7 ms·

>All gig workers are slaves and we should treat each other with more dignity and upgrade them to employees. It's our bloody duty as a decent human being. Lyft/

by jasode 6y ago

>All gig workers are slaves and we should treat each other with more dignity and upgrade them to employees. It's our bloody duty as a decent human being. Lyft/Uber can upgrade them to employees but the arithmetic of bottom-up economics means Uber has to raise prices to cover full employment benefits. The raised fares conflict with what passengers are willing to pay. E.g. even though yellow medallion taxis often cost more than Uber (especially for suburb trips) -- those yellow cab drivers were not employees with benefits like unpaid leave and healthcare. I believe what this really comes down to is that society is not willing to pay the higher prices for drivers to be treated as employees. Same situation as not willing to paying higher prices at hair salons so hair stylists are full employees (instead of being contractors) with healthcare. It does seem like constantly blaming Uber for mis-categorizing employees conveniently shifts the blame from the society/customers. The extra money to pay the drivers comes from the passengers. Let's look at comparison cases: The city of Austin TX temporarily banned Uber from operating there. A non-profit rideshare (RideAustin[1]) was formed. Even though they don't have to implement the same business practices as Uber/Lyft, it's interesting that the RideAustin drivers are also independent contractors and not employees with full benefits. Also as far as I can tell, there is no worker co-op owned by the drivers anywhere in the world that treats members/drivers as employees with benefits. Why is that? Serious question about the framing of ethics: if (some) drivers see an arbitrage opportunity because potential passengers think Uber-with-employee-drivers "charges too much" so drivers willingly choose a rideshare co-op that treat them as contractors to undercut Uber, are the co-op drivers being unethical towards the Uber-drivers-as-employees? Yes, a judge can force Uber to convert everyone to employees but that same judge can't force potential customers to pay higher prices. The alternative entities of RideAustin and driver co-ops shows there's a limit to prices that ride shares can charge. [1] http://www.rideaustin.com/ http://www.rideaustin.com/

2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
>Lyft/Uber can upgrade them to employees but the arithmetic of bottom-up economics means Uber has to raise prices to cover full employment benefits. The raised fares conflict with what passengers are willing to pay Then the business is not profitable enough to exist. Simple as that.
- bohm 6y ago
  People still need transportation.
  - LeonidasXIV 6y ago
    > People still need transportation. Uber left Denmark after they decided that they have no interest in adhering to the relevant regulations. We still have trains, commuter trains, subways, busses, bikes, scooters, taxis and cars. People still can get to places and fairly conveniently.
  - ethanbond 6y ago
    If only there were examples of cities that operate just fine without boatloads of private car based transportation...
    - ghaff 6y ago
      Like Manhattan? No one takes taxis/Uber there.
  - Broken_Hippo 6y ago
    Sure. But they don't need Uber or Lyft. You can build a robust bus system, government run and not expected to make a profit, for example. You can have registered cabs. You can have rental bikes (bonus if they are electric assisted). If you can make sure scooters don't litter the walkways, that works as well. If you already have the infrastructure in place, perhaps trams or subways are a good thing. We could expand busses to be able to travel from city to city. Same thing with trains: Make them run on time and expand. Busses, however, use the most extensive existing infrastructure and would likely be more cost-effective in most areas. Not all "busses" need to be large, though. In some areas or at some times of day, a 15 passenger van might be enough. We could have bonus points if we changed school bus laws so that we don't have a duplicate bus system that leaves busses unused for much of the day. In the US, one could take a sliver of the military budget (where there is plenty of waste) to pay for it.
- ethanbond 6y ago
mercer 6y ago
> I believe what this really comes down to is that society is not willing to pay the higher prices for drivers to be treated as employees. Same situation as not willing to paying higher prices at hair salons so hair stylists are full employees (instead of being contractors) with healthcare. It does seem like constantly blaming Uber for mis-categorizing employees conveniently shifts the blame from the society/customers. The extra money to pay the drivers comes from the passengers. Generally I'd argue that society/customers, and in particular employees/'contractors' don't have all that much leverage over big companies, especially ones that capture a market. That's why we have regulation. Blaming the customers for not keeping track of everything and going for the cheapest option is like blaming climate change on the consumer. It's technically sort of true, but practically speaking it makes no sense. Consumers will keep buying cigarettes, marketeers will keep marketing them via entertainment channels, and tobacco companies will keep rolling in the money and do everything they can to encourage all this. But taxes, anti-smoking campaigns and government-enforced restrictions on where you can smoke have made a /ton/ of difference over the years. There seems to be a trend to have 'flex-workers' (contractors) where in practice they all quack like employee ducks, without many of the benefits and guarantees. It mostly feels like a loop-hole and /of course/ the average consumer will go for cheap and convenient when they can. doesn't mean it's a good thing for society (and in particular the workers).
- piva00 6y ago
  > Blaming the customers for not keeping track of everything and going for the cheapest option is like blaming climate change on the consumer. It's technically sort of true, but practically speaking it makes no sense. It's part of the current US economical ideology where individual responsibility is taken as a mantra. I completely agree with you, it's a good soundbite that any simple analysis and some thinking show how stupid it is.
  - mercer 6y ago
    Divide and conquer is very effective when the unit of measurement is the individual. I'd say this is core to what separates the 'left' in the US from the 'liberals' or 'liberal left'. For better and worse.
znpy 6y ago
> Lyft/Uber can upgrade them to employees but the arithmetic of bottom-up economics means Uber has to raise prices to cover full employment benefits What's the problem with that?
dustinmoris 6y ago
This is a straw man argument. Only because other jobs also have issues doesn't mean we shouldn't try to start improving somewhere at some point. Also customers NEVER want to pay more for anything, so that is hardly an argument to treat some people like slaves. It is the duty of the strong to fight for better treatment of those who can't fight for themselves because they lack financial security or for other practical reasons. Law is exactly doing that.
- jasode 6y ago
  >Only because other jobs also have issues doesn't mean we shouldn't try to start improving somewhere at some point. Also customers NEVER want to pay more for anything, so that is hardly an argument to treat some people like slaves. Please don't paint my intention to describe the underlying economics for higher quality focused discussion as me being against humanity's improvement and you being the one with the moral high ground. I was emphasizing that there's a dynamic interplay between what drivers (whether Uber or non-profit driver co-op) can charge and what customers will willingly pay. Your comment left the dynamics of out of it which can lead to a naive assumption of what law can realistically accomplish. Consider your next statement: >It is the duty of the strong to fight for better treatment of those who can't fight for themselves because they lack financial security or for other practical reasons. Law is exactly doing that. The law isn't just exactly that. A law that attempts to add economic advantage to one group will inevitably make another group worse. The other disadvantaged group often becomes the "unseen"[1] group. Instead of talking in feel-good sentiments that nobody can debate (e.g. "duty of strong to fight for the weak")... let's try to discuss via math/probabilities: Uber has about ~150,000 drivers in California. A law that forces all drivers to become employees does not automatically mean 150000 get minimum hourly wage of $15 and 2 weeks of paid time off. No, what happens is that many (I'm guessing more than 50%) Uber drivers would be removed from the system to comply with the "drivers-must-be-employees" law. The drivers that remain in Uber would be the ones on profitable routes in more affluent regions of the cities than can pay higher prices. The unemployed drivers that lost income from Uber now become the "unseen". Do the unseen who get $0 because Uber can't afford them as employees get also get attention in our moral framework? [1] Bastiat's essay on "that which is seen and unseen": https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Essays_on_Political_Economy/That_Which_Is_Seen,_and_That_Which_Is_Not_Seen https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Essays_on_Political_Economy/T...
dnlbtlr 6y ago
“ Uber has to raise prices to cover full employment benefits. ” The question is how much would this be per ride(a few cents?) and do they really? Uber and Lyft are raking in cash.
kungato 6y ago
I mean in a EU country a male haircut costs 6€. In another EU country a male haircut costs at least 30€. People can live on both wages. These number are relatively arbitrary as they make sense in the ecosystem of housing and other prices. California can compensate in many ways for the fact that "people don't want to pay the gig workes more". Free/social healthcare, education and housing via progressive taxing etc. Since people in the USA don't want to be "slaves of communism" or whatever, they are wage slaves
murgindrag 6y ago
There is no such thing as "society is not willing to pay the higher prices for drivers to be treated as employees." Society isn't a brain which thinks. There is emergent behavior. * I am glad to be forced to pay more to have Uber/Lyft drivers treated well. I think we should have worker's right protections. * I am unwilling to pay more myself as a one-off (e.g. through tipping). It's a Prisoner's Dilemma. That's what regulations are for. If everyone were like me, we'd end up exactly where we are. Do I think everyone is exactly like me? No. But I think it's a similar model. That said, the concept of treating gig workers as employees is dumb as rocks. It's reusing in 1920 mechanism to accomplish a 2020 goal. My goal is for gig workers to have health care, vacations, and so on, not that they be employees; they're not. The gig workers I know appreciate being able to jump from Uber to Instacart to other life constraints. A half-dozen 1/12th time jobs is just a bad system. And the medallion cab system was far more abusive of drivers than Uber/Lyft ever was. The power there sits with the medallion investors. The drivers were getting shafted.
- maxehmookau 6y ago
  > There is no such thing as "society is not willing to pay the higher prices for drivers to be treated as employees." Society isn't a brain which thinks. There is emergent behavior. I don't see this argument made enough, especially on HN.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
    I think because a lot of people realize that "brains which think" are themselves emergent behavior of a complex system, which is ultimately not really different.
- treeman79 6y ago
  I did Uber eats for a few months after I got injured. Between that and renting out a room on airbnb, It kept us from going homeless while I recovered enough to work again. Turns out Disability insurance is nearly worthless for any complicated injuries.
- momokoko 6y ago
yeetman21 6y ago
ik i would not be willing to pay higher prices, even if it did mean better conditions or whatever, sounds v. mercenary but its the honest truth
seanmcdirmid 6y ago
Why wouldn’t taxi drivers be forced to become employees as well as truck drivers and other gig economy workers?
jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
> Also as far as I can tell, there is no worker co-op owned by the drivers anywhere in the world that treats members/drivers as employees with benefits. Why is that? http://www.unioncabpdx.com/ http://www.unioncabpdx.com/ The world is a big place. I'm sure there are others.
- jasode 6y ago
  >http://www.unioncabpdx.com/ http://www.unioncabpdx.com/ Are you responding to the actual constraints in this discussion of _employees_ with _benefits_? As far as I can tell, Union Cab PDX does not provide employee benefits such as: - minimum hourly wage - paid time off (e.g. funding 2 weeks vacation) - unemployment payments if laid off I don't know if it's related but Unioncabpdx recently left the CWA Local 7901 union as they weren't paying membership dues: https://nwlaborpress.org/2018/12/union-cab-quietly-goes-non-union/ https://nwlaborpress.org/2018/12/union-cab-quietly-goes-non-...
  - jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
    Yes, they provide benefits, including healthcare. I don't know anything about them pulling out of the CWA local.
    - jasode 6y ago
      >Yes, they provide benefits, including healthcare. But Union Cab Portland does not provide a guaranteed minimum hourly wage (a benefit that real employees are entitled to) and they are exempt like every other taxi company in Portland from the minimum wage law because taxi drivers are treated as contractors.
blaser-waffle 6y ago
From http://www.rideaustin.com/faq http://www.rideaustin.com/faq > RideAustin is a community driven nonprofit ridesharing company founded by local entrepreneurs. The RideAustin launch team is led by Joe Liemandt, a longtime Austin tech entrepreneur, and Andy Tryba, CEO of Crossover. It is powered by donations, with paid and volunteer hours from both the Austin tech community and the broader Austin community working together. So it's a non-profit, with volunteers ("volunteers"), who can get a stipend. Sounds like a legal fiction, but I'd need to know more about how much they pay, how much money the founders make, etc. The cynic in me says it's the same shit but marketed better and not publicly traded, but there may be some genuine benefits.
aiilns 6y ago
Was society willing to pay for workers when they had slaves? To think that if only the Confederate states would have made that iron-clad argument back then, the civil war would have been avoided. Imagine how low the prices could be if we still had slaves. If your business is unsustainable without taking advantage of the workers then it ought not to exist.

by jasode 6y ago

2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago

>Lyft/Uber can upgrade them to employees but the arithmetic of bottom-up economics means Uber has to raise prices to cover full employment benefits. The raised fares conflict with what passengers are willing to pay Then the business is not profitable enough to exist. Simple as that.

bohm 6y ago
People still need transportation.
- LeonidasXIV 6y ago
  > People still need transportation. Uber left Denmark after they decided that they have no interest in adhering to the relevant regulations. We still have trains, commuter trains, subways, busses, bikes, scooters, taxis and cars. People still can get to places and fairly conveniently.
- ethanbond 6y ago
  If only there were examples of cities that operate just fine without boatloads of private car based transportation...
  - ghaff 6y ago
    Like Manhattan? No one takes taxis/Uber there.
- Broken_Hippo 6y ago
  Sure. But they don't need Uber or Lyft. You can build a robust bus system, government run and not expected to make a profit, for example. You can have registered cabs. You can have rental bikes (bonus if they are electric assisted). If you can make sure scooters don't litter the walkways, that works as well. If you already have the infrastructure in place, perhaps trams or subways are a good thing. We could expand busses to be able to travel from city to city. Same thing with trains: Make them run on time and expand. Busses, however, use the most extensive existing infrastructure and would likely be more cost-effective in most areas. Not all "busses" need to be large, though. In some areas or at some times of day, a 15 passenger van might be enough. We could have bonus points if we changed school bus laws so that we don't have a duplicate bus system that leaves busses unused for much of the day. In the US, one could take a sliver of the military budget (where there is plenty of waste) to pay for it.
ethanbond 6y ago

mercer 6y ago

> I believe what this really comes down to is that society is not willing to pay the higher prices for drivers to be treated as employees. Same situation as not willing to paying higher prices at hair salons so hair stylists are full employees (instead of being contractors) with healthcare. It does seem like constantly blaming Uber for mis-categorizing employees conveniently shifts the blame from the society/customers. The extra money to pay the drivers comes from the passengers. Generally I'd argue that society/customers, and in particular employees/'contractors' don't have all that much leverage over big companies, especially ones that capture a market. That's why we have regulation. Blaming the customers for not keeping track of everything and going for the cheapest option is like blaming climate change on the consumer. It's technically sort of true, but practically speaking it makes no sense. Consumers will keep buying cigarettes, marketeers will keep marketing them via entertainment channels, and tobacco companies will keep rolling in the money and do everything they can to encourage all this. But taxes, anti-smoking campaigns and government-enforced restrictions on where you can smoke have made a /ton/ of difference over the years. There seems to be a trend to have 'flex-workers' (contractors) where in practice they all quack like employee ducks, without many of the benefits and guarantees. It mostly feels like a loop-hole and /of course/ the average consumer will go for cheap and convenient when they can. doesn't mean it's a good thing for society (and in particular the workers).

piva00 6y ago
> Blaming the customers for not keeping track of everything and going for the cheapest option is like blaming climate change on the consumer. It's technically sort of true, but practically speaking it makes no sense. It's part of the current US economical ideology where individual responsibility is taken as a mantra. I completely agree with you, it's a good soundbite that any simple analysis and some thinking show how stupid it is.
- mercer 6y ago
  Divide and conquer is very effective when the unit of measurement is the individual. I'd say this is core to what separates the 'left' in the US from the 'liberals' or 'liberal left'. For better and worse.

znpy 6y ago

> Lyft/Uber can upgrade them to employees but the arithmetic of bottom-up economics means Uber has to raise prices to cover full employment benefits What's the problem with that?

dustinmoris 6y ago

This is a straw man argument. Only because other jobs also have issues doesn't mean we shouldn't try to start improving somewhere at some point. Also customers NEVER want to pay more for anything, so that is hardly an argument to treat some people like slaves. It is the duty of the strong to fight for better treatment of those who can't fight for themselves because they lack financial security or for other practical reasons. Law is exactly doing that.

jasode 6y ago
>Only because other jobs also have issues doesn't mean we shouldn't try to start improving somewhere at some point. Also customers NEVER want to pay more for anything, so that is hardly an argument to treat some people like slaves. Please don't paint my intention to describe the underlying economics for higher quality focused discussion as me being against humanity's improvement and you being the one with the moral high ground. I was emphasizing that there's a dynamic interplay between what drivers (whether Uber or non-profit driver co-op) can charge and what customers will willingly pay. Your comment left the dynamics of out of it which can lead to a naive assumption of what law can realistically accomplish. Consider your next statement: >It is the duty of the strong to fight for better treatment of those who can't fight for themselves because they lack financial security or for other practical reasons. Law is exactly doing that. The law isn't just exactly that. A law that attempts to add economic advantage to one group will inevitably make another group worse. The other disadvantaged group often becomes the "unseen"[1] group. Instead of talking in feel-good sentiments that nobody can debate (e.g. "duty of strong to fight for the weak")... let's try to discuss via math/probabilities: Uber has about ~150,000 drivers in California. A law that forces all drivers to become employees does not automatically mean 150000 get minimum hourly wage of $15 and 2 weeks of paid time off. No, what happens is that many (I'm guessing more than 50%) Uber drivers would be removed from the system to comply with the "drivers-must-be-employees" law. The drivers that remain in Uber would be the ones on profitable routes in more affluent regions of the cities than can pay higher prices. The unemployed drivers that lost income from Uber now become the "unseen". Do the unseen who get $0 because Uber can't afford them as employees get also get attention in our moral framework? [1] Bastiat's essay on "that which is seen and unseen": https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Essays_on_Political_Economy/That_Which_Is_Seen,_and_That_Which_Is_Not_Seen https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Essays_on_Political_Economy/T...

dnlbtlr 6y ago

“ Uber has to raise prices to cover full employment benefits. ” The question is how much would this be per ride(a few cents?) and do they really? Uber and Lyft are raking in cash.

kungato 6y ago

I mean in a EU country a male haircut costs 6€. In another EU country a male haircut costs at least 30€. People can live on both wages. These number are relatively arbitrary as they make sense in the ecosystem of housing and other prices. California can compensate in many ways for the fact that "people don't want to pay the gig workes more". Free/social healthcare, education and housing via progressive taxing etc. Since people in the USA don't want to be "slaves of communism" or whatever, they are wage slaves

murgindrag 6y ago

There is no such thing as "society is not willing to pay the higher prices for drivers to be treated as employees." Society isn't a brain which thinks. There is emergent behavior. * I am glad to be forced to pay more to have Uber/Lyft drivers treated well. I think we should have worker's right protections. * I am unwilling to pay more myself as a one-off (e.g. through tipping). It's a Prisoner's Dilemma. That's what regulations are for. If everyone were like me, we'd end up exactly where we are. Do I think everyone is exactly like me? No. But I think it's a similar model. That said, the concept of treating gig workers as employees is dumb as rocks. It's reusing in 1920 mechanism to accomplish a 2020 goal. My goal is for gig workers to have health care, vacations, and so on, not that they be employees; they're not. The gig workers I know appreciate being able to jump from Uber to Instacart to other life constraints. A half-dozen 1/12th time jobs is just a bad system. And the medallion cab system was far more abusive of drivers than Uber/Lyft ever was. The power there sits with the medallion investors. The drivers were getting shafted.

maxehmookau 6y ago
> There is no such thing as "society is not willing to pay the higher prices for drivers to be treated as employees." Society isn't a brain which thinks. There is emergent behavior. I don't see this argument made enough, especially on HN.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
  I think because a lot of people realize that "brains which think" are themselves emergent behavior of a complex system, which is ultimately not really different.
treeman79 6y ago
I did Uber eats for a few months after I got injured. Between that and renting out a room on airbnb, It kept us from going homeless while I recovered enough to work again. Turns out Disability insurance is nearly worthless for any complicated injuries.
momokoko 6y ago

yeetman21 6y ago

ik i would not be willing to pay higher prices, even if it did mean better conditions or whatever, sounds v. mercenary but its the honest truth

seanmcdirmid 6y ago

Why wouldn’t taxi drivers be forced to become employees as well as truck drivers and other gig economy workers?

jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago

> Also as far as I can tell, there is no worker co-op owned by the drivers anywhere in the world that treats members/drivers as employees with benefits. Why is that? http://www.unioncabpdx.com/ http://www.unioncabpdx.com/ The world is a big place. I'm sure there are others.

jasode 6y ago
>http://www.unioncabpdx.com/ http://www.unioncabpdx.com/ Are you responding to the actual constraints in this discussion of _employees_ with _benefits_? As far as I can tell, Union Cab PDX does not provide employee benefits such as: - minimum hourly wage - paid time off (e.g. funding 2 weeks vacation) - unemployment payments if laid off I don't know if it's related but Unioncabpdx recently left the CWA Local 7901 union as they weren't paying membership dues: https://nwlaborpress.org/2018/12/union-cab-quietly-goes-non-union/ https://nwlaborpress.org/2018/12/union-cab-quietly-goes-non-...
- jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
  Yes, they provide benefits, including healthcare. I don't know anything about them pulling out of the CWA local.
  - jasode 6y ago
    >Yes, they provide benefits, including healthcare. But Union Cab Portland does not provide a guaranteed minimum hourly wage (a benefit that real employees are entitled to) and they are exempt like every other taxi company in Portland from the minimum wage law because taxi drivers are treated as contractors.

blaser-waffle 6y ago

From http://www.rideaustin.com/faq http://www.rideaustin.com/faq > RideAustin is a community driven nonprofit ridesharing company founded by local entrepreneurs. The RideAustin launch team is led by Joe Liemandt, a longtime Austin tech entrepreneur, and Andy Tryba, CEO of Crossover. It is powered by donations, with paid and volunteer hours from both the Austin tech community and the broader Austin community working together. So it's a non-profit, with volunteers ("volunteers"), who can get a stipend. Sounds like a legal fiction, but I'd need to know more about how much they pay, how much money the founders make, etc. The cynic in me says it's the same shit but marketed better and not publicly traded, but there may be some genuine benefits.

aiilns 6y ago

Was society willing to pay for workers when they had slaves? To think that if only the Confederate states would have made that iron-clad argument back then, the civil war would have been avoided. Imagine how low the prices could be if we still had slaves. If your business is unsustainable without taking advantage of the workers then it ought not to exist.