness/02...
  - pgeorgi 7y ago
    and nothing of value was lost
  - kwcts 7y ago
    >In Germany, Wal-Mart stopped requiring sales clerks to smile at customers — a practice that some male shoppers interpreted as flirting — and scrapped the morning Wal-Mart chant by staff members. This is just fucking insane. That's not a supermarket, that's like a cult. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpPUUWp5sO4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpPUUWp5sO4
    - lapnitnelav 7y ago
      How can you be a grown adult having to work at a minimum wage job, see this and not die inside?
    - smacktoward 7y ago
      It's one of those awful ideas that seems to bubble back up into the corporate mind periodically. IBM actually did the same thing back in the first half of the 20th century (see https://www.networkworld.com/article/2333702/a-history-of-singing-the-big-blues.html https://www.networkworld.com/article/2333702/a-history-of-si... for the full history), even going so far as to publish a songbook titled "Songs of the I.B.M": https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/08/tripping-through-ibms-astonishingly-insane-1937-corporate-songbook/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/08/tripp... They kept it up into the 1950s, when Tom Watson died and control of the company passed to his son. I like this note from the end of the Network World article, where they ask a Harvard Business School professor if there's anything similar going on in the contemporary tech world: > "I don't think there is a Microsoft company song other than 'Get to the bank as fast as possible so you can deposit the check,' " Tedlow adds.
- barry-cotter 7y ago
  German labour law and culture are utterly unlike the US. Under NLRB regulations the kind of long term, relatively collegial, give and take contract negotiation that is mundane in Germany is illegal. Volkswagen and other German car companies would like to have the same system in the US as in Germany. They don’t because it’s illegal.
  - rightbyte 7y ago
    Remember that the unions is in the VW board. I don't think VW should want to want that even if they do. Having 3 months mutual contract disbandment time favours the employer way more than the employee. It's huge being able to replace a person in an orderly manner. Also I believe given big corps. inefficiencys and internal "politics" not being able to fire who you want at random but in predetermined order is also good for the corparations since you will automatically keep the employees with the most experience and not make stupid shortsighted savings or fireing people the bosses don't like.
- joejerryronnie 7y ago
  Germany essentially leveraging the poor countries in the EU to subsidize their economy may also have something to do with their low unemployment rate.
tstgggssg 7y ago
The problem is that most are not making much money [0] and most would be better off working a min wage job. Most Uber/lyft drivers are recent immigrants , working poor who end up taking on a lot of risk for little if any reward. Uber also uses psychological tricks to trick drivers into driving more then is rational [1] [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/12/technology/uber-driver-ipo.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/12/technology/uber-driver-ip... [1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/04/02/technology/uber-drivers-psychological-tricks.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/04/02/technology/ub...
- manfredo 7y ago
  > The problem is that most are not making much money [0] and most would be better off working a min wage job. $40,000 a year is hardly minimum wage. Most of the drivers I've talked to explain that it does usually equate to between minimum wage to $20-$25 an hour after expenses depending on how effective you are at getting surge priced rides. But, unlike a minimum wage job you can set your own hours which is a huge advantage. > Most Uber/lyft drivers are recent immigrants , working poor who end up taking on a lot of risk for little if any reward. Yeah, and what would poor recent immigrants be doing instead? Probably work that is much riskier (e.g. farm work). > Uber also uses psychological tricks to trick drivers into driving more then is rational I don't see any "psychological tricks" in this article. Telling drivers where the most riders are and where surge pricing is happening helps drivers get more money. And I'm supposed to think this is a bad thing? Also, I would advise against trusting the NYT when it comes to reporting on the tech industry - especially large tech companies. I have observed grossly exaggerated stories and even outright falsehoods portraying tech companies in a negative light with enough consistency that I do not consider them a reliable source on this topic. Remember, traditional media like the New York Times is being decimated by Google and social media. Fanning the fires of the "techlash" is in their best interest.
  - enraged_camel 7y ago
    >>$40,000 a year is hardly minimum wage. No, but it gets pretty close when you factor in all the expenses that contractors have to deal with.
inferiorhuman 7y ago
This seems like political posturing that's going to hurt the majority of employees if it passes. Will it hurt them more than making roughly minimum wage or less? https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-is-how-much-uber-drivers-really-make-2018-05-15 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-is-how-much-uber-driv... Marketwatch is estimating under $11/hr with no insurance, no retirement benefits, etc. Even In-n-Out and Starbucks pay more, offer better benefits (even for part timers), and generally offer flexible schedules.
- ravenstine 7y ago
  Mostly no, because the majority of gig economy workers already have full time employment and are working for Uber or DoorDash to make supplemental income. I'm saying this as someone who drove for GrubHub for months and knew other drivers.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- pishpash 7y ago
  So why don't they go work there then? Come back when you have an answer.
  - inferiorhuman 7y ago
    So why don't they go work there then? Come back when you have an answer. You'd prefer that I answer "because gig economy companies provide unmatched flexibility and freedom to their employees^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hcontractors", right? I'm not really here to play that game, so how's this? - They may not work in an area where In-n-Out exists or Starbucks is hiring. Note: this doesn't mean that the other available low/no skill work pays less than Uber or other "gig economy" jobs. - They may not realize that retail work pays more than Uber or they may believe Uber's exaggerated wage claims while not realizing that Uber would continue to take a larger and larger share of the driver's earnings - They may have fallen prey to Uber's predatory financing and bought a vehicle expressly to drive for Uber - They may believe that working in "gig economy" serfdom makes financial sense. I've a friend like that. They "work" for Instacart, but instead of driving their own vehicle (which they're upside down on) they use Uber to get to the grocery store, then another Uber to the person's house, and then another Uber home. Trust me, it's costing them money to do this but in their head it makes sense - They could be Travis Kalanick and drive under the Boober[1] model — basically driving as a means of meeting sexual conquests. - They could believe that retail work is beneath them - Back before Uber was forced to institute background checks another option is that the driver failed a background check elsewhere or was otherwise unemployable in retail. 1: https://qz.com/1011300/uber-ceo-travis-kalanick-pissed-people-off-and-it-made-the-company-great/ https://qz.com/1011300/uber-ceo-travis-kalanick-pissed-peopl...
pjmlp 7y ago
As someone that has worked across several European countries, all of them with better employee protection laws than US, I pretty much prefer our view of how employees should be handled. And yes I also enjoyed the French Alps as part of it. There is an limit to exploitation capitalism.
naner 7y ago
Is there a name for this type of reasoning? An extreme version is that sweat shops are more beneficial then letting kids starve to death. Can we try and improve the situation for low wage workers as well as additional methods to address unemployment?
- eecc 7y ago
  TINA? Paternalism (think of factory owners building Falansteriums for their workers)
  - johnchristopher 7y ago
    Interesting. I googled it and found that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanst%C3%A8re https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanst%C3%A8re
chewz 7y ago
> Increasing benefits and worker protections also increases the cost of hiring employees. Majority of land owners over the course of history had come to the conclusion that serfdom and slavery is beneficial to positive returns on landholding. Also multiple countries had been greatly improving their GDP from forced labor (Nazi Germany, Mao's China, Stalin's Russia and other). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unfree_labour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unfree_labour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom
- tstgggssg 7y ago
  You left out USA
- manfredo 7y ago
  Are you seriously comparing gig workers to slavery? This is just beyond absurd, and it makes me dubious as to whether you're participating in this conversation in good faith. On the off chance that you're not trolling, contractors - unlike slaves - have the freedom to choose what work they'll do. Drivers for Uber often also drive for Lyft when it pays better. There's nothing stopping them leaving if their opinion is that the pay is not worth the work. By comparison, slaves are not free and are forced to do whatever work their masters tell them to.
  - chewz 7y ago
    Slaves and serf were historically also free to go if they have paid off their masters. You could also argue thst they had received some protection and benefits. "Freedom" of choice is relative term here.
    - lozenge 7y ago
      Talking about the historical situation of slaves while referring only to ancient Rome is incredibly contrived considering slavery was alive and well not that long ago.
      - 7y ago
georgeecollins 7y ago
>> This seems like political posturing that's going to hurt the majority of employees if it passes. That reminds me of the posturing when they passed those child labor laws. And what did we get? A bunch of unemployed children.
- zhoujianfu 7y ago
  The child unemployment rate in America is more than twice that of China!
  - inferiorhuman 7y ago
    That reads like a Zippy the Pinhead strip
- pishpash 7y ago
  Surely you're not arguing that adults have the same degree of agency and consent as children.
  - kmlx 7y ago
    this is exactly what some people are arguing about. they treat other people like children, and then wonder why they aren't getting votes.
- manfredo 7y ago
  Categorizing contract workers as employees and forbidding or limiting child labor are vastly different situations. I can only assume that this is some failed attempt at a joke. Child labor laws prevented parents from sacrificing their children' educations to use them for immediate economic gain. This is not at all related to extending employee benefits to contract workers that set their own hours.
  - blub 7y ago
    And gig labor laws could prevent people from sacrificing their healthcare and other benefits for immediate economic gain. Uber's, cause the drivers aren't gaining much, apparently.
rzwitserloot 7y ago
Take the wider view. Let's posit as a hypothetical that 1% of the workforce is deplorably bad at the notion of being employed (let's define that as: It'll take them 100s+ of trying things until they find a job where the employer is better off employing them vs. not employing them). Let's say a further 1% is rated as 'quite bad' (defined as: More than half the jobs they would on paper qualify for, they'd do such a bad job the employer is better off not employing them). Why employ these people? In western europe the common song and dance routine is a calvinistic 'because work is good for you, otherwise they'd be lazy gits'... at which point apparently the argument becomes: The employers of the notion must carry the burden of dealing with these folks, for the good of society. In the US and a lot of right wing euro parties the sentiment is more: Well, they are lazy! I don't wanna pay taxes to enable these morons. Except that is an economic falsehood; they drag society down no matter what you do. I guess unless you're willing to take the moral position of just casually killing them in a way that is really cheap and easy (and thus, probably quite imprecise – few to no people are morally okay with this I assume), you just have to grin and bear it. Yeah, they drag a bit. It's fine; the economy can easily accomodate them. The point is: A system that does let such people be employed here and there for a while is not inherently better than one that does not, and, 0% unemployment is a crazy goal.
- manfredo 7y ago
  > Let's posit as a hypothetical that 1% of the workforce is deplorably bad at the notion of being employed (let's define that as: It'll take them 100s+ of trying things until they find a job where the employer is better off employing them vs. not employing them). Let's say a further 1% is rated as 'quite bad' (defined as: More than half the jobs they would on paper qualify for, they'd do such a bad job the employer is better off not employing them). This is an overly coarse grained depiction of the situation. An individual is not blanket "bad employee" who can't be productive. I'm a good software developer, but if you hired me to be a concert pianist I'd suck at it. I'd say probably 5-10% of employees end up being under productive or non-productive at their jobs. This is consistent with the performance review scores I've seen. When firing an employee is easy, employers are much more willing to hire because they know that they will be able to terminate employees that are not productive. When firing an employee is hard, employers will be reluctant to hire employees and will only hire the ones that they are confident will do well. This usually makes it very hard to get started in an industry, because companies are leery of workers without experience. > Why employ these people? In western europe the common song and dance routine is a calvinistic 'because work is good for you, otherwise they'd be lazy gits'... at which point apparently the argument becomes: The employers of the notion must carry the burden of dealing with these folks, for the good of society. This doesn't seem to be the case seeing as how most of Western Europe has a higher unemployment rate than the US. > In the US and a lot of right wing euro parties the sentiment is more: Well, they are lazy! I don't wanna pay taxes to enable these morons. Except that is an economic falsehood; they drag society down no matter what you do. I guess unless you're willing to take the moral position of just casually killing them in a way that is really cheap and easy (and thus, probably quite imprecise – few to no people are morally okay with this I assume), you just have to grin and bear it. Yeah, they drag a bit. It's fine; the economy can easily accomodate them. You're seriously saying that if we don't employ people who are incapable of doing their jobs, then the only other option is summary execution? This is absurd to the point that I can only assume this is a bad joke. The much more likely approach is to let them continue to be unemployed and search for a job that they are capable of doing. > The point is: A system that does let such people be employed here and there for a while is not inherently better than one that does not, and, 0% unemployment is a crazy goal. 0% unemployment is a crazy goal and I don't know why you seem to think that making it harder or easier to fire employees will ever bring it closer to zero. Even in fields where the number of job openings vastly exceed the available positions, unemployment is still usually at 1-2%.

Leszek 7y ago

Germany has similar workers' rights and protection from firing, yet it has a lower unemployment rate.

mseidl 7y ago
Plus in Germany, you have what's called a probezeit, or probationary time. It can't be longer than one year, but it's a time where either party can end the work contract if it's not working out.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
erikpukinskis 7y ago
Don’t German companies penalize you for quitting sometimes?
manfredo 7y ago
Its still easier to fire employees in Germany than in France from what I understand. Germany also has also averaged roughly half the yearly population growth rate as compared to France for the last several decades (even dipping into the negatives for several years). So the supply of labor is more constrained.
cinquemb 7y ago
Not that I think employment rate means much (look at japan's very low employment rate compare to their economic growth since 1989, its very low [2.4% now]), but their unemployment rate for April came in at 4.9%, whereas in the US was at 3.6%.
- pgeorgi 7y ago
  https://data.oecd.org/chart/5A9X https://data.oecd.org/chart/5A9X is the harmonized unemployment rate for Germany and the USA, which they define as: "Harmonised unemployment rates define the unemployed as people of working age who are without work, are available for work, and have taken specific steps to find work. The uniform application of this definition results in estimates of unemployment rates that are more internationally comparable than estimates based on national definitions of unemployment. This indicator is measured in numbers of unemployed people as a percentage of the labour force and it is seasonally adjusted. The labour force is defined as the total number of unemployed people plus those in civilian employment." (https://data.oecd.org/unemp/harmonised-unemployment-rate-hur.htm https://data.oecd.org/unemp/harmonised-unemployment-rate-hur...)
  - cinquemb 7y ago
    I'm just reporting what the German statistical office reports (https://m.investing.com/economic-calendar/german-unemployment-rate-142 https://m.investing.com/economic-calendar/german-unemploymen...). Besides, harmonized or not, doesn't explain the economic weakness in Germany over the past decade compared to the US.
    - pgeorgi 7y ago
      > I'm just reporting what the German statistical office reports ... which is meaningless when you compare it to the official US statistics (as you did) because they count things differently. The harmonization helps make the numbers comparable in the first place.
      - cinquemb 7y ago
freeflight 7y ago
Those German worker rights, and strong ties between companies and unions were supposedly among the reasons why Walmart failed in Germany: “They didn’t understand that in Germany, companies and unions are closely connected,” Mr. Poschmann said. “Bentonville didn’t want to have anything to do with unions. They thought we were communists.” [0] [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/02/business/worldbusiness/02walmart.html https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/02/business/worldbusiness/02...
- pgeorgi 7y ago
  and nothing of value was lost
- kwcts 7y ago
  >In Germany, Wal-Mart stopped requiring sales clerks to smile at customers — a practice that some male shoppers interpreted as flirting — and scrapped the morning Wal-Mart chant by staff members. This is just fucking insane. That's not a supermarket, that's like a cult. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpPUUWp5sO4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpPUUWp5sO4
  - lapnitnelav 7y ago
    How can you be a grown adult having to work at a minimum wage job, see this and not die inside?
  - smacktoward 7y ago
    It's one of those awful ideas that seems to bubble back up into the corporate mind periodically. IBM actually did the same thing back in the first half of the 20th century (see https://www.networkworld.com/article/2333702/a-history-of-singing-the-big-blues.html https://www.networkworld.com/article/2333702/a-history-of-si... for the full history), even going so far as to publish a songbook titled "Songs of the I.B.M": https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/08/tripping-through-ibms-astonishingly-insane-1937-corporate-songbook/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/08/tripp... They kept it up into the 1950s, when Tom Watson died and control of the company passed to his son. I like this note from the end of the Network World article, where they ask a Harvard Business School professor if there's anything similar going on in the contemporary tech world: > "I don't think there is a Microsoft company song other than 'Get to the bank as fast as possible so you can deposit the check,' " Tedlow adds.
barry-cotter 7y ago
German labour law and culture are utterly unlike the US. Under NLRB regulations the kind of long term, relatively collegial, give and take contract negotiation that is mundane in Germany is illegal. Volkswagen and other German car companies would like to have the same system in the US as in Germany. They don’t because it’s illegal.
- rightbyte 7y ago
  Remember that the unions is in the VW board. I don't think VW should want to want that even if they do. Having 3 months mutual contract disbandment time favours the employer way more than the employee. It's huge being able to replace a person in an orderly manner. Also I believe given big corps. inefficiencys and internal "politics" not being able to fire who you want at random but in predetermined order is also good for the corparations since you will automatically keep the employees with the most experience and not make stupid shortsighted savings or fireing people the bosses don't like.
joejerryronnie 7y ago
Germany essentially leveraging the poor countries in the EU to subsidize their economy may also have something to do with their low unemployment rate.

tstgggssg 7y ago

The problem is that most are not making much money [0] and most would be better off working a min wage job. Most Uber/lyft drivers are recent immigrants , working poor who end up taking on a lot of risk for little if any reward. Uber also uses psychological tricks to trick drivers into driving more then is rational [1] [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/12/technology/uber-driver-ipo.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/12/technology/uber-driver-ip... [1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/04/02/technology/uber-drivers-psychological-tricks.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/04/02/technology/ub...

manfredo 7y ago
> The problem is that most are not making much money [0] and most would be better off working a min wage job. $40,000 a year is hardly minimum wage. Most of the drivers I've talked to explain that it does usually equate to between minimum wage to $20-$25 an hour after expenses depending on how effective you are at getting surge priced rides. But, unlike a minimum wage job you can set your own hours which is a huge advantage. > Most Uber/lyft drivers are recent immigrants , working poor who end up taking on a lot of risk for little if any reward. Yeah, and what would poor recent immigrants be doing instead? Probably work that is much riskier (e.g. farm work). > Uber also uses psychological tricks to trick drivers into driving more then is rational I don't see any "psychological tricks" in this article. Telling drivers where the most riders are and where surge pricing is happening helps drivers get more money. And I'm supposed to think this is a bad thing? Also, I would advise against trusting the NYT when it comes to reporting on the tech industry - especially large tech companies. I have observed grossly exaggerated stories and even outright falsehoods portraying tech companies in a negative light with enough consistency that I do not consider them a reliable source on this topic. Remember, traditional media like the New York Times is being decimated by Google and social media. Fanning the fires of the "techlash" is in their best interest.
- enraged_camel 7y ago
  >>$40,000 a year is hardly minimum wage. No, but it gets pretty close when you factor in all the expenses that contractors have to deal with.

inferiorhuman 7y ago

This seems like political posturing that's going to hurt the majority of employees if it passes. Will it hurt them more than making roughly minimum wage or less? https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-is-how-much-uber-drivers-really-make-2018-05-15 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-is-how-much-uber-driv... Marketwatch is estimating under $11/hr with no insurance, no retirement benefits, etc. Even In-n-Out and Starbucks pay more, offer better benefits (even for part timers), and generally offer flexible schedules.

ravenstine 7y ago
Mostly no, because the majority of gig economy workers already have full time employment and are working for Uber or DoorDash to make supplemental income. I'm saying this as someone who drove for GrubHub for months and knew other drivers.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
pishpash 7y ago
So why don't they go work there then? Come back when you have an answer.
- inferiorhuman 7y ago
  So why don't they go work there then? Come back when you have an answer. You'd prefer that I answer "because gig economy companies provide unmatched flexibility and freedom to their employees^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hcontractors", right? I'm not really here to play that game, so how's this? - They may not work in an area where In-n-Out exists or Starbucks is hiring. Note: this doesn't mean that the other available low/no skill work pays less than Uber or other "gig economy" jobs. - They may not realize that retail work pays more than Uber or they may believe Uber's exaggerated wage claims while not realizing that Uber would continue to take a larger and larger share of the driver's earnings - They may have fallen prey to Uber's predatory financing and bought a vehicle expressly to drive for Uber - They may believe that working in "gig economy" serfdom makes financial sense. I've a friend like that. They "work" for Instacart, but instead of driving their own vehicle (which they're upside down on) they use Uber to get to the grocery store, then another Uber to the person's house, and then another Uber home. Trust me, it's costing them money to do this but in their head it makes sense - They could be Travis Kalanick and drive under the Boober[1] model — basically driving as a means of meeting sexual conquests. - They could believe that retail work is beneath them - Back before Uber was forced to institute background checks another option is that the driver failed a background check elsewhere or was otherwise unemployable in retail. 1: https://qz.com/1011300/uber-ceo-travis-kalanick-pissed-people-off-and-it-made-the-company-great/ https://qz.com/1011300/uber-ceo-travis-kalanick-pissed-peopl...

pjmlp 7y ago

As someone that has worked across several European countries, all of them with better employee protection laws than US, I pretty much prefer our view of how employees should be handled. And yes I also enjoyed the French Alps as part of it. There is an limit to exploitation capitalism.

naner 7y ago

Is there a name for this type of reasoning? An extreme version is that sweat shops are more beneficial then letting kids starve to death. Can we try and improve the situation for low wage workers as well as additional methods to address unemployment?

eecc 7y ago
TINA? Paternalism (think of factory owners building Falansteriums for their workers)
- johnchristopher 7y ago
  Interesting. I googled it and found that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanst%C3%A8re https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanst%C3%A8re

chewz 7y ago

> Increasing benefits and worker protections also increases the cost of hiring employees. Majority of land owners over the course of history had come to the conclusion that serfdom and slavery is beneficial to positive returns on landholding. Also multiple countries had been greatly improving their GDP from forced labor (Nazi Germany, Mao's China, Stalin's Russia and other). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unfree_labour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unfree_labour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom

tstgggssg 7y ago
You left out USA
manfredo 7y ago
Are you seriously comparing gig workers to slavery? This is just beyond absurd, and it makes me dubious as to whether you're participating in this conversation in good faith. On the off chance that you're not trolling, contractors - unlike slaves - have the freedom to choose what work they'll do. Drivers for Uber often also drive for Lyft when it pays better. There's nothing stopping them leaving if their opinion is that the pay is not worth the work. By comparison, slaves are not free and are forced to do whatever work their masters tell them to.
- chewz 7y ago
  Slaves and serf were historically also free to go if they have paid off their masters. You could also argue thst they had received some protection and benefits. "Freedom" of choice is relative term here.
  - lozenge 7y ago
    Talking about the historical situation of slaves while referring only to ancient Rome is incredibly contrived considering slavery was alive and well not that long ago.
    - 7y ago

georgeecollins 7y ago

>> This seems like political posturing that's going to hurt the majority of employees if it passes. That reminds me of the posturing when they passed those child labor laws. And what did we get? A bunch of unemployed children.

zhoujianfu 7y ago
The child unemployment rate in America is more than twice that of China!
- inferiorhuman 7y ago
  That reads like a Zippy the Pinhead strip
pishpash 7y ago
Surely you're not arguing that adults have the same degree of agency and consent as children.
- kmlx 7y ago
  this is exactly what some people are arguing about. they treat other people like children, and then wonder why they aren't getting votes.
manfredo 7y ago
Categorizing contract workers as employees and forbidding or limiting child labor are vastly different situations. I can only assume that this is some failed attempt at a joke. Child labor laws prevented parents from sacrificing their children' educations to use them for immediate economic gain. This is not at all related to extending employee benefits to contract workers that set their own hours.
- blub 7y ago
  And gig labor laws could prevent people from sacrificing their healthcare and other benefits for immediate economic gain. Uber's, cause the drivers aren't gaining much, apparently.

rzwitserloot 7y ago

Take the wider view. Let's posit as a hypothetical that 1% of the workforce is deplorably bad at the notion of being employed (let's define that as: It'll take them 100s+ of trying things until they find a job where the employer is better off employing them vs. not employing them). Let's say a further 1% is rated as 'quite bad' (defined as: More than half the jobs they would on paper qualify for, they'd do such a bad job the employer is better off not employing them). Why employ these people? In western europe the common song and dance routine is a calvinistic 'because work is good for you, otherwise they'd be lazy gits'... at which point apparently the argument becomes: The employers of the notion must carry the burden of dealing with these folks, for the good of society. In the US and a lot of right wing euro parties the sentiment is more: Well, they are lazy! I don't wanna pay taxes to enable these morons. Except that is an economic falsehood; they drag society down no matter what you do. I guess unless you're willing to take the moral position of just casually killing them in a way that is really cheap and easy (and thus, probably quite imprecise – few to no people are morally okay with this I assume), you just have to grin and bear it. Yeah, they drag a bit. It's fine; the economy can easily accomodate them. The point is: A system that does let such people be employed here and there for a while is not inherently better than one that does not, and, 0% unemployment is a crazy goal.

manfredo 7y ago
> Let's posit as a hypothetical that 1% of the workforce is deplorably bad at the notion of being employed (let's define that as: It'll take them 100s+ of trying things until they find a job where the employer is better off employing them vs. not employing them). Let's say a further 1% is rated as 'quite bad' (defined as: More than half the jobs they would on paper qualify for, they'd do such a bad job the employer is better off not employing them). This is an overly coarse grained depiction of the situation. An individual is not blanket "bad employee" who can't be productive. I'm a good software developer, but if you hired me to be a concert pianist I'd suck at it. I'd say probably 5-10% of employees end up being under productive or non-productive at their jobs. This is consistent with the performance review scores I've seen. When firing an employee is easy, employers are much more willing to hire because they know that they will be able to terminate employees that are not productive. When firing an employee is hard, employers will be reluctant to hire employees and will only hire the ones that they are confident will do well. This usually makes it very hard to get started in an industry, because companies are leery of workers without experience. > Why employ these people? In western europe the common song and dance routine is a calvinistic 'because work is good for you, otherwise they'd be lazy gits'... at which point apparently the argument becomes: The employers of the notion must carry the burden of dealing with these folks, for the good of society. This doesn't seem to be the case seeing as how most of Western Europe has a higher unemployment rate than the US. > In the US and a lot of right wing euro parties the sentiment is more: Well, they are lazy! I don't wanna pay taxes to enable these morons. Except that is an economic falsehood; they drag society down no matter what you do. I guess unless you're willing to take the moral position of just casually killing them in a way that is really cheap and easy (and thus, probably quite imprecise – few to no people are morally okay with this I assume), you just have to grin and bear it. Yeah, they drag a bit. It's fine; the economy can easily accomodate them. You're seriously saying that if we don't employ people who are incapable of doing their jobs, then the only other option is summary execution? This is absurd to the point that I can only assume this is a bad joke. The much more likely approach is to let them continue to be unemployed and search for a job that they are capable of doing. > The point is: A system that does let such people be employed here and there for a while is not inherently better than one that does not, and, 0% unemployment is a crazy goal. 0% unemployment is a crazy goal and I don't know why you seem to think that making it harder or easier to fire employees will ever bring it closer to zero. Even in fields where the number of job openings vastly exceed the available positions, unemployment is still usually at 1-2%.