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"the real harm here will not be to Uber," Uber said. "It is the drivers who cannot work..." The city's researchers found that drivers made an average of about

• marcusverus 6y ago
  > The city's researchers found that drivers made an average of about $9.73 per hour. Why cut the quote off in the middle of the sentence? > The city's researchers found that drivers made an average of about $9.73 per hour, while the ride-hailing companies' researcher put the number at $23.25.
  • muttled 6y ago
    I assume that the city's researchers looked at take-home divided by time available to drive and the companies probably only counted the time the drivers were actively engaged. It's why they only want to have to pay a wage when a driver is engaged: they can make them clock out in between rides.
    • wgerard 6y ago
      Actually IIRC last time I looked it was more like city researchers usually subtract depreciation on the vehicle from the earnings, which can be quite substantial (IRS rates are roughly a quarter per mile). Uber doesn't subtract that, so the rate per hour varies wildly.
    • kenjackson 6y ago
      They both said they did what you note. But they have different data sets. The companies included tips and not any delta associated with insurance. Oddly the companies would not share their data set with the city but did share it with Cornell. Just on that count alone I tend to look more favorable to the city’s numbers.
      • Pfhreak 6y ago
        > The companies included tips and not any delta associated with insurance. Tips are not part of wages. You should make whatever wage you are going to make and then get tips on top of that.
        • PragmaticPulp 6y ago
          Morally you might be right, but that’s not the legal definition. Your tips are counted as part of your wages. In some cases companies can pay wages below minimum wage as long as the sum of wages and tips adds up to minimum wage.
          • dragonwriter 6y ago
            > Your tips are counted as part of your wages No, they aren't. > In some cases companies can pay wages below minimum wage as long as the sum of wages and tips adds up to minimum wage Both federally and in many states wage and hour laws, there is a lower tipped minimum wage that can be paid so long as the sum of tips and actual wages is at least the the level that would be the minimum wage for a nontipped position, but the fact that there is still a minimum for the actual wage and that the wage is summed with tips to compare against a separate target makes very clear that “wages” and “tips” are separate buckets, the former does not include the latter. Now, there are other things (like income taxes) that operate on the sum not one of the individual buckets, but that's a different issue.
            • PragmaticPulp 6y ago
              If you want to debate semantics, that’s one thing, but arbitrarily excluding wages from someone’s earnings to make a point is still disingenuous. The US DOL has a very clear definition of what constitutes a tipped worker and the association compensation requirements: https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/wages/wagestips https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/wages/wagestips
              • dragonwriter 6y ago
• AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  > This appeal to employment is disconcerting, as ride sharing apps are doing their workers no favors by paying them so poorly (including the lack of benefits). Except that they do, because they provide a level of flexibility not available at most other jobs. If you're a college student and you have two hours and fifteen minutes between classes, you can drive for two hours and fifteen minutes. If you're a school bus driver who drives kids to school in the morning and drives them back in the afternoon but has nothing to do in the meantime, you can get in your own car and drive passengers at that time and make some extra money. If you have a part time job working three days a week with an inconsistent schedule set by your employer, you can drive another two days a week, even if it's a different two days every week. There is value in that, or why is anybody doing it rather than working at Walmart or Starbucks where that isn't available? But if you make the drivers employees then the company has no reason not to schedule their hours inflexibly, because the flexibility was only needed to attract workers at the lower level of compensation. In practice what you're doing is disallowing employers from offering employees terms of employment that provide the employee with working conditions of greater non-monetary value than ordinary jobs in exchange for less money. There is no reason to think that this is never advantageous for the employee, and the workers who don't find those terms advantageous remain free to work for any other employer. > When talking about jobs, especially in the US where so many benefits are tied to employment, a job with pay so low and no benefits should not be considered a good thing. Then do something about all the benefits tied to employment. All of that exists only as a direct result of government policy.
  • carlob 6y ago
    Then again a few taxi drivers I have talked to in the US admitted starting to drive for ride sharing companies after finishing their maximum allowed shift of 12 hours... Also I've heard multiple reports that in most of the gig economy markets casual workers are de-prioritized, so that only those who put in at least 40 hours a week stay in the game...
  • vsareto 6y ago
    Seattle has the authority to change the conditions of employment - how much less Uber pays in exchange for the flexibility. Uber/Lyft has a right to stop operating there if they don't like it. Why would Uber/Lyft fight so hard to stay with unfavorable conditions?
• seattledev 6y ago
  Seattle minimum wage is $16.39 an hour for companies with more than 500 employees. Otherwise it's essentially $15.75/hour. edit: either i misread your post or you edited it right as i posted this
• baggy_trough 6y ago
  Why do you think you know better than the workers involved who is doing them favors or no favors? Those workers choose to drive for Uber or Lyft because it was better than any other alternative available to them. Seattle is doing harm with this legislation.
  • Pfhreak 6y ago
    This is a dead end line of thinking. It ignores that these people might not be able to choose any alternative. If you are faced with starvation and homelessness, you might 'choose' to take an incredibly poorly paid job because it enables you to barely scratch by. That's hardly a 'choice', it's the companies realizing they have a worker pool they can exploit that will take pennies on the dollar. Seattle is saying, "No, if you are providing work in this city, you will abide by minimum wage standards like any other employer."
    • winphone1974 6y ago
      This is the same reason companies used Groupon with their terrible economics or people take cash advances on their credit cards: you need the money today even if it is incredibly expensive and sub optimal. Does the GP also think we don't need laws for CC companies because the high levels of consumer debt show people obviously want 20%+ interest rates?
    • baggy_trough 6y ago
      It's actually your line of thinking which leads to a dead end - the dead end of unemployment.
      • Pfhreak 6y ago
        I imagine the same argument was made by coal barons who were forced to stop paying in company scrip. And the industrialists who were forced to stop employing children in their factories. And the owners who were forced to grant weekends and 8 hour workdays. We have a long history of protecting workers from exploitation in this country. The weekend, prohibitions on child labor, OSHA standards, PPE, minimum wages, payment in US dollars, anti-discrimination laws, coverage for accidents on site, leaves for illness, etc. etc. etc.
• quest88 6y ago
  It seems like they're paying them just right if drivers are still driving for them.
  • missedthecue 6y ago
    Yeah i'm not understanding why thousands and thousands of people in these cities are doing it for $9.73 when they could get a job at starbucks and instantly make much more.
    • viscanti 6y ago
      But they are doing it. So things like flexibility must be important. If it was a small number of people we could expect that they might be making some kind of irrational decision. If it's thousands and thousands of people then it's likely an indication that it's the best possible option for people in that situation.
      • missedthecue 6y ago
        This is my assumption as well.
    • asdff 6y ago
      Because their manager at starbucks cuts their hours to 38 a week to keep from paying full time benefits. Plus who has been hiring in the past 3 months?
      • debian_lover 6y ago
        And then you have to stand in a hellhole for 8 hours a day, hating your life. Big difference
  • Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
    If the goal was a desperate work force then we succeeded decades ago. By measuring sufficiency of pay against the population of drivers you're not measuring anything useful. Intellectually indolent comments like this are overtly harmful to the people desperate enough to work for nearly half their cities minimum wage.
• s3r3nity 6y ago
  Uber is still not making profits. So where is this money coming from? You can't raise prices and expect the same level of demand from consumers. So once demand goes down, the # of drivers needed will go down. So you raise prices by restricting supply of drivers. It's not that complicated. Uber is not keeping prices low as part of some scheme to rip off drivers and hoard profits in some bank vault like a cartoon villain - they're what the supply / demand of the market dictate. If you disagree, I'm happy to look at concrete data to change my mind.
  • Broken_Hippo 6y ago
    Perhaps if you cannot pay your employees minimum wage - regardless of the sort of work they are doing, perhaps you shouldn't be in business. I don't care if Uber is making money or not. If there is need for more adequate public transportation and taxis, perhaps we should work on that issue. If the system is robust enough, merely having a personal driver (uber/lyft/taxi/limo) should be a luxury and a choice. This has nothing to do with data, but principle. And it isn't like Uber has been a good player in all of this: I truly don't agree with their attitude towards laws, and do truly believe they are in business because they exploit people and eschew their responsibility as employers both by offering gig-only employment and refusing to classify drivers as employees: Their business obviously relies on the drivers.
    • chillacy 6y ago
      That sounds nice on principle but I'm not sure I liked the world where Taxis were a monopoly and did things like "not pick you up if you weren't in the city" and "not pick you up if you were nonwhite." So, I'm hoping there is a universe where drivers get paid more (maybe even set their own prices, that makes them more like business owners and the apps more like payment providers) and rideshare can exist.
    • s3r3nity 6y ago
      > Perhaps if you cannot pay your employees minimum wage - regardless of the sort of work they are doing, perhaps you shouldn't be in business. I don't care if Uber is making money or not. So instead of hiring 1000’s of workers who _voluntarily_ chose to work there for those wages, (not just drivers)...principles say they should ALL be out of work? Absurd.
• twblalock 6y ago
  > When talking about jobs, especially in the US where so many benefits are tied to employment, a job with pay so low and no benefits should not be considered a good thing. The alternative is no job at all, for many drivers.
  • Broken_Hippo 6y ago
    Perhaps a robust safety net is in order so folks don't have to be exploited in order to afford food. Or better laws.
    • twblalock 6y ago
      Yeah but that's a separate conversation from whether this new regulation is a good one in the real world, where the safety net is not very good.
  • TrackerFF 6y ago
    People adapt, consumers too. If Uber or Lyft were to vanish from the face of the earth tomorrow due to regulations, some other business would probably pick up where they left, serving the demand - because after all, there is demand for ride-hailing services. Question is, how much are consumers willing to pay?
• shirakawasuna 6y ago
  The replies to this comment forget that the demand is there regardless and that if margins are so thin, the cost can be passed on to those who take ubers/lyfts - disproportionately those who make more money.
  • sokoloff 6y ago
    If you doubled the price of Uber/Lyft rides, I suspect the demand is cut by more than 50%. I find Uber (and Lyft) more convenient than taxis, but also compelling because they're not as absurdly expensive as taxis.
    • shirakawasuna 6y ago
      Unless the typical uber ride is an hour long, the price would not be doubled. And I see no reason that demand would go down in a way that is worth the trade-off of exploitation and forcing people to go on without living wages.
• tom-_- 6y ago
  This is where government policy meets business reality. The reality is, ridesharing is a low margin business. Have you seen Uber's earnings reports? It's questionable whether the business model can ever be sustainable. So with higher wages, you're just accelerating Uber's drive into insolvency. Their only option is to cut workers and increase ride prices. But you can only do the latter so much before you lose users to the point where Uber just becomes a private taxi service for the wealthy in which case you might as well not use a rideshare model and just hire professional chauffeurs.
  • 542354234235 6y ago
    If a business model requires the exploitation of its workers to remain profitable, is that a business worth having? If forcing businesses to pay their laborers a wage sufficient to have a bare minimum standard of living before paying shareholders for their speculative investment, is that a bad thing?
    • 908B64B197 6y ago
      But are they exploited? If drivers really lost money working with Uber or if it was so little money compared to minimal wages, nobody would be driving!
      • 542354234235 6y ago
        If it were true that people doing job= no exploitation, then we wouldn’t need labor laws. Paying people below poverty wages, and people doing the job because they need the money is exploitation. It is taking advantage of the asymmetry of the power in a relationship between a rich company and a poor employee to set terms that that are exploitative of the employee.
        • 908B64B197 6y ago
          But in this case, it's claimed that any fast food joint job pays better than Uber. I don't see how the platform could keep a steady number of drivers if that was true. And, to he honest, I really don't like the condescending attitude some politicians have toward Uber drivers. They seem to assume they can't do the math to figure out if they are profitable or not.