5 ms·

Would a good compromise be if you work less than say 15 hours a week you don’t get all the employee benefits and if you work closer to a full time schedule you

Would a good compromise be if you work less than say 15 hours a week you don’t get all the employee benefits and if you work closer to a full time schedule you do? I hate the idea of closing it off to people that just want to side income.

simple_phrases 6y ago
People work side jobs all the time where they're considered employees. Nothing is preventing them from doing the same with Uber.
- theptip 6y ago
  If Uber drivers become employees, I'd expect Uber would have them work fixed schedules rather than have free working hours. They try to incentivize drivers to work during off-hours, but can't specify shifts and have their workers remain classified as ICs. This would make Uber less useful for the workers that want to dip in for an hour or two. Net utility from the change might still be positive as I suspect these days most drivers work something closer to full-time / shifts, but I'd want to see more data on this.
  - csa 6y ago
    > If Uber drivers become employees, I'd expect Uber would have them work fixed schedules rather than have free working hours. In California, this is one of the tests of whether someone is an independent contractor or an employee — who dictates the hours worked. I wouldn’t be surprised if this ends up biting many drivers in the hurt. Uber can easily say “You want employee benefits? No problem. We tell you when to work, and you probably won’t like your schedule.” And the crappy schedule may not be because Uber is being ornery — it may just be when they need drivers.
    - NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
      Bizarre thought experiment: if Uber drivers are employed by Uber; shouldn't independent taxi drivers be employed by the city that licenses them on the same basis? A significant fraction of taxi drivers (>25%) are self-employed. They own their own vehicles and set their own hours of work. In many cases, they're actually obliged by the terms of their licenses to take fares (actually less independent than Uber drivers). The fares they charge are set by their licensing authorities, rather than being negotiable.
      - viscanti 6y ago
        If the argument is that workers should be treated as employees because of the benefits given to employees (like health care), then you could apply that same argument here. The weird thing for me is to see politicians who advocate for universal health care also advocating for more workers being classified as employees. It seems like one of the big benefits of universal health care is that it decouples heath care and earning money, but I rarely see politicians making that argument.
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    > Net utility from the change might still be positive as I suspect these days most drivers work something closer to full-time / shifts, but I'd want to see more data on this. You also have to keep in mind that full time minimum wage jobs are more commonly available in the market than jobs with very high flexibility, so we may want to preserve their availability for people who need that. That may even be what the people driving full time are after. Even if you're driving 40 hours a week, if it means you get to do it in weird slices around your kids' schedules, that could be worth the lack of benefits. But require them and you end up scheduled in inflexible 8 hour contiguous blocks and you might as well be working at Walmart.
  - simple_phrases 6y ago
    > If Uber drivers become employees, I'd expect Uber would have them work fixed schedules rather than have free working hours. That's a weird expectation, because millions of people work jobs as employees without fixed schedules, and in areas with similar rulings, this doesn't happen with gig workers.
LeifCarrotson 6y ago
That leads to what's "underemployment", and to people working multiple side income jobs as their sole source of income with benefits from none of them. It's already present at 30 hours a week/130 hours a month in the US. It doesn't necessarily mean that the market for side income jobs is closed, it just closes those jobs and businesses which are nonviable if they're required to pay their employees a reasonable wage.
MiroF 6y ago
> I hate the idea of closing it off to people that just want to side income. Oftentimes this is a necessary side-effect of what (I believe at least) is good legislation. A minimum wage of $7 might close off a job to less qualified people who want to work for less, but on-net I think is a good policy.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  I don't understand how people think like this. It's like a policy that gives to the needy by taking from the even more needy is somehow a good idea. If you want to help people who can't command high wages, lower their taxes and make it up from people who have more money. Or give them a UBI to much the same effect. Don't take the money out of opportunities for even worse off people, that's ridiculous.
  - viscanti 6y ago
    Minimum wages were initially created as a way to price people of color out of the job market. They still disproportionally effect people of color. Creating a floor on earnings prevents a large section of the population from ever getting ANY work experience. If they can't ever get to the first rung of the career ladder they're unlikely to ever get beyond that. There's some weird obsession of hoping that businesses (or the free market) are going to solve all of the problems of society. That's clearly not the case, but instead of the government stepping in to address those issues, they hope that creating things like earnings floor mandates will solve the problem. Those patchwork implementation generally end up having unintended (or in the case of minimum wages, actually intended and racist) consequences.
_jal 6y ago
By adding a boundary with financial implications, you also incentivize businesses to ensure employees don't cross it. I don't have a good replacement mechanism that keeps benefits tied to employment and isn't complex and likely prone to other perverse incentives. But at the very least, we should be clear about what the incentives end up being. Which is why I think the right answer is to decouple things like healthcare from employment.
- dgoldstein0 6y ago
  A possible solution is to have no hard cutoff. Work 5 hours a week? Get 5/40ths of full time benefits. Or something like that. Obviously it's tricky with benefits that are all or nothing, though some of that could be adjusted - for health insurance, this could mean Uber offers to pay a variable portion of the cost based on how much you worked in the last ~3 months. With anything on a strictly proportional scale, there's no obvious financial incentive to keep workers from working the number of hours they want. Though I agree healthcare is the one thing that would probably be better off not tied to employment.
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    Even better, just stop having non-cash benefits for employees whatsoever, which would allow them to command higher compensation in cash and then buy whatever "benefits" they want or with it or not. The entire concept of "benefits" came out of regulatory arbitrage to avoid 20th century wage controls or because of differential tax treatment. It's an anachronism that should cease to exist.
    - TylerE 6y ago
      That is very dangerous. People are, in the large, morons. That goes double when it comes to money and health.
      - invalidOrTaken 6y ago
        They stop being morons pretty quick after having been bitten though. Remember: we are in this situation right now with freelancers, gig workers, etc. If you're worried about creating an army of uninsured, they already exist.
barasuara 6y ago
Not at all. Uber may discreetly and artificially limit the orders for drivers from their infrastructure (assuming idle or downtime don't count as work hours). Grab, for example, has been known to unilaterally and unfairly reduce the workloads on drivers not affiliated with an exclusive fleet company.
SkyBelow 6y ago
Boundaries should always have constant slopes. The best example I'm familiar with is the benefits that kick in for a US employee who works full time. This results in companies doing a number of actions to get their workers to work near enough to full time without crossing that line. 11 people working 36.5 is much cheaper than 10 working 40. If the law instead was sloped, offering a partial benefit equal to hours/40, this wouldn't happen. (To avoid creating an incentive for mass overtime, the law would allow for over 100% benefits.)
walshemj 6y ago
Then peoples hours would be capped at < 15 bad employers do this in the uk

simple_phrases 6y ago

People work side jobs all the time where they're considered employees. Nothing is preventing them from doing the same with Uber.

theptip 6y ago
If Uber drivers become employees, I'd expect Uber would have them work fixed schedules rather than have free working hours. They try to incentivize drivers to work during off-hours, but can't specify shifts and have their workers remain classified as ICs. This would make Uber less useful for the workers that want to dip in for an hour or two. Net utility from the change might still be positive as I suspect these days most drivers work something closer to full-time / shifts, but I'd want to see more data on this.
- csa 6y ago
  > If Uber drivers become employees, I'd expect Uber would have them work fixed schedules rather than have free working hours. In California, this is one of the tests of whether someone is an independent contractor or an employee — who dictates the hours worked. I wouldn’t be surprised if this ends up biting many drivers in the hurt. Uber can easily say “You want employee benefits? No problem. We tell you when to work, and you probably won’t like your schedule.” And the crappy schedule may not be because Uber is being ornery — it may just be when they need drivers.
  - NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
    Bizarre thought experiment: if Uber drivers are employed by Uber; shouldn't independent taxi drivers be employed by the city that licenses them on the same basis? A significant fraction of taxi drivers (>25%) are self-employed. They own their own vehicles and set their own hours of work. In many cases, they're actually obliged by the terms of their licenses to take fares (actually less independent than Uber drivers). The fares they charge are set by their licensing authorities, rather than being negotiable.
    - viscanti 6y ago
      If the argument is that workers should be treated as employees because of the benefits given to employees (like health care), then you could apply that same argument here. The weird thing for me is to see politicians who advocate for universal health care also advocating for more workers being classified as employees. It seems like one of the big benefits of universal health care is that it decouples heath care and earning money, but I rarely see politicians making that argument.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  > Net utility from the change might still be positive as I suspect these days most drivers work something closer to full-time / shifts, but I'd want to see more data on this. You also have to keep in mind that full time minimum wage jobs are more commonly available in the market than jobs with very high flexibility, so we may want to preserve their availability for people who need that. That may even be what the people driving full time are after. Even if you're driving 40 hours a week, if it means you get to do it in weird slices around your kids' schedules, that could be worth the lack of benefits. But require them and you end up scheduled in inflexible 8 hour contiguous blocks and you might as well be working at Walmart.
- simple_phrases 6y ago
  > If Uber drivers become employees, I'd expect Uber would have them work fixed schedules rather than have free working hours. That's a weird expectation, because millions of people work jobs as employees without fixed schedules, and in areas with similar rulings, this doesn't happen with gig workers.

LeifCarrotson 6y ago

That leads to what's "underemployment", and to people working multiple side income jobs as their sole source of income with benefits from none of them. It's already present at 30 hours a week/130 hours a month in the US. It doesn't necessarily mean that the market for side income jobs is closed, it just closes those jobs and businesses which are nonviable if they're required to pay their employees a reasonable wage.

MiroF 6y ago

> I hate the idea of closing it off to people that just want to side income. Oftentimes this is a necessary side-effect of what (I believe at least) is good legislation. A minimum wage of $7 might close off a job to less qualified people who want to work for less, but on-net I think is a good policy.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago
I don't understand how people think like this. It's like a policy that gives to the needy by taking from the even more needy is somehow a good idea. If you want to help people who can't command high wages, lower their taxes and make it up from people who have more money. Or give them a UBI to much the same effect. Don't take the money out of opportunities for even worse off people, that's ridiculous.
- viscanti 6y ago
  Minimum wages were initially created as a way to price people of color out of the job market. They still disproportionally effect people of color. Creating a floor on earnings prevents a large section of the population from ever getting ANY work experience. If they can't ever get to the first rung of the career ladder they're unlikely to ever get beyond that. There's some weird obsession of hoping that businesses (or the free market) are going to solve all of the problems of society. That's clearly not the case, but instead of the government stepping in to address those issues, they hope that creating things like earnings floor mandates will solve the problem. Those patchwork implementation generally end up having unintended (or in the case of minimum wages, actually intended and racist) consequences.

_jal 6y ago

By adding a boundary with financial implications, you also incentivize businesses to ensure employees don't cross it. I don't have a good replacement mechanism that keeps benefits tied to employment and isn't complex and likely prone to other perverse incentives. But at the very least, we should be clear about what the incentives end up being. Which is why I think the right answer is to decouple things like healthcare from employment.

dgoldstein0 6y ago
A possible solution is to have no hard cutoff. Work 5 hours a week? Get 5/40ths of full time benefits. Or something like that. Obviously it's tricky with benefits that are all or nothing, though some of that could be adjusted - for health insurance, this could mean Uber offers to pay a variable portion of the cost based on how much you worked in the last ~3 months. With anything on a strictly proportional scale, there's no obvious financial incentive to keep workers from working the number of hours they want. Though I agree healthcare is the one thing that would probably be better off not tied to employment.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  Even better, just stop having non-cash benefits for employees whatsoever, which would allow them to command higher compensation in cash and then buy whatever "benefits" they want or with it or not. The entire concept of "benefits" came out of regulatory arbitrage to avoid 20th century wage controls or because of differential tax treatment. It's an anachronism that should cease to exist.
  - TylerE 6y ago
    That is very dangerous. People are, in the large, morons. That goes double when it comes to money and health.
    - invalidOrTaken 6y ago
      They stop being morons pretty quick after having been bitten though. Remember: we are in this situation right now with freelancers, gig workers, etc. If you're worried about creating an army of uninsured, they already exist.

barasuara 6y ago

Not at all. Uber may discreetly and artificially limit the orders for drivers from their infrastructure (assuming idle or downtime don't count as work hours). Grab, for example, has been known to unilaterally and unfairly reduce the workloads on drivers not affiliated with an exclusive fleet company.

SkyBelow 6y ago

Boundaries should always have constant slopes. The best example I'm familiar with is the benefits that kick in for a US employee who works full time. This results in companies doing a number of actions to get their workers to work near enough to full time without crossing that line. 11 people working 36.5 is much cheaper than 10 working 40. If the law instead was sloped, offering a partial benefit equal to hours/40, this wouldn't happen. (To avoid creating an incentive for mass overtime, the law would allow for over 100% benefits.)

walshemj 6y ago

Then peoples hours would be capped at < 15 bad employers do this in the uk