5 ms·

Everyone seems to forget or disregard the fact that these lawsuits are paid for by the taxi industry. Even when they dig up a few Uber drivers, it’s all a sham.

Everyone seems to forget or disregard the fact that these lawsuits are paid for by the taxi industry. Even when they dig up a few Uber drivers, it’s all a sham. 70% of surveyed rideshare drivers prefer to be independent contractors. If there was a serious majority for employment, Uber and Lyft simply wouldn’t exist.

mdorazio 4y ago
Surveyed by whom and how was the question asked?
- Spivak 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - jdminhbg 4y ago
    It’s possible that Uber and Lyft drivers are simply not dumb enough to believe that the legislature is going to magically conjure a 401k match and PTO for their 10 hour/week driving side gig.
    - cool_dude85 4y ago
      In other countries, working at McDonalds you get pension time (better, I'd say, than any 401k match) and more weeks of PTO than most Americans do. These rights were "magically conjured" either by the legislature or labor action.
      - jdminhbg 4y ago
        You can get that at fast food places or corporate coffee chains in the US as well. What you can’t get is PTO for working 10 hours a week whenever you feel like it.
        Spivak 4y ago
        And no one is saying that. It's "if you work enough hours that you're effectively part or full time then you get benefits" which is how lots of employer arrangements work now. One of my friends is a therapist and their arrangement is have a case-load of more than 30 hours get benefits.
        jdminhbg 4y ago
        That might be a defensible position to take, but it's simply false that "no one is saying that." AB5, which this ballot prop is a response to, absolutely says that: https://www.investopedia.com/california-assembly-bill-5-ab5-4773201#toc-what-is-the-assembly-bill-5-ab5-abc-test https://www.investopedia.com/california-assembly-bill-5-ab5-... There is no minimum time worked.
      - carlosjobim 4y ago
        Pension time is not a gift, it is money being stolen from the worker and transferred to the rulers and to the elderly, with no trustable guarantee of the worker ever getting anything back. With that said, working at McDonalds and paying a pension is completely different than working a gig job, because you are expected to work when scheduled and will be fired if you don't, while an Uber driver works when he sees fit.
        Jochim 4y ago
        > With that said, working at McDonalds and paying a pension is completely different than working a gig job, because you are expected to work when scheduled and will be fired if you don't, while an Uber driver works when he sees fit. While McDonalds might expect their employees to work a regular schedule, it's very common in the service industry for the schedule to depend on the employee's acceptance of the shift. The employee might commit to working a particular day in advance but it's very similar to the Uber/Lyft situation.
        carlosjobim 4y ago
        From what I know it's pretty much one way in the service industry. The boss decides the schedule and will get rid of you if you don't adhere. With Uber it is explicit and expected that drivers only work when they feel like.
        Jochim 4y ago
        It really depends on the place. I've never encountered one where the manager had total control over who was working when. Availability would be requested before creating the schedule and one would be made up based on that. Even then, if you found you were scheduled for shifts you couldn't work you could request a change. Good managers would arrange it themselves, otherwise you'd have to organise a swap. That's not to say they don't exist. Some managers will certainly retaliate against employees who don't conform.
  - scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago
    As an ex-Lyft driver (SF,CA) and someone who knows/knew many of them I would add here that it is rare for anyone doing this kind of work to be planning to do it for life. It’s usually part of some temporary plan or arrangement. This is why these people often argue against what would seem to be in their interest. They want to stay under radar, they just want/need the cash. That being said, I’m not so sure in hindsight that any of it is healthy. In the EU where I live now, driving a car for this work requires the driver to jump through many extra hoops so it is a more long-term decision to become one. You get nicer cars, better drivers and… higher prices. There is no solution to this problem! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
    - hellojesus 4y ago
      The solution is the free market. People don't have to drive. It's a super low barrier to entry position and therefore is ultracompetitive. Drivers wouldn't drive if they wanted benefits. They would work elsewhere.
      - Jochim 4y ago
        The free market solution of 70 years ago was to sell babies[0]. The willingness of the desperate to engage in an act is not affirmation of it's morality. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_selling#cite_ref-58 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_selling#cite_ref-58
        hellojesus 4y ago
        Why should we label a voluntary transaction as immoral so long as no third party harm is done? Seems that this is similar to adoption but with proceeds benefiting parents. Maybe moral hazard in incentivizing peolple to produce children purely to sell, but I would imagine market dynamics would solve the supply issue when prices decline.
  - BeFlatXIII 4y ago
    Average LinkedIn post.
  - Rebelgecko 4y ago
    Huh? Prop 22 actually grants some of those things, while letting drivers continue to choose their own schedules* *Technically being an employee wouldn't force Uber to give them schedules, BUT Uber would be forced to pay minimum wage for time drivers spend idle. Unless they wanted to throw money away, they'd be forced to start capping the # of active drivers, otherwise someone could drop off a stack of cell phones on Zyzzyx Road and make a $1k/day without having to actually pick up customers.
kcatskcolbdi 4y ago
I can't vouch for the validity of the statistic you mention, as you didn't source it. However, I can provide with 100% certainty that I would prefer being paid 1 trillion dollars an hour instead of my current wage. In fact, I would prefer being paid every dollar amount between my current wage and 1 trillion dollars an hour. Labor preference does not dictate market conditions. Labor preference has an especially low impact in circumstances where the compensation is low and competition for good paying jobs is fierce. It is wrong to state that if a serious majority of ride-share drivers wanted employment Uber and Lyft wouldn't exist.
- hellojesus 4y ago
  I think the GP is stating that market dynamics would dictate that someone working as a 1099 for ride share that also had a preference for w2 status would simply find a different, w2 job instead of continuing to work SS a 1099. And I agree with that statement.
p0pcult 4y ago
[flagged]
- throwawaymaths 4y ago
  Yet somehow they are more exploitative. I would never ever want to be a taxi driver, but made ~60k/year as a Lyft driver.
- Quinner 4y ago
  Before Uber (around 2010) LA County mandated that Taxis accept credit cards. I don't think I ever managed to get in a cab where the credit card reader wasn't mysteriously "broken."
  - Rebelgecko 4y ago
    Even if I told the driver when I was getting in that I'd be paying via CC, the machine would no longer be working by the time we got to my destination. Miraculously, by the time I said "wow sucks for you" and started opening the car door to leave, the machine would start working again (or in one case they had to call in my CC number, which might be the only time the machine was actually broken)
  - p0pcult 4y ago
    There is a difference between an employee of a company breaking the law, and the company itself breaking the law.

mdorazio 4y ago

Surveyed by whom and how was the question asked?

Spivak 4y ago
[flagged]
- jdminhbg 4y ago
  It’s possible that Uber and Lyft drivers are simply not dumb enough to believe that the legislature is going to magically conjure a 401k match and PTO for their 10 hour/week driving side gig.
  - cool_dude85 4y ago
    In other countries, working at McDonalds you get pension time (better, I'd say, than any 401k match) and more weeks of PTO than most Americans do. These rights were "magically conjured" either by the legislature or labor action.
    - jdminhbg 4y ago
      You can get that at fast food places or corporate coffee chains in the US as well. What you can’t get is PTO for working 10 hours a week whenever you feel like it.
      - Spivak 4y ago
        And no one is saying that. It's "if you work enough hours that you're effectively part or full time then you get benefits" which is how lots of employer arrangements work now. One of my friends is a therapist and their arrangement is have a case-load of more than 30 hours get benefits.
        jdminhbg 4y ago
        That might be a defensible position to take, but it's simply false that "no one is saying that." AB5, which this ballot prop is a response to, absolutely says that: https://www.investopedia.com/california-assembly-bill-5-ab5-4773201#toc-what-is-the-assembly-bill-5-ab5-abc-test https://www.investopedia.com/california-assembly-bill-5-ab5-... There is no minimum time worked.
    - carlosjobim 4y ago
      Pension time is not a gift, it is money being stolen from the worker and transferred to the rulers and to the elderly, with no trustable guarantee of the worker ever getting anything back. With that said, working at McDonalds and paying a pension is completely different than working a gig job, because you are expected to work when scheduled and will be fired if you don't, while an Uber driver works when he sees fit.
      - Jochim 4y ago
        > With that said, working at McDonalds and paying a pension is completely different than working a gig job, because you are expected to work when scheduled and will be fired if you don't, while an Uber driver works when he sees fit. While McDonalds might expect their employees to work a regular schedule, it's very common in the service industry for the schedule to depend on the employee's acceptance of the shift. The employee might commit to working a particular day in advance but it's very similar to the Uber/Lyft situation.
        carlosjobim 4y ago
        From what I know it's pretty much one way in the service industry. The boss decides the schedule and will get rid of you if you don't adhere. With Uber it is explicit and expected that drivers only work when they feel like.
        Jochim 4y ago
        It really depends on the place. I've never encountered one where the manager had total control over who was working when. Availability would be requested before creating the schedule and one would be made up based on that. Even then, if you found you were scheduled for shifts you couldn't work you could request a change. Good managers would arrange it themselves, otherwise you'd have to organise a swap. That's not to say they don't exist. Some managers will certainly retaliate against employees who don't conform.
- scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago
  As an ex-Lyft driver (SF,CA) and someone who knows/knew many of them I would add here that it is rare for anyone doing this kind of work to be planning to do it for life. It’s usually part of some temporary plan or arrangement. This is why these people often argue against what would seem to be in their interest. They want to stay under radar, they just want/need the cash. That being said, I’m not so sure in hindsight that any of it is healthy. In the EU where I live now, driving a car for this work requires the driver to jump through many extra hoops so it is a more long-term decision to become one. You get nicer cars, better drivers and… higher prices. There is no solution to this problem! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  - hellojesus 4y ago
    The solution is the free market. People don't have to drive. It's a super low barrier to entry position and therefore is ultracompetitive. Drivers wouldn't drive if they wanted benefits. They would work elsewhere.
    - Jochim 4y ago
      The free market solution of 70 years ago was to sell babies[0]. The willingness of the desperate to engage in an act is not affirmation of it's morality. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_selling#cite_ref-58 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_selling#cite_ref-58
      - hellojesus 4y ago
        Why should we label a voluntary transaction as immoral so long as no third party harm is done? Seems that this is similar to adoption but with proceeds benefiting parents. Maybe moral hazard in incentivizing peolple to produce children purely to sell, but I would imagine market dynamics would solve the supply issue when prices decline.
- BeFlatXIII 4y ago
  Average LinkedIn post.
- Rebelgecko 4y ago
  Huh? Prop 22 actually grants some of those things, while letting drivers continue to choose their own schedules* *Technically being an employee wouldn't force Uber to give them schedules, BUT Uber would be forced to pay minimum wage for time drivers spend idle. Unless they wanted to throw money away, they'd be forced to start capping the # of active drivers, otherwise someone could drop off a stack of cell phones on Zyzzyx Road and make a $1k/day without having to actually pick up customers.

kcatskcolbdi 4y ago

I can't vouch for the validity of the statistic you mention, as you didn't source it. However, I can provide with 100% certainty that I would prefer being paid 1 trillion dollars an hour instead of my current wage. In fact, I would prefer being paid every dollar amount between my current wage and 1 trillion dollars an hour. Labor preference does not dictate market conditions. Labor preference has an especially low impact in circumstances where the compensation is low and competition for good paying jobs is fierce. It is wrong to state that if a serious majority of ride-share drivers wanted employment Uber and Lyft wouldn't exist.

hellojesus 4y ago
I think the GP is stating that market dynamics would dictate that someone working as a 1099 for ride share that also had a preference for w2 status would simply find a different, w2 job instead of continuing to work SS a 1099. And I agree with that statement.

p0pcult 4y ago

[flagged]

throwawaymaths 4y ago
Yet somehow they are more exploitative. I would never ever want to be a taxi driver, but made ~60k/year as a Lyft driver.
Quinner 4y ago
Before Uber (around 2010) LA County mandated that Taxis accept credit cards. I don't think I ever managed to get in a cab where the credit card reader wasn't mysteriously "broken."
- Rebelgecko 4y ago
  Even if I told the driver when I was getting in that I'd be paying via CC, the machine would no longer be working by the time we got to my destination. Miraculously, by the time I said "wow sucks for you" and started opening the car door to leave, the machine would start working again (or in one case they had to call in my CC number, which might be the only time the machine was actually broken)
- p0pcult 4y ago
  There is a difference between an employee of a company breaking the law, and the company itself breaking the law.