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Uber Drivers Are Contractors, Not Employees, Labor Board Says

nytimes.com

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Re: Uber Drivers Are Contractors, Not Employees, Labor Board Says

#231

Post by ShrinkingWild »

timoth3y wrote: post #140
TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Deregulate the health insurance market so you can sell across state lines. 2. Employers start giving their employees the money they pay on their behalf. 3. People shop for the health insurance they want/need. In a year, every other advertisement on TV would be for health insurance, like it is with car insurance now.

> 1. Deregulate the health insurance market so you can sell across state lines. I've always found this suggestion a bit disingenuous. First, there is no federal law that bans insurance from being sold across state lines. What they really mean (but can't say because it is not politically appealing) is "Don't allow states to regulate insurance sold in their state." State boards regulate insurance. They seem to do it we…

>It would be great until there was a hard year and the insurance companies would have the be bailed out by the taxpayers.

Surely that wouldn't be the case? They wouldn't have to be bailed out; If a company hadn't planned ahead well enough to survive a bad year then they deserve to go under. In an unregulated economy, bailing out failed companies shouldn't be an option.

Re: Uber Drivers Are Contractors, Not Employees, Labor Board Says

#232

Post by baq »

twblalock wrote: post #170
ihm wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if this is a comprehensive source. Here's a poll where 70% of the respondents supported Medicare for all[1]. [1] https://thehill.com/hilltv/what-americas-thinking/412545-70-...

> I don't know if this is a comprehensive source. Here's a poll where 70% of the respondents supported Medicare for all The 70% don't understand that Medicare for all would kill off the private insurance industry. A lot of people like the idea of a single-payer system but they never assume they would be forced to give up their current private insurance. Tell people that their private insurance would go out of busines…

> The 70% don't understand that Medicare for all would kill off the private insurance industry.

objectively not true in countries with public insurance.

Re: Uber Drivers Are Contractors, Not Employees, Labor Board Says

#233

Post by mcv »

thanatropism wrote: post #91
Spooky23 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

States with more people and costs usually have more coverage requirements. You don’t want insurance to be like banking where banks domicile in “friendly” places like Delaware and South Dakota. Health insurance is awful enough. Republicans want this so that high cost, low benefit plans can be hocked to less sophisticated people. The more right wing folks also like shared responsibility pools where the members are the…

Are Republicans basically evil?

[flagged]

Re: Uber Drivers Are Contractors, Not Employees, Labor Board Says

#234

Post by skookumchuck »

blub wrote: post #205
ehnto wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a stretch, drivers can leave at any time. They can even quit and look for other kinds of work. I don't disagree that it is playing out poorly, but that's because the driving market is a duopoly that was running at a VC funded loss for years to set a customer price that ultimately doesn't work out for the drivers. If instead fares were reasonable and the market competitive then a driver could switch to another…

You're confusing poorly paid contractors with highly paid and sought contractors. The latter can indeed leave at any time and be fine. Perhaps take a sabbatical at the sea side. The former will have their livelihood threatened if they make use of that flexibility, hence they have in reality no flexibility at all. They dance to the tune of Uber, Amazon and other bullies.

If they have no choice but be slaves to Uber today, what did they do before Uber? Uber is a very recent development.

Re: Uber Drivers Are Contractors, Not Employees, Labor Board Says

#235

Post by _Codemonkeyism »

mcv wrote: post #227
_Codemonkeyism wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Germany there is regulation about "Scheinselbständigkeit" meaning you are not really a contractor because you only have one customer for example. This is mostly a good thing but problematic with e.g. consulting where you have perhaps only one customer for some time. It was created to prevent exploitation but on the other scale limits high income people and consultancies, which was not the goal.

Same thing in Netherland. There's constantly attempts to cut down on "schijnzelfstandigheid", which results in me having to jump through lots of hoops because I do long projects for big clients, on-site, as part of a team. But I make my own business decisions. But when PostNL wants to fire all their mail deliverers and rehire them as independent contractors, they can. When I asked why, it turned out the main differen…

I think there should be a lower limit for this to be in effect, e.g. below 50k EUR/y or 100k EUR/y.

Re: Uber Drivers Are Contractors, Not Employees, Labor Board Says

#236

Post by Sharlin »

blub wrote: post #178
dcosson wrote: post #23

It’s sad that the idea of people being able to get by and live a comfortable life without the benefits from a full time job is so far outside the Overton window that it’s not even mentioned in these conversations. That seems like such an obviously better outcome for everyone - what if we got rid of healthcare benefits and other types of favorable tax treatment that are tied to full time employment so that everyone is…

Nice big fat red herring. Health care as a discussion point in the contractor vs. employee topic is relevant for only one country on the planet. The important benefits of having a job as opposed to gigging can be summarized as "the employer should not have complete power over the employee". For Uber drivers this is exactly the case, that's why this type of work is socially poisonous.

> Health care as a discussion point in the contractor vs. employee topic is relevant for only one country on the planet.

Even in countries with single-payer healthcare, full-time employees may be eligible to a better healthcare deal via their employer than a temp worker, never mind a contractor.

Re: Uber Drivers Are Contractors, Not Employees, Labor Board Says

#237

Post by chii »

blub wrote: post #205
ehnto wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a stretch, drivers can leave at any time. They can even quit and look for other kinds of work. I don't disagree that it is playing out poorly, but that's because the driving market is a duopoly that was running at a VC funded loss for years to set a customer price that ultimately doesn't work out for the drivers. If instead fares were reasonable and the market competitive then a driver could switch to another…

You're confusing poorly paid contractors with highly paid and sought contractors. The latter can indeed leave at any time and be fine. Perhaps take a sabbatical at the sea side. The former will have their livelihood threatened if they make use of that flexibility, hence they have in reality no flexibility at all. They dance to the tune of Uber, Amazon and other bullies.

> You're confusing poorly paid contractors with highly paid and sought contractors.

there's no difference. If your skillset is sought after, you get more money (by exercising your market demand).

The fact that there are many poorly paid people is not a problem of the companies paying them poorly, but of society not creating equal opportunities for those people (e.g., for education) to skill up.

Re: Uber Drivers Are Contractors, Not Employees, Labor Board Says

#238

Post by chii »

ShrinkingWild wrote: post #231
timoth3y wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. Deregulate the health insurance market so you can sell across state lines. I've always found this suggestion a bit disingenuous. First, there is no federal law that bans insurance from being sold across state lines. What they really mean (but can't say because it is not politically appealing) is "Don't allow states to regulate insurance sold in their state." State boards regulate insurance. They seem to do it we…

>It would be great until there was a hard year and the insurance companies would have the be bailed out by the taxpayers. Surely that wouldn't be the case? They wouldn't have to be bailed out; If a company hadn't planned ahead well enough to survive a bad year then they deserve to go under. In an unregulated economy, bailing out failed companies shouldn't be an option.

except all those people who's supposed to have been insured will now no longer be (but would've paid their premium, at least partially). So what happens then? Either those people lose their money, or the state bails them out.

If the gov't forces an insurer to keep a reserve (for such an occasion), then it becomes regulation!

Re: Uber Drivers Are Contractors, Not Employees, Labor Board Says

#239

Post by mcv »

barry-cotter wrote: post #183
toastal wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds pretty evil to me. This is where you get the idea of 'corporations are people' to give more rights and them some to businesses to defend against your average person.

The legal basis of Citizens United was that individuals don’t lose rights by coming together as an organisation. So the NYT has free speech rights because its owners have free speech rights. And if a propaganda film like Fahrenheit 9/11 or Bowling for Columbine can be sold by a film studio a group of people can come together, whether as a for profit or not for profit corporation to produce their very own propaganda f…

Nobody is talking about annulling free speech rights, the issue is granting extra free speech rights to entities that are not people, as well as considering activities speech, and therefore protected, that are not speech. Like donating money to political campaigns.

People can still donate their money, but to allow corporations, which are explicitly created to concentrate money and power, to donate money to politicians, that has a massive impact.

The people working for a company can have free speech without the company itself having free speech. In fact, some companies having a tendency to curb free speech through contracts denying people the right to talk about certain things.

And then there's also the issue that corporations get used to dodge personal liability by their owners and employees. If corporations don't share their people's responsibilities, why should they get to share their speech? Corporations are very explicitly a separate entity, and not merely the group of people working for it.

Re: Uber Drivers Are Contractors, Not Employees, Labor Board Says

#240

Post by mcv »

_Codemonkeyism wrote: post #235
mcv wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same thing in Netherland. There's constantly attempts to cut down on "schijnzelfstandigheid", which results in me having to jump through lots of hoops because I do long projects for big clients, on-site, as part of a team. But I make my own business decisions. But when PostNL wants to fire all their mail deliverers and rehire them as independent contractors, they can. When I asked why, it turned out the main differen…

I think there should be a lower limit for this to be in effect, e.g. below 50k EUR/y or 100k EUR/y.

That's certainly been an option that's been considered. Not sure what the current status of that is. The main downside is that it gives a very arbitrary barrier.

And maybe it should be hourly rate rather than yearly revenue, because a client might have no idea what a contractor's year looks like. You don't want clients to be forced into additional commitments until they've hired you for enough hours.

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