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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

#61

Post by brightball »

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…

What I will never understand is simply this:

1. A position is advertised as independent contractor

2. A person chooses to fill the job as an independent contractor while being compensated EXACTLY as agreed

3. The person sues to be considered an employee

In situations like that, it’s really difficult for me to side with anyone but the business.

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

#62

Post by zdragnar »

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…

Price increases to accommodate higher wages will drive down demand. The net result is fewer jobs, or replacing those jobs with other things... Robotic fry cooks aren't economical at current wages, but from what I've heard it's a near thing.

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

#63

Post by Slansitartop »

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.

That's not a bad thing IMHO. I think the world could do with fewer underpaid jobs with no advancement opportunities.

Edit: Looks like some founders looking to create underpaid jobs with no advancement opportunities found my comment /s.

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

#64

Post by Slansitartop »

sokoloff wrote: post #43
roenxi wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The situation is an interesting case of economic realities quietly trumping political ideology. Uber thinks they are offering a reasonable deal. The people doing the work obviously think that it is the best deal they have available. The government is going to need to stamp down pretty heavily to stop that, because the actors in this situation have no particular incentive to change anything.

In general, I don't think I want the government to be in the business of stamping out the best deal that individuals have available. I know in this case, the assumption is that the deal offered will magically get substantially better. I don't think that generally works nearly as well as the abstract arguers argue.

> In general, I don't think I want the government to be in the business of stamping out the best deal that individuals have available.

That's interesting framing. What if the "best deal that individuals have available" is objectively bad for them, exploitative, or one more step down in a "race to the bottom"?

IIRC, The Grapes of Wrath described several "best deal[s] that individuals [had] available."

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

#65

Post by jon_richards »

Slansitartop wrote: post #64
sokoloff wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general, I don't think I want the government to be in the business of stamping out the best deal that individuals have available. I know in this case, the assumption is that the deal offered will magically get substantially better. I don't think that generally works nearly as well as the abstract arguers argue.

> In general, I don't think I want the government to be in the business of stamping out the best deal that individuals have available. That's interesting framing. What if the "best deal that individuals have available" is objectively bad for them, exploitative, or one more step down in a "race to the bottom"? IIRC, The Grapes of Wrath described several "best deal[s] that individuals [had] available."

Not the parent commenter, but I've often thought it's the government's job to prevent the tragedy of the commons. That's pretty much explicitly "stamping out the best deal that individuals have available".

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

#66

Post by gerbilly »

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…

>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.

Wouldn't it be nice if you could make a living being a 'fry cook?' When you leave work you could just kiss off and go have dinner, go bowling or whatever.

Each day would be self contained. There wouldn't be bad dreams tossing and tuning you because your project isn't going well at work.

Why do we celebrate this race to the bottom? There have been such stunning increases in productivity, so in theory we could all work a few hours a week and enjoy 1950s living standards.

Would that be so bad?

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

#67

Post by toddBarkus »

raducu wrote: post #57
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 -- mi…

It's the aspect of personal choice that you're skipping over. Uber drivers made the choice to apply to work as "independent contractors" and agreed to the terms. A bastard child has no agency in the arrangement, but a mistress likely did agree to the arrangement. There's no fair expectation of the latter to be retroactively or otherwise considered a legal spouse, nor is it just for a contractor to sue to force others to change classification.

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

#68

Post by zhte415 »

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.

When writing for diverse audiences there are ways of dealing with this.

Footnotes.

'Click for conments'

etc

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

#69

Post by throwaway2048 »

gerbilly wrote: post #66
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…

>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. Wouldn't it be nice if you could make a living being a 'fry cook?' When you leave work you could just kiss off and go have dinner, go bowling or whatever. Each day would be self contained. T…

it would be bad for the profit margins of the 1%

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

#70

Post by throwaway2048 »

brightball wrote: post #61
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…

What I will never understand is simply this: 1. A position is advertised as independent contractor 2. A person chooses to fill the job as an independent contractor while being compensated EXACTLY as agreed 3. The person sues to be considered an employee In situations like that, it’s really difficult for me to side with anyone but the business.

you are totally failing to consider the coersive power employers have, especially at the low end of employment.

When every job you can get sucks, what are you going to choose to do if the terms are massively unfair and inequitable? starve to death?

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