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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

#591

Post by blackflame7000 »

throwaway_law wrote: post #332
csunbird wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

unless they have a college degree

a College degree != a professional license

The American National Society of Professional Engineers provides a model law and lobbies legislatures to adopt occupational licensing regulations. The model law requires:

1) a four-year degree from a university program accredited by the Engineering Accreditation Committee (EAC) of the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET),

2) an eight-hour examination on the fundamentals of engineering (FE) usually taken in the senior year of college,

3) four years of acceptable experience,

4) a second examination on principles and practice

5) written recommendations from other professional engineers.

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

#592

Post by will4274 »

stefan_ wrote: post #539
EpicEng wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Experts said that there is nothing in the bill that requires employees to work set shifts, and that Uber and Lyft are legally entitled to continue allowing drivers to make their own scheduling decisions. Well yeah, it doesn't force them to. Who are these "experts"? If Uber takes on 100,000 new employees and all of the costs that go along with them, why wouldn't they also manage them like... employees? You can't have…

Because Uber has been arguing that people work for them because of the flexibility? So when they don't offer it, people won't work for them, employed or not? This is such a weird response. Like Uber would institute some schedule out of spite, and why even.

It's not out of spite. Healthcare is a fixed cost for employees. Overtime costs more per hour in pay. Undertime costs more per hour because the same fixed costs are divided over fewer hours. If Uber has to pay fixed costs, they have a greater incentive to minimize undertime.

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

#593

Post by ptaipale »

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…

The strange thing here is that United States uses more public money to health care than European welfare states. So Americans already now pay more taxes for health than Europeans. Some aspects of the U.S. health care system are incredibly ineffective use of money.

https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm

There are reasons for this; some of them good (the best care in the U.S. is very high quality and leading-edge technology, and consumer protection through litigation tries to minimize errors); some are bad (e.g. because of litigation, legal costs are very high, and the system seems to carry a lot of overheads, and many people still lack coverage).

It seems the so-called Obamacare wasn't a very good approach, because so many people felt it was ripping them off. Clearly it is easier to build an efficient public health care system from nothing (like e.g. my country Finland did in 20th century) than transform an existing system (which the U.S. has and where there are lots of incumbent operators that have "assets" that they protect.

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

#594

Post by JMTQp8lwXL »

PorterDuff wrote: post #573
labrador wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I drive Lyft and Uber in the SF Bay Area. I'm a retired computer programmer and I need to supplement my income to have spending money. I'm on MediCal which is a great health insurance program and easy to get on if you are low income. I'm actually making really good money driving. When I am smart about knowing when and where to be I can make a too much money even working part time, by which I mean I will disqualify my…

Hah, that's an interesting trap to be in. It's not dissimilar to pushing wages down in order to qualify for high ACA subsidies. The way the system is set up, there's quite a tax cliff...especially for older people (the difference between $0/month and $1200ish for an individual).

If you have wealth, you can essentially create an income, on paper, to look like whatever you want, to meet ACA subsidy qualifications. Here's an example of a practical application: You could rent, or buy a home with your wealth. If you buy a home outright, you won't have the monthly mortgage or rental payment (you'll have property taxes, but let's assume those are far lower than an ongoing monthly rent check).

Withdrawing from pre-tax retirement accounts counts as income for ACA purposes. You've now lowered your annual expenses (and thus, your income) and can qualify for subsidies, but all you've really done is shift some of your net worth from investment accounts to housing, in order to reduce annual expenses. This example is likely more applicable to a person in retirement, as well.

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

#596

Post by [deleted] »

woah wrote: post #451

This is an extremely heavy handed law which would be destructive to large parts of the economy by making many people’s livelihoods illegal. The drafters of the law knew this, which is why 90% of the text of the law is carve-outs for various professions. But forcing people to live their lives through loopholes never works well. For example, they have this carve out for high skilled professions: > (3) An individual who…

[deleted]

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

#597

Post by ericb »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #503
unksdfnaajhfjk wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is why I don't understand why people take gig jobs. Sometimes Compared to what? is the most important question. I've been driving for a few years. Before this I was making minimum wage with no benefits. Before that I had a difficult stretch of unemployment. One of my least favorite questions passengers ask me is What did you do before this? because I don't really like to talk about it. It is a rough job - you…

So, you'd rather drive without a guaranteed minimum wage, possibility for unemployment benefits, or health care benefits? I fail to see how that leaves the driver in a better position.

This is the conclusion people come to naturally when one assumes all the other variables don't change in response to the wage. but they all change

The number of rides change as the price of the ride goes up, which happens when you raise the underlying cost to the rider. (aka supply and demand)

The number of drivers change with the overhead cost-per-driver. If each driver has a fixed healthcare overhead, it makes sense to hire only full time drivers as you can pay the overhead once and get the most hours driven from that sunk cost.

The number of drivers that get hired if you bump the salary also declines for all the reasons above.

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

#598

Post by ben_jones »

djrogers wrote: post #378

It seems to me that an evolution of the current Uber/Lyft model would allow for the gig-economy to continue. Today Uber/Lyft being the exclusive determinants of both cost of rides and pay for drivers, which leads to 'prividing rides' being their core business. If NewCo were to build an app/platform that allowed drivers to bid on rides in real time (perhaps with driver determined presets for price floors, distance, et…

This would be terrible for a large number of Uber riders. Want to go across the Bay Bridge? $100. Airport? $100. Want to get picked up after a night of drinking? $100. Want to get picked up in a poor neighborhood? Not happening.

All the problems associated with taxis: poor service, scams, racism, extortive pricing, will return.

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

#599

Post by hbarka »

I want to be empathetic to both sides of the argument. Don’t 1099 workers have preferential tax treatments? Why would you give that up and become W2? On the other hand, health insurance is a safety net. I feel like we need a new system where one can be an entrepreneur and still be able to afford healthcare.

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

#600

Post by diminoten »

bcheung wrote: post #595

One unintended outcome of this is probably going to be age discrimination. If companies are now required to provide health care they is an incentive to hire younger workers with cheaper healthcare expenses than older people who cost more.

California considers age to be a protected class.
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