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If Lyft can't keep its drivers as contractors, it may never be profitable

latimes.com

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Re: If Lyft can't keep its drivers as contractors, it may never be profitable

#101

Post by rat87 »

viscanti wrote: post #58
zbentley wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How much help did he earn? How much does he deserve? The money a driver gets paid is the help. That seems naïve and inhumane. Compensation and benefits are understood to be separate things in the US at this time. From social security to health insurance, the costs of securing such things without an employer (an entity on the other side of the wealth gap, usually) are often untenable. > Forcing Lyft to hire employee…

> The choice between untenably-expensive benefits as a contractor or untenably-unaffordable benefits as an unemployed person is no choice at all--especially for people with health problems/children/debt. It appears that lots of people choose to drive for Lyft knowing they won't get those benefits. Why ignore their choice? If they're choosing to do it and Lyft can't give them the same opportunity along with the benefi…

> It appears that lots of people choose to drive for Lyft knowing they won't get those benefits. Why ignore their choice?

Because we live in a democracy that has some minimal protections for workers(not as much as we should). We have minimum wage laws and child labor laws and worker safety protections.

Re: If Lyft can't keep its drivers as contractors, it may never be profitable

#102

Post by maehwasu »

This entire issue is a product of US health care costs. No one would give a shit about the classification of workers, if it weren’t for the fact that health care is insanely expensive and brutal to manage without insurance.

The US needs to address this issue, and now. However, as someone currently working in the field, I’m starting to think that the size of the country, and the sclerotic, poorly incentivized bureaucracy that controls health, will make it impossible to address until there’s a true crisis.

Re: If Lyft can't keep its drivers as contractors, it may never be profitable

#103

Post by michaelmrose »

TylerE wrote: post #88
michaelmrose wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they are quoting the money coming in before expenses like gas/lease etc? Maybe they put it an above average investment of time?

Actually, time is pretty strictly regulated by the DOT. No more than 60 hours duty hours a week, no more than 14 duty hours in a row, of which no more than 11 hours can be actually driving, and must go off duty for at least 10 hours to reset the clock. Sounds more complicated than it is... once the duty period begins, any stops (fuel, breaks, meals, etc) do NOT stop the clock. This is why most long-haul operations us…

By most jobs definitions how much of an individuals waking life is consumed by work in this scenario over the course of a year?

Re: If Lyft can't keep its drivers as contractors, it may never be profitable

#104

Post by username223 »

viscanti wrote: post #60
btown wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something like “A contractor who accepts tasks through electronic communications generated by an automated system, and where the automated system could reasonably collect sufficient data to know how much time is spent exclusively on that task by the contractor, shall be entitled to at least minimum wage and ... for the time spent on the task.” We don’t want to remove the ability for a true contractor to work on spec,…

> But if you’re being given orders by an inhuman system, you deserve at least some of the protections employees receive against inhumane employers. Why? If there were better options out there then Lyft wouldn't have any drivers. Lyft has over one million drivers, which means that for those people there weren't any better opportunities. Lyft isn't profitable even at that lower level without benefits or the extra prote…

Haven't I read this somewhere before? Oh, yes:

"Are there no prisons?"

"Plenty of prisons..."

"And the Union workhouses." demanded Scrooge. "Are they still in operation?"

"Both very busy, sir..."

"Those who are badly off must go there."

"Many can't go there; and many would rather die."

"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."

Re: If Lyft can't keep its drivers as contractors, it may never be profitable

#105

Post by dexen »

relaunched wrote: post #35
chrisseaton wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If he's earning more than average, and professional truck drivers are pretty well paid, then can't be purchase that social net himself? He can buy health insurance, pension, group income protection, everything you mentioned. I know poor people can't do that, and that's the issue, but why can't a well-paid truck driver do it?

The supply side dynamics of trucking is crazy. There has been a driver shortage for 10+ years, easy. About 2/3 of the trucks on the road are owned by fleets of 5 or less, with most trucks being a 1 unit, owner operator. The entire industry, small and large fleets, use owner operators as perverse cost savings. In some cases, you lease the truck from the large fleet, they charge you for gas and maintenance, insurance,…

>There has been a driver shortage for 10+ years

How does that square with the low net compensation of the drivers? Is there perhaps a secondary mechanism, other than the (asserted) labor supply shortage, that depresses the wages?

Re: If Lyft can't keep its drivers as contractors, it may never be profitable

#106

Post by tialaramex »

Freak_NL wrote: post #92
ams6110 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's his cost. The employer is probably paying twice that much more behind the scenes. Money they could otherwise be paying him.

Employer negotiated insurances tend to cost less than individually bought ones, because the employer gets a group discount. The larger the group, the bigger the collective discount. Just like toilet paper, insurances are cheaper when bought in bulk. Imagine the awesome coverage you'd get as a Lyft or Uber driver if you were actually employed by them.

More so than with toilet paper.

Suppose two people, Alice and Bob, are both shopping for medical insurance in a country like the US where there is no safety net.

Alice is basically healthy, except she seems to always catch everything. She got flu twice last winter, crazy!

Bob is proud to have never taken a day off in eighteen years.

You show them the same price, Bob winces, and decides he'll risk it without insurance but Alice, conscious that she always seems to catch everything, pays anyway.

Six years later Alice gets really sick, turns out her immune system was shot but she didn't know it. Insurance company loses money on her. She was a bad investment. Bob's still fine, touch wood.

Group insurance is cheaper because you're insuring Bob, who wouldn't have bothered except he's part of the group, as well as Alice, who it turns out was a high risk.

This is one reason why countries with universal healthcare don't bankrupt themselves the way typical anti-healthcare models suggest they should. A group with everybody in it is relatively cheap _overall_ to cover because it has loads of healthy people in it, and they don't need much healthcare, not just all the sick people who have no choice but to get into any system they can to avoid dying.

"We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately". Maybe Franklin never said that, if he didn't he should have.

Re: If Lyft can't keep its drivers as contractors, it may never be profitable

#107

Post by aaomidi »

dexen wrote: post #105
relaunched wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The supply side dynamics of trucking is crazy. There has been a driver shortage for 10+ years, easy. About 2/3 of the trucks on the road are owned by fleets of 5 or less, with most trucks being a 1 unit, owner operator. The entire industry, small and large fleets, use owner operators as perverse cost savings. In some cases, you lease the truck from the large fleet, they charge you for gas and maintenance, insurance,…

>There has been a driver shortage for 10+ years How does that square with the low net compensation of the drivers? Is there perhaps a secondary mechanism, other than the (asserted) labor supply shortage, that depresses the wages?

This is actually one of the cases where supply side economics breaks down.

People refuse to pay more for this and if you've invested so much for truck, car insurance, etc...

Re: If Lyft can't keep its drivers as contractors, it may never be profitable

#108

Post by zazen »

aaomidi wrote: post #107
dexen wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There has been a driver shortage for 10+ years How does that square with the low net compensation of the drivers? Is there perhaps a secondary mechanism, other than the (asserted) labor supply shortage, that depresses the wages?

This is actually one of the cases where supply side economics breaks down. People refuse to pay more for this and if you've invested so much for truck, car insurance, etc...

To me, the question still stands: if people refuse to pay more for the service, then in what sense is there a shortage of the service?

Can you expand on what you mean by "supply side economics breaking down"?

Re: If Lyft can't keep its drivers as contractors, it may never be profitable

#109

Post by aaomidi »

zazen wrote: post #108
aaomidi wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is actually one of the cases where supply side economics breaks down. People refuse to pay more for this and if you've invested so much for truck, car insurance, etc...

To me, the question still stands: if people refuse to pay more for the service, then in what sense is there a shortage of the service? Can you expand on what you mean by "supply side economics breaking down"?

A lot of trucks are owner operated. They can't afford to not work - even though they know they will be able to potentially make more money.

Owning a truck is a lot of maintenance - insurance, parking costs, etc. A lot of owners also have to pay lease, loans, etc. They can't afford to negotiate for better rates.

Just because there isn't a lot of supply doesn't mean that rates go up!

Re: If Lyft can't keep its drivers as contractors, it may never be profitable

#110

Post by FakeComments »

nradov wrote: post #14
jackschultz wrote: post #6

Anyone else see these and think about how maybe there should be some other type of worker other than employee or contractor? Those are hard definitions, and creating laws to reflect this type of worker is incredibly difficult considering people and companies figure out loopholes, but really feels like there should be another category to go with this type of work that's going to become more and more common.

Another alternative would be to decouple health insurance and retirement plans from employment.

Are retirement plans coupled to employment?

Neither social security nor 401Ks are, in that you can often keep and almost always rollover (to a personal) 401K when departing.

Pensions were, but as I understand it, those basically don’t exist anymore.

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