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California passes bill that classifies gig economy workers as employees

nytimes.com

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

#561

Post by lutorm »

rtkwe wrote: post #500
JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I don't understand why people take gig jobs. Think of the opportunity costs. First off, Uber drivers don't make that much. Then you have vehicle depreciation and maintenance costs. You need to carry an insurance rider that covers rideshare driving. You also need to pay for your own health care. When you add up all these expenses, plus the desire for a living wage, there is no way drivers can be making eno…

I mean those are all costs you should factor in but don't have to pay or are somewhat opaque (eg: depreciation). Drivers can go without health care and gamble on the insurance rider. Then the only paid costs are vehicle maintenance.

By "gamble on the insurance rider" you mean further externalize the cost that Uber already externalized onto the drivers? Because the people that end up paying when you "gamble on the insurance" are the people that you injure in an accident, or systemically through the need to carry "uninsured coverage" to cover yourself against those gamblers.

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

#562

Post by m-p-3 »

chongli wrote: post #400
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…

The way to protect workers is to shift the burden of health care and other costly benefits onto the government, supported by taxes. Then there is no risk to hiring a new employee beyond the wages you pay them. The US public does not want this, though, and the war of words over universal health care has led to incredibly deep entrenchment on the side of those opposed. All this despite the mountain of evidence from oth…

It makes me sick that so many Americans are willing to keep their taxes lower and pay their own healthcare insurance (which are absurdly high, and you still have premiums to pay, etc) instead of having the peace of mind that if they become seriously sick, that it won't ruin them and their close relatives.

Sure, you might be healthy now but do you really want to take a gamble like this and keep more money in your wallet now, and potentially lose everything due to bad luck later? I guess it's the American way?

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

#563

Post by tathougies »

chongli wrote: post #400
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…

The way to protect workers is to shift the burden of health care and other costly benefits onto the government, supported by taxes. Then there is no risk to hiring a new employee beyond the wages you pay them. The US public does not want this, though, and the war of words over universal health care has led to incredibly deep entrenchment on the side of those opposed. All this despite the mountain of evidence from oth…

Alternatively, incentivize companies to offer more pay rather than healthcare. For example, by disallowing group bargaining for healthcare by an employer.

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

#564

Post by subhobroto »

munk-a wrote: post #549
irrational wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The US public does not want this I don't think this is true. I think what the US public doesn't want is the higher taxes to pay for it. We are already swimming in debt and wages haven't kept up with inflation. My daughter is making exactly the same wages now that I made when I was her age 25 years ago, in comparable jobs.

I think the US public doesn't want to lose more of their money to healthcare than it currently is - and this is the attack that's most commonly leveraged against universal healthcare... "Your taxes will go up!" well yes, they will, but my out of pocket will go down as I'll no longer be shoveling so much money from my salary (either pre- or post- collection) to health insurance.

You hit the nail on the head. I have written answers on Quora that show numbers to support your thoughts.

I used to paste links to these posts here but people felt I was spamming, so I don't do that anymore.

Feel free to look at my other comments and posts on Quora as well as reach out to me. We need more people like you to bring prosperity.

The status quo will not bring us prosperity.

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

#565

Post by nqzero »

einarvollset wrote: post #518
nickjj wrote: post #315

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. 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…

> relevant state agency

the federal govt as well (the irs has a 20 point checklist to help make the determination)

every contract i've ever gotten in the last 10 years has required that i indemnify the company against being classified as a worker, and then given instructions that violate that checklist, and been upset when i pushed back

started looking for a w2 on tuesday :(

https://galachoruses.org/sites/default/files/IRS-20-question...

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

#566

Post by blackflame7000 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #461
chongli wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way to protect workers is to shift the burden of health care and other costly benefits onto the government, supported by taxes. Then there is no risk to hiring a new employee beyond the wages you pay them. The US public does not want this, though, and the war of words over universal health care has led to incredibly deep entrenchment on the side of those opposed. All this despite the mountain of evidence from oth…

> The US public does not want this That's far from clear. Polling fairly consistently shows that the US public favors at least some degree of it (particularly shifting the healthcare burden from employers to government, other benefits have less political salience), though any particular plan for the detailed mechanism may have trouble gaining majority support.

Honestly, I really wish people would stop basing so many decisions on Polls. There are so many problems with accurately polling people's opinions because generating a truly random dataset is really hard. Unless people have some sort of financial stake in the outcome you're only going to hear what they want to happen instead of what they think will happen.

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

#567

Post by tathougies »

As if Uber or Lyft even care. They almost certainly foresaw this (who couldn't), which is why they have taken the typical response to government over-regulation -- automation. The end goal is a self driving car, and the resulting concentration of wealth. Once again, we can blame so-called 'progressive' policies for furthering the enriching of the rich and the continued subjugation of the poor and middle classes who are denied yet another income stream.

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

#568

Post by PorterDuff »

cptaj wrote: post #460
stjohnswarts wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't use the 0.1% cases to justify the 90% who will get wrecked financially because of major surgery, cancer treatment, etc because it's so expensive. Medical treatment shouldn't be a for profit business, there has to be a better way, and other countries have a better system (in the sense of doing the greatest good for the most people, and not just the 0.1%) than we do and we can copy the best of them as we will…

I think it can be for profit but it needs regulation on how much you can bleed patients for. Selling pills for thousands of dollars when they cost you a dime to make is simply exploitative.

What was the NRE on that pill or the hundreds (thousands?) that didn't work at all?

OTOH (or the other other hand), I'll bet that you could make a strong argument for stopping new drug development entirely. Simply sell existing drugs for as little as possible. It wouldn't surprise me if most of that research has insanely high marginal cost with little benefit at this point.

I'll bet you'd have a healthier public, on average, if this happened.

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

#569

Post by throwaway_law »

0xffff2 wrote: post #519
throwaway_law wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 c…

>The sorts of company-to-company contracts where the individual "contractors" are W2 employees of a contracted company are totally unaffected by this legislation.

You must have missed the part of my comment that specifies:

"the firms who get the contract to do the work and *turn around and subcontract the work to you for pennys on the dollar"

>(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.)

Then what is to stop this new employment firm Uber has to contract with to obtain drivers from deciding after they have the infrastructure of drivers in place from cutting Uber out and launching their own ride-share app?

At the end of the day Uber isn't claiming drivers as contractors because of complexity, they are doing it to lower their costs.

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