Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Uber Drivers Are Contractors, Not Employees, Labor Board Says

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 357 posts

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

#241

Post by tstrimple »

burlesona wrote: post #180
blub wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The definition of a contractor is in fact the opposite. Employees have to obey the hours and other conditions set by the employer. However, a business is not allowed to set such terms for a contractor - in general the rule is you can tell a contractor what you want done and what you’ll pay but you can’t tell them how or when to do it. I think what the OP was getting at is perhaps US centric, but basically Uber would…

This is only true of contractors in high skill roles. Sure, most of us on HN could demand a rate which compensates for the lack of worker protections and additional overhead (on the worker side) of being a contractor. Uber drivers cannot.

Contractors for low skill work is exclusively a means to avoid the overhead of having an employee and all the worker protections that entails. The "contractor" has no negotiating power, and no protections normally given to employees. For the Uber "contractors" it's the worst of both worlds while Uber get to have their cake and eat it too.

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

#242

Post by crashbunny »

chii wrote: post #237
blub wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, everyone should have the opportunity for education, but if no one can live on the pay of an uber driver so everyone skills up to get a better paying job, who will drive the ubers?

I think everyone working fulltime should have a liveable wage.

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

#243

Post by LoSboccacc »

C1sc0cat wrote: post #220
LoSboccacc wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

dunno, since the car insurance market was deregulated in italy (or better: regulated for transparent competition, which is different in some ways) my premium went from 1200/yr to 250/yr and I'm not receiving a worse service for it. it's all about in how the regulation is carried out. paperless data transfer between company, ban on exit and transfer fees, standardized risk assessment that's binding for all companies a…

id take a look at the small print if I where you based on what happens in the UK

of course, most insurers are basically running a scam operation. that was happening before irregardless of changes that were introduced to protect customers.

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

#244

Post by ShrinkingWild »

chii wrote: post #238
ShrinkingWild wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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!

Those people lose their money. I can't think of a good reason why they'd expect to get that money back, they were paying for a service that was being provided up until the company could no longer provide it.

Losing your money to a failed company is a cost of doing business sometimes, it's a risk everybody takes when they purchase things in advance. The company/owner would owe a refund for the service not provided due to company collapse, whether or not they can pay that is another matter and should be accepted as part of the risk. There's no such thing as risk free business and attempts to remove the risk inevitably remove part of the value too.

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

#245

Post by oliwarner »

oliwarner wrote: post #65
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…

Your outlook assumes benefits are a net-bad, because health insurance is an evil bloated mess, but I think these are two very separate issues. Yes, obviously ending the scam of US healthcare costs is a great goal, but that really has nothing to do with employment benefits other than it meaning more people are insured. That is an income, not a cause of the corruption in healthcare. Employment "benefits" extend conside…

I would reword this, but I stand by the premise.

Healthcare is a red herring. Ignore it.

These types of worker have no power. The supply of unskilled workers is endless and —without regulation— companies can drive conditions and remuneration lower and lower. Giving up benefits is just another cost saved for the company, not the employee.

That's why I think it's important we do regulate employment, so that people aren't having their otherwise-deserved benefits stripped away under this happy-go-lucky "gig economy" label.

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

#246

Post by zip1234 »

fooey wrote: post #90
iamthirsty wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course they aren’t interested—the default model is working for them right now. Take away the default model, and open pure competition, and the insurance companies will have to compete on that level, and things will relatively quickly get better.

You're acting like every insurance company isn't already a massive multi-state corporation. State Farm Texas competing with State Farm Kansas is surely going to solve all our problems.

There is probably a serious amount of overhead for those companies caused by making divisions in 50 separate states.

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

#248

Post by sbuttgereit »

_Codemonkeyism wrote: post #225
blub wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

In my little micro consulting business that is often the case. I have a pool of clients that I work with, but typically there's only one large project at any one time and I may not hear from some clients for a year when I'm not working a large project. I'd hate to be considered an employee for a whole host of reasons, not the least of which being I use my consulting revenue to fund other internal projects which I hope to be profit making, but currently aren't. My business here in the US is essentially a corporation, so the accounting and tax ramifications would be very different if what I billed were only considered wages.

Finally, where I live at least, the "Scheinselbständigkeit" regulation would not necessarily apply to to Uber/Lyft even if it existed here: many of the ride-share cars I see around here have both Lyft and Uber signage and the drivers will switch their time between the companies. I don't know all the dynamics of why drivers do that, but I'm sure there are reasons for doing that.

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

#249

Post by village-idiot »

I do think it’s probably correct that Uber drivers aren’t employees, setting their own schedule is a huge differentiator in the labor market. But I think that we might need a new classification (and labor protections) for people who are classified as contractors but fulfill such a large percentage of a company’s actual work on a permanent basis. The season temp and the Uber driver that’s mission critical to Uber’s daily functioning are just different from a labor perspective, and should be given different protections and leverage.

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

#250

Post by gridlockd »

blub wrote: post #207
ehnto wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a bad measure to try and solve the problem of Uber fixing it's own prices in order to create the current market dynamic. The cost of an uber ride AND the drivers wage are both subsidized by Ubers losses. If they didn't do that rates would go up necessarily. The Uber we know now simply can't exist forever, New York tried a bad way to illuminate the real price of the service so that the rest of the driving indus…

How many billions of stilts are needed to prop Uber up before it becomes obvious that it can't stand up at all and should be laid to rest? It was a measure aimed at preventing Uber from externalizing their costs on society.

Uber isn't externalizing costs on society. Uber pays drivers more than they are worth, using venture capital. Drivers have an income they wouldn't otherwise have. Riders pay less than they otherwise would have.

The only ones who lose here are Taxi drivers who are being undercut. Taxi drivers don't represent "society", they represent the taxi lobby.

Post reply on HN