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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

#271

Post by ShrinkingWild »

vageli wrote: post #253
ShrinkingWild wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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…

I don't agree that that is unacceptable, regardless of what "we as a society" have deemed. The consumers being held to account for their own business dealing is the reality of the situation, they're giving their money over to the business and in doing so accept the risk. Taking that risk and putting it on everyone who didn't take that risk through bailouts using tax money is unacceptable. Analogizing to a more personal scenario to highlight the moral wrong: It's as unacceptable to me as it would be if I had an accident in my car and forced everybody in the nearby vicinity who wasn't involved to pay for the repairs.

Businesses having separate funds to protect against it is a good idea but it shouldn't be mandatory to have one, only to tell the consumer whether there is one. I imagine most consumers would happily pay a little more and choose the company with one than the one without.

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

#272

Post by simonh »

Kaotique wrote: post #255

Uber represents the new kind of company where all the risk is pushed to the employee, while all the profits are pulled to the company. Making all your employees supposedly outside contractors facilitates a race to the bottom between these contractors. Same with food delivery companies. The drivers have to provide and maintain the vehicle, organize their own health care, pension and insurance. Some companies even disa…

It's not entirely new though. The majority of Taxi drivers are already essentially independent contractors. It's not as though Uber is competing with an established industry of full employees.

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

#273

Post by jkaplowitz »

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #268
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…

Give me a better way to express this idea, then: How do we create a REAL market for health insurance, so we can buy it like EVERY OTHER KIND OF INSURANCE?

It's not like every other kind of insurance, though. Health "insurance" covers many expected and predictable costs, which isn't what insurance is about in any industry.

What we call health "insurance" is really just access to health care with expenses adequately covered, with only the portion of that covering unexpected or unlikely risks properly falling under the heading of insurance.

Additionally, even the true insurance piece is one of the only kinds of insurance where it's a societal imperative (in most people's opinions) for everyone to get the insured benefits they need, regardless of ability to pay. Even car insurance isn't required for people who rely on mass transit.

Health insurance policymaking needs to differ from most other kinds of insurance policymaking for these reasons.

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

#274

Post by ShrinkingWild »

crashbunny wrote: post #242
chii wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

No one would, uber would be forced to either pay higher or go out of business due to a lack of supply in drivers. As it stands though, supply of drivers way outweighs demand for drivers, so they get paid less.

A "liveable wage", whatever that is, isn't a workable solution for a lot of businesses, simply because the actual value of their work may be lower than the liveable wage. Now instead of getting some money for food to eat or a place to stay, they now get nothing because it just isn't viable to pay the liveable wage for the value they supply.

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

#275

Post by mcv »

antidesitter wrote: post #254
mcv wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 politician…

> the issue is granting extra free speech rights Nope. It is about prohibiting corporations and unions from using their funds to make independent expenditures for speech [1]. > In fact, some companies having a tendency to curb free speech through contracts denying people the right to talk about certain things. Your example is strange. Such contracts are not imposed by the government. > corporations get used to dodge…

I explain this is the comment you reply to. You say that corporations should have the same rights as people because they're made up of people. But corporations are quite explicitly a way for those people to avoid liability for what the corporation does.

My argument is that only people are people. Corporations are explicitly different, and there's no good reason for corporations to automatically have the same rights as people.

The whole problem with Citizens United is that it uses the 1st amendment right of free speech for people to grant corporations the right to make political donations, which makes no sense. Corporations are not people and donations are not speech. It's no wonder that this leads to a political system that represents corporations more than it represents people.

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

#276

Post by e1g »

crashbunny wrote: post #242
chii wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

“Everyone working full time should have a loveable wage”. It’s a useful thought experiment to see where does this break down for you. Does every startup deserve funding if the founder promises to commit full time? Does every aspiring artist or actor get a liveable wage if they promise to engage full time regardless of their skill? Does every researcher get paid even if their focus is on playing video games? At some point “value created”, and “skill”, and “demand”, and “competition” are reasonable measuring heuristics without invoking “late stage capitalism” tropes.

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

#277

Post by dragonwriter »

gwright wrote: post #270
gwright wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And start demanding that our government do what it's supposed to do: ensure that the wealth generated by corporations is adequately shared by all. On what basis do you think this is the proper role for government?

Disheartening that my comment has drawn some negative reactions. A public policy of forced "sharing" of wealth has an absolutely abysmal track record. Any supporters of that idea willing to explain why they think it will work this time? Anybody want to take my question seriously and answer what philosophy of government they are using to claim that redistribution of wealth is the proper role for government?

> A public policy of forced "sharing" of wealth has an absolutely abysmal track record.

A public policy of forced sharing of wealth is what distinguishes the developed societies of the modern world from those of the late 19th and early 20th centuries (that is, it distinguished modern mixed economies from true capitalism), and it's what has made possible anything but a miserable existence for the bulk of society, the working class.

Every debate over this issue in modern developed societies is mostly, in effect, a debate over fine-tuning parameters, not over whether or not to have such a policy in the first place, except where some economic reactionary is preaching a return to 19th century capitalism.

So, no, your premise that it has an abysmal rack record is as wrong as it is possible to be; it (forced sharing over an otherwise capitalist property structure) has the best track record for human conditions of any broad class of economic approaches ever tried.

There might be better options that haven't been properly tried, sure, but that's a bit speculative.

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

#278

Post by jackschultz »

The thing that always bugs me with these arguments is that people don't seem to bring up the idea of creating a new legal class for these types of workers. Arguing whether those workers fit contractors or employees isn't great to read about because frankly, they fit in neither.

From Uber/Lyft drivers, to Door Dash delivery workers, to any other sort of up and coming on demand work which I'm sure keep coming and evolving, I believe creating a new legal class would be well worth the effort rather than arguing about where they fit in the current system.

This type of solution isn't easy. With all the arguments about if the drivers are contractors or employees, creating a new class of workers will easily be just as difficult; instead of legal fees for the law interpretation, it'd be legal fees for law creation.

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

#279

Post by jorvi »

AlexandrB wrote: post #266
Kaotique wrote: post #255

Uber represents the new kind of company where all the risk is pushed to the employee, while all the profits are pulled to the company. Making all your employees supposedly outside contractors facilitates a race to the bottom between these contractors. Same with food delivery companies. The drivers have to provide and maintain the vehicle, organize their own health care, pension and insurance. Some companies even disa…

> but have such disrespect for the wellbeing of their workers or how they affect communities in the world. That's the innovation and the reason for the multi-billion dollar VC valuations while Uber was private. The app/platform is nearly a commodity at this point. Most taxi companies in my area have apps with similar features. Edit: Notice that Lyft is basically the same story and Airbnb's main value-add is stripping…

> they're often implicitly saying that they want to strip job security and labor protections from the people doing X and consumer protections from the people using X.

I'd say its much more likely when the average person wants 'Uber but for X' they mean cheaper prices for better service than X. Taxis got completely destroyed by Uber because they are often rude, unclean, (unpredictably) expensive and scammy. Hotels feel so much heat from AirBNB because AirBNB offers better 'suites', at better locations, for 25-50% cheaper. Most people are only fleetingly aware of the problems these services cause by externalizing a lot of costs.

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

#280

Post by danharaj »

jorvi wrote: post #279
AlexandrB wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but have such disrespect for the wellbeing of their workers or how they affect communities in the world. That's the innovation and the reason for the multi-billion dollar VC valuations while Uber was private. The app/platform is nearly a commodity at this point. Most taxi companies in my area have apps with similar features. Edit: Notice that Lyft is basically the same story and Airbnb's main value-add is stripping…

> they're often implicitly saying that they want to strip job security and labor protections from the people doing X and consumer protections from the people using X. I'd say its much more likely when the average person wants 'Uber but for X' they mean cheaper prices for better service than X. Taxis got completely destroyed by Uber because they are often rude, unclean, (unpredictably) expensive and scammy. Hotels fee…

OP said "pitches", so was talking about entrepreneurs and VC's, not average people.
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