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California bill could force Uber and Lyft to reclassify drivers as employees

121 points by T-A 7y ago

d1zzy 7y ago
There are many serious issues around how Lyft/Uber (and many others) treat their "employees" and I'm happy if things are moving in a direction to help them out. However, as a customer, Lyft/Uber has been HUGELY better than any previous taxi experience, in the San Francisco Bay Area. Before Uber was a thing, I tried getting a taxi in the Bay Area at 3 different times. Months apart. Calling different companies (that I found by searching "Bay Area taxi"). In ALL cases there were issues, huge issues: * the first one I called said he'll be there in 20 minutes(!!) but 30 minutes later he didn't show nor called. I call back and someone else answers and says they'll be there in 20 minutes, ofc 30 minutes later nobody showed up... * the second time I needed a taxi I called, said they will be there in 30 minutes and never showed or answered any subsequent calls * third time I think someone DID show up, after about 30 minutes (15 minutes later than they said they will) Absolutely horrible, unacceptable experience. With Lyft/Uber I never had any such issues and I took many more rides with those. Not to mention it was much cheaper (the latter likely has something to do with the main complains being raised now by their employees). Look, I fully support cab riders to get a living wage, even if that means significantly increasing my fare, but I do hope the new legislation doesn't result in going back to the pre-Lyft/Uber taxi experience because that was just insanely bad. Also, at least some of the drivers I talked to were doing this as an aside so it makes total sense for them to be contractors (one guy was temporarily in the Bay Area doing some construction work so he was Uber-ing on the side for extra money) so that is another issue that needs to be considered in legislation to still enable this type of use case.
- r00fus 7y ago
  I don’t think we can really put the genie back into the bottle there. Uber and Lyft have proven that app-based hailing is what people want. The costs will go up though.
- nraynaud 7y ago
  I suspect it’s one of those case where things are bad because it made no economic sense to make them better, a bit like airplane boarding. In the case of taxis, replacing them by Uber and lyft made no sense globally, because it was just exploiting the drivers, and using venture capital in an unsustainable manner.
- wswope 7y ago
  Shortly after Uber and Lyft became popular, they were forced out of Austin due to a scuffle around local regulation. It took very little time for some new competitors to start up, one of which (RideAustin), is still thriving. The cost is almost exactly the same, but far more money goes to the drivers, and the drivers tend to be far higher quality. If memory serves me right, they even adopted some user-friendly features like a female-only driver setting first too. You can have your cake and eat it too: there's no real dichotomy between Uber/Lyft and the taxi companies.
  - bobthepanda 7y ago
    It's worth noting that the original scuffle was about fingerprinting drivers, a regulation that they already comply with in New York City. The difference is that Uber and Lyft won't leave one of their biggest markets.
    - caseysoftware 7y ago
      No, "fingerprinting" was the issue the City marketed. The actual scuffle was because the City of Austin wanted ride-level trip data and a larger fee from the individual rides. Further, Mayor Adler's goal was a tax+security screening system for anyone who wanted to transact online. Those are his words, not mine. Quoted in the post below. I detailed some of it here: https://medium.com/@CaseySoftware/mayor-steve-adler-is-scamming-the-austin-tech-community-399d12b976e9 https://medium.com/@CaseySoftware/mayor-steve-adler-is-scamm...
      - bobthepanda 7y ago
        Ride-level data and per-trip fees are also a requirement in New York City. In fact, now minimum wages are required in New York for TNC drivers. The point still stands, is that Uber has never, and would not ever, actually threaten to leave bigger markets. And the data isn't some evil hoovering scheme, but it is incredibly helpful with city planning: > Like camera-wearing meerkats, taxis provided insight into the city’s transportation ecosystem. Are cabs speeding along a certain stretch of street? Time to review the street design. Getting stuck at the same intersection every rush hour? Maybe rethink the traffic light timing. https://www.wired.com/story/nyc-uber-lyft-ride-hail-data/ https://www.wired.com/story/nyc-uber-lyft-ride-hail-data/
- dreamcompiler 7y ago
  Before Uber and Lyft cabs were terrible everywhere except maybe London and Tokyo. Competition was sorely needed in this industry. I hope the competition continues even if the prices go up.
  - pmart123 7y ago
    London cabs were brutally expensive though. The minivan service was typically very good compared to other cities.
  - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
    Beijing, Shanghai, and a few their Chinese cities were decent enough, as were the few Indian cities I went to and Bangkok. Many smaller SE Asian cities were horrible though, with western tourists seen as prime targets for the local taxi mafia.
  - williamDafoe 7y ago
    In Japan the cabs cost NOTHING, like Uber and Lyft when they have a sale; I spent the 2nd half of June in Japan and never exceeded $10 in fare.
- uptown 7y ago
  Anecdotal, but I've had less than great experiences with both Uber and Lyft. The most common issue if that a driver will accept you as passenger, then somewhere along the way, they cancel you, leaving you start waiting again for a new driver. Presumably they got a closer/better fare wherever they were driving from, but it sucks to be strung along 2 or 3 times like that while waiting for a ride home.
- markdown 7y ago
  I can barely remember my interaction with anyone I met yesterday. How do you remember three distinct taxi (and therefore trivial) encounters from years ago? Do you work for Uber, or do you just have an amazing memory?
  - ImprovedSilence 7y ago
    uh... really? you should get that memory thing checked out. I too have absolutely terrible pre-uber experiences (in the DC area). If one was out drinking in DC, and needed a cab back across the river to VA, you had to hope the cabbie had the doors unlocked, because they couldn't refuse a fair once you got in and sat in the car, otherwise they'd just drive away if you told them where you were going. And it was "cash only". Which I later learned was a load of BS, when I had a $100+ fare for work, cabbie happily pulled out the old cc scanner complete with carbon paper... Things didn't get better until my roommate introduced me to his "driver". Which is was just a guy with a Town Car that I could call, tell him where I'm going and when, and if he was available, he'd quote me a price (there was no meter or anything). And then there was the stress of is the cabbie I called for going to show up in time to get me to the airport at 6am. Uber/Lyft crushed it for all these reasons, and if the prices need to rise a little, sure fine. The example of a new company in Austin doing it's own little Austin thing is fine, but the other huge benefit of Uber is it travel. If I get off a plane in Europe, NYC, SF, small po-dunk town, whatever, I've now got a very frictionless path to getting myself some transportation. Don't gotta look up the local cab company, don't gotta mess with the local mass transit, all my billing info is setup and ready to go. Makes me wonder if everyone seemingly hating on them or wishing them harm is too young to remember how shitty things were before. On the "employee" side, I do know a number of people who drive for either or both company, but they all do it on the side, fwiw.
    - williamDafoe 7y ago
      You can't get a Lyft to the airport At 4:15 am ($30 fare). Been there, failed that.
  - mindways 7y ago
    I'd wager because strong emotion tends to result in strong memories, and waiting for a needed ride that isn't showing up is stressful, particularly if you have no insight into where the right might be or if/when it's arriving. I have memories of several times I was stood up or unreasonably delayed by bad taxi service / rideshare service, and the higher-stress ones (e.g., when I was trying to catch a plane) are the most vivid. One's from over a decade ago - I can't remember where I was going, but I remember the room I was in, pacing back and forth, calling the taxi dispatcher for the 3rd time.
- Johnny555 7y ago
  The other problem is that there are a dozen or more cab companies in SF, so sometimes you'd call a cab from one company and see empty cars from other companies drive by. So you have to make the choice between alienating the company you called by taking a competing cab, or waiting and hoping that your called cab shows up.
wetpaws 7y ago
Fun fact - Austin is a peculiar example of a city that banned uber and basically created a black market for makeshift ridesharing service based on facebook groups, google docs, craigslist adds and only god knows what else. People think that once uber is dead ridesharing will disappear, but reality shows that once idea is in the wild it's almost impossible to stop it.
- api 7y ago
  This is particularly the case when taxis are so painfully awful. Every time I ride one I vow "never again." Its always a horrible experience and costs 2X as much as anything else.
  - notfromhere 7y ago
    Taxis cost as much as uber's if you're traveling in a major city under about 1.5 miles. I prefer taxi's to uber's if im next to a hotspot and you can just give directions by cross-street.
mrosett 7y ago
<unpopular opinion> I worry that this bill will ultimately eliminate a unique niche in the job market. I have several family members who drive for Uber/Lyft and consider it a great way to make money. One of the aspects they like is how much independence they have: no manager, no set schedule, no need to work the same number of hours each week or each day. The pay is fine - not great - but the flexibility makes working for Uber much more appealing than e.g. working as a receptionist or taking another service job. Many drivers I've ridden with seem to value that component as well. If Uber switches to treating drivers as employees (which makes each driver have higher overhead) then they'll probably switch to.... well, treating them as employees: stricter rules about when you have to drive, how much you have to drive, and so on. The tradeoff will benefit some employees - basically those who are trying to make Uber into a full-time job - at the expense of others.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 7y ago
  I’ve been wondering this lately: when it comes to Uber contractors vs employees, it’s always presented as an all-or-nothing kind of option. I wonder if Uber might one day offer both an employee and contract option to satisfy both needs
- bt848 7y ago
  “Unique niches” of the job market that exploit the people filling them must be regulated out of existence. Uber drivers who very carefully manage their overhead generally still earn a pittance, near minimum wage or even below it. Uber mostly relies on the ignorance of their drivers who essentially accelerate the conversion of stored value in their vehicle into short-term earnings. Then when the first bill comes for brake pads, tires, shocks, CV joints and tie rod ends they pack it in. This is why their driver turnover rate is astronomical. The other side of the issue is the drivers who ignore such things and drive all over the place in under-maintained, under-insured cars, converting a public nuisance externality into Uber revenue and prolonged starvation wages.
  - mrosett 7y ago
    The claim that Uber drivers aren't actually earning money but just engaging in "conversion of stored value in their vehicle into short-term earnings" is based on a clearly flawed study [0]. Even after subtracting out vehicle wear and tear, drivers make a modest (but not great) wage. You can rail about "exploitation" and "starvation wages" but the people I know who have worked for Uber generally thought the wage was decent and the conditions were better than most alternatives. Removing the option to "be exploited" by Uber doesn't leave them working a cushy 6-figure software job; it leads to doing work they like less. [0]: https://medium.com/uber-under-the-hood/an-analysis-of-ceeprs-paper-on-the-economics-of-ride-hailing-1c8bfbf1081d https://medium.com/uber-under-the-hood/an-analysis-of-ceeprs...
post_break 7y ago
Personally I'd rather them devastate Airbnb. Uber and Lyft haven't caused the car market to price people out of corollas and camrys. I know it's a tongue in cheek comment but driving for uber or lyft is a choice, the housing market getting turned into hotel development isn't for a lot of people.
- ImprovedSilence 7y ago
  Yeah, this is so much truth. It happens more than in big cities too. It's driving up home prices in smaller college towns, for football, graduations, and old people tourism, and it can really put a crunch on supply for people who actually need to live there.
- conanbatt 7y ago
  What's driving housing prices up are bad city/state level policies, not airbnb. Airbnb makes housing more effective, by housing more people for longer periods of time. Housing utilization goes up with Airbnb, not down.
  - Skunkleton 7y ago
    I have left my house empty every time I have stayed in an AirBnB. Anecdotal? Sure, but I am not the only one.
    - conanbatt 7y ago
      But the other side hasn't, so in your case its 50% increase in utilization (1/2 parties uses Airbnb). If you had use Airbnb, it would have been 2 more houses per 2 vacation trips.
      - Skunkleton 7y ago
        Most of the time I end up in a spare room, or in a property specially bought to rent out as an AirBnB. Neither of these help with housing shortages.
saimiam 7y ago
Now for a truly unpopular opinion: Uber, Lyft (on basically all other on-demand/delivery services) are making urban living qualitatively far worse on average than the benefit of extra commerce facilitated by them. They should be banned outright. Give us our streets back. Back when ride-share and on-demand/delivery services were not so ubiquitous, you could either get out and do a chore yourself or do without. For example, one recent weekend I casually mentioned to my wife that I was craving a specific sweet popular in my hometown in Eastern India. She surreptitiously looked up a vendor selling that sweet where I now live and had it delivered. I loved the gesture but it made me think that without delivery, I wouldn't have caused a bike messenger to pick up my snack and bring it a few kilometers to my house. Ergo, no environmental impact, no added traffic, less use of plastic and packaging, and all manner of downstream impacts attributable to me. Yes, there are positives - less skilled/more entrepreneurial people are able to support themselves as drivers, money flows around from consumer to producer as it should in a healthy economy, my cravings are being met and my wife is able to exercise her love language, and so on but IMO, the negatives outweigh the positives. The extra traffic introduced by delivery is untenable, at least in urban India. Delivery persons drive often don't obey traffic laws with minimal consequences. Becoming a driver provides MVE - minimal viable employment - for someone facing economic pressures so instead of upskilling to earn more, they stagnate. The environmental impact of delivery alone should make us worry about their usefulness.
- saimiam 7y ago
  Yep, unpopular.
- elindbe2 7y ago
  Seems like you should argue for the outright banning of cars if your argument is that cars make things too easy and have a negative environmental impact.
dmode 7y ago
I am curious about the choice of the word “devastate” in the headline. Should we have a business where it is only viable when paying workers less than minimum wages ? Should we have a business where your core work has to be performed by “contractors” ? That is not a business model at all.
gok 7y ago
Do they seriously think this will lead to anything except Uber and Lyft leaving California, putting hundreds of thousands of drivers out of work?
vikinghckr 7y ago
One thing not mentioned here is how it will impact customers, and who these customers are. These regulations will result in higher fares for customers and those customers overwhelmingly tend to be people who can't afford to buy and maintain a car. Affluent people already have cars and those on the fence will choose to drive more if fares go up. So the main impact would be on people in the service industry who rely on Uber/Lyft for their daily commutes.
- jerrre 7y ago
  How can owning a car be more expensive than having someone else own a car and paying them for it, while also paying them to drive it, while also the app gets a share? Is the base cost of owning a car so high? Do the apps subsidize so much?
  - thatoneuser 7y ago
    Cars are pretty expensive and I think most people really only need them sometimes (if you're poor enough for this to be an issue you won't be driving all over for fun nights and weekends). If you could bus to work, taxi to a few stores and only pay $100 or so - that's just insurance. If youre paying a car off its easily $200-500 a month in top. Plus gas, plus maintenance, etc. Cars have the same issue phones do - they aren't necessarily needing to get better, but manufacturers want money so they're expensive when they don't really have to be.
  - vikinghckr 7y ago
    Well, if you own a car just for commute, it's sitting idle for 23 hours out of 24. Whereas the Uber/Lyft driver is using it for 8-12 hours a day, and the overall ownership/maintenance cost is not linear with usage. On top of that, add UberPool, and the cost for ride hailing goes even lower. So essentially, ride hailing can be thought of as a form of public transport.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
jpster 7y ago
Seems Part C would be beneficial to professional drivers and serve to lock non-pros out. Do I have the right interpretation?
tidenly 7y ago
Where I live you're automatically granted certain benefits and your company is required to provide you with health insurance, pension and unemployment insurance based upon factors like the number of hours you actually work a week and the like - regardless of what your contact says. Does America have things like that? Seems like it would include a lot of Uber drivers if they did.
cybersnowflake 7y ago
What other job can you think of where you can work as much as you want, anytime you want? Need a break? Click a button anytime you feel like it. Take as long or as little time as you wish. Want more work? Click a button anytime you feel like it. No timecards to punch. No boss breathing down your ass for being late. Its freedom on a level beyond practically any other major job category you can think of. What more could you ask for? Sure you're probably not going to be raising a whole family with a white picket fence on Uber alone. They NEVER claimed you could AFAIK. Its never been portrayed as anything more than supplemental income. PROTIP: Uber is a job for the bored college student looking for a little extra spending money not the main means of survival for a struggling single mother of 10 kids. If you're at the point where you're relying on CA to force Uber to pay you more so you can put food on the table or get kidney surgery you're doing it wrong and you have far bigger problems than a company that has done you no wrong other than existing and not paying very much. Now we're going to destroy this unique business model forever because of the greed of the taxis and people who can't understand that not every single job on earth is meant to earn you a solid middle class income.
berbec 7y ago
If your business requires a consistently high amount of labor hours worked and the survival of that business depends on none of those labor hours being filled by employees, I'm not sure you have a profitable (in any term: short- to long- inclusive) business model. You have a VC ponzi scheme that inevitably collapse.
- darkwizard42 7y ago
  What? Have you considered that most hairdressers, plumbers, construction workers are all contractors that do just this?
username90 7y ago
The main point of driving for Uber is that you can get a job without a job interview. I don't know of many other jobs where you can do that. Will classifying them as employees force Uber to vet their drivers more with things like interviews to offset the extra overhead of employee classification?
mlwhiz 7y ago
I think this initiative should be welcomed and Indian govt should also do this. I was just talking to an Uber driver in India just the other day. In India Uber got its dominant market share by offering incentives to the drivers when they joined. Something like if you do n number of trips you will get more money. The incentives were great and so a lot of people got into driving. Bought their own cars. Got cars financed from Uber. And then as supply increased Uber pulled off the incentives with nowhere to go for the drivers. Now a driver who got 800 rs for an airport trip by himself has to make do with 400 rs in his pocket and Uber gets a 200 rs commision.
CryptoPunk 7y ago
What supporters of these kind of bills don't understand is that if you increase the risks and liabilities that companies providing these jobs carry, they will stop providing these jobs. Classifying the people working these jobs as employees increases the risks and liabilities for the platform providers. And those claiming we'd be better off with those jobs not existing are lying to the public. It's against the worker's interest to remove any employment (or self-employment) opportunity from the job marketplace. Now of course they will accuse opponents of the bill of lying, so the public has to investigate and decide for itself.
noego 7y ago
> ride-hailing companies would be responsible for half (6.2%) of employees' Social Security and Medicare (1.45%) tax, as well as the costs for administering any employee benefits (e.g., health care and 401ks) The changes described in the bill seem surprisingly minor. As long as Uber isn't expected to pay its drivers a fixed salary, or control their work hours, I don't see how "better benefits" will fundamentally destroy their business model. It is fundamentally no different than raising the rates paid by riders, and passing those increased rates along to drivers in the form of better benefits. As long as it is applied consistently to both Uber and Lyft, neither of them will lose market share. Ridership will decline incrementally when rates are raised incrementally, but the majority of Uber riders aren't going to take buses instead just because prices went up 15%. I've long been a fan of the gig economy and of companies like Uber/Lyft, but the new regulations described above sound pretty reasonable. Saying they will devastate Uber's business model sounds like clickbait on the part of BI, and FUD on the part of Uber.
HALtheWise 7y ago
Does anyone know how this works for drivers that today drive for both Uber and Lyft at the same time? I see many cars with both stickers on the windshield, and it seems like a very powerful force preventing one or the other from gaining a monopoly status in the city. When a driver using both apps is waiting for a ride, whose time are they clocking under? Does that create legal incentives for drivers to drive for one company, and in doing so make it very hard to sustain minority competitor in the ride sharing space?
hndamien 7y ago
Why is there no supply side software for Uber drivers like in ad tech?

121 points by T-A 7y ago

There are many serious issues around how Lyft/Uber (and many others) treat their "employees" and I'm happy if things are moving in a direction to help them out. However, as a customer, Lyft/Uber has been HUGELY better than any previous taxi experience, in the San Francisco Bay Area. Before Uber was a thing, I tried getting a taxi in the Bay Area at 3 different times. Months apart. Calling different companies (that I found by searching "Bay Area taxi"). In ALL cases there were issues, huge issues: * the first one I called said he'll be there in 20 minutes(!!) but 30 minutes later he didn't show nor called. I call back and someone else answers and says they'll be there in 20 minutes, ofc 30 minutes later nobody showed up... * the second time I needed a taxi I called, said they will be there in 30 minutes and never showed or answered any subsequent calls * third time I think someone DID show up, after about 30 minutes (15 minutes later than they said they will) Absolutely horrible, unacceptable experience. With Lyft/Uber I never had any such issues and I took many more rides with those. Not to mention it was much cheaper (the latter likely has something to do with the main complains being raised now by their employees). Look, I fully support cab riders to get a living wage, even if that means significantly increasing my fare, but I do hope the new legislation doesn't result in going back to the pre-Lyft/Uber taxi experience because that was just insanely bad. Also, at least some of the drivers I talked to were doing this as an aside so it makes total sense for them to be contractors (one guy was temporarily in the Bay Area doing some construction work so he was Uber-ing on the side for extra money) so that is another issue that needs to be considered in legislation to still enable this type of use case.

r00fus 7y ago
I don’t think we can really put the genie back into the bottle there. Uber and Lyft have proven that app-based hailing is what people want. The costs will go up though.
nraynaud 7y ago
I suspect it’s one of those case where things are bad because it made no economic sense to make them better, a bit like airplane boarding. In the case of taxis, replacing them by Uber and lyft made no sense globally, because it was just exploiting the drivers, and using venture capital in an unsustainable manner.
wswope 7y ago
Shortly after Uber and Lyft became popular, they were forced out of Austin due to a scuffle around local regulation. It took very little time for some new competitors to start up, one of which (RideAustin), is still thriving. The cost is almost exactly the same, but far more money goes to the drivers, and the drivers tend to be far higher quality. If memory serves me right, they even adopted some user-friendly features like a female-only driver setting first too. You can have your cake and eat it too: there's no real dichotomy between Uber/Lyft and the taxi companies.
- bobthepanda 7y ago
  It's worth noting that the original scuffle was about fingerprinting drivers, a regulation that they already comply with in New York City. The difference is that Uber and Lyft won't leave one of their biggest markets.
  - caseysoftware 7y ago
    No, "fingerprinting" was the issue the City marketed. The actual scuffle was because the City of Austin wanted ride-level trip data and a larger fee from the individual rides. Further, Mayor Adler's goal was a tax+security screening system for anyone who wanted to transact online. Those are his words, not mine. Quoted in the post below. I detailed some of it here: https://medium.com/@CaseySoftware/mayor-steve-adler-is-scamming-the-austin-tech-community-399d12b976e9 https://medium.com/@CaseySoftware/mayor-steve-adler-is-scamm...
    - bobthepanda 7y ago
      Ride-level data and per-trip fees are also a requirement in New York City. In fact, now minimum wages are required in New York for TNC drivers. The point still stands, is that Uber has never, and would not ever, actually threaten to leave bigger markets. And the data isn't some evil hoovering scheme, but it is incredibly helpful with city planning: > Like camera-wearing meerkats, taxis provided insight into the city’s transportation ecosystem. Are cabs speeding along a certain stretch of street? Time to review the street design. Getting stuck at the same intersection every rush hour? Maybe rethink the traffic light timing. https://www.wired.com/story/nyc-uber-lyft-ride-hail-data/ https://www.wired.com/story/nyc-uber-lyft-ride-hail-data/
dreamcompiler 7y ago
Before Uber and Lyft cabs were terrible everywhere except maybe London and Tokyo. Competition was sorely needed in this industry. I hope the competition continues even if the prices go up.
- pmart123 7y ago
  London cabs were brutally expensive though. The minivan service was typically very good compared to other cities.
- seanmcdirmid 7y ago
  Beijing, Shanghai, and a few their Chinese cities were decent enough, as were the few Indian cities I went to and Bangkok. Many smaller SE Asian cities were horrible though, with western tourists seen as prime targets for the local taxi mafia.
- williamDafoe 7y ago
  In Japan the cabs cost NOTHING, like Uber and Lyft when they have a sale; I spent the 2nd half of June in Japan and never exceeded $10 in fare.
uptown 7y ago
Anecdotal, but I've had less than great experiences with both Uber and Lyft. The most common issue if that a driver will accept you as passenger, then somewhere along the way, they cancel you, leaving you start waiting again for a new driver. Presumably they got a closer/better fare wherever they were driving from, but it sucks to be strung along 2 or 3 times like that while waiting for a ride home.
markdown 7y ago
I can barely remember my interaction with anyone I met yesterday. How do you remember three distinct taxi (and therefore trivial) encounters from years ago? Do you work for Uber, or do you just have an amazing memory?
- ImprovedSilence 7y ago
  uh... really? you should get that memory thing checked out. I too have absolutely terrible pre-uber experiences (in the DC area). If one was out drinking in DC, and needed a cab back across the river to VA, you had to hope the cabbie had the doors unlocked, because they couldn't refuse a fair once you got in and sat in the car, otherwise they'd just drive away if you told them where you were going. And it was "cash only". Which I later learned was a load of BS, when I had a $100+ fare for work, cabbie happily pulled out the old cc scanner complete with carbon paper... Things didn't get better until my roommate introduced me to his "driver". Which is was just a guy with a Town Car that I could call, tell him where I'm going and when, and if he was available, he'd quote me a price (there was no meter or anything). And then there was the stress of is the cabbie I called for going to show up in time to get me to the airport at 6am. Uber/Lyft crushed it for all these reasons, and if the prices need to rise a little, sure fine. The example of a new company in Austin doing it's own little Austin thing is fine, but the other huge benefit of Uber is it travel. If I get off a plane in Europe, NYC, SF, small po-dunk town, whatever, I've now got a very frictionless path to getting myself some transportation. Don't gotta look up the local cab company, don't gotta mess with the local mass transit, all my billing info is setup and ready to go. Makes me wonder if everyone seemingly hating on them or wishing them harm is too young to remember how shitty things were before. On the "employee" side, I do know a number of people who drive for either or both company, but they all do it on the side, fwiw.
  - williamDafoe 7y ago
    You can't get a Lyft to the airport At 4:15 am ($30 fare). Been there, failed that.
- mindways 7y ago
  I'd wager because strong emotion tends to result in strong memories, and waiting for a needed ride that isn't showing up is stressful, particularly if you have no insight into where the right might be or if/when it's arriving. I have memories of several times I was stood up or unreasonably delayed by bad taxi service / rideshare service, and the higher-stress ones (e.g., when I was trying to catch a plane) are the most vivid. One's from over a decade ago - I can't remember where I was going, but I remember the room I was in, pacing back and forth, calling the taxi dispatcher for the 3rd time.
Johnny555 7y ago
The other problem is that there are a dozen or more cab companies in SF, so sometimes you'd call a cab from one company and see empty cars from other companies drive by. So you have to make the choice between alienating the company you called by taking a competing cab, or waiting and hoping that your called cab shows up.

wetpaws 7y ago

Fun fact - Austin is a peculiar example of a city that banned uber and basically created a black market for makeshift ridesharing service based on facebook groups, google docs, craigslist adds and only god knows what else. People think that once uber is dead ridesharing will disappear, but reality shows that once idea is in the wild it's almost impossible to stop it.

api 7y ago
This is particularly the case when taxis are so painfully awful. Every time I ride one I vow "never again." Its always a horrible experience and costs 2X as much as anything else.
- notfromhere 7y ago
  Taxis cost as much as uber's if you're traveling in a major city under about 1.5 miles. I prefer taxi's to uber's if im next to a hotspot and you can just give directions by cross-street.

mrosett 7y ago

<unpopular opinion> I worry that this bill will ultimately eliminate a unique niche in the job market. I have several family members who drive for Uber/Lyft and consider it a great way to make money. One of the aspects they like is how much independence they have: no manager, no set schedule, no need to work the same number of hours each week or each day. The pay is fine - not great - but the flexibility makes working for Uber much more appealing than e.g. working as a receptionist or taking another service job. Many drivers I've ridden with seem to value that component as well. If Uber switches to treating drivers as employees (which makes each driver have higher overhead) then they'll probably switch to.... well, treating them as employees: stricter rules about when you have to drive, how much you have to drive, and so on. The tradeoff will benefit some employees - basically those who are trying to make Uber into a full-time job - at the expense of others.

SOLAR_FIELDS 7y ago
I’ve been wondering this lately: when it comes to Uber contractors vs employees, it’s always presented as an all-or-nothing kind of option. I wonder if Uber might one day offer both an employee and contract option to satisfy both needs
bt848 7y ago
“Unique niches” of the job market that exploit the people filling them must be regulated out of existence. Uber drivers who very carefully manage their overhead generally still earn a pittance, near minimum wage or even below it. Uber mostly relies on the ignorance of their drivers who essentially accelerate the conversion of stored value in their vehicle into short-term earnings. Then when the first bill comes for brake pads, tires, shocks, CV joints and tie rod ends they pack it in. This is why their driver turnover rate is astronomical. The other side of the issue is the drivers who ignore such things and drive all over the place in under-maintained, under-insured cars, converting a public nuisance externality into Uber revenue and prolonged starvation wages.
- mrosett 7y ago
  The claim that Uber drivers aren't actually earning money but just engaging in "conversion of stored value in their vehicle into short-term earnings" is based on a clearly flawed study [0]. Even after subtracting out vehicle wear and tear, drivers make a modest (but not great) wage. You can rail about "exploitation" and "starvation wages" but the people I know who have worked for Uber generally thought the wage was decent and the conditions were better than most alternatives. Removing the option to "be exploited" by Uber doesn't leave them working a cushy 6-figure software job; it leads to doing work they like less. [0]: https://medium.com/uber-under-the-hood/an-analysis-of-ceeprs-paper-on-the-economics-of-ride-hailing-1c8bfbf1081d https://medium.com/uber-under-the-hood/an-analysis-of-ceeprs...

post_break 7y ago

Personally I'd rather them devastate Airbnb. Uber and Lyft haven't caused the car market to price people out of corollas and camrys. I know it's a tongue in cheek comment but driving for uber or lyft is a choice, the housing market getting turned into hotel development isn't for a lot of people.

ImprovedSilence 7y ago
Yeah, this is so much truth. It happens more than in big cities too. It's driving up home prices in smaller college towns, for football, graduations, and old people tourism, and it can really put a crunch on supply for people who actually need to live there.
conanbatt 7y ago
What's driving housing prices up are bad city/state level policies, not airbnb. Airbnb makes housing more effective, by housing more people for longer periods of time. Housing utilization goes up with Airbnb, not down.
- Skunkleton 7y ago
  I have left my house empty every time I have stayed in an AirBnB. Anecdotal? Sure, but I am not the only one.
  - conanbatt 7y ago
    But the other side hasn't, so in your case its 50% increase in utilization (1/2 parties uses Airbnb). If you had use Airbnb, it would have been 2 more houses per 2 vacation trips.
    - Skunkleton 7y ago
      Most of the time I end up in a spare room, or in a property specially bought to rent out as an AirBnB. Neither of these help with housing shortages.

saimiam 7y ago

Now for a truly unpopular opinion: Uber, Lyft (on basically all other on-demand/delivery services) are making urban living qualitatively far worse on average than the benefit of extra commerce facilitated by them. They should be banned outright. Give us our streets back. Back when ride-share and on-demand/delivery services were not so ubiquitous, you could either get out and do a chore yourself or do without. For example, one recent weekend I casually mentioned to my wife that I was craving a specific sweet popular in my hometown in Eastern India. She surreptitiously looked up a vendor selling that sweet where I now live and had it delivered. I loved the gesture but it made me think that without delivery, I wouldn't have caused a bike messenger to pick up my snack and bring it a few kilometers to my house. Ergo, no environmental impact, no added traffic, less use of plastic and packaging, and all manner of downstream impacts attributable to me. Yes, there are positives - less skilled/more entrepreneurial people are able to support themselves as drivers, money flows around from consumer to producer as it should in a healthy economy, my cravings are being met and my wife is able to exercise her love language, and so on but IMO, the negatives outweigh the positives. The extra traffic introduced by delivery is untenable, at least in urban India. Delivery persons drive often don't obey traffic laws with minimal consequences. Becoming a driver provides MVE - minimal viable employment - for someone facing economic pressures so instead of upskilling to earn more, they stagnate. The environmental impact of delivery alone should make us worry about their usefulness.

saimiam 7y ago
Yep, unpopular.
elindbe2 7y ago
Seems like you should argue for the outright banning of cars if your argument is that cars make things too easy and have a negative environmental impact.

dmode 7y ago

I am curious about the choice of the word “devastate” in the headline. Should we have a business where it is only viable when paying workers less than minimum wages ? Should we have a business where your core work has to be performed by “contractors” ? That is not a business model at all.

gok 7y ago

Do they seriously think this will lead to anything except Uber and Lyft leaving California, putting hundreds of thousands of drivers out of work?

vikinghckr 7y ago

One thing not mentioned here is how it will impact customers, and who these customers are. These regulations will result in higher fares for customers and those customers overwhelmingly tend to be people who can't afford to buy and maintain a car. Affluent people already have cars and those on the fence will choose to drive more if fares go up. So the main impact would be on people in the service industry who rely on Uber/Lyft for their daily commutes.

jerrre 7y ago
How can owning a car be more expensive than having someone else own a car and paying them for it, while also paying them to drive it, while also the app gets a share? Is the base cost of owning a car so high? Do the apps subsidize so much?
- thatoneuser 7y ago
  Cars are pretty expensive and I think most people really only need them sometimes (if you're poor enough for this to be an issue you won't be driving all over for fun nights and weekends). If you could bus to work, taxi to a few stores and only pay $100 or so - that's just insurance. If youre paying a car off its easily $200-500 a month in top. Plus gas, plus maintenance, etc. Cars have the same issue phones do - they aren't necessarily needing to get better, but manufacturers want money so they're expensive when they don't really have to be.
- vikinghckr 7y ago
  Well, if you own a car just for commute, it's sitting idle for 23 hours out of 24. Whereas the Uber/Lyft driver is using it for 8-12 hours a day, and the overall ownership/maintenance cost is not linear with usage. On top of that, add UberPool, and the cost for ride hailing goes even lower. So essentially, ride hailing can be thought of as a form of public transport.
- deleted 7y ago
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jpster 7y ago

Seems Part C would be beneficial to professional drivers and serve to lock non-pros out. Do I have the right interpretation?

tidenly 7y ago

Where I live you're automatically granted certain benefits and your company is required to provide you with health insurance, pension and unemployment insurance based upon factors like the number of hours you actually work a week and the like - regardless of what your contact says. Does America have things like that? Seems like it would include a lot of Uber drivers if they did.

cybersnowflake 7y ago

What other job can you think of where you can work as much as you want, anytime you want? Need a break? Click a button anytime you feel like it. Take as long or as little time as you wish. Want more work? Click a button anytime you feel like it. No timecards to punch. No boss breathing down your ass for being late. Its freedom on a level beyond practically any other major job category you can think of. What more could you ask for? Sure you're probably not going to be raising a whole family with a white picket fence on Uber alone. They NEVER claimed you could AFAIK. Its never been portrayed as anything more than supplemental income. PROTIP: Uber is a job for the bored college student looking for a little extra spending money not the main means of survival for a struggling single mother of 10 kids. If you're at the point where you're relying on CA to force Uber to pay you more so you can put food on the table or get kidney surgery you're doing it wrong and you have far bigger problems than a company that has done you no wrong other than existing and not paying very much. Now we're going to destroy this unique business model forever because of the greed of the taxis and people who can't understand that not every single job on earth is meant to earn you a solid middle class income.

berbec 7y ago

If your business requires a consistently high amount of labor hours worked and the survival of that business depends on none of those labor hours being filled by employees, I'm not sure you have a profitable (in any term: short- to long- inclusive) business model. You have a VC ponzi scheme that inevitably collapse.

darkwizard42 7y ago
What? Have you considered that most hairdressers, plumbers, construction workers are all contractors that do just this?

username90 7y ago

The main point of driving for Uber is that you can get a job without a job interview. I don't know of many other jobs where you can do that. Will classifying them as employees force Uber to vet their drivers more with things like interviews to offset the extra overhead of employee classification?

mlwhiz 7y ago

I think this initiative should be welcomed and Indian govt should also do this. I was just talking to an Uber driver in India just the other day. In India Uber got its dominant market share by offering incentives to the drivers when they joined. Something like if you do n number of trips you will get more money. The incentives were great and so a lot of people got into driving. Bought their own cars. Got cars financed from Uber. And then as supply increased Uber pulled off the incentives with nowhere to go for the drivers. Now a driver who got 800 rs for an airport trip by himself has to make do with 400 rs in his pocket and Uber gets a 200 rs commision.

CryptoPunk 7y ago

What supporters of these kind of bills don't understand is that if you increase the risks and liabilities that companies providing these jobs carry, they will stop providing these jobs. Classifying the people working these jobs as employees increases the risks and liabilities for the platform providers. And those claiming we'd be better off with those jobs not existing are lying to the public. It's against the worker's interest to remove any employment (or self-employment) opportunity from the job marketplace. Now of course they will accuse opponents of the bill of lying, so the public has to investigate and decide for itself.

noego 7y ago

> ride-hailing companies would be responsible for half (6.2%) of employees' Social Security and Medicare (1.45%) tax, as well as the costs for administering any employee benefits (e.g., health care and 401ks) The changes described in the bill seem surprisingly minor. As long as Uber isn't expected to pay its drivers a fixed salary, or control their work hours, I don't see how "better benefits" will fundamentally destroy their business model. It is fundamentally no different than raising the rates paid by riders, and passing those increased rates along to drivers in the form of better benefits. As long as it is applied consistently to both Uber and Lyft, neither of them will lose market share. Ridership will decline incrementally when rates are raised incrementally, but the majority of Uber riders aren't going to take buses instead just because prices went up 15%. I've long been a fan of the gig economy and of companies like Uber/Lyft, but the new regulations described above sound pretty reasonable. Saying they will devastate Uber's business model sounds like clickbait on the part of BI, and FUD on the part of Uber.

HALtheWise 7y ago

Does anyone know how this works for drivers that today drive for both Uber and Lyft at the same time? I see many cars with both stickers on the windshield, and it seems like a very powerful force preventing one or the other from gaining a monopoly status in the city. When a driver using both apps is waiting for a ride, whose time are they clocking under? Does that create legal incentives for drivers to drive for one company, and in doing so make it very hard to sustain minority competitor in the ride sharing space?

hndamien 7y ago

Why is there no supply side software for Uber drivers like in ad tech?