8 ms·

> 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

by 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.
jasode 6y ago
>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). Well, instead of abstract descriptions about trends of mis-classified flex-workers and abused loopholes such that nobody can argue about it... I was trying to steer the conversation towards concrete cause & effect. Let's look at another worker-owned driver rideshare -- Local Driver Co-op: https://localdriver.co/ https://localdriver.co/ It costs members/drivers $100 to join. They are trying to undercut Uber and excerpt of verbiage from their webpage: "Riders save up to 20% versus competition -- Enjoy unbeatable rates, guaranteeing your money supports the drivers and their families." Some questions of morals and decency: - Should a judge (or new legislation) force LDC to treat drivers as employees with minimum hourly wage and unpaid time off? Since LDC contractors are trying to undercut Uber, a proposal to force LDC re-classification to "employees" would cause some drivers to protest this. So bottom line is... should drivers even be allowed to declare themselves as independent contractors and form a platform to chase after passengers? - If LDC drivers don't get decent pay -- and we can predict they won't because history shows that taxi drivers and rideshare drivers in every country don't get enough dignified pay to put kids through college and save for retirement and cover the wear&tear on their car -- who is to blame for "abusing* them? LDC? (That would mean the drivers are abusing themselves.) Or the customers/passengers? - Should LDC be completely shut down and that business "should not exist" (as some commenters put it) because it pays too poorly? Let's talk in concrete terms of how "driver protection" laws would realistically affect outcomes. Let's talk about game theory of economics where customers may not willingly play along with the intentions of well-meaning laws and will just avoid paying higher prices. Some drivers themselves may not want to play along with "drivers must be employees with minimum wage". These are the aspects we don't discuss enough.
- plankers 6y ago
  It sounds like you're already pointing to one concrete outcome that would come from these "driver protection" laws: the proliferation of driver co-ops that are able to undercut Uber and Lyft. Assuming they aren't regulated as Uber and Lyft are(for argument's sake), this would allow drivers the choice of whether to become an employee of the big corps or remain an independent contractor by using the co-op platform. I don't think it would be much of a stretch to assume that in this situation you would have sleek, more expensive "luxury" services competing against more humble, but cheaper, community run services. Sounds like a much more equitable arrangement that provides greater choice for both riders and drivers.
luckylion 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. But that's not quite it, I believe. The point isn't that customers choose the cheaper of two options, it's that non-users don't become users of a service until there's a super cheap option. Taxis/Yellow cabs were a thing before Uber, but they're more expensive than what lots of people were willing to pay. It's not "do I want to buy X for $5 or $2?", it's "I won't buy X unless it's $2 max". If you increase Uber's prices to those of Taxis, few people will use them. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's a thing.
- kwanbix 6y ago
  I don´t know how is it in all of the world, but in many countries/cities, the problem with Taxi drivers is that there is no control, they treat you like shit, there is no one else to complain, they take you to the longest route, many have their "clocks" (that is what we call the machine they use to charge you the fare) fixed so that they charge more, and there are illegal taxis that steal from you (as in real robbery). Uber is good because you can complain to Uber, you get refunds, if drivers get bad ratings they are no longer part of Uber, and in general, it is safer than taxis. I was some days ago in another country. I didn't know any Taxi phone number, but I had my uber app, so I just requested an uberx, and it came. Problem solved.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    It sounds like you'd be happy with a premium service (like Uber originally was). You pay more than a taxi but you get all the other benefits you list. Problem solved.
    - kwanbix 6y ago
      Taxi´s companies have existed for a while. Compared to Uber the differences are: customer support is shitty, good luck getting a refund, you need to know the phone numbers or have the apps installed of all of the cities in the world. It is more complicated. Uber is uber internationally. It is only one app, only one (relatively good) support. By the way, I don´t "love" Uber, is just that I see the value on it.
clusterfish 6y ago
Businesses want more profit. Consumers want to pay less. Workers want to earn more. Pretty much always. This doesn't always result in an optimal outcome. Market power, externalities, information asymmetry, etc. This is why we have regulations. Forcing the society and Uber to pay for drivers to be treated as employees seems like a very reasonable outcome. If they don't like it they can hire less drivers, but the ones that remain will at least have some minimum standard of living that developed countries pride themselves for.
- xapata 6y ago
  What does it mean to be "treated like an employee"? I'd like regulation to give everyone healthcare. Are non-employees not worthy?
  - dfxm12 6y ago
    Here's a quick overview, without getting too much into the minutia or Uber specific differences: https://employment.findlaw.com/employment-discrimination/employees-rights-101.html https://employment.findlaw.com/employment-discrimination/emp... tl;dr - "employees" enjoy a lot of benefits & protections, both legally required and provided by their employer, that non-employees (like contractors) simply don't have.
    - xapata 6y ago
      That's the current legal definition. But since we're talking about changing the law, our concepts aren't constrained by current law. I'm asking about the concept, not the law.
  - srean 6y ago
    > I'd like regulation to give everyone healthcare From what I understand, that would be unamerican.
  - muffinman26 6y ago
    The biggest difference in the US is that "treated like an employee" also means being paid a minimum wage. As an employee in the United States, your employer is also responsible for paying a portion of your social security and medicare taxes, and for making sure taxes are properly withheld from your paycheck. Even before the gig economy became a big deal, businesses like yoga studios would attempt to classify their skilled teachers as independent contractors so they could pay them well below minimum wage, but take away their ability to teach at the location if they taught somewhere else as well. Hair salons and yoga studios sometimes go so far as to charge their independent contractors rent, which would make sense if these people were truly renting the space and could freely take their clients elsewhere, but these businesses also frequently limit the contractors' ability to collect personal contact information. When I volunteered to help people with their taxes, a large number of Uber/Lyft/DoorDash/etc. drivers were surprised to learn that not only did they have to pay large amounts of income tax that would usually be automatically deducted from their pay check, but they also had to pay double the social security and medicare taxes because they had to pay the employer and the employee portions. Companies that classify their workers as independent contractors in this way are taking advantage of the fact it can take people up to a year to realize that taxes and car maintenance will take what little income they have made.

by mercer 6y ago

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.

jasode 6y ago

>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). Well, instead of abstract descriptions about trends of mis-classified flex-workers and abused loopholes such that nobody can argue about it... I was trying to steer the conversation towards concrete cause & effect. Let's look at another worker-owned driver rideshare -- Local Driver Co-op: https://localdriver.co/ https://localdriver.co/ It costs members/drivers $100 to join. They are trying to undercut Uber and excerpt of verbiage from their webpage: "Riders save up to 20% versus competition -- Enjoy unbeatable rates, guaranteeing your money supports the drivers and their families." Some questions of morals and decency: - Should a judge (or new legislation) force LDC to treat drivers as employees with minimum hourly wage and unpaid time off? Since LDC contractors are trying to undercut Uber, a proposal to force LDC re-classification to "employees" would cause some drivers to protest this. So bottom line is... should drivers even be allowed to declare themselves as independent contractors and form a platform to chase after passengers? - If LDC drivers don't get decent pay -- and we can predict they won't because history shows that taxi drivers and rideshare drivers in every country don't get enough dignified pay to put kids through college and save for retirement and cover the wear&tear on their car -- who is to blame for "abusing* them? LDC? (That would mean the drivers are abusing themselves.) Or the customers/passengers? - Should LDC be completely shut down and that business "should not exist" (as some commenters put it) because it pays too poorly? Let's talk in concrete terms of how "driver protection" laws would realistically affect outcomes. Let's talk about game theory of economics where customers may not willingly play along with the intentions of well-meaning laws and will just avoid paying higher prices. Some drivers themselves may not want to play along with "drivers must be employees with minimum wage". These are the aspects we don't discuss enough.

plankers 6y ago
It sounds like you're already pointing to one concrete outcome that would come from these "driver protection" laws: the proliferation of driver co-ops that are able to undercut Uber and Lyft. Assuming they aren't regulated as Uber and Lyft are(for argument's sake), this would allow drivers the choice of whether to become an employee of the big corps or remain an independent contractor by using the co-op platform. I don't think it would be much of a stretch to assume that in this situation you would have sleek, more expensive "luxury" services competing against more humble, but cheaper, community run services. Sounds like a much more equitable arrangement that provides greater choice for both riders and drivers.

luckylion 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. But that's not quite it, I believe. The point isn't that customers choose the cheaper of two options, it's that non-users don't become users of a service until there's a super cheap option. Taxis/Yellow cabs were a thing before Uber, but they're more expensive than what lots of people were willing to pay. It's not "do I want to buy X for $5 or $2?", it's "I won't buy X unless it's $2 max". If you increase Uber's prices to those of Taxis, few people will use them. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's a thing.

kwanbix 6y ago
I don´t know how is it in all of the world, but in many countries/cities, the problem with Taxi drivers is that there is no control, they treat you like shit, there is no one else to complain, they take you to the longest route, many have their "clocks" (that is what we call the machine they use to charge you the fare) fixed so that they charge more, and there are illegal taxis that steal from you (as in real robbery). Uber is good because you can complain to Uber, you get refunds, if drivers get bad ratings they are no longer part of Uber, and in general, it is safer than taxis. I was some days ago in another country. I didn't know any Taxi phone number, but I had my uber app, so I just requested an uberx, and it came. Problem solved.
- ghaff 6y ago
  It sounds like you'd be happy with a premium service (like Uber originally was). You pay more than a taxi but you get all the other benefits you list. Problem solved.
  - kwanbix 6y ago
    Taxi´s companies have existed for a while. Compared to Uber the differences are: customer support is shitty, good luck getting a refund, you need to know the phone numbers or have the apps installed of all of the cities in the world. It is more complicated. Uber is uber internationally. It is only one app, only one (relatively good) support. By the way, I don´t "love" Uber, is just that I see the value on it.

clusterfish 6y ago

Businesses want more profit. Consumers want to pay less. Workers want to earn more. Pretty much always. This doesn't always result in an optimal outcome. Market power, externalities, information asymmetry, etc. This is why we have regulations. Forcing the society and Uber to pay for drivers to be treated as employees seems like a very reasonable outcome. If they don't like it they can hire less drivers, but the ones that remain will at least have some minimum standard of living that developed countries pride themselves for.

xapata 6y ago
What does it mean to be "treated like an employee"? I'd like regulation to give everyone healthcare. Are non-employees not worthy?
- dfxm12 6y ago
  Here's a quick overview, without getting too much into the minutia or Uber specific differences: https://employment.findlaw.com/employment-discrimination/employees-rights-101.html https://employment.findlaw.com/employment-discrimination/emp... tl;dr - "employees" enjoy a lot of benefits & protections, both legally required and provided by their employer, that non-employees (like contractors) simply don't have.
  - xapata 6y ago
    That's the current legal definition. But since we're talking about changing the law, our concepts aren't constrained by current law. I'm asking about the concept, not the law.
- srean 6y ago
  > I'd like regulation to give everyone healthcare From what I understand, that would be unamerican.
- muffinman26 6y ago
  The biggest difference in the US is that "treated like an employee" also means being paid a minimum wage. As an employee in the United States, your employer is also responsible for paying a portion of your social security and medicare taxes, and for making sure taxes are properly withheld from your paycheck. Even before the gig economy became a big deal, businesses like yoga studios would attempt to classify their skilled teachers as independent contractors so they could pay them well below minimum wage, but take away their ability to teach at the location if they taught somewhere else as well. Hair salons and yoga studios sometimes go so far as to charge their independent contractors rent, which would make sense if these people were truly renting the space and could freely take their clients elsewhere, but these businesses also frequently limit the contractors' ability to collect personal contact information. When I volunteered to help people with their taxes, a large number of Uber/Lyft/DoorDash/etc. drivers were surprised to learn that not only did they have to pay large amounts of income tax that would usually be automatically deducted from their pay check, but they also had to pay double the social security and medicare taxes because they had to pay the employer and the employee portions. Companies that classify their workers as independent contractors in this way are taking advantage of the fact it can take people up to a year to realize that taxes and car maintenance will take what little income they have made.