6 ms·

There is no stick; they already have to do that. If the drivers don’t like the rates and think they earn too little, they quit. Uber has to ensure that drivers

• drusepth 6y ago
  >> Drivers then could, over their local "$city Uber drivers" FB/WhatsApp group, agree to not take any ride below $X, >This is, of course, illegal. What law does this break?
  • poizan42 6y ago
    In the US, I think it's Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act. It's referenced from the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_fixing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_fixing
    • abduhl 6y ago
      That’s an interesting question actually. Can a third party who technically has no say in setting the actual price of a product be said to be engaging in price fixing by refusing to enter into a market, even if done collectively?
    • sudosysgen 6y ago
      I'm, to say the very least, not sure that the Sherman Anti-trust Act prevents collective bargaining.
      • fastball 6y ago
        Given that the price in question is put on consumers and Uber only takes a cut, this indeed sounds more like price-fixing than collective bargaining.
        • sudosysgen 6y ago
          Collective bargaining is always price fixing on the price of labour. So is the minimum wage. It also explicitly legal, and generally good for the common person. In general, price fixing of the cost of labour is only found to be illegal price fixing when the people fixing the price are not (or not only) employees/workers. Which isn't the case here.
          • fastball 6y ago
            Collective bargaining applies when you are demanding things from an employer. But in this case, drivers colluding to not accept ride-shares under a certain price would be demanding a price from the consumer (which again, ride-share companies are only taking a fraction of, so it really is a price-fix on the consumer). And under such a scenario where that was allowed by the Ubers/Lyfts of the world, drivers would certainly be private contractors, and therefore business entities in their own right. So price-fixing.
            • sudosysgen 6y ago
              Two things. Firstly, if you consider that Uber is only an intermediary and nothing else, then the consumer is the employer. Making this collective bargaining, Employers are consumers in the labour market. Price fixing is always against the interests of a pure consumer, including collective bargaining. Unions are beneficial because (and only if) the vast majority are workers much moreso than consumers. Secondly, as we have seen, since the money is paid to Uber, and Uber decides how much the rides cost and to who they are assigned when, as well as the fact as Uber pays drivers, and in combination with the fact that drivers are the core business of Uber, they are indeed employees, and this is collective bargaining. In both cases, it is collective bargaining. If the consumer is the rider, and they directly pay with a cut to Uber the fare, as well as decide the price they are offering and control how the ride goes, then the driver is the employee. In the real world and according to California statute, the driver is the employee (of Uber). Therefore, it is collective bargaining.
              • 6y ago
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
• stale2002 6y ago
  "> Drivers then could, over their local "$city Uber drivers" FB/WhatsApp group, agree to not take any ride below $X, This is, of course, illegal." Although I am not 100% certain on this, I think that these kinds of anti-trust laws only apply when certain companies have huge amounts of market power. I believe that certain "anti-competitive" behavior would not be illegal, if done by a whole bunch of small contractors. The obvious example would be unions that do this. But it is possible that this is a special exception to the law.
• ummonk 6y ago
  The bonus pay and special deals are actually what would make the contractor classification somewhat questionable, even without the California law. Uber is using incentives to try to control its drivers' hours.