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It's troubling that these business models aren't viable unless you pay the drivers less than $15 an hour. Especially with no benefits. That is very little these

• Manuel_D 3y ago
  The law did not mandate a $15 and hour wage. It set specific per mile cost requirements, which could easily be well over $15 per hour. Ride share driver's aren't slaves. They chose to drive for ride share companies above the other options. If it was a bad deal then Uber and Lyft would be having trouble finding drivers. How is strictly fewer options a good thing?
  • gwd 3y ago
    Go read about working conditions at factories in the 19th century. Those people weren't slaves either; they "chose" to work 12 hour days, 7 days a week, in extraordinarily dangerous conditions, because the alternate from their perspective was to starve to death. That's not the situation these Uber drivers are in, specifically because of unions and other laws (such as minimum wage laws) which prevent such "choices" from happening.
    • Manuel_D 3y ago
      The irony is that industrial jobs in the early 19th century were better than the alternatives, namely subsistence farming. For all the talk about "Dickensian" industrial working conditions, the industrializing countries in 19th century saw some of the biggest leaps in standards of living in history, unions or not. This is exactly the kind of misguided take that leads people deprive people less privileged then themselves of employment opportunities. You wouldn't want to drive for Uber, it'd be a bad choose in your situation. And you're applying the same thinking to people who don't have the same employment prospects. What will Uber and Lyft drivers do now that price controls have made ride sharing too expensive for most of the market? Work at fast food joints? In retail? All of those choice were present when drivers chose to drive for ride share companies, and the drivers concluded they were inferior to working for Uber and Lyft. Now, were forcing them to go to one of those inferior choices and patting ourselves on the back for doing a supposedly good thing.
      • silent_cal 3y ago
        I think this is a bit of a false dichotomy. Yeah wasting away in a factory for 12 hours a day is better than starving to death on a farm, but still, the factory conditions didn't have to suck as bad as they did.
      • okwhateverdude 3y ago
        Or Uber and Lyft could simply make less profit so they could abide by local labor laws. The labor law didn't remove the employment opportunity. Greed and shitty companies that don't want to abide by the law removed the employment opportunity. Don't shift blame for the scofflaws.
        • Manuel_D 3y ago
          But if profit is negative then Uber and Lyft will just leave the market entirely. The only way to keep profits positive is to increase prices beyond what customers are willing to pay.
  • thejazzman 3y ago
    > They chose I'm afraid most humans are not "choosing", at least not in the way many people on hackernews get to choose between various extremely-cushy white collars job. Work = Survival We'll "choose" the best option available to use, and as the overall temperature of the market changes, so do our "choices"..
    • aetherson 3y ago
      And the labor market is overall very hot right now. Unemployment is 3.9%.
  • coldpie 3y ago
    > The law did not mandate a $15 and hour wage. It set specific per mile cost requirements, which could easily be well over $15 per hour. I'm not 100% certain, but I think this is a workaround for Uber/Lyft's workaround that lets them violate employment laws, namely, that they claim their employees are contractors, not employees. Since the contractor agreement specifies payment per mile, that's what the council's ordinance applies to. If Uber/Lyft were honest about their employees being employees, then they would have the minimum wage law applied, like any other business.
    • Manuel_D 3y ago
      If Uber and Lyft drivers were employees the Uber and Lyft could mandate which times of day drivers need to work, as well as prohibiting them from working for competing ride share companies. Like it or not, Uber and Lyft drivers are indeed contractors. They set their own hours, and are free to work for competing ride share apps. There's nothing dishonest about this, people are just salty that the "Ride share driver are actually employees" meme is not true.
      • coldpie 3y ago
        Sure, I'm just explaining why the council chose the per-mile strategy in order to enforce the already-extant minimum wage ordinance.
      • Ekaros 3y ago
        But on other hand they are not free to set prices. Which to me is what would make Uber and Lyft purely matching service. Allow the drivers to set the prices and rules. Then customers can take or not take them.
  • fumeux_fume 3y ago
    It appears the drivers are choosing to lobby their city government for this increase. If you believe the boundaries of political power for labor do not extend past slavery you're overlooking a large and incredibly important part of American history.
    • JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > appears the drivers are choosing to lobby their city government for this increase Not challenging you, but do you have evidence? I remember in California drivers being famously against reform.
      • baggy_trough 3y ago
        One person's reform is another person's job loss.
        • JumpCrisscross 3y ago
          Sure, but if the drivers are lobbying for it that risk is their right.
          • baggy_trough 3y ago
            I don't really agree with that, because it is exceedingly unlikely that all drivers are lobbying for it or agree with it, even if a majority do so (which is not at all certain).
    • Manuel_D 3y ago
      I'm very interested in sources indicating that this legislation is supported by the majority of ride share drivers. Though, to be fair, if 10 out of 1,000 ride share drivers are supporting this legislation it's technically honest to "[an unspecified proportion of] drivers are choosing to lobby their city government for this increase."
      • 3y ago
  • silent_cal 3y ago
    I think they are slaves to a degree if they are illegal immigrants, which I suspect many of them are. This is the dirty trick played by many big businesses in the US. "You'll get your low wage and you'll like it, or else." I do know this happens in the agriculture and construction businesses, and based on my limited powers of observation, it happens in the ride-share business too.
  • tivert 3y ago
    > Ride share driver's aren't slaves. They chose to drive for ride share companies above the other options. If it was a bad deal then Uber and Lyft would be having trouble finding drivers. And slaves aren't slaves either, they chose to remain slaves above other options (rebel and be beaten or killed). If it was a bad deal, the slaveholders would be having trouble getting their slaves to work, and would just be killing or beating them all the time. I find type of argument irksome. It basically ignores whatever the actual situation is with a blind assumption whatever the market does is the best (or at least better) thing and is therefore fine. If you give a person terrible choices, and they pick the best of a bad lot, that choice doesn't excuse the situation. All Minneapolis did was mandate one those choices had to be better. The rest is up to Uber and Lyft, who chose to play hardball to keep exploiting their workers to the degree they've become accustomed. > How is strictly fewer options a good thing? Exploitative options aren't a acceptable.
    • Manuel_D 3y ago
      > And slaves aren't slaves either, they chose to remain slaves above other options (rebel and be beaten or killed) Coercion is when you cannot reasonably refuse. If one faces torture and execution for refusal, then they cannot reasonably refuse. Will Uber and Lyft tie up drivers and whip them if they choose to take a job at Starbucks? Whill Uber and Lyft kill drivers? Come on, you call my argument irksome then you compare these drivers to actual chattel slavery.
      • tivert 3y ago
        Remember: at it's core, capitalism uses the threat of deprivation and want to coerce cooperation with it, and it always likes an oversupply of labor. Don't want to chose to work at my sweatshop (or the sweatshop of one of my peers) for miserable wages while I get rich off your labor? Fine, go starve. And don't go trespassing on my estate to try to grow food, if you try the men with guns will come for you. What's so clever about it is the threat is indirect and systemic (instead of direct and personal), which is all some people seem to need to deny it's there. It also brings to mind the ancient Roman fire brigades, which were more of an extortion racket than anything else.
  • piva00 3y ago
    > How is strictly fewer options a good thing? When the options are narrowed into precarious work such as most (or even all) of the "gig economy" bullshit, have more options of precarious work is not good overall for a society. It erodes the standard employment relationship, it's cheaper for employers so companies not relying on precarious work are in disadvantage which pushes more people into precarious work, creating a death spiral to proper secure employment in more sectors of society over time.
  • RestlessMind 3y ago
    > Ride share driver's aren't slaves. But they can be some desperate people, who are willing to put up with inhumane working conditions just to survive. We, as a developed society, should have a floor on the working conditions. Otherwise, businesses will take advantage of the weakest members of the society to bring back practices like 9-9-6, peeing in the bottle at the warehouses, child labor and what not. Regulations are the best defense against a race to the bottom.
• lotsofpulp 3y ago
  I don’t see why most people in America would expect to be able to afford drivers. Labor is and has long been famously expensive. A lot of immigrants will have drivers/maids/cooks in their country of origin, and then come to the US and have to do their own laundry/cooking/driving/etc.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • Ekaros 3y ago
    I don't see any reason why taxi drivers should not be able to charge same that say lawyers or software consultants. And really these platforms should allow exactly that drivers to set their own prices even above government set minimum.
    • JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > don't see any reason why taxi drivers should not be able to charge same that say lawyers or software consultants I can compete with a taxi driver based on my existing skill set. I cannot with a lawyer or coder. This is basic supply and demand.
• brodouevencode 3y ago
  It's a low-skill job that just about anyone can do. Almost all jobs of this sort will be eliminated with technology/automation ESPECIALLY since higher labor wages put upward pressure on operating costs. i.e.: once self-driving vehicles come onto the scene (as in ubiquitous) there won't be a labor force to worry about.
  • silent_cal 3y ago
    Is this supposed to make me feel better? Lol
    • brodouevencode 3y ago
      I can tell you with certainty that most low-margin, high workforce industries (because I work in one of them) are looking to automate much of their workforce away especially in light of labor costs rising (minimum wage laws), increasing safety regulations (let the robots do it), increasing competitive pressure (foreign countries have cheaper labor), and social changes (people prefer interacting with a cell phone over a human being). Couple this with a publicly traded company such as Uber/Lyft whose whole existence depends on market value (the stock price) then the management of those companies are going to do the math to figure out if automating jobs is the right thing to do: their job is to maximize the value of the company (the stock price). The shareholders also have a vested interest for the same reasons.
      • silent_cal 3y ago
        I believe you, but that's depressing
  • IllIlIIllI 3y ago
    This would make more sense if a $15/hour wage was something out of step with historical wages. It's a big jump right now, but historically it's not out of step with previous periods. What were average wages at taxi companies pre-Uber? As for self-driving, I'd be a little concerned that a ~$8/hour cost (assuming previous was around $7) puts Uber in an untenable situation, self-driving cars or not. Ultimately there still would be labor force to worry about, no? Currently, drivers are responsible for maintenance, cleanliness, etc. -- once you switch to self-driving, someone else has to do all of that.