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Uber/Lyft drivers say they were misled into petitioning against workers rights

hannasanarion 7y ago
It is shockingly easy to convince workers that rights are bad for them. The same thing happens at many blue collar jobs.
- omeid2 7y ago
  More generally, it is shockingly easy to frame an issue with disinformation to misguide the general public. The only solution to this is better education that teaches critical thinking rather than mechanical parroting-exams based system that is widespread today in majority of the world.
  - d-sc 7y ago
    It’s not even that. I’ve seen plenty of people who are very good at critical thinking have views that to me seem nonsensical.
    - enriquto 7y ago
      really? I thought that intelligent people always agree on everything!
    - omeid2 7y ago
      Cognitive Dissonance is a real thing. I think those nonsensical views are largely possible to hold because they're commonly held and not that they have any merit. Unfortunately we are extremely susceptible to conformity and social proof. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2F_7B_-FI4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2F_7B_-FI4
    - homonculus1 7y ago
      Is it off-topic of me to ask for examples out of pure curiosity?
    - sampleinajar 7y ago
      Fair enough. Critical thinking is a way to think about a problem that does not guarantee similar conclusions, nor does it imply that it can used effectively for all problems.
  - RomanBob 7y ago
    >The only solution to this is better education that teaches critical thinking The underlying assumption here is that everybody is capable of anything if only they were given the right 'education'.
    - nothrabannosir 7y ago
      Or, more charitably: "everybody is capable of improving anything if only they were given more education than they are now."
      - fuzz4lyfe 7y ago
        "everybody is capable of improving anything if only they were given more education than they are now and cared enough to study" Is probably more accurate. You can bring a horse to water but you can't make them drink. It's impossible to know but it may be that those who are willing to be educated already have been and those who are left are willfully ignorant or have low enough intelligence that education isn't possible. As society becomes more complex, greater and greater numbers of people will be unable to successfully interact with it. What we do with them is a unsolved problem.
    - omeid2 7y ago
      "Everyone is capable of anything" is a bit of a stretch, but as general rule critical thinking is not improbable for majority of the people. That is, I believe with better education we can have a substantially larger number of people who are capable of critical thinking and can navigate through trickery and misinformation at a basic level.
      - wutbrodo 7y ago
        Even under assumptions of universal inherent capability, the dirty truth is that we simply don't know how to reliably teach critical thinking en masse. That's nominally what college is for, but the universalization of college admissions has exposed the fact that the difference between a degreed and non-degreed worker had more to do with the input population to colleges than any direct effect of a college education. This is an unsolved problem, and a really important one in the modern cognitive economy, which is why theories about inherent cognitive capability have gained so much purchase recently. For my part, I think these theories are plausible, but also think that their implications are significant enough that I don't want to be too hasty and buy into them until I've been convinced that we've exhausted the possibility that thinking can be taught.
  - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
    >The only solution to this is better education that teaches critical thinking rather than mechanical parroting-exams based system that is widespread today in majority of the world. As long as... a) The politicians find it easier to manipulate dumb voters and realize that voters with good critical thinking skills are more capable of calling out their BS. and b) The bureaucrats deciding what gets taught in public school are ultimately accountable to people appointed by and accountable to politicians and c) Most of the voting public gets a public school education. ...we will never have a general public with good critical thinking skills. Now, before anyone puts words in my mouth, no there isn't some grand conspiracy to keep the proles stupid, it just so happens that there's a disincentive to making them smart and making them smart takes resources so obviously there's no will to get it done. You'd be surprised how much good stuff the government doesn't do is attributable to this incentive structure.
- wutbrodo 7y ago
  This is a pretty disgusting level of paternalist condescension towards workers that's unfortunately all too common in these discussions. Believe it or not, not all blue-collar workers are stupid ignorami who don't understand what labor regulations means for them. As the article says: > Plenty of drivers said they understood Uber’s and Lyft’s political messaging. And some drivers who spoke to Recode made an articulate case for why they want to remain independent contractors. (A poll of 1,200 drivers by independent blog The Rideshare Guy last year showed that about 76 percent of respondents wanted to remain independent contractors rather than become employees.) That isn't to say that there isn't an issue with deceiving workers: Uber and Lyft hardly have a reputation for ethical business practices, and I wouldn't be surprised if their messaging was intentionally unclear here. On top of that, it's possible that restrictions on labor can be positive and I'm not ruling out any degree of labor paternalism as valuable to society. But your reductionist framing of blue-collar workers as simpletons who couldn't possibly disagree with you about _the way their own lives and employment should work_ is despicable. And frankly, the doublespeak involved in labeling restrictions on labor relationships as rights (and thus obviously and unambiguously positive) says much more about your ignorance than theirs.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    The GP didn't say this is exclusive to blue collar worker; they only used blue collar as an example. It is shockingly easy to convince any kind of workers to go against their own best interest, whether it comes to unions or employment regulations. E.g., I know plenty of white-collar workers in my country who believe they're being robbed by their country because their employers have to also pay for their socialized health insurance, naively assuming that if that was not the case, they could actually pocket that money.
    - wutbrodo 7y ago
      Sure that's fair, but that only expands the circle of condescension, which is perhaps _slightly_ better because it weakens the element of class snobbery. The notion that anyone who disagrees with you is an idiot who doesn't understand what's good for them as well as you understand what's good for them is what I'm pushing back against. The very phrase "voting against their own interests" is dripping with condescension and the presumption that you understand their lives better than they do. It's the same justification used for every historical and current violation of freedom in the social sphere: gay conversion therapy, the drug war, mores around gender roles, etc etc. The fact that economic constraints don't evoke the same immediate reaction as social ones doesn't mean that economic policy can't have an immense impact on people's lives, and cause or alleviate immense suffering. Now don't get me wrong: I'm not some extremist hyper-individualist believer in Homo Economicus, and I think there's plenty of scope for paternalism in policy. I think that it's entirely possible to talk to a specific person about their policy beliefs and come away with the view that they don't understand what's going on and are voting against their own interests. I just think that a little humility is in order when making assumptions about other people's lives and struggles a d choices, and applying this approach en masse with blanket statements like the GP comment (and your own, to a lesser degree) is a lot more likely to be ignorant of the realities of the variety and complexity of these people's lives.
- jnty 7y ago
  This isn't exclusive to blue collar jobs. Software engineers seem positively allergic to unions!
  - specialist 7y ago
    Apropos of nothing, I belatedly realized that all my libertarian minded friends (geeks of an age) are often simultaneously fans of both Ayn Rand and game theory, two notions largely in mutual opposition.
- fergie 7y ago
  The same thing happens at many white collar software engineering jobs. How many people on HN are in a union?
  - pessimizer 7y ago
    Because it's very easy to get turkeys to vote for Christmas. Turkeys have no idea why you like Christmas or what you're planning for Christmas, they just know what you're telling them. Tell them that turkeys are the most important things on Christmas and it would be entirely spoiled without them, and promise them a handful of feed right now as a reward for voting for it. You don't even have to lie.
  - systemtest 7y ago
    What would be the benefit of being in a union as a software engineer? I never felt that I needed one.
    - darpa_escapee 7y ago
      A few years ago Adobe, Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit, Pixar, Lucasfilm and eBay all successfully kept engineer pay down through anti-poaching agreements[1]. Unions provide checks and balances against that type of abuse. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
    - sp332 7y ago
      You could eliminate open-plan office spaces.
- Frondo 7y ago
  The same thing happens at technical jobs, too. In the programming world, how many people are convinced that white-collar desk labor is qualitatively different from assembly line work, such that unions apply to factories but would never apply to a bunch of coders in an office building? I grew up hearing that programmers are professionals and individuals and we can all negotiate for maximal pay, and of course that's poppycock. The vast, vast majority of programmers would be well-served with a guild or union at their workplace, because most are simple laborers trading their time for dollars; exactly the same boat as people building cars or wiring buildings. Everyone cites the rock star making bank -- you are probably not it, and even if you're on the upper tier, a union could get you a larger slice of that company pie, and could get you more of a say in how the workplace is run (no more crunch time? more schedule flexibility? more time off? more opportunities for mentoring or being mentored? pick how you want your workplace improved...). The thing is, technical workers were headed down the path of considering themselves labor until IBM brought in union-busters that crafted this propaganda of "the nature of the work means we're more like engineers or doctors or lawyers and THEY'RE not unionized" (ignoring that they're all members of professional guilds). So, thank IBM that we're only now, decades later, starting to see labor organizing in tech fields, and here, only in the most abusive of fields (video game development); thank IBM and our desire to see ourselves as somehow above the guys who built the buildings we're in.
  - Frondo 7y ago
    Here's a short read about why it'd benefit nearly everyone reading this here to unionize... https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2018/05/31/why-95-percent-of-software-engineers-lose-nothing-by-unionizing/ https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2018/05/31/why-95-perce...
TheMagicHorsey 7y ago
This is stupid. Uber and Lyft said the right thing. If they are forced to take on drivers as employees, they aren't going to hire these random people who are driving for them now, and they aren't going to hire them to work flexible schedules. They are going to hire the best people they can get for an employee's salary and benefits ... and that isn't going to be the same people benefitting now. People seem to think that they are going to get the jobs once those jobs become more desirable. No, they won't. Once its a more desirable job, it's going to get the best worker willing to work for that wage. Not the hodgepodge who are driving now. Something similar goes through the heads of teachers that demand higher salaries. If salaries get really high, existing teachers won't be the ones parents will want to hire. They'll hire really highly skilled people that are currently in other more lucrative careers. If you look at Finland where teaching is a well compensated job, the people teaching are similar to people going into lucrative consulting or programming jobs. It's not the bottom performers from third tier universities, as in the US.
- dahfizz 7y ago
  Totally agree. Very often people will analyze a snapshot of a scenario, recognize something they want to change, and campaign for change without considering how the system will change. They fixate on that one variable. "Uber drivers are not paid as well as they should. Let's mandate that wages go up!" Expected outcome: wages change and nothing else. The people who are currently underpaid get a big raise. Real outcome: The market adjusts and Uber only hires professional drivers, who were earning about the same anyway. Previous Uber drivers are unemployed.
  - _Codemonkeyism 7y ago
    https://fs.blog/2016/04/second-order-thinking/ https://fs.blog/2016/04/second-order-thinking/
  - vidarh 7y ago
    Where is this huge pool of more professional drivers who are unemployed waiting for Uber to add additional benefits before making the leap? Because if they're not unemployed, then if Uber suddenly starts competing for them, other jobs are being freed up. While some individuals may be affected, it seems highly unlikely that there is enough slack in the labor supply in that market that the addition of a few benefits will let Uber suddenly make large shifts in who they let work for them. Especially given that Uber already have a huge amount of hard data on which drivers do best with them anyway, and so it will continue to make far more sense for Uber to manage drivers based on actual performance.
tjpnz 7y ago
Reminds me of what happened when they were passing the "Hobbit" law in NZ. The companies that stood to gain from it got their people out to protest against the unions, but few knew how the largely Hollywood written legislation might affect them down the line. I actually know of one person who attended the protests and got bitten by the law a few years later, in an entirely different industry too.
tbrownaw 7y ago
From what I vaguely recall hearing, most places don't like to have employees that work more than half time but less than full time. Maybe fixing whatever misincentives are causing this discontinuity would also help make the contractor / employee difference less of an issue?
- londons_explore 7y ago
  A 90 percent time worker is a lazy worker...
  - usrnm 7y ago
    Only if he gets 100% of the salary. A 90% worker for 90% of the money sounds perfectly reasonable
    - londons_explore 7y ago
      Sounds reasonable, but doesn't work out. All the other people in the office see that employee as "lazy Bob". The guy who isn't around every 2nd Friday. They guy who works slower than everyone else. They guy who always seems to be randomly missing from important meetings, and then doesn't know what's going on. A 90% time employee is worth far less than 90% to the company. Source:. Worked at a company where employees could either take a few days off after a bout of overtime, or get paid extra. Those who took days off were seen as lazy, not committed, and wouldn't get promotions or roles of responsibility.
      - x3ro 7y ago
        That's a lot of anecdotal evidence framed as facts. I for one have been working 80% for two years (Germany) and have never felt more productive and motivated. And not only that, but I've also been able to use my Fridays off to acquire skills I would otherwise not have had the time or motivation to learn. None of my colleagues ever complained about me seeming lazy or slow, quite the opposite, really.
Paraesthetic 7y ago
Interestingly, the text messages Uber and Lyft sent are factually accurate in that being made an employee will limit the ability of drivers to choose their own working hours. What they dont tell them is that they will also have better entitlements and cost the company more.
- detaro 7y ago
  Since when are companies forbidden from letting workers choose their working hours?
  - slfnflctd 7y ago
    When it will destroy their business if they do so.
- SilasX 7y ago
  Not true. The annoying/hard part about this debate is that the law is making a distinction, and everyday speech makes a distinction, and we use the same words in both cases, even though they have different meanings and implications. It doesn't help that the legal distinction is hard to reason about since its goal is kind of nebulous. As best I can tell, it's balancing between "ensuring that businesses pay social insurance[1] obligations for anyone who they've made economically dependent on them" and "not making it burdensome to hire sporadic workers that 'feel' like legit independent contractors". So yes, Uber can absolutely class drivers as employees (EmploymentLaw::Employee) and then say "oh just work whenever" (LaySpeech::Contractor). [1] an umbrella term covering a lot of things; here, unemployment insurance and worker's compensation insurance. Edit: Rewrote when I realized you were saying the opposite and I was disagreeing.
sharperguy 7y ago
If uber and lyft drivers are employees, what about people who post on youtube or twitter, since they are creating revenue for the company and being paid?
- j4kp07 7y ago
  Fortunately, "creating revenue" is not a factor in determining if someone is an employee or independent.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
specialist 7y ago
Honest question: Why aren't Uber drivers considered franchisees? Or a concessionaire? My cousin ran a concession in my town's largest sportsball stadium. The way the deal is structured, my cousin was paying Ogden (the host company) for the privilege of working there. What we now call the gig economy.
- joeblau 7y ago
  I'm not 100% sure on this but I think when you start a franchise, the model is that you pay an huge up front price for being able to use the brand. I think that's kind of what the New York taxi license model is; Pay $1,000,000, now you too can drive a cab. I think the dream of the gig economy is that you can use your own tool/skill to work when you want. Think of it more like cutting the grass or shoveling snow in your neighborhood for $15-$30 bucks depending on the area (If you had a neighborhood like that).
  - specialist 7y ago
    Ugh. Licensing fees. Of course. I should have consulted wiki first. (Thank you for illuminating me.) I'm stuck on the drivers providing their own hardware to secure the privilege of working. Other pejoratives don't quite capture this arrangement. Share cropping, dealer channel (value added reseller), multi-level marketing. Maybe "gig economy" is the pejorative.
    - joeblau 7y ago
      Yeah maybe — it should really just be the entrepreneurial economy. I think one of the big challenges is that most people jumping into this type of work want the freedom of an entrepreneur and the "safety" of an employee. There seem to be services that offer full-time employee like benefits[1], but I'm not sure how effective they are. As an entrepreneur, it is a "bring your own tools" type of system. When I did contract development, I had to bring my own laptop, my own software, and use that to produce and bill the client. I think the challenge in this new system is that the pricing dynamics aren't fluid. You know what, as I'm typing this I wonder if building a system that lets the entrepreneurs somehow control the prices will maybe help set an equilibrium. [1] - https://www.trupo.com https://www.trupo.com
everly 7y ago
Most Uber/Lyft drivers would be happy as independent contractors if the companies didn't keep reducing rates/incentives. The mileage/time rates of pay have been slashed drastically and Lyft recently removed Primetime rate increases altogether, so drivers now get essentially no additional money for driving during the busiest times.
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  As independent contractors, they are free to not accept work at an unacceptable price.
  - rchaud 7y ago
    Except that if they turn down enough rides, they'll be kicked off the platform entirely.
    - lotsofpulp 7y ago
      Then the platform will fail due to lack of supply of labor. It’s not ideal, but these freedoms of both parties are part and parcel of independent contracting.
      - rchaud 7y ago
        No it won't. Uber and Lyft offer significant incentives to boost driver recruitment at the start, and then start peeling them back once those drivers have invested time and rides on the platform. The whole demand/supply equilibrium thing is Econ 101; it belongs in textbooks, because it's oversimplified and doesn't match how business operates in real world conditions.
        lotsofpulp 7y ago
        How does it not apply in the real world? Are there an infinite number of licensed drivers in the US for them to churn through? I’m also not aware of any consensual transaction not subject to supply and demand. Could you provide an example?
unstatusthequo 7y ago
Anyone remember that "Man Show" episode where they had women signing up to end women's sufferage?This headline reminded me of that.

It is shockingly easy to convince workers that rights are bad for them. The same thing happens at many blue collar jobs.

omeid2 7y ago
More generally, it is shockingly easy to frame an issue with disinformation to misguide the general public. The only solution to this is better education that teaches critical thinking rather than mechanical parroting-exams based system that is widespread today in majority of the world.
- d-sc 7y ago
  It’s not even that. I’ve seen plenty of people who are very good at critical thinking have views that to me seem nonsensical.
  - enriquto 7y ago
    really? I thought that intelligent people always agree on everything!
  - omeid2 7y ago
    Cognitive Dissonance is a real thing. I think those nonsensical views are largely possible to hold because they're commonly held and not that they have any merit. Unfortunately we are extremely susceptible to conformity and social proof. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2F_7B_-FI4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2F_7B_-FI4
  - homonculus1 7y ago
    Is it off-topic of me to ask for examples out of pure curiosity?
  - sampleinajar 7y ago
    Fair enough. Critical thinking is a way to think about a problem that does not guarantee similar conclusions, nor does it imply that it can used effectively for all problems.
- RomanBob 7y ago
  >The only solution to this is better education that teaches critical thinking The underlying assumption here is that everybody is capable of anything if only they were given the right 'education'.
  - nothrabannosir 7y ago
    Or, more charitably: "everybody is capable of improving anything if only they were given more education than they are now."
    - fuzz4lyfe 7y ago
      "everybody is capable of improving anything if only they were given more education than they are now and cared enough to study" Is probably more accurate. You can bring a horse to water but you can't make them drink. It's impossible to know but it may be that those who are willing to be educated already have been and those who are left are willfully ignorant or have low enough intelligence that education isn't possible. As society becomes more complex, greater and greater numbers of people will be unable to successfully interact with it. What we do with them is a unsolved problem.
  - omeid2 7y ago
    "Everyone is capable of anything" is a bit of a stretch, but as general rule critical thinking is not improbable for majority of the people. That is, I believe with better education we can have a substantially larger number of people who are capable of critical thinking and can navigate through trickery and misinformation at a basic level.
    - wutbrodo 7y ago
      Even under assumptions of universal inherent capability, the dirty truth is that we simply don't know how to reliably teach critical thinking en masse. That's nominally what college is for, but the universalization of college admissions has exposed the fact that the difference between a degreed and non-degreed worker had more to do with the input population to colleges than any direct effect of a college education. This is an unsolved problem, and a really important one in the modern cognitive economy, which is why theories about inherent cognitive capability have gained so much purchase recently. For my part, I think these theories are plausible, but also think that their implications are significant enough that I don't want to be too hasty and buy into them until I've been convinced that we've exhausted the possibility that thinking can be taught.
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  >The only solution to this is better education that teaches critical thinking rather than mechanical parroting-exams based system that is widespread today in majority of the world. As long as... a) The politicians find it easier to manipulate dumb voters and realize that voters with good critical thinking skills are more capable of calling out their BS. and b) The bureaucrats deciding what gets taught in public school are ultimately accountable to people appointed by and accountable to politicians and c) Most of the voting public gets a public school education. ...we will never have a general public with good critical thinking skills. Now, before anyone puts words in my mouth, no there isn't some grand conspiracy to keep the proles stupid, it just so happens that there's a disincentive to making them smart and making them smart takes resources so obviously there's no will to get it done. You'd be surprised how much good stuff the government doesn't do is attributable to this incentive structure.
wutbrodo 7y ago
This is a pretty disgusting level of paternalist condescension towards workers that's unfortunately all too common in these discussions. Believe it or not, not all blue-collar workers are stupid ignorami who don't understand what labor regulations means for them. As the article says: > Plenty of drivers said they understood Uber’s and Lyft’s political messaging. And some drivers who spoke to Recode made an articulate case for why they want to remain independent contractors. (A poll of 1,200 drivers by independent blog The Rideshare Guy last year showed that about 76 percent of respondents wanted to remain independent contractors rather than become employees.) That isn't to say that there isn't an issue with deceiving workers: Uber and Lyft hardly have a reputation for ethical business practices, and I wouldn't be surprised if their messaging was intentionally unclear here. On top of that, it's possible that restrictions on labor can be positive and I'm not ruling out any degree of labor paternalism as valuable to society. But your reductionist framing of blue-collar workers as simpletons who couldn't possibly disagree with you about _the way their own lives and employment should work_ is despicable. And frankly, the doublespeak involved in labeling restrictions on labor relationships as rights (and thus obviously and unambiguously positive) says much more about your ignorance than theirs.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  The GP didn't say this is exclusive to blue collar worker; they only used blue collar as an example. It is shockingly easy to convince any kind of workers to go against their own best interest, whether it comes to unions or employment regulations. E.g., I know plenty of white-collar workers in my country who believe they're being robbed by their country because their employers have to also pay for their socialized health insurance, naively assuming that if that was not the case, they could actually pocket that money.
  - wutbrodo 7y ago
    Sure that's fair, but that only expands the circle of condescension, which is perhaps _slightly_ better because it weakens the element of class snobbery. The notion that anyone who disagrees with you is an idiot who doesn't understand what's good for them as well as you understand what's good for them is what I'm pushing back against. The very phrase "voting against their own interests" is dripping with condescension and the presumption that you understand their lives better than they do. It's the same justification used for every historical and current violation of freedom in the social sphere: gay conversion therapy, the drug war, mores around gender roles, etc etc. The fact that economic constraints don't evoke the same immediate reaction as social ones doesn't mean that economic policy can't have an immense impact on people's lives, and cause or alleviate immense suffering. Now don't get me wrong: I'm not some extremist hyper-individualist believer in Homo Economicus, and I think there's plenty of scope for paternalism in policy. I think that it's entirely possible to talk to a specific person about their policy beliefs and come away with the view that they don't understand what's going on and are voting against their own interests. I just think that a little humility is in order when making assumptions about other people's lives and struggles a d choices, and applying this approach en masse with blanket statements like the GP comment (and your own, to a lesser degree) is a lot more likely to be ignorant of the realities of the variety and complexity of these people's lives.
jnty 7y ago
This isn't exclusive to blue collar jobs. Software engineers seem positively allergic to unions!
- specialist 7y ago
  Apropos of nothing, I belatedly realized that all my libertarian minded friends (geeks of an age) are often simultaneously fans of both Ayn Rand and game theory, two notions largely in mutual opposition.
fergie 7y ago
The same thing happens at many white collar software engineering jobs. How many people on HN are in a union?
- pessimizer 7y ago
  Because it's very easy to get turkeys to vote for Christmas. Turkeys have no idea why you like Christmas or what you're planning for Christmas, they just know what you're telling them. Tell them that turkeys are the most important things on Christmas and it would be entirely spoiled without them, and promise them a handful of feed right now as a reward for voting for it. You don't even have to lie.
- systemtest 7y ago
  What would be the benefit of being in a union as a software engineer? I never felt that I needed one.
  - darpa_escapee 7y ago
    A few years ago Adobe, Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit, Pixar, Lucasfilm and eBay all successfully kept engineer pay down through anti-poaching agreements[1]. Unions provide checks and balances against that type of abuse. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
  - sp332 7y ago
    You could eliminate open-plan office spaces.
Frondo 7y ago
The same thing happens at technical jobs, too. In the programming world, how many people are convinced that white-collar desk labor is qualitatively different from assembly line work, such that unions apply to factories but would never apply to a bunch of coders in an office building? I grew up hearing that programmers are professionals and individuals and we can all negotiate for maximal pay, and of course that's poppycock. The vast, vast majority of programmers would be well-served with a guild or union at their workplace, because most are simple laborers trading their time for dollars; exactly the same boat as people building cars or wiring buildings. Everyone cites the rock star making bank -- you are probably not it, and even if you're on the upper tier, a union could get you a larger slice of that company pie, and could get you more of a say in how the workplace is run (no more crunch time? more schedule flexibility? more time off? more opportunities for mentoring or being mentored? pick how you want your workplace improved...). The thing is, technical workers were headed down the path of considering themselves labor until IBM brought in union-busters that crafted this propaganda of "the nature of the work means we're more like engineers or doctors or lawyers and THEY'RE not unionized" (ignoring that they're all members of professional guilds). So, thank IBM that we're only now, decades later, starting to see labor organizing in tech fields, and here, only in the most abusive of fields (video game development); thank IBM and our desire to see ourselves as somehow above the guys who built the buildings we're in.
- Frondo 7y ago
  Here's a short read about why it'd benefit nearly everyone reading this here to unionize... https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2018/05/31/why-95-percent-of-software-engineers-lose-nothing-by-unionizing/ https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2018/05/31/why-95-perce...

TheMagicHorsey 7y ago

This is stupid. Uber and Lyft said the right thing. If they are forced to take on drivers as employees, they aren't going to hire these random people who are driving for them now, and they aren't going to hire them to work flexible schedules. They are going to hire the best people they can get for an employee's salary and benefits ... and that isn't going to be the same people benefitting now. People seem to think that they are going to get the jobs once those jobs become more desirable. No, they won't. Once its a more desirable job, it's going to get the best worker willing to work for that wage. Not the hodgepodge who are driving now. Something similar goes through the heads of teachers that demand higher salaries. If salaries get really high, existing teachers won't be the ones parents will want to hire. They'll hire really highly skilled people that are currently in other more lucrative careers. If you look at Finland where teaching is a well compensated job, the people teaching are similar to people going into lucrative consulting or programming jobs. It's not the bottom performers from third tier universities, as in the US.

dahfizz 7y ago
Totally agree. Very often people will analyze a snapshot of a scenario, recognize something they want to change, and campaign for change without considering how the system will change. They fixate on that one variable. "Uber drivers are not paid as well as they should. Let's mandate that wages go up!" Expected outcome: wages change and nothing else. The people who are currently underpaid get a big raise. Real outcome: The market adjusts and Uber only hires professional drivers, who were earning about the same anyway. Previous Uber drivers are unemployed.
- _Codemonkeyism 7y ago
  https://fs.blog/2016/04/second-order-thinking/ https://fs.blog/2016/04/second-order-thinking/
- vidarh 7y ago
  Where is this huge pool of more professional drivers who are unemployed waiting for Uber to add additional benefits before making the leap? Because if they're not unemployed, then if Uber suddenly starts competing for them, other jobs are being freed up. While some individuals may be affected, it seems highly unlikely that there is enough slack in the labor supply in that market that the addition of a few benefits will let Uber suddenly make large shifts in who they let work for them. Especially given that Uber already have a huge amount of hard data on which drivers do best with them anyway, and so it will continue to make far more sense for Uber to manage drivers based on actual performance.

tjpnz 7y ago

Reminds me of what happened when they were passing the "Hobbit" law in NZ. The companies that stood to gain from it got their people out to protest against the unions, but few knew how the largely Hollywood written legislation might affect them down the line. I actually know of one person who attended the protests and got bitten by the law a few years later, in an entirely different industry too.

tbrownaw 7y ago

From what I vaguely recall hearing, most places don't like to have employees that work more than half time but less than full time. Maybe fixing whatever misincentives are causing this discontinuity would also help make the contractor / employee difference less of an issue?

londons_explore 7y ago
A 90 percent time worker is a lazy worker...
- usrnm 7y ago
  Only if he gets 100% of the salary. A 90% worker for 90% of the money sounds perfectly reasonable
  - londons_explore 7y ago
    Sounds reasonable, but doesn't work out. All the other people in the office see that employee as "lazy Bob". The guy who isn't around every 2nd Friday. They guy who works slower than everyone else. They guy who always seems to be randomly missing from important meetings, and then doesn't know what's going on. A 90% time employee is worth far less than 90% to the company. Source:. Worked at a company where employees could either take a few days off after a bout of overtime, or get paid extra. Those who took days off were seen as lazy, not committed, and wouldn't get promotions or roles of responsibility.
    - x3ro 7y ago
      That's a lot of anecdotal evidence framed as facts. I for one have been working 80% for two years (Germany) and have never felt more productive and motivated. And not only that, but I've also been able to use my Fridays off to acquire skills I would otherwise not have had the time or motivation to learn. None of my colleagues ever complained about me seeming lazy or slow, quite the opposite, really.

Paraesthetic 7y ago

Interestingly, the text messages Uber and Lyft sent are factually accurate in that being made an employee will limit the ability of drivers to choose their own working hours. What they dont tell them is that they will also have better entitlements and cost the company more.

detaro 7y ago
Since when are companies forbidden from letting workers choose their working hours?
- slfnflctd 7y ago
  When it will destroy their business if they do so.
SilasX 7y ago
Not true. The annoying/hard part about this debate is that the law is making a distinction, and everyday speech makes a distinction, and we use the same words in both cases, even though they have different meanings and implications. It doesn't help that the legal distinction is hard to reason about since its goal is kind of nebulous. As best I can tell, it's balancing between "ensuring that businesses pay social insurance[1] obligations for anyone who they've made economically dependent on them" and "not making it burdensome to hire sporadic workers that 'feel' like legit independent contractors". So yes, Uber can absolutely class drivers as employees (EmploymentLaw::Employee) and then say "oh just work whenever" (LaySpeech::Contractor). [1] an umbrella term covering a lot of things; here, unemployment insurance and worker's compensation insurance. Edit: Rewrote when I realized you were saying the opposite and I was disagreeing.

sharperguy 7y ago

If uber and lyft drivers are employees, what about people who post on youtube or twitter, since they are creating revenue for the company and being paid?

j4kp07 7y ago
Fortunately, "creating revenue" is not a factor in determining if someone is an employee or independent.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

specialist 7y ago

Honest question: Why aren't Uber drivers considered franchisees? Or a concessionaire? My cousin ran a concession in my town's largest sportsball stadium. The way the deal is structured, my cousin was paying Ogden (the host company) for the privilege of working there. What we now call the gig economy.

joeblau 7y ago
I'm not 100% sure on this but I think when you start a franchise, the model is that you pay an huge up front price for being able to use the brand. I think that's kind of what the New York taxi license model is; Pay $1,000,000, now you too can drive a cab. I think the dream of the gig economy is that you can use your own tool/skill to work when you want. Think of it more like cutting the grass or shoveling snow in your neighborhood for $15-$30 bucks depending on the area (If you had a neighborhood like that).
- specialist 7y ago
  Ugh. Licensing fees. Of course. I should have consulted wiki first. (Thank you for illuminating me.) I'm stuck on the drivers providing their own hardware to secure the privilege of working. Other pejoratives don't quite capture this arrangement. Share cropping, dealer channel (value added reseller), multi-level marketing. Maybe "gig economy" is the pejorative.
  - joeblau 7y ago
    Yeah maybe — it should really just be the entrepreneurial economy. I think one of the big challenges is that most people jumping into this type of work want the freedom of an entrepreneur and the "safety" of an employee. There seem to be services that offer full-time employee like benefits[1], but I'm not sure how effective they are. As an entrepreneur, it is a "bring your own tools" type of system. When I did contract development, I had to bring my own laptop, my own software, and use that to produce and bill the client. I think the challenge in this new system is that the pricing dynamics aren't fluid. You know what, as I'm typing this I wonder if building a system that lets the entrepreneurs somehow control the prices will maybe help set an equilibrium. [1] - https://www.trupo.com https://www.trupo.com

everly 7y ago

Most Uber/Lyft drivers would be happy as independent contractors if the companies didn't keep reducing rates/incentives. The mileage/time rates of pay have been slashed drastically and Lyft recently removed Primetime rate increases altogether, so drivers now get essentially no additional money for driving during the busiest times.

lotsofpulp 7y ago
As independent contractors, they are free to not accept work at an unacceptable price.
- rchaud 7y ago
  Except that if they turn down enough rides, they'll be kicked off the platform entirely.
  - lotsofpulp 7y ago
    Then the platform will fail due to lack of supply of labor. It’s not ideal, but these freedoms of both parties are part and parcel of independent contracting.
    - rchaud 7y ago
      No it won't. Uber and Lyft offer significant incentives to boost driver recruitment at the start, and then start peeling them back once those drivers have invested time and rides on the platform. The whole demand/supply equilibrium thing is Econ 101; it belongs in textbooks, because it's oversimplified and doesn't match how business operates in real world conditions.
      - lotsofpulp 7y ago
        How does it not apply in the real world? Are there an infinite number of licensed drivers in the US for them to churn through? I’m also not aware of any consensual transaction not subject to supply and demand. Could you provide an example?

unstatusthequo 7y ago

Anyone remember that "Man Show" episode where they had women signing up to end women's sufferage?This headline reminded me of that.