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On the other hand, California also created a bill that targets two companies specifically; kind of its own special interest if you will. We saw how quickly they

On the other hand, California also created a bill that targets two companies specifically; kind of its own special interest if you will. We saw how quickly they started carving out exceptions once the original bill was passed and comedians couldn’t perform, and journalists started getting let go. Why not just pass the bill and call it the “Uber and Lyft must pay their drivers like employees and let them act like independent contractors too” bill? Because that’s really what it is. Uber and Lyft will no doubt relocate and cease operations in California altogether if they can’t get around this. I guess the pandemic is a good time to do that since so many workers are remote, but there is no doubt in my mind that’s going to happen. The bill that was passed is an existential crises for them. The business model was intended for people to make some part time money. Like selling stuff on Etsy. It cant support paying drivers like they are salaried workers. Not many of them at least. It’s all around bad. When states and the feds start regulating companies like this, it’s a prime example of the failures of our governments to provide for the people.

jankassens 6y ago
Yet many drivers do this full time. Why should ride share companies be excluded from worker protections that apply to other companies? Could Amazon convert to a gig-economy for warehouse workers where you sign up via an app? There are certainly some folks who drive just a few hours a week and the companies like to highlight that by releasing stats like “% of drivers drive less then 5 hours”. I think “% of driver time by drivers over 35h/week” would paint a different picture and show just how much they rely on full time drivers.
- ericmay 6y ago
  Many people sell stuff on eBay as their full time job too. I don't find this line of reasoning compelling if you want to single out Uber and Lyft specifically. What is the amount of hours they should work to not be "employees"? 5? Ok Uber and Lyft can limit the hours you drive to 5. Is that fine then? I'd actually say though that what you identified (gig worker for Amazon warehouses) might be desirable if we had many "benefits" divorced from your employer, like the 401k, health care, etc. What if I could work my salaried job, and then sign up to go work a shift at the warehouse?
  - klmadfejno 6y ago
    A few points. It's not just benefits that employees receive, it's also taxes paid on employees. Moving benefits out of employment is a good idea, but if that happened, the taxes to fund these services would come from employers again. So Uber would still be more or less leeching off of society by not paying its share of social funds Secondly, the discussion of hours, while potentially having some philosophical merit, isn't especially material in the scheme of things. Uber can't survive with everyone driving fewer than x hours. A lot of their comp structure tries to incentive people to drive as much as possible, with nonlinear increasing rewards for those who drive the most. Their business is built on network effects. If there's fewer drivers, then it costs more, so fewer people ride, so fewer people want to drive, and the more expensive it is the keep the driver population thriving. The idea behind surge pricing is that you create flash incentives to get drivers out there when demand is high. If there's a cap on hours, you've now got a competing interest which says there's an incentive to NOT work while the market isn't surging- because you might cost yourself greater earnings down the line. It's a lot easier to get a driver doing 5 hours to do 8 hours instead, than it is to get two drivers to do 4 hours. Labor has switching costs for the drivers.
    - ericmay 6y ago
      Ok so then Uber would just be paying taxes from the sale of the rides. I'm kind of confused as to why that would be an issue. But happy to hear more about it. > If there's a cap on hours, you've now got a competing interest which says there's an incentive to NOT work while the market isn't surging- because you might cost yourself greater earnings down the line. Ok so then is the cap 8 hours? 10? Is it 7? It seems to me that you're inventing more problems to solve a different problem than is worthwhile. You can have more drivers doing less hours, if the economics of it work (and neither of us know whether or not it does, and ironically enough I doubt the State of California does either). The point isn't to move goal posts around a set number of hours, the point is to illustrate that is exactly what you're advocating for.
      - klmadfejno 6y ago
        > Ok so then Uber would just be paying taxes from the sale of the rides. I'm kind of confused as to why that would be an issue. But happy to hear more about it. Odds are good that if health insurance benefits are pushed out of employers, you're going to see it funded by a tax on top of wages, not a corporate income tax, because the former is directly tied to the number of people the org is supporting in the United States and the latter is not. The classification of employee vs. contractor is still salient. It's still a good idea nonetheless. > Ok so then is the cap 8 hours? 10? Is it 7? It seems to me that you're inventing more problems to solve a different problem than is worthwhile. You can have more drivers doing less hours, if the economics of it work (and neither of us know whether or not it does, and ironically enough I doubt the State of California does either). I don't think there's any philosophical merit to claiming someone working 7+ hours a day is not a full time worker. We may not know the exact economics, but we do know they're not great. Uber loses billions per year, and pays substantial money to deal with high driver turnover. A mixed system makes it worse.
- xyzzy_plugh 6y ago
  It's complicated, really. Some drivers drive like 80+ hours a week. If they become employees, they will not be able to.
  - vincnetas 6y ago
    And i think it's OK. There is a reason why professional truck drivers must not drive longer than specified amount of time without taking breaks. Work safety regulations are usually written in blood.
    - ericmay 6y ago
      But the work is fundamentally different. You can work 80 hours in retail for example. With Uber drivers it's not "drive down long stretch of road without a break for 8 hours".
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - FireBeyond 6y ago
        "Less repetitive/boring" != "less mentally taxing".
        ericmay 6y ago
        Sure, but that also doesn't mean you can't work just fine doing 80 hours/week in some jobs and not be fine working 80 hours/week in others.
        vincnetas 6y ago
        No one should be doing 80 hours a week, that's 12 hours each day without weekends + commute (1 hour) + 8 hours sleep, 2 hours for eating and you have 1 hour left for the "all the other things". And thats if you don't have children. If you do you already spending more than 24 hours a day.
viscanti 6y ago
> On the other hand, California also created a bill that targets two companies specifically; kind of its own special interest if you will. And it's not like California just decided to target those two companies for fun. Labor unions lobbied Lorena Gonzalez to get AB5 passed so that they could have more dues paying members. So there's a clear special interest responsible for AB5.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> On the other hand, California also created a bill that targets two companies specifically No, it didn't. AB5 codified a court decision with much broader impact than to those two companies, and in doing so exempted a few other impacted industries from it, leaving more than those two companies, and more than the industry they are in, still affected (whether you count the bill and the court case together, such that the impact is those not exempted, or separately, so that it is those exempted.)

jankassens 6y ago

Yet many drivers do this full time. Why should ride share companies be excluded from worker protections that apply to other companies? Could Amazon convert to a gig-economy for warehouse workers where you sign up via an app? There are certainly some folks who drive just a few hours a week and the companies like to highlight that by releasing stats like “% of drivers drive less then 5 hours”. I think “% of driver time by drivers over 35h/week” would paint a different picture and show just how much they rely on full time drivers.

ericmay 6y ago
Many people sell stuff on eBay as their full time job too. I don't find this line of reasoning compelling if you want to single out Uber and Lyft specifically. What is the amount of hours they should work to not be "employees"? 5? Ok Uber and Lyft can limit the hours you drive to 5. Is that fine then? I'd actually say though that what you identified (gig worker for Amazon warehouses) might be desirable if we had many "benefits" divorced from your employer, like the 401k, health care, etc. What if I could work my salaried job, and then sign up to go work a shift at the warehouse?
- klmadfejno 6y ago
  A few points. It's not just benefits that employees receive, it's also taxes paid on employees. Moving benefits out of employment is a good idea, but if that happened, the taxes to fund these services would come from employers again. So Uber would still be more or less leeching off of society by not paying its share of social funds Secondly, the discussion of hours, while potentially having some philosophical merit, isn't especially material in the scheme of things. Uber can't survive with everyone driving fewer than x hours. A lot of their comp structure tries to incentive people to drive as much as possible, with nonlinear increasing rewards for those who drive the most. Their business is built on network effects. If there's fewer drivers, then it costs more, so fewer people ride, so fewer people want to drive, and the more expensive it is the keep the driver population thriving. The idea behind surge pricing is that you create flash incentives to get drivers out there when demand is high. If there's a cap on hours, you've now got a competing interest which says there's an incentive to NOT work while the market isn't surging- because you might cost yourself greater earnings down the line. It's a lot easier to get a driver doing 5 hours to do 8 hours instead, than it is to get two drivers to do 4 hours. Labor has switching costs for the drivers.
  - ericmay 6y ago
    Ok so then Uber would just be paying taxes from the sale of the rides. I'm kind of confused as to why that would be an issue. But happy to hear more about it. > If there's a cap on hours, you've now got a competing interest which says there's an incentive to NOT work while the market isn't surging- because you might cost yourself greater earnings down the line. Ok so then is the cap 8 hours? 10? Is it 7? It seems to me that you're inventing more problems to solve a different problem than is worthwhile. You can have more drivers doing less hours, if the economics of it work (and neither of us know whether or not it does, and ironically enough I doubt the State of California does either). The point isn't to move goal posts around a set number of hours, the point is to illustrate that is exactly what you're advocating for.
    - klmadfejno 6y ago
      > Ok so then Uber would just be paying taxes from the sale of the rides. I'm kind of confused as to why that would be an issue. But happy to hear more about it. Odds are good that if health insurance benefits are pushed out of employers, you're going to see it funded by a tax on top of wages, not a corporate income tax, because the former is directly tied to the number of people the org is supporting in the United States and the latter is not. The classification of employee vs. contractor is still salient. It's still a good idea nonetheless. > Ok so then is the cap 8 hours? 10? Is it 7? It seems to me that you're inventing more problems to solve a different problem than is worthwhile. You can have more drivers doing less hours, if the economics of it work (and neither of us know whether or not it does, and ironically enough I doubt the State of California does either). I don't think there's any philosophical merit to claiming someone working 7+ hours a day is not a full time worker. We may not know the exact economics, but we do know they're not great. Uber loses billions per year, and pays substantial money to deal with high driver turnover. A mixed system makes it worse.
xyzzy_plugh 6y ago
It's complicated, really. Some drivers drive like 80+ hours a week. If they become employees, they will not be able to.
- vincnetas 6y ago
  And i think it's OK. There is a reason why professional truck drivers must not drive longer than specified amount of time without taking breaks. Work safety regulations are usually written in blood.
  - ericmay 6y ago
    But the work is fundamentally different. You can work 80 hours in retail for example. With Uber drivers it's not "drive down long stretch of road without a break for 8 hours".
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - FireBeyond 6y ago
      "Less repetitive/boring" != "less mentally taxing".
      - ericmay 6y ago
        Sure, but that also doesn't mean you can't work just fine doing 80 hours/week in some jobs and not be fine working 80 hours/week in others.
        vincnetas 6y ago
        No one should be doing 80 hours a week, that's 12 hours each day without weekends + commute (1 hour) + 8 hours sleep, 2 hours for eating and you have 1 hour left for the "all the other things". And thats if you don't have children. If you do you already spending more than 24 hours a day.

viscanti 6y ago

> On the other hand, California also created a bill that targets two companies specifically; kind of its own special interest if you will. And it's not like California just decided to target those two companies for fun. Labor unions lobbied Lorena Gonzalez to get AB5 passed so that they could have more dues paying members. So there's a clear special interest responsible for AB5.

dragonwriter 6y ago

> On the other hand, California also created a bill that targets two companies specifically No, it didn't. AB5 codified a court decision with much broader impact than to those two companies, and in doing so exempted a few other impacted industries from it, leaving more than those two companies, and more than the industry they are in, still affected (whether you count the bill and the court case together, such that the impact is those not exempted, or separately, so that it is those exempted.)