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California bill could force Uber and Lyft to reclassify drivers as employees

businessinsider.com

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Re: California bill could force Uber and Lyft to reclassify drivers as employees

#71

Post by TaylorAlexander »

WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #38
mrosett wrote: post #10

I worry that this bill will ultimately eliminate a unique niche in the job market. I have several family members who drive for Uber/Lyft and consider it a great way to make money. One of the aspects they like is how much independence they have: no manager, no set schedule, no need to work the same number of hours each week or each day. The pay is fine - not great - but the flexibility makes working for Uber much more…

The Gig economy jobs are a race to the bottom of the pay scale now. You can get the least expensive services by using workers that have no insurance, vacations, sick days or any type of benefits but is that the work environment that we want to encourage? I get it. It's nice to be independent but it's even better to have a job that lets you have at the very least a satisfactory life. Technology can give us jobs that f…

I’m kind of a techie social activist myself, and you’re very right about technology not being the whole solution. I think people forget that no technology can solve all of our problems. The technology is a tool but we also need to organize with one another in the human sphere and decide what is fair and what is not - what rules we want to play by.

And I’m with you that we should question whether we want to live in a world where so many workers lack basic benefits.

In the long term I want to see us end employment-based social programs, but we’re not there yet. Until we get there, we definitely should make sure workers are treated as workers with all the legal benefits that entails.

Have you ever read Murray Bookchin?

Re: California bill could force Uber and Lyft to reclassify drivers as employees

#72

Post by kisstheblade »

kisstheblade wrote: post #64
mrosett wrote: post #10

I worry that this bill will ultimately eliminate a unique niche in the job market. I have several family members who drive for Uber/Lyft and consider it a great way to make money. One of the aspects they like is how much independence they have: no manager, no set schedule, no need to work the same number of hours each week or each day. The pay is fine - not great - but the flexibility makes working for Uber much more…

"great way to make money". Do they really make enough money to pay for their food, housing in the city they work, health care, pension, kids and kids education? If not these sorts of jobs (or with this pay) should be banned. Else it's just subsidies from taxpayers who need to pay for these things through government "subsidies". Where I live (a nordic country) eg. taxi drivers used to be able to live a very comfortabl…

Jeez, I don't get hacker news downvoting (and yes whining about it is against the rules I guess). Was there some fundamental flaw in my argument, was it too "mean" or did someone just disagree and downvote because of that.

Re: California bill could force Uber and Lyft to reclassify drivers as employees

#73

Post by thatoneuser »

jerrre wrote: post #70
vikinghckr wrote: post #69

One thing not mentioned here is how it will impact customers, and who these customers are. These regulations will result in higher fares for customers and those customers overwhelmingly tend to be people who can't afford to buy and maintain a car. Affluent people already have cars and those on the fence will choose to drive more if fares go up. So the main impact would be on people in the service industry who rely on…

How can owning a car be more expensive than having someone else own a car and paying them for it, while also paying them to drive it, while also the app gets a share? Is the base cost of owning a car so high? Do the apps subsidize so much?

Cars are pretty expensive and I think most people really only need them sometimes (if you're poor enough for this to be an issue you won't be driving all over for fun nights and weekends). If you could bus to work, taxi to a few stores and only pay $100 or so - that's just insurance. If youre paying a car off its easily $200-500 a month in top. Plus gas, plus maintenance, etc.

Cars have the same issue phones do - they aren't necessarily needing to get better, but manufacturers want money so they're expensive when they don't really have to be.

Re: California bill could force Uber and Lyft to reclassify drivers as employees

#75

Post by tidenly »

Where I live you're automatically granted certain benefits and your company is required to provide you with health insurance, pension and unemployment insurance based upon factors like the number of hours you actually work a week and the like - regardless of what your contact says. Does America have things like that? Seems like it would include a lot of Uber drivers if they did.

Re: California bill could force Uber and Lyft to reclassify drivers as employees

#76

Post by cybersnowflake »

What other job can you think of where you can work as much as you want, anytime you want? Need a break? Click a button anytime you feel like it. Take as long or as little time as you wish. Want more work? Click a button anytime you feel like it. No timecards to punch. No boss breathing down your ass for being late. Its freedom on a level beyond practically any other major job category you can think of. What more could you ask for?

Sure you're probably not going to be raising a whole family with a white picket fence on Uber alone. They NEVER claimed you could AFAIK. Its never been portrayed as anything more than supplemental income. PROTIP: Uber is a job for the bored college student looking for a little extra spending money not the main means of survival for a struggling single mother of 10 kids. If you're at the point where you're relying on CA to force Uber to pay you more so you can put food on the table or get kidney surgery you're doing it wrong and you have far bigger problems than a company that has done you no wrong other than existing and not paying very much.

Now we're going to destroy this unique business model forever because of the greed of the taxis and people who can't understand that not every single job on earth is meant to earn you a solid middle class income.

Re: California bill could force Uber and Lyft to reclassify drivers as employees

#77

Post by vikinghckr »

jerrre wrote: post #70
vikinghckr wrote: post #69

One thing not mentioned here is how it will impact customers, and who these customers are. These regulations will result in higher fares for customers and those customers overwhelmingly tend to be people who can't afford to buy and maintain a car. Affluent people already have cars and those on the fence will choose to drive more if fares go up. So the main impact would be on people in the service industry who rely on…

How can owning a car be more expensive than having someone else own a car and paying them for it, while also paying them to drive it, while also the app gets a share? Is the base cost of owning a car so high? Do the apps subsidize so much?

Well, if you own a car just for commute, it's sitting idle for 23 hours out of 24. Whereas the Uber/Lyft driver is using it for 8-12 hours a day, and the overall ownership/maintenance cost is not linear with usage. On top of that, add UberPool, and the cost for ride hailing goes even lower. So essentially, ride hailing can be thought of as a form of public transport.

Re: California bill could force Uber and Lyft to reclassify drivers as employees

#78

Post by [deleted] »

jerrre wrote: post #70
vikinghckr wrote: post #69

One thing not mentioned here is how it will impact customers, and who these customers are. These regulations will result in higher fares for customers and those customers overwhelmingly tend to be people who can't afford to buy and maintain a car. Affluent people already have cars and those on the fence will choose to drive more if fares go up. So the main impact would be on people in the service industry who rely on…

How can owning a car be more expensive than having someone else own a car and paying them for it, while also paying them to drive it, while also the app gets a share? Is the base cost of owning a car so high? Do the apps subsidize so much?

[deleted]

Re: California bill could force Uber and Lyft to reclassify drivers as employees

#79

Post by atoav »

mrosett wrote: post #10

I worry that this bill will ultimately eliminate a unique niche in the job market. I have several family members who drive for Uber/Lyft and consider it a great way to make money. One of the aspects they like is how much independence they have: no manager, no set schedule, no need to work the same number of hours each week or each day. The pay is fine - not great - but the flexibility makes working for Uber much more…

I don’t see why that wouldnlt be feasible. I worked in flexible student jobs myself while beeing officially an employee.

If I were to work for the same company constantly as an freelancer the state would rightfully assume that it is to avoid the costs connected with employment. And as a freelancer I can choose my dates myself as well.

I don’t see why a more flexible scheduling system should allow you to avoid paying into a system that is there for a reason.

Re: California bill could force Uber and Lyft to reclassify drivers as employees

#80

Post by berbec »

If your business requires a consistently high amount of labor hours worked and the survival of that business depends on none of those labor hours being filled by employees, I'm not sure you have a profitable (in any term: short- to long- inclusive) business model. You have a VC ponzi scheme that inevitably collapse.
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