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U.S. judge says Uber drivers are not company's employees

reuters.com

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Re: U.S. judge says Uber drivers are not company's employees

#51

Post by jiveturkey »

dannyw wrote: post #49
bkor wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let these positions continue to function as gap-filling opportunities for the young and those who need massive flexibility or want side-hustles. It seems pretty clear that instead of letting people be underpaid (which affects the economy badly anyway) they prefer people to be paid properly. In Netherlands there's a proposal that employers who use flex workers should actually pay more social benefits for such people…

Or the costs push companies or of business and less jobs exist.

less of that type of job

Re: U.S. judge says Uber drivers are not company's employees

#52

Post by seanccox »

dannyw wrote: post #49
bkor wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let these positions continue to function as gap-filling opportunities for the young and those who need massive flexibility or want side-hustles. It seems pretty clear that instead of letting people be underpaid (which affects the economy badly anyway) they prefer people to be paid properly. In Netherlands there's a proposal that employers who use flex workers should actually pay more social benefits for such people…

Or the costs push companies or of business and less jobs exist.

This is a common misunderstanding about the relationships between companies, employees, and markets.

Companies aren't the originators of jobs. Instead, demand for goods/services can reach a threshold that makes corporate organization for profit viable, and in so doing, requires that employees be hired to fill the demand. If there isn't demand for a good/service, then even a company that is providing it will be unable to pay people. On the other hand, if demand for that good/service exceeds the capacity of the company, they will hire more people (and/or more companies will be created to compete for business).

Re: U.S. judge says Uber drivers are not company's employees

#53

Post by manigandham »

seanccox wrote: post #52
dannyw wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or the costs push companies or of business and less jobs exist.

This is a common misunderstanding about the relationships between companies, employees, and markets. Companies aren't the originators of jobs. Instead, demand for goods/services can reach a threshold that makes corporate organization for profit viable, and in so doing, requires that employees be hired to fill the demand. If there isn't demand for a good/service, then even a company that is providing it will be unable…

That demand is not in a vacuum, it also depends greatly on price. Increasing prices will reduce demand, and thereby reduce viability.

Re: U.S. judge says Uber drivers are not company's employees

#54

Post by jmull »

Not surprising, and probably the right decision.

But...

If you’re fighting for the ability to not pay your front-line people minimum wage, I have to wonder if you’ve got a viable business.

These are the people who interact directly with your paying customers and the ones who actually provide the service your customers value.

Keeping costs down is great, but you cannot squeeze the life-blood out of your business.

Re: U.S. judge says Uber drivers are not company's employees

#55

Post by jiveturkey »

walshemj wrote: post #37
gizmo686 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have set hours. In my experience (as a software engineer) most companies take a hybrid approach, where they define a few core hours a day when you are supposed to be working (to assure that everyone is in at the same time for at least part of the day), but let you decide when to put in the majority of your hours.

Which is the basis of all salaried jobs ie you don't have fixed hours of work

my guess is most (by far) salaried jobs are not flex time. certainly flex hours is not the basis of all salaried jobs.

to pick a job at random: teachers are salaried. they certainly have fixed working hours.

Re: U.S. judge says Uber drivers are not company's employees

#56

Post by jiveturkey »

tom_mellior wrote: post #39

> The case is Razak v. Uber Technologies Inc, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, No. 2:16-cv-00573. I would just like to commend Reuters for giving an explicit, concrete citation of the case in question. We should really hold journalists to the minimal standard of actually pointing us the the primary source. It's not hard; they know what it is they are referring to. All they need to do is t…

I don’t think they leave out citations due to laziness or difficulty. It’s because the general public glazes over as more of the detail is presented. Which hurts revenue.

Re: U.S. judge says Uber drivers are not company's employees

#57

Post by raducu »

aksss wrote: post #42

Ride-sharing, like a fry cook, was never meant to be a life’s career ambition. Jeez people. Folks are complaining that a fry cook can’t afford to buy a house and an Uber driver doesn’t get a 401(k). Wake up and smell the coffee. Let these positions continue to function as gap-filling opportunities for the young and those who need massive flexibility or want side-hustles. We drive up employment cost massively and wond…

Isn't all of this true for a lot of jobs? Janitor, picking up fruits, garbage man and so on and so on. These are all jobs, these are people working, of course in this day and age everyone should make a decent living wage. Uber drivers are no more contractors than factory workers, they're not ride-sharing anything, they are (exploited) taxi drivers. This contractor/temp bullshit thing reeks of dark age mentality -- mistress vs wife, bastard vs legal heir.

Re: U.S. judge says Uber drivers are not company's employees

#58

Post by busterarm »

aksss wrote: post #42

Ride-sharing, like a fry cook, was never meant to be a life’s career ambition. Jeez people. Folks are complaining that a fry cook can’t afford to buy a house and an Uber driver doesn’t get a 401(k). Wake up and smell the coffee. Let these positions continue to function as gap-filling opportunities for the young and those who need massive flexibility or want side-hustles. We drive up employment cost massively and wond…

> Driving cars for hire has always been a shit way to make a living, ask anyone who’s driven cab.

Lol, nope.

My (single) mother drove a NYC taxi cab from 1978 through 1992 (after previous careers playing in orchestras, selling commercial real estate and being a corporate comptroller). The money she earned doing that raised two sons; she was able to invest in 6 medallions (though she was ripped off by her business partner, that's another story) and eventually helped her go back to nursing school.

Many, many cab drivers used to be able raise families on their income. In the 1980s it was a pretty decent, albeit dangerous, way to make a living. There were even whole city blocks, in Midtown, where all/virtually-all of the businesses were related to taxi service and repair (38th street on 10th avenue and another in the mid-60s on I think 3rd or 1st).

In the 90s, for whatever reason that started to become untenable and a rapid exodus of Sikh cab drivers began where they moved their families to New Jersey and started doing black car elsewhere.

Re: U.S. judge says Uber drivers are not company's employees

#59

Post by LanceH »

hardwaresofton wrote: post #14
ggm wrote: post #7

Unsurprising, but luckily only applicable to the US however undoubtedly will be referred to on other trials in other economies. We've always had the 'gig' economic problem. It's maybe me but I don't get it. Treating employment as subcontracting tilts benefits massively to the employer and reduces unionisation. It's anti worker. It's retrograde. It's going to increase dependencies on state benefits due to the lack of…

> It's maybe me but I don't get it. Treating employment as subcontracting tilts benefits massively to the employer and reduces unionisation. It's anti worker. It's retrograde. It's going to increase dependencies on state benefits due to the lack of savings, depressed lifetime income and absense of 401 self funded retirement. Yes. However the venn diagram of people who know/learned this, and people who are willing to…

It's anti-worker, except for those who wish to work who would otherwise be outside the workforce. In this case, there is no employer of one-off drivers. Cities with medallions are deliberately anti-worker to all but a few.

Re: U.S. judge says Uber drivers are not company's employees

#60

Post by tom_mellior »

jiveturkey wrote: post #56
tom_mellior wrote: post #39

> The case is Razak v. Uber Technologies Inc, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, No. 2:16-cv-00573. I would just like to commend Reuters for giving an explicit, concrete citation of the case in question. We should really hold journalists to the minimal standard of actually pointing us the the primary source. It's not hard; they know what it is they are referring to. All they need to do is t…

I don’t think they leave out citations due to laziness or difficulty. It’s because the general public glazes over as more of the detail is presented. Which hurts revenue.

The "general public" that reads an article about a specific court case until the very end would be too scared by a case number appearing in the last sentence or in an end note? I don't quite believe that.
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