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No, in Switzerland. Instead it managed to steal almost a billion USD from drivers in Switzerland alone and give others the "idea" they can break the law too. U

No, in Switzerland. Instead it managed to steal almost a billion USD from drivers in Switzerland alone and give others the "idea" they can break the law too. Uber is the worst kind of business preying on the lower class claiming independence and freedom when it's the opposite and you are basically a working slave. It did everything possible to go around government worker protections. [1] https://www.20min.ch/story/uber-soll-fahrern-eine-halbe-milliarde-schulden-646772268209 https://www.20min.ch/story/uber-soll-fahrern-eine-halbe-mill...

dsco 4y ago
I know a bunch of people who are happy Uber drivers as they couldn’t afford becoming regular taxi drivers. Do you often point out to your Uber divers that they’re lower class and being preyed on? How do they take it?
- mavu 4y ago
  you can tell yourself that all day long if it makes you feel better. In Europe, uber is exploiting the most vulnerable in our societies, and profiting of the harm they do to people and communities. Not to mention, breaking laws, endangering passengers, using outright evil methods to keep their workers money.
  - yladiz 4y ago
    Some of the most vulnerable are the homeless and mentally disabled. How is Uber exploiting them?
    - harvey9 4y ago
      The phrase 'most vulnerable' is terribly overused, but your comment is still disingenuous.
  - ipaddr 4y ago
    These are not fair comments because everything you say the taxi industry it replaced is guilt of and closing the market. Uber puts new cars on the road and opens the industry to those who are locked out.
    - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
      Suppose taxi industry is guilty of murder, does that mean I can now commit murder too?
      - kspacewalk2 4y ago
        If it gets replaced by a strictly less murderous alternative, this alternative is preferable.
      - stale2002 4y ago
        No, but if a taxi industry is murdering people, and also helped create laws that prevent competitors from entering the market, I think it is OK to get around the laws that prevent competitors from competing with the taxi murder mafia.
      - ambrozk 4y ago
        In this metaphor, "murder" stands for "operating a taxi service without the approval of the existing taxi services."
- RajT88 4y ago
  My brother in law is a mechanic. He sees a lot of drivers who have a 3 year old car with 200k miles on them and basically a new car worth of repairs needed. I also get a lot of happy drivers saying "this is my first day / week". I see a lot of crazy driving too. All in all, it seems like there is a learning curve to being a profitable Uber driver. It is not necessarily easy to accomplish. The ones who seem to anecdotally do best by it are the folks supplementing income by opportunistically taking fares here and there.
  - remflight 4y ago
    I love people who somehow think that taxi industry is filled with clean, perfectly maintained cars, fairly paid workers with great benefits and just the epitome of great citizens without any corruption.
    - RajT88 4y ago
      Do you think I am one of those? If so, why?
    - andybak 4y ago
      I see lots of people here from different countries describing very different experiences and wondering why they don't align.
    - ambrozk 4y ago
      It's insane. Thank God for tech companies for disrupting one of the worst industries on the planet. Uber and Lyft are, IMO, some of the best examples of the virtuous nature of "move fast & break things" as a business philosophy.
      - Nursie 4y ago
        Uber are worse where I live. They cancel on you, they accept the fare and then just screw around for 20 minutes until you cancel, then if you try to rebook the price has magically gone up. At most times of day they are more expensive than the normal cab firms. This all seems to come down to the rates of pay available to drivers getting worse, presumably as the VC money runs out. Thankfully the old cab firms have managed to cling on in the face of years of massive market distortion, and are still there to pick up the slack.
- winternett 4y ago
  A lot of people eat peanuts, but a handful of people die from them. Should all people be made to eat peanut butter? Uber is only a good company if it improves, yet somehow there is a never ending online narrative that "It's treating me well, so it's great for the world!". That's not normal, it's deception.
chrischen 4y ago
They swapped masters from evil medallion rent seekers to software engineers. I’d pick the engineers any day and I’m glad they broke corrupt laws to make changes.
- mantas 4y ago
  Taxi medallions ain't a thing in many countries. Many countries had proper regulated taxes with good drivers and clean cars (or vice versa). Now it's a shitshow with beaten Prius and a shithead behind the wheel.
  - aaronchall 4y ago
    I agree we should probably say "licenses" and not "medallions" when talking about policies all over the world, it's just that medallions are known as the worst example of corruption and regulatory capture, protecting incumbents while incredibly claiming this helped stranded people who need to get home when no taxis can be found. At the peak these licenses were going for a million dollars each. I think Uber, Lyft, and others are serving a great good in substituting for taxis in filling the need for road travelers. Taxi drivers may argue that the drivers are being abused, but we can't all have (nor do we all want) jobs with lots of protections. Being a driver should be a job anyone could take while on the road to reaching their dreams in life, and not restricted to a lucky few who demanded the government give them a monopoly on the gig.
    - mantas 4y ago
      No, licenses-for-million-money did not exist outside of some markets. Previously you'd get into taxi and then tell address. And refusing not-profitable-enough service was illegal. Now drivers see the route beforehand and can skip it. A job should allow people to make a good wage and make a living out of it. It shouldn't be race-to-the-bottom for the profit of few by sacrificing quality of service.
  - dantheman 4y ago
    Too bad those countries with proper regulated taxis and good drivers couldn't compete. Sounds like they weren't so good at least to the consumer.
FrenchDevRemote 4y ago
I don't see how it's slavery to work for uber. If uber wasn't there, the drivers would be either unemployed, working another minimum wage job, or taking 30 years loans to get Taxi licenses(which most of them wouldn't be able to get). It's just the same as any other precarious job
- runarberg 4y ago
  This is a really simplistic view of labor dynamics and almost certainly too simplistic. Jobs don’t exist in a vacuum. When a job is created sometimes it spurs other jobs, but sometimes it removes them. It is a really dynamic system full of feedbacks and feed forwards. I think I read somewhere where someone actually modeled the dynamics behind uber eats, and found out that it resulted in net-negative jobs... That is every worker for uber-eats meant that more then one other worker didn’t get a job, not to mention the worse condition of that one worker that actually had the job.
  - lesstenseflow 4y ago
    I read the article you are referring to and it actually came to the opposite conclusion from what you’re saying: net-positive jobs, more spent and more earned. (If you’re wondering how I am rebutting runarberg when neither he nor I cited a source, that’s a darn good question. But let the record show I offer just as much evidence as he.)
    - runarberg 4y ago
      I can draw out a plausible model right now that results in net-negative jobs. Driving factors include: * Food vendors that previously had delivery downsizing their own delivery staff and offloading it to uber eats. * Restaurants not wanting to pay the service fees to uber eats gets fewer customers from the lowered exposures (as customers start ordering mostly through the delivery app), and eventually shut down. * Restaurants that previously didn’t do delivery getting less money per customer as the delivery services take their share. And is forced to cut down on their opening hours and some of their staff to make up for the loss. I never read that article you are referring to—if it even exits. The point was that labor dynamics are more complicated then: If a job is created, someone will work that job. If we transfer over to the taxi market. There are examples of city government using Uber as an excuse to cut bus lines. Some bus drivers hence lost their jobs, and some companies probably lost their workers as the commute became to hard.
O__________O 4y ago
Taxi Drivers in Switzerland typically earn around 40,700 CHF per year and Uber drivers make roughly the same if working full-time, more if they are working more than 40-hours a week. Unless the union is able to explicitly explain their claim the Uber is somehow unfair to drivers, to me sounds like the union is just complaining they not getting their member dues. Possible I missed something, so here are my sources: How much Uber drivers make in Switzerland https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/ride-sharing-app-_uber-reaches-400-000-active-users-in-switzerland/45291726 https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/ride-sharing-app-_uber-reaches-... Taxi Driver Average Salary in Switzerland http://www.salaryexplorer.com/salary-survey.php?loc=210&loctype=1&job=236&jobtype=3 http://www.salaryexplorer.com/salary-survey.php?loc=210&loct...
- sschueller 4y ago
  Uber does not pay Social Security, Overtime, workers comp etc. When these people retire they have nothing, this money was effectively stolen from the workers. Unia has successfully sued Uber at the highest courts and Uber recently lost. Geneva has banned Uber and others are expected to follow. There will now be an attempt to recover almost a Billion USD that is owed to drivers from Uber. [1] [1] https://www.unia.ch/de/aktuell/aktuell/artikel/a/19138 https://www.unia.ch/de/aktuell/aktuell/artikel/a/19138
  - ratww 4y ago
    > this money was effectively stolen from the workers Yep. And also from the state/taxpayers, as the state will have to spend money to ensure those workers aren't left out in the street when older.
    - Dracophoenix 4y ago
      Uber didn't "steal" anything as competition is not a zero-sum game. Drivers chose contract work over a full-time job, and it's their choice to save their income. Besides, pensions and Social Security aren't shields against elder poverty befalling spendthrifts. They're merely buffers and one's that come at the opportunity cost of being able to take the money at that point in time and investing it.
olalonde 4y ago
> No, in Switzerland. Instead it managed to steal almost a billion USD from drivers in Switzerland alone and give others the "idea" they can break the law too. It seems that this ~billion USD is an hypothetical amount Uber would have had to pay if its contractors had been employees? If so, I'm not quite sure "steal" is the appropriate word here. It also ignores the many things Uber might have done differently if its drivers had been employees: increase fare rates, decrease driver payouts, hire less drivers, possibly get out of Switzerland entirely, etc.
- Dobbs 4y ago
  Wage theft is still theft. In the US it is the largest form of theft there is.
  - sebzim4500 4y ago
    Doesn't wage theft imply they aren't paying the amount that they agreed to pay?
    - adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
      they weren't paying the benefits required by law
    - Dobbs 4y ago
      wage theft comes in many forms. Most would use it to describe the deprivation of any pay or benefits as agreed upon or required by law. So not paying benefits required, reclassifying legal status of workers to avoid paying things, not paying overtime correctly, etc.
- notimetorelax 4y ago
  Well, and this is exactly the problem. They disrupted the market of ordinary taxis by undercuting the prices. Now that they are compelled to pay social contribitions their business is suddenly unprofitable. As it was discussed in the other threads - Uber is not prohibited in Switzerland, they just need to adhere to the law same as everyone else. Somehow this seems to be a problem for them.
labrador 4y ago
> Uber is the worst kind of business preying on the lower class claiming independence and freedom Sounds like Uber was the original web3 business
cornel_io 4y ago
Jesus f with the "slave" overdramatization, that is just ridiculous. Most of the people driving for Uber would not have been driving cabs and living wonderful lives otherwise, they'd be slinging burgers at McDonald's or just unemployed. They wouldn't be making the choice to drive if it didn't make sense for them, which makes it "work", not "slavery". I'm sorry that the world doesn't offer magical fairyland jobs that are super easy, require zero skill, and pay super well, I really am - as a society we should be aiming for an abundance economy fueled by automation, where everyone shares in the spoils. But running a business that gives people work that they are generally happy to have the option to take is not infringement on anyone's independence or freedom. Just don't drive for them, and you'd be in the exact same position you were in without them existing (unless you were profiting from the heavily cartel-ized taxi system which abused all the customers, in which case I can't give a bigger shrug).

dsco 4y ago

I know a bunch of people who are happy Uber drivers as they couldn’t afford becoming regular taxi drivers. Do you often point out to your Uber divers that they’re lower class and being preyed on? How do they take it?

mavu 4y ago
you can tell yourself that all day long if it makes you feel better. In Europe, uber is exploiting the most vulnerable in our societies, and profiting of the harm they do to people and communities. Not to mention, breaking laws, endangering passengers, using outright evil methods to keep their workers money.
- yladiz 4y ago
  Some of the most vulnerable are the homeless and mentally disabled. How is Uber exploiting them?
  - harvey9 4y ago
    The phrase 'most vulnerable' is terribly overused, but your comment is still disingenuous.
- ipaddr 4y ago
  These are not fair comments because everything you say the taxi industry it replaced is guilt of and closing the market. Uber puts new cars on the road and opens the industry to those who are locked out.
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    Suppose taxi industry is guilty of murder, does that mean I can now commit murder too?
    - kspacewalk2 4y ago
      If it gets replaced by a strictly less murderous alternative, this alternative is preferable.
    - stale2002 4y ago
      No, but if a taxi industry is murdering people, and also helped create laws that prevent competitors from entering the market, I think it is OK to get around the laws that prevent competitors from competing with the taxi murder mafia.
    - ambrozk 4y ago
      In this metaphor, "murder" stands for "operating a taxi service without the approval of the existing taxi services."
RajT88 4y ago
My brother in law is a mechanic. He sees a lot of drivers who have a 3 year old car with 200k miles on them and basically a new car worth of repairs needed. I also get a lot of happy drivers saying "this is my first day / week". I see a lot of crazy driving too. All in all, it seems like there is a learning curve to being a profitable Uber driver. It is not necessarily easy to accomplish. The ones who seem to anecdotally do best by it are the folks supplementing income by opportunistically taking fares here and there.
- remflight 4y ago
  I love people who somehow think that taxi industry is filled with clean, perfectly maintained cars, fairly paid workers with great benefits and just the epitome of great citizens without any corruption.
  - RajT88 4y ago
    Do you think I am one of those? If so, why?
  - andybak 4y ago
    I see lots of people here from different countries describing very different experiences and wondering why they don't align.
  - ambrozk 4y ago
    It's insane. Thank God for tech companies for disrupting one of the worst industries on the planet. Uber and Lyft are, IMO, some of the best examples of the virtuous nature of "move fast & break things" as a business philosophy.
    - Nursie 4y ago
      Uber are worse where I live. They cancel on you, they accept the fare and then just screw around for 20 minutes until you cancel, then if you try to rebook the price has magically gone up. At most times of day they are more expensive than the normal cab firms. This all seems to come down to the rates of pay available to drivers getting worse, presumably as the VC money runs out. Thankfully the old cab firms have managed to cling on in the face of years of massive market distortion, and are still there to pick up the slack.
winternett 4y ago
A lot of people eat peanuts, but a handful of people die from them. Should all people be made to eat peanut butter? Uber is only a good company if it improves, yet somehow there is a never ending online narrative that "It's treating me well, so it's great for the world!". That's not normal, it's deception.

chrischen 4y ago

They swapped masters from evil medallion rent seekers to software engineers. I’d pick the engineers any day and I’m glad they broke corrupt laws to make changes.

mantas 4y ago
Taxi medallions ain't a thing in many countries. Many countries had proper regulated taxes with good drivers and clean cars (or vice versa). Now it's a shitshow with beaten Prius and a shithead behind the wheel.
- aaronchall 4y ago
  I agree we should probably say "licenses" and not "medallions" when talking about policies all over the world, it's just that medallions are known as the worst example of corruption and regulatory capture, protecting incumbents while incredibly claiming this helped stranded people who need to get home when no taxis can be found. At the peak these licenses were going for a million dollars each. I think Uber, Lyft, and others are serving a great good in substituting for taxis in filling the need for road travelers. Taxi drivers may argue that the drivers are being abused, but we can't all have (nor do we all want) jobs with lots of protections. Being a driver should be a job anyone could take while on the road to reaching their dreams in life, and not restricted to a lucky few who demanded the government give them a monopoly on the gig.
  - mantas 4y ago
    No, licenses-for-million-money did not exist outside of some markets. Previously you'd get into taxi and then tell address. And refusing not-profitable-enough service was illegal. Now drivers see the route beforehand and can skip it. A job should allow people to make a good wage and make a living out of it. It shouldn't be race-to-the-bottom for the profit of few by sacrificing quality of service.
- dantheman 4y ago
  Too bad those countries with proper regulated taxis and good drivers couldn't compete. Sounds like they weren't so good at least to the consumer.

FrenchDevRemote 4y ago

I don't see how it's slavery to work for uber. If uber wasn't there, the drivers would be either unemployed, working another minimum wage job, or taking 30 years loans to get Taxi licenses(which most of them wouldn't be able to get). It's just the same as any other precarious job

runarberg 4y ago
This is a really simplistic view of labor dynamics and almost certainly too simplistic. Jobs don’t exist in a vacuum. When a job is created sometimes it spurs other jobs, but sometimes it removes them. It is a really dynamic system full of feedbacks and feed forwards. I think I read somewhere where someone actually modeled the dynamics behind uber eats, and found out that it resulted in net-negative jobs... That is every worker for uber-eats meant that more then one other worker didn’t get a job, not to mention the worse condition of that one worker that actually had the job.
- lesstenseflow 4y ago
  I read the article you are referring to and it actually came to the opposite conclusion from what you’re saying: net-positive jobs, more spent and more earned. (If you’re wondering how I am rebutting runarberg when neither he nor I cited a source, that’s a darn good question. But let the record show I offer just as much evidence as he.)
  - runarberg 4y ago
    I can draw out a plausible model right now that results in net-negative jobs. Driving factors include: * Food vendors that previously had delivery downsizing their own delivery staff and offloading it to uber eats. * Restaurants not wanting to pay the service fees to uber eats gets fewer customers from the lowered exposures (as customers start ordering mostly through the delivery app), and eventually shut down. * Restaurants that previously didn’t do delivery getting less money per customer as the delivery services take their share. And is forced to cut down on their opening hours and some of their staff to make up for the loss. I never read that article you are referring to—if it even exits. The point was that labor dynamics are more complicated then: If a job is created, someone will work that job. If we transfer over to the taxi market. There are examples of city government using Uber as an excuse to cut bus lines. Some bus drivers hence lost their jobs, and some companies probably lost their workers as the commute became to hard.

O__________O 4y ago

Taxi Drivers in Switzerland typically earn around 40,700 CHF per year and Uber drivers make roughly the same if working full-time, more if they are working more than 40-hours a week. Unless the union is able to explicitly explain their claim the Uber is somehow unfair to drivers, to me sounds like the union is just complaining they not getting their member dues. Possible I missed something, so here are my sources: How much Uber drivers make in Switzerland https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/ride-sharing-app-_uber-reaches-400-000-active-users-in-switzerland/45291726 https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/ride-sharing-app-_uber-reaches-... Taxi Driver Average Salary in Switzerland http://www.salaryexplorer.com/salary-survey.php?loc=210&loctype=1&job=236&jobtype=3 http://www.salaryexplorer.com/salary-survey.php?loc=210&loct...

sschueller 4y ago
Uber does not pay Social Security, Overtime, workers comp etc. When these people retire they have nothing, this money was effectively stolen from the workers. Unia has successfully sued Uber at the highest courts and Uber recently lost. Geneva has banned Uber and others are expected to follow. There will now be an attempt to recover almost a Billion USD that is owed to drivers from Uber. [1] [1] https://www.unia.ch/de/aktuell/aktuell/artikel/a/19138 https://www.unia.ch/de/aktuell/aktuell/artikel/a/19138
- ratww 4y ago
  > this money was effectively stolen from the workers Yep. And also from the state/taxpayers, as the state will have to spend money to ensure those workers aren't left out in the street when older.
  - Dracophoenix 4y ago
    Uber didn't "steal" anything as competition is not a zero-sum game. Drivers chose contract work over a full-time job, and it's their choice to save their income. Besides, pensions and Social Security aren't shields against elder poverty befalling spendthrifts. They're merely buffers and one's that come at the opportunity cost of being able to take the money at that point in time and investing it.

olalonde 4y ago

> No, in Switzerland. Instead it managed to steal almost a billion USD from drivers in Switzerland alone and give others the "idea" they can break the law too. It seems that this ~billion USD is an hypothetical amount Uber would have had to pay if its contractors had been employees? If so, I'm not quite sure "steal" is the appropriate word here. It also ignores the many things Uber might have done differently if its drivers had been employees: increase fare rates, decrease driver payouts, hire less drivers, possibly get out of Switzerland entirely, etc.

Dobbs 4y ago
Wage theft is still theft. In the US it is the largest form of theft there is.
- sebzim4500 4y ago
  Doesn't wage theft imply they aren't paying the amount that they agreed to pay?
  - adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
    they weren't paying the benefits required by law
  - Dobbs 4y ago
    wage theft comes in many forms. Most would use it to describe the deprivation of any pay or benefits as agreed upon or required by law. So not paying benefits required, reclassifying legal status of workers to avoid paying things, not paying overtime correctly, etc.
notimetorelax 4y ago
Well, and this is exactly the problem. They disrupted the market of ordinary taxis by undercuting the prices. Now that they are compelled to pay social contribitions their business is suddenly unprofitable. As it was discussed in the other threads - Uber is not prohibited in Switzerland, they just need to adhere to the law same as everyone else. Somehow this seems to be a problem for them.

labrador 4y ago

> Uber is the worst kind of business preying on the lower class claiming independence and freedom Sounds like Uber was the original web3 business

cornel_io 4y ago

Jesus f with the "slave" overdramatization, that is just ridiculous. Most of the people driving for Uber would not have been driving cabs and living wonderful lives otherwise, they'd be slinging burgers at McDonald's or just unemployed. They wouldn't be making the choice to drive if it didn't make sense for them, which makes it "work", not "slavery". I'm sorry that the world doesn't offer magical fairyland jobs that are super easy, require zero skill, and pay super well, I really am - as a society we should be aiming for an abundance economy fueled by automation, where everyone shares in the spoils. But running a business that gives people work that they are generally happy to have the option to take is not infringement on anyone's independence or freedom. Just don't drive for them, and you'd be in the exact same position you were in without them existing (unless you were profiting from the heavily cartel-ized taxi system which abused all the customers, in which case I can't give a bigger shrug).