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

California passes bill that classifies gig economy workers as employees

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

511–520 of 754 posts

Re: California passes bill that classifies gig economy workers as employees

#511

Post by uasm »

kmjg88nvf8 wrote: post #316
uasm wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Uber is not Taxi. OP point is still correct. Taxi companies are coming back but Uber drivers get fired" They can't be "fired", since they were never properly hired in the first place! They were never regarded as employees. That's exactly what this legislation is setting out to change!

It doesn't matter how you call it - they will be unable to earn extra money by driving, that is the issue. If they relied on that money to make ends meet, they may not be happy anymore.

> "It doesn't matter how you call it - they will be unable to earn extra money by driving, that is the issue. If they relied on that money to make ends meet, they may not be happy anymore."

Your post makes zero sense, so I'll keep it short for you. Uber was the middleman, and without it - both individual drivers as-well as taxi companies have significantly more leverage over the consumers, and can now start charging higher prices.

Re: California passes bill that classifies gig economy workers as employees

#512

Post by fuzz4lyfe »

newshorts wrote: post #372
fuzz4lyfe wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>One medical emergency will end it all. One medical emergency and your credit will be ruined. Wait a seven years without contracting the debt collector and the debt becomes uncollectible. After three years roughly three quarters of the effect on your credit will evaporate. That's what actually happens beyond the hyperbolic political grandstanding. Remember kids, if you get a bill that you can't possibly pay. Don't pa…

Sounds like bad advice. Where will you live? In my area you need good credit to get an apartment... Credit affects your life in many ways, I’m not advocating a specific action, just pointing out that the advice above can have negative effects on your life.

With things like this it is helpful to work from first principals. Ask yourself, are all people with poor credit homeless? Are most?

Re: California passes bill that classifies gig economy workers as employees

#513

Post by OCASM »

moate wrote: post #284
clinta wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if it means that fewer people get the opportunity to to do it at all? I know people who drive for a little extra money while they work other jobs. This kind of flexibility is what might be at risk, excluding many people who need that extra income from ever getting the opportunity.

So the trade off is always "more jobs" vs "better jobs". A company can hire 10 people at 10 dollars an hour or 20 people at 5 dollars an hour. Which situation is you believe is "better" depends on your end goal: Are you trying to make more small jobs, or are you trying to make jobs meaningful in their earning ability? Framed another way, the people you know driving for "a little extra cash" are chipping away at oppor…

No, the trade off is being employed vs being unemployed. You can demand people pay you more for a service but you can't force them to hire you in the first place.

Re: California passes bill that classifies gig economy workers as employees

#514

Post by henryfjordan »

balfirevic wrote: post #296
ken wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can think of many different ways to interpret your first sentence, so I'm not clear what you're saying, but this does make me wonder if it's going to lead to any sort of licensing or certification for general industry programmers. If workers in this field want to call themselves "software engineers" and gain the benefits of a professional title, like lawyers and architects, they're going to have to start following…

> If workers in this field want to call themselves "software engineers" and gain the benefits of a professional title What are those benefits?

In CA you can be a professional engineer which gives you the power to sign off on a bridge design or other similarly high-stakes projects. There's designations for all kinds of engineers (Civil, Mech, Electrical, etc).

You get a nice little salary bump or something usually, but you also get the risk associated with the bridge falling down. You sign off on the design and can be liable for negligence and malpractice.

You have to take a little test when you graduate college, then work under another professional engineer for 5 years, then take another test.

CA basically has no professional software engineering license yet.

Re: California passes bill that classifies gig economy workers as employees

#515

Post by 0xffff2 »

gwbas1c wrote: post #253
mikekchar wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a software contractor... (A) and (B) are terrifying. I think (A) means you really can't do contract work while working under the direction of a manager, or PGM. So you essentially have to be doing work for hire rather than filling in a specialist role for a defined period of time. (B)... Wow... So if the company is a software development company, they can't hire contractors??? I really hope I'm reading that wrong.…

Most of the software contractors I know easily meet (A) and (B). In these cases, they bid on the job based on its requirements, have multiple customers, define how they will implement the software, and sometimes even have employees. When I personally worked as a contractor, the other contractors I worked with mostly bounced from short gig to short gig. That would probably meet (B). (A) was a bit more subjective. If y…

>When I personally worked as a contractor, the other contractors I worked with mostly bounced from short gig to short gig. That would probably meet (B). (A) was a bit more subjective.

I'm confused. You seem to be applying (B) to the contractor somehow, where my reading is that it applies to the company doing the contracting. It doesn't matter what the contractor is doing; if a company makes widgets, they can't hire a contractor to make widgets. It doesn't matter if the widgets are a different color or if the contractor only ever makes widgets for any given company for a few months at a time.

Re: California passes bill that classifies gig economy workers as employees

#516

Post by fuzz4lyfe »

moate wrote: post #300
fuzz4lyfe wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>One medical emergency will end it all. One medical emergency and your credit will be ruined. Wait a seven years without contracting the debt collector and the debt becomes uncollectible. After three years roughly three quarters of the effect on your credit will evaporate. That's what actually happens beyond the hyperbolic political grandstanding. Remember kids, if you get a bill that you can't possibly pay. Don't pa…

Hello. Human who did this. This advice is extremely glib and more of a headache than you're is making it out to be. Sure, there's techniques for deal with this shit. It doesn't change the fact that that it's still a giant pile of shit to deal with, and it would just be much better if we as a collective society didn't allow one medical emergency to cause problems for you of this magnitude. Also, if you're trying to be…

>what do you think happens to that business?

Generally nothing, the hospitals don't actually expect you to pay the bill they just want the tax write off they get when they send it to collections. Jeff Bezos might have to pay but if you are just some guy with a business that doesn't even generate enough money to pay for your own health insurance you will most likely be fine.

Re: California passes bill that classifies gig economy workers as employees

#517

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

miracle2k wrote: post #350
mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drivers do choose whether to work, just like employees do. They also choose when to be on the clock, which is the single item from your comment that can even loosely be used to argue they could be contractors. Drivers definitely don’t choose where to work, that’s dictated by the apps’ central scheduling algorithms, and only might be related to the driver’s current location, and not in any way chosen by the driver. Ch…

> Choosing to run an errand, give me a break? You can’t be serious? Employees do that stuff all the time. That type of thing is not related to the distinction between contractor or employee. If you work, say, in a restaurant and decide you want to go pick up your laundry, expect the shift supervisor to tell you no. Certainly some employees enjoy that flexibility, but that is entirely at the discretion of your employe…

My sister who works as a waitress in a restaurant routinely checks in with her boss to leave for brief periods related to child care, usually around pickup/dropoff from the bus at the end of the school day. This type of arrangement is very common, even in chain stores or big retailers.

Re: California passes bill that classifies gig economy workers as employees

#518

Post by einarvollset »

nickjj wrote: post #315
einarvollset wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will probably come as a surprise to you (it did me several years ago), that it’s not simply up to you and the company hiring you if you are considered a freelancer. This is not a matter of billable vs guaranteed hours. It’s a classification based on employee control over the person in question. In fact, if you were micro directing the people you paid 1099, you may have had what the state of NY would consider an em…

> It will probably come as a surprise to you (it did me several years ago), that it’s not simply up to you and the company hiring you if you are considered a freelancer. Where do you draw the line? Let's say you hire someone for 3 hours to help you out for a specific task. A "I would like X done with Y" type of scenario. Are they now considered an employee? What if you asked someone to do a code review for 5 hours wh…

"Where do you draw the line?"

That's the ting, there is no exact science here. It's an interpretation by the relevant state agency (like most taxes really).

For example, CA has been cracking down hard lately, dunno about NYS. Obviously enforcement is selective - better for the state to go after someone big like Lyft/Uber rather than you. Does not mean that you're in the right just because you didn't get your election scrutinized.

And FWIW - your accountants are right in that it's beneficial and probably totally fine to 1099. But ask them to guarantee that the state won't go after you for it and watch them squirm :D

Re: California passes bill that classifies gig economy workers as employees

#519

Post by 0xffff2 »

throwaway_law wrote: post #232
mikekchar wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a software contractor... (A) and (B) are terrifying. I think (A) means you really can't do contract work while working under the direction of a manager, or PGM. So you essentially have to be doing work for hire rather than filling in a specialist role for a defined period of time. (B)... Wow... So if the company is a software development company, they can't hire contractors??? I really hope I'm reading that wrong.…

>I really hope I'm reading that wrong. I might want to do work for a California company one day ;-) In theory this should be really good for software contractors, because in this should rip out the middlemen (i.e. the firms who get the contract to do the work and turn around and subcontract the work to you for pennys on the dollar). Now in theory these middlemen are gone and you as the software developer should be ab…

Huh? The sorts of company-to-company contracts where the individual "contractors" are W2 employees of a contracted company are totally unaffected by this legislation. If anything, this legislation is likely to introduce that relationship where it didn't exist before (e.g. Uber might contract with local companies formed solely to employ Uber drivers in that locality, so that Uber doesn't have to deal with all of the complexity of treating all of its drivers as employees.)

Re: California passes bill that classifies gig economy workers as employees

#520

Post by KirinDave »

whiddershins wrote: post #246

All these people making Uber money on the side ... the whole thing was possible in part due to the low friction in (and also complete disregard for) the regulatory environment. I’m in NYC and honestly can’t figure out how to legally hire a studio assistant for a few hours a week without being at risk for any of a number of lawsuit vectors. So I just coil my own cables. And I don’t mentor people who want to learn some…

Why don't you just hire people part time? That still exists and it exists for a reason.
Post reply on HN