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A ride is more like a task. I've been a contractor and I couldn't refuse jira tasks. You've signed a contract with the company, you should do all the jira tasks

A ride is more like a task. I've been a contractor and I couldn't refuse jira tasks. You've signed a contract with the company, you should do all the jira tasks they throw at you.

novok 6y ago
Many people argue that those kinds of contractors are employees. Often your an employee of the contracting firm AFAIK too, so you have to follow the implicit orders of the contracting firm.
- raducu 6y ago
  I am a "contractor", but yeah, if you only work for one company for X months, you should be an employee. If all your money comes via a single company, even if you phisically work at a different place each day, you should be an employee of that company.
  - fastball 6y ago
    That's kinda the problem with ride-sharing though. Many (most) drivers are driving with multiple apps.
    - freeone3000 6y ago
      Many, many people in the US are employed with multiple companies at a time. Everyone who "works two jobs". Employment is not exclusive.
      - fastball 6y ago
        I was responding to a comment about "only working for one company for X months".
Slartie 6y ago
But you could have refused the customer in the first place. Nobody forced you to make a contract with him. Of course, once you did, you are compelled to keep up your end of the bargain, and that probably included you doing those jira tasks (you could have probably refused to do entirely different work, like walking the dog of the manager, when you were originally contracted for doing IT development work). A true contractor in the rideshare space would have an individual contract with each rider, and could of course reject riders based on the terms of the contract (of which the target location is one). However, once a customer is accepted based on the agreed-upon terms (fare, target, number of passengers etc.) he wouldn't be able to throw the passenger out in the middle of the ride for no good reason. If you now want to say that a rideshare contractor should not be able to reject a customer based upon the terms of the ride, I ask you: why shouldn't he? With whom does he have a contract that binds him? And you say: with Uber. And I say: yeah, and that's why your analogy is fundamentally flawed, why he isn't an individual contractor for each customer but simply an employee of Uber, with whom he has a contract that mandates him to accept all customers that Uber deems acceptable. Exactly like a plumber working at a plumbing company who also has to do plumbing work at any customer his boss sends him to, while his individually contracting plumber colleague can decide to decline or accept customers at his own discretion.
- julienb_sea 6y ago
  Alternatively, the contract is between the driver and the rideshare platform. The driver is a participant in the platform and is contractually expected to behave within the rules and bounds of the platform. This does not require defining the driver as an employee. When the driver activates uber driver mode, they are initiating a contract which states they will work within the bounds of the app. The driver is able to terminate that contract at will and at any time, and reactivate it at will and at his leisure. When the contract is active, the driver has committed to operate within the pricing, pickup and dropoff structure of the platform - as in the driver has committed to minimize discrimination of their rides and accept the platform's rider oriented pricing structure.
  - Slartie 6y ago
    I am pretty sure that you cannot "activate" a work contract by opening an app. What is the notion of "activating" a contract anyway, I mean legally. Does something like that exist in US law? I would doubt that, and I would also doubt that you can simply define opening an app as the beginning of a legally binding, entirely new contract with as many implications as Uber's driver contracts have. I am pretty sure that in reality, Uber signs a contract once with a new driver, after checking his background, driver license and everything, and that contract is active from that point in time until explicitly terminated by either party. Just closing the app does not terminate it, neither does opening the app create a new contract. Closing the app just amounts to the driver leaving his "workplace", opening it again amounts to the driver entering his "workplace", but the contract under which that work takes place is the same and active all the time, it just gives the driver a lot of leeway with regard to how many hours he wants to work. That is a generous employment, but it is an employment nevertheless in nature.

A ride is more like a task. I've been a contractor and I couldn't refuse jira tasks. You've signed a contract with the company, you should do all the jira tasks they throw at you.

novok 6y ago

Many people argue that those kinds of contractors are employees. Often your an employee of the contracting firm AFAIK too, so you have to follow the implicit orders of the contracting firm.

raducu 6y ago
I am a "contractor", but yeah, if you only work for one company for X months, you should be an employee. If all your money comes via a single company, even if you phisically work at a different place each day, you should be an employee of that company.
- fastball 6y ago
  That's kinda the problem with ride-sharing though. Many (most) drivers are driving with multiple apps.
  - freeone3000 6y ago
    Many, many people in the US are employed with multiple companies at a time. Everyone who "works two jobs". Employment is not exclusive.
    - fastball 6y ago
      I was responding to a comment about "only working for one company for X months".

Slartie 6y ago

But you could have refused the customer in the first place. Nobody forced you to make a contract with him. Of course, once you did, you are compelled to keep up your end of the bargain, and that probably included you doing those jira tasks (you could have probably refused to do entirely different work, like walking the dog of the manager, when you were originally contracted for doing IT development work). A true contractor in the rideshare space would have an individual contract with each rider, and could of course reject riders based on the terms of the contract (of which the target location is one). However, once a customer is accepted based on the agreed-upon terms (fare, target, number of passengers etc.) he wouldn't be able to throw the passenger out in the middle of the ride for no good reason. If you now want to say that a rideshare contractor should not be able to reject a customer based upon the terms of the ride, I ask you: why shouldn't he? With whom does he have a contract that binds him? And you say: with Uber. And I say: yeah, and that's why your analogy is fundamentally flawed, why he isn't an individual contractor for each customer but simply an employee of Uber, with whom he has a contract that mandates him to accept all customers that Uber deems acceptable. Exactly like a plumber working at a plumbing company who also has to do plumbing work at any customer his boss sends him to, while his individually contracting plumber colleague can decide to decline or accept customers at his own discretion.

julienb_sea 6y ago
Alternatively, the contract is between the driver and the rideshare platform. The driver is a participant in the platform and is contractually expected to behave within the rules and bounds of the platform. This does not require defining the driver as an employee. When the driver activates uber driver mode, they are initiating a contract which states they will work within the bounds of the app. The driver is able to terminate that contract at will and at any time, and reactivate it at will and at his leisure. When the contract is active, the driver has committed to operate within the pricing, pickup and dropoff structure of the platform - as in the driver has committed to minimize discrimination of their rides and accept the platform's rider oriented pricing structure.
- Slartie 6y ago
  I am pretty sure that you cannot "activate" a work contract by opening an app. What is the notion of "activating" a contract anyway, I mean legally. Does something like that exist in US law? I would doubt that, and I would also doubt that you can simply define opening an app as the beginning of a legally binding, entirely new contract with as many implications as Uber's driver contracts have. I am pretty sure that in reality, Uber signs a contract once with a new driver, after checking his background, driver license and everything, and that contract is active from that point in time until explicitly terminated by either party. Just closing the app does not terminate it, neither does opening the app create a new contract. Closing the app just amounts to the driver leaving his "workplace", opening it again amounts to the driver entering his "workplace", but the contract under which that work takes place is the same and active all the time, it just gives the driver a lot of leeway with regard to how many hours he wants to work. That is a generous employment, but it is an employment nevertheless in nature.