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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

#91

Post by SturgeonsLaw »

TuringNYC wrote: post #54
jaaron wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If you are an hourly-paid employee, you can't just choose the times that suit you" Why not? Or more specifically: the law doesn't require this, so why would it have to change? The bill merely states, "hey, this flexible way you've been working, that's not independent contracting, that's employment and the employer have to abide by all these other regulations." Those regulations in no way require Uber to make workers…

The law may not state it but economics does. Even the cheapest insurance plans cost 500/mo. If you drive an hour a month and earn $100 for the month, it is not cost effective to issue a full health plan for that. There is a break even point of course. But that break even point will not allow driver flexibility.

The real problem here is the coupling of healthcare with employment. Other than health insurance, there's very little in the way of benefits that would really need to be paid for a gig worker, I'm sure a lot of them would just prefer extra money. If the cost of healthcare was borne by the taxpayer, rather than a component of wages, then a case could be made that small shifts are feasible.

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

#92

Post by michaelmrose »

TuringNYC wrote: post #54
jaaron wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If you are an hourly-paid employee, you can't just choose the times that suit you" Why not? Or more specifically: the law doesn't require this, so why would it have to change? The bill merely states, "hey, this flexible way you've been working, that's not independent contracting, that's employment and the employer have to abide by all these other regulations." Those regulations in no way require Uber to make workers…

The law may not state it but economics does. Even the cheapest insurance plans cost 500/mo. If you drive an hour a month and earn $100 for the month, it is not cost effective to issue a full health plan for that. There is a break even point of course. But that break even point will not allow driver flexibility.

If its not legal to drive uninsured and your insurance wont cover you driving commercially why is it OK for you to drive in such a way such that if you hurt someone they are screwed because you can't pay and your insurance wont?

I think most of planet earth only wants to work 1 gig or at most 2 for somewhere between 20 and 40 hours. I doubt people who want to work a tiny number of hours make up a meaningful proportion of the workforce. In other words much ado about nothing.

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

#93

Post by mlwhiz »

I think this initiative should be welcomed and Indian govt should also do this.

I was just talking to an Uber driver in India just the other day. In India Uber got its dominant market share by offering incentives to the drivers when they joined. Something like if you do n number of trips you will get more money. The incentives were great and so a lot of people got into driving. Bought their own cars. Got cars financed from Uber. And then as supply increased Uber pulled off the incentives with nowhere to go for the drivers.

Now a driver who got 800 rs for an airport trip by himself has to make do with 400 rs in his pocket and Uber gets a 200 rs commision.

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

#94

Post by jrjdjdhhedh »

michaelmrose wrote: post #92
TuringNYC wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The law may not state it but economics does. Even the cheapest insurance plans cost 500/mo. If you drive an hour a month and earn $100 for the month, it is not cost effective to issue a full health plan for that. There is a break even point of course. But that break even point will not allow driver flexibility.

If its not legal to drive uninsured and your insurance wont cover you driving commercially why is it OK for you to drive in such a way such that if you hurt someone they are screwed because you can't pay and your insurance wont? I think most of planet earth only wants to work 1 gig or at most 2 for somewhere between 20 and 40 hours. I doubt people who want to work a tiny number of hours make up a meaningful proportio…

They are talking about health insurance it's easy to dismiss things out of hand when you can't seem to read correctly.

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

#95

Post by NikkiA »

TuringNYC wrote: post #53
jaaron wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would the bill eliminate this niche market? The bill does NOT say, Uber drivers need to change the way they work. The bill does say, the way Uber drivers work is considered employment with respect to the law. It changes the definition of employment to include the type of flexible work Uber drivers are currently doing. In other words, Uber (or any similar gig-economy business) could keep working with their employe…

Ok but let’s consider the left end of the distribution — someone who drives four hours a week — is it really sensible for Uber it any gig platform to pay benefits? What about a single Amazon Mechanical Turk hIt — would that also carry benefits? This wouldn’t be cost effective. I think over half these problems go away with government issued healthcare. Companies and workers can be more dynamic.

One of the responsibilities an employer has in the UK is to pay national insurance taxes, that are ostensibly believed to be how the NHS is funded (it's not), this is a responsibility that Uber/Lyft were shirking by their 'creative use of employment law' initially until they were forced to treat drivers as employees.

So no, government issued healthcare is likely to make the issue even more starkly obviously wrong.

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

#96

Post by michaelmrose »

briandear wrote: post #42
qtplatypus wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would having a person classified as an employee turn it into a full time job? Like why would they hire managers and set schedules when it gives no benifit to Uber? To me this closes a loophole. As you say these people drive for Uber, uber is doing the employing. This is not like if a contracted a builder to renovate my kitchen. That is the class of employment that are real contractors.

Uber is a marketing company. The Uber business model is nearly identical to the taxi business model it is replacing — except taxi drivers don’t have to lease or rent cars from Uber as they did with the taxi company. You also don’t have mobster-controlled “Medallions” as a means to artificially constrict supply. I think a lot of people have no idea how the old taxi business worked.. it was far worse than Uber — it was…

>...traits in very short supply in an era where people that literally sweep floors think that work is worth $15 per hour.

The move to increase the minimum wage to 15 is presented by the uninformed as a cash grab by the lazy. The truth is 15 dollars just isn't much nowadays. The old often have a hard time forgetting about the nominal value and considering the actual buying power.

Lets ignore the fact that minimum wage workers can't actually buy houses and compare the minimum wage of $1 in 1960 to the cost of a median house at 11,900. So 11,900 hours of work 1.35 years of labor hours worth.

In 2018 it was 210k divided by 7.25 is 3.3 years of labor hours. Divide by 10 and its 2.4 years of labor hours. Divide by 15 and its 1.6 years worth of labor hours.

Alternatively we could discuss tuition at a 4 year public university where our 1965 counterpart now making 1.25 could expect to pay 240 labor hours for a year of instruction vs 1380 hours to pay the 10k it costs now at 7.25 1000 at 10 or 667.

How about a loaf of bread 22c or 13 minutes of work at 1960s $1. Now 2.50 vs 7.25 about 21 minutes of work at 10 its 15 minutes at 15 its now 10 minutes.

In real terms people wanting $15 to sweep the floor want $15 to sweep the floor because that is what it now costs to have a barely acceptable life. Not a good or a healthy one but one which is spent sleeping indoors and eating decent food.

In fact the fact is those agitating hardest for a better minimum wage are overwhelmingly have a disproportionate share of the jobs AND above average rent.

Essentially if this minimum wage looks too high you might just be too old.

Not everyone has the same options as everyone else. Some of us are just stuck trying to get by.

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

#97

Post by michaelmrose »

jrjdjdhhedh wrote: post #94
michaelmrose wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If its not legal to drive uninsured and your insurance wont cover you driving commercially why is it OK for you to drive in such a way such that if you hurt someone they are screwed because you can't pay and your insurance wont? I think most of planet earth only wants to work 1 gig or at most 2 for somewhere between 20 and 40 hours. I doubt people who want to work a tiny number of hours make up a meaningful proportio…

They are talking about health insurance it's easy to dismiss things out of hand when you can't seem to read correctly.

Did you just create this account to insult people seems like a bad use of your time.

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

#98

Post by username90 »

The main point of driving for Uber is that you can get a job without a job interview. I don't know of many other jobs where you can do that. Will classifying them as employees force Uber to vet their drivers more with things like interviews to offset the extra overhead of employee classification?

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

#99

Post by AlexTWithBeard »

NikkiA wrote: post #95
TuringNYC wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok but let’s consider the left end of the distribution — someone who drives four hours a week — is it really sensible for Uber it any gig platform to pay benefits? What about a single Amazon Mechanical Turk hIt — would that also carry benefits? This wouldn’t be cost effective. I think over half these problems go away with government issued healthcare. Companies and workers can be more dynamic.

One of the responsibilities an employer has in the UK is to pay national insurance taxes, that are ostensibly believed to be how the NHS is funded (it's not), this is a responsibility that Uber/Lyft were shirking by their 'creative use of employment law' initially until they were forced to treat drivers as employees. So no, government issued healthcare is likely to make the issue even more starkly obviously wrong.

So... Why not make contractors pay National Insurance?

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

#100

Post by NikkiA »

AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #99
NikkiA wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the responsibilities an employer has in the UK is to pay national insurance taxes, that are ostensibly believed to be how the NHS is funded (it's not), this is a responsibility that Uber/Lyft were shirking by their 'creative use of employment law' initially until they were forced to treat drivers as employees. So no, government issued healthcare is likely to make the issue even more starkly obviously wrong.

So... Why not make contractors pay National Insurance?

They do, like all employees, but the employer usually pays a contribution too, by insisting that workers are 'self-employed contractors' it reduces the money being paid to the NI fund.

Contractor fees are somewhat assumed to include the rates necessary for a genuine contractor to pay the full NI amount, but Uber/Lyft relies on their 'contractors' not really being fully aware of that.

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