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"Gig workers want both flexibility and benefits." Times have changed. People don't want stable jobs anymore. That's why the industries where workers have a m

• thorin 6y ago
  If you offer people stable work, with good pay and benefits, pension, healthcare (in the US), you won't have a shortage of applicants believe me. This myth being spread that people want flexible work is perpetuated by the people who benefit.
  • rmrfstar 6y ago
    Sorry that my sarcasm wasn't clear. The idea that people enjoy being marginally attached "gig workers" is absurd. Talk to an Uber driver. If they aren't scared that you are a spy from corporate, they will tell you what they really think.
  • londons_explore 6y ago
    I want flexible work... The ability to earn some money with zero notice is awesome. The minute you start requiring contracts and working hours, and qualifications, and exclusivity, it has suddenly made life dull. Suddenly you're a drone wearing a suit working 9-5 for 50 years then retiring when you're too old to fulfil your dreams. No thanks!
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    • thorin 6y ago
      I'm not saying no-one wants it. The vast majority of people would love to take a safe job working in a car plant or in the civil service if it paid for a good lifestyle, home etc. Once you have a family you have certain restrictions on routine e.g. school that force you to do things in a certain way even if you're completely flexible. I've had plenty of career gaps and flexibility but strangely all within the flexibility of pretty standard permanent jobs.
      • AmericanChopper 6y ago
        That’s really only one way to look at flexibility. I’ve had my employment end rather abruptly in the past, and I turned to gig work to get by (it wasn’t Uber, but it was the same sort of employment relationship). The issue I had wasn’t that I could only work certain hours in the day. It was that I needed to start a new job immediately. If only stable long term employment relationships were legal, then I would have had to search for weeks, go through endless recruiting processes, and if I was lucky I could have expected to get my next pay check in a couple of months. That’s what happens when you require employers to make that level of commitment to people. Having a job available that I could essentially just turn up to and start doing immediately, and then stop doing just as quickly, was exactly what I needed. Especially because I was quite young and financially unstable at the time. It really saved me back then, and if somebody had tried to tell me that they wanted to prohibit me from doing that, because the work I was doing didn’t meet their standards, I would have told them to take a hike. What happens when you try to forcibly impose those standards isn’t that everybody’s working conditions/arrangements magically improve. What happens is the price of labor goes up, the demand for labor goes down, and you end up taking work away from people that were happy to do it, and leaving them with no work at all.
        • rmrfstar 6y ago
          > prohibit me from doing that As far as I can tell, no one is talking about prohibiting temporary contract work. What most people seem to be saying is, you shouldn't be able to pretend that people are temporary contract workers when they really aren't.
          • AmericanChopper 6y ago
            If it had taken me 12 months of working that job to get me by while I found a new permanent one, I would have done it for 12 months, and been quite grateful to have it. I should be the person who has the greatest say in whether I’m a contract worker or not, and exactly what you are talking about is prohibiting me from doing that.
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  • cik2e 6y ago
    It’s not a myth. The article says that 2/3 of drivers highly value the flexibility arrangement. I’ve driven Uber for that exact reason myself. I’ve also spoken to many drivers and almost every single one has said something about “being your own boss” as being the key benefit. Sure, there maybe plenty of people who would love to be Uber employees but they aren’t the majority of those driving for Uber today. What Uber drivers really want is more money, and the continued flexibility to earn and spend it when and how they want to.
    • rvense 6y ago
      But the alternative for most Uber drivers is not a stable job in the fields that the post you're replying to mentioned. It's probably coffee shops, fast food, call center work or similar. If your alternative is that, being your own boss obviously sounds good. The solution here is not just to fix Uber, but generally the circumstances and compensation for these kinds of jobs.
      • SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
        I guess I agree in principle that we should work to build a country where everyone has a satisfying job and makes enough money to live a decent life. But that doesn't seem like a feasible near-term project, so we're gonna have to figure out how things should work in the interim.
      • pnutjam 6y ago
        Yes, if you've never worked a scheduled service sector job you don't understand. 6am to 2pm on day, 8pm to 4pm the next and 3 days of 3p to 10pm in a row. That makes Uber look good, especially when that schedule is not known until the day before it starts for many workers.
    • rbg246 6y ago
      They like flexibility because it's their second job trying to make enough to live on.
• saalweachter 6y ago
  Tech companies don't give their workers flexible schedules instead of pensions because flextime is more valuable than a pension. They give them flextime because (a) it costs them nothing (b) it has no impact on the quality of the work done (c) flextime workers are just as if not more likely to overwork and (d) it costs them nothing.
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• starfallg 6y ago
  >That's why the industries where workers have a modicum of power (law, medicine, finance, tech) are dominated by "flexible" work schedules. Read that as "grueling". I take that's what you meant.
• Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  > Times have changed. People don't want stable jobs anymore Citation needed; while I do agree / believe that people want more flexibility in their work (choose how many hours / week, when, etc to work around things like child care, avoid traffic, etc), they still want stability. People (read: I) want a max 5 day / week, max 40 hour / week contract that covers cost of living + luxuries, not a "maybe you'll do 10 hours this week, we'll let you know when you can come in" kinda deal. The gig economy is telling people that their income depends on how much rides they do, basically forcing them to work 12+ hour, 7 day work weeks to make ends meet. You can claim that's their choice, but if a 'regular' work week doesn't cover the cost, it's not a feasible job. The gig economy is an extension of what seemed to become the new norm in the US, working multiple jobs to make ends meet. This should not be necessary. If a 40 hour work week is not enough, wages are too low and / or cost of living is too high.
  • jfoster 6y ago
    The other thing the gig economy does is entirely (for better or worse) expose people to the supply/demand realities of the business. For example, if you are a full-time employed programmer at Uber, you get paid the same every week, regardless of how many people request rides. In fact, if you put in more hours as a full-time programmer, you generally might not even get paid any extra for them. If you are a driver, you are paid per ride and dependent on the parameters of the ride. (time, distance, min fare, etc.) It's entirely possible to break down the different pros/cons of each type of employment and repackage them. It's really just about whether that should happen and what should/shouldn't be included. Flexibility and the option to choose when they will work is pretty core to these types of jobs. What would be traded away to make that happen?
    • im3w1l 6y ago
      > For example, if you are a full-time employed programmer at Uber, you get paid the same every week, regardless of how many people request rides. Most tech companies give stock / options so there is some connection.
  • pnutjam 6y ago
• jawns 6y ago
  You are conflating income stability with process stability. Income stability benefits workers, because when their income is stable (same amount in each paycheck, paychecks in regular intervals) it is much easier to make a budget. There is less worry about, "Will I get enough hours this week to pay my rent?" Process stability often benefits employers over workers, but sometimes it doesn't benefit either employers or workers. Flexible schedules are generally an acknowledgment by employers that they're not losing much (and may even see productivity gains) by allowing workers to have some wiggle room in their hours -- but workers gain a lot from this flexibility.
• maxehmookau 6y ago
  > People don't want stable jobs anymore. Whoa whoa whoa. Whoa. That's a heck of a generalisation.
• dragonwriter 6y ago
  > People don't want stable jobs anymore. Sure they do. > That's why the industries where workers have a modicum of power (law, medicine, finance, tech) are dominated by "flexible" work schedules. Flexible work schedules and stable jobs are orthogonal concerns. Flexible work schedule is “employee has some freedom to set working schedule without adverse consequence”, stable job is “employee has relative security against loss of income, benefits, and employment”. People absolutely still want stable jobs (though they are much harder to find), whether or not they also want flexible work schedules. What has changed is that traditional employment in the private sector isn't nearly as secure as it used to be, which makes the gig-work vs. traditional employment calculus favor the former more than it would have in the past, since the choice is between insecure work without flexibility and slightly more insecure work with flexibility, rather than secure work without flexibility and unsecure work with flexibility. Also, for many, it's the choice between no work and insecure work, and whether or not people want stable work, they definitely are compelled by our economic system to generally prefer some work over no work.
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