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Yeah the law should be gig work is illegal and the OP should have been classified as a part time or full time worker who would have been paid for the entire tim
by qbasic_forever 3y ago
Yeah the law should be gig work is illegal and the OP should have been classified as a part time or full time worker who would have been paid for the entire time on the clock during the work day, including the time wasted while the company toiled to resolve a customer dispute.
- jfghi 3y agoBut then Uber would be forced to lose even more money while “disrupting” their industry?
- warent 3y agoWell yeah... they're forced to lose money in the same way any failed non-viable business is "forced to lose money" lol
- ambrood 3y agoperhaps update your priors at this point. Uber is a profitable company now.
- jfghi 3y agoWikipedia puts net income at -9.1 billion for 2022. It takes more than one quarters worth of information to update a prior on a 14 year old company.
- imgabe 3y agoUber had a profitable quarter. They are still $30 billion in the red over the lifetime of the company.
- sokoloff 3y agoIndeed. A net income of $394M in the quarter doesn't even pay 3 month's worth of imputed interest charge on $30B of aggregate losses.
- ambrood 3y agoyou realise that much of it is stock grants right?
- ambrood 3y agoAgain much of that is how the accounting for stock grants goes (most of it in company’s history) and not say, actual PNL incurred in incentives.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- koopuluri 3y agoI definitely see the argument to classify workers as a more "permanent" status and guarantee all the benefits that come with that. But that would likely increase prices, decrease demand and cause some drivers to lose jobs. Ofc, this depends on the region (country, state, etc.), I'd love to see some estimates on how much prices would go up in a particular region, and how much the demand would potentially decrease - when classifying drivers as full / part time workers. Will be keeping an eye on this Seattle experiment.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- qbasic_forever 3y agoIt doesn't have to increase prices, it could decrease executive pay (which has grown far, far faster than worker pay) instead!
- eru 3y agoIf they could just decrease executive pay, why aren't they doing that already? In a sense, executive pay comes straight out of shareholders' pockets, so they would clearly have an incentive to decrease it, if they could. Executive pay seems fairly independent of the issue at hand.
- anticensor 3y agoSome executives are themselves shareholders and want to pay themselves twice.
- eru 3y agoYes, but in that case it doesn't matter, a dollar is a dollar and they can't make extra dollars this way.
- liquidjems 3y ago
- granzymes 3y agoMore likely, as a college student the OP wouldn’t have been able to get a shift scheduled because Uber would prioritize drivers who can work full time.
- qbasic_forever 3y agoAnd Uber would have a terrible time finding employees in a university area where most of the local population and workforce is beholden to a part time class schedule. It would leave them open for a competitor who values and works with part time workers to swoop in and eat Uber's lunch.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- komali2 3y agoOr, we discover that we can't really have on-demand food delivery without a level of human suffering we find unacceptable, and it goes away. Uber dies. So what?
- ffhhttt 3y agoHow is fixed shift work any better in the regard? Does Amazon treat it’s driver better than uber?
- ffhhttt 3y agoThere is no way these part time workers would ever have as much flexibility as they have under the current model though.
- vasco 3y agoIf you're so sure about how to create a better business that all the employees would prefer why don't you do it instead of speaking about things you clearly don't know about? You've been told multiple time people value flexibility and yet you keep fixating on an old work model that you want to apply to everyone. More options are better. Full time jobs didn't go away. This whole industry didn't exist other than getting paid per shift as a pizza delivery driver. How many gig workers do you personally know? I know more than 20 and all of them prefer gig work to signing up for a full time delivery position at a restaurant. Gig work is available to immigrants super fast as well. Go to any major city in Europe and see migrants and refugees making a living delivering food. Do you think they are dumb and choose the worst job they can get? Talk to some people before you pontificate over what they should want for themselves. They can literally stop the app at any point so your problem isn't that gig work exists, but that other people value things you don't.
- sergiotapia 3y agoTerrible idea. My brother in law makes a living driving for Uber, it's how he supports his family.
- eru 3y agoThe common fallacy is that if we ban anything that any employment that's not utopia, only utopian jobs will be left. Alas, that doesn't mean that everyone will have a utopian job.
- underwater 3y agoAm I missing the sarcasm? If your brother in law is relying on Uber, then employment protections would mean he doesn't lose his sole income unfairly and without notice. Uber argue that most gig workers are just doing it as a spur of the moment side hustle, and therefore the flexibility is necessary. But your anecdote is the opposite.
- jvmfjvfjvf 3y agoThat isn't how labor law works. Employees in his state are most likely at-will and can be fired without notice.
- matsemann 3y agoDamn your labor laws over there are wild. And you just accept that? To me it sounds like drivers support Uber because of some dystopian Stockholm syndrome where it's their only hope in a failed system.
- chongli 3y agoMy dad drives for Uber Eats as well as Skip the Dishes (a Canadian gig work food delivery app). He gets paid more per hour on Skip but the app will not allow him to work as much as he wants, it forces him to sign up for 3-4 hour shifts a week ahead of time. Sometimes Skip will only give him 1-2 shifts in a week (8 hours total work), which is simply not enough money to get by. So he uses Uber Eats to pick up the slack. The app lets him go online and go offline any time he wants — no shifts, no scheduling ahead. He’s also completely free to reject as many orders as he wants until he gets ones that offer a bigger tip. Skip, on the other hand, penalizes his earnings if he falls below 80% moving average accept rate (over the last 10 orders). If Uber were forced to employ all of their drivers full- or part-time, he would lose all of the flexibility he now enjoys. He’d have scheduled shifts and have to clock in and clock out at specific times on specific days. He’d likely also lose the ability to reject orders entirely. I can tell you right now, he would hate that. So would many other gig workers, who take full advantage of the flexibility to be able to look after their families and otherwise live their lives. Compare that with the chaos that is the life of a retail worker stuck with an automated shift scheduling system and zero start/stop time consistency and zero flexibility.
- qbasic_forever 3y agoDo you realize what you're saying? Gig company A only dribbles out 8 hours of work a week so your Dad is forced to also work for gig company B, but needs flexible hours to do so. You are completely failing to see my point--if gig company A had to employ your Dad as a part time or full time employee with guaranteed minimum wage or work hours and other benefits he wouldn't have to tetris together an insane set of gig work jobs to keep from being evicted or starved. Your dad is forced to be an indentured servant for these companies that can't make money without exploiting people like him. And somehow you are immediately going to bat for these employers... pretty sick IMHO.
- aikinai 3y agoI’m not GP, but I think you’re missing their point. They described the Canadian job as “gig” but it’s actually structured more like more traditional part time work. It sounds like you’d prefer to outlaw all part time work? The point is true gig work allows you the flexibility to fit it around whatever else you have going on, be that part time work, starting a startup, taking care of a family, etc. of course it’s downsides and probably needs some more rules to protect the workers. But banning eliminates the opportunity entirely. It sucks to be a freelance writer and it’s easy to get screwed; should we ban that too?
- TulliusCicero 3y agoNo, there are certain upsides to gig work (mostly being able to set your own hours on the fly). What gig workers need is just better labor protections and benefits.
- ChainOfFools 3y agoWhen what you want is full-time work with benefits, and all of the fixed schedule commitment and expectation of "you will always show up at a given time for a specified duration" stability that comes with that, then gig work seems like a major step down and even a cynical plot by corporations to deprive you of something you think you should rightfully have. But when what you want is gig work and all of the flexibility that comes with that, and there are many people who want this and have wanted it for years - even decades before the so-called gig economy became a buzzword- then gig work is perfect and irreplaceable. There are some niches that have operated under the gig work model for almost 100 years, such a certain sectors of trucking where drivers own their own rigs and specifically choose to enter that line of work, as opposed to a salaried job where they don't have to worry about maintaining their own vehicle, precisely because they want the ability to simply switch their (very well-paid 6 figure minimun) job off like a light when they feel like it, for a couple of weeks or a couple of months or longer, and then switch it back on. I personally know a guy who has performed with the Trans-Siberian Orchestra for almost 20 years doing exactly this. he's a trucker with his own rig and his own schedule on his own terms for 6 months out of the year, and tours with the orchestra for the other 6 months. This type of lifestyle would not be possible if there was no established gig system available for people who wished to have that flexibility.
- barbariangrunge 3y agoTemp agencies have existed since forever. You call them, I’d like to work, you get a shift or a week of shifts or whatever. No commitment beyond that. Denying people part time work status has no benefits, part time workers already had opportunities to be super flexible
- LudwigNagasena 3y agoYeah, let’s also ban freelancing and self-employment. Ban, ban, ban. Let’s just forbid everything that it’s different from your lifestyle.
- sneak 3y agoPerhaps the state shouldn't be in the business of telling consenting adults what services they can buy or sell to each other provided they're not harming others. It's hard to see a victim here; no victim, no crime.