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Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees

courdecassation.fr

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Re: Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees

#542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is this category of worker is not just made of a small fringe of poor victims. Many of these people are legitimate entrepreneurs who become millionaire small business owners. You're going to destroy an important path to wealth creation for the poor and middle class by forcing them to be mega corp drones. This is an awful idea. You will destroy their lives by pulling up the ladders blue collar workers are us…

It's not only about opportunity for gig economy workers, it's about us all paying the price of gig economy business operations. Uber's business model can be extended to virtually any job, if we lower the barrier to entry just like Uber is trying to do for the taxi business. Their model is to be a gatekeeper to customers via their platform - if they are successful, none of those blue collar workers trying to climb out…

Something that keeps popping back to my mind since the late 80's is to wonder to what extend government could or even should deliver type FOO services. Coding a taxi service wont cost anywhere near as much as the damage Uber is looking to deal. We spend crazy amounts of money designing, implementing and configuring labor protection and Uber obviously wants to work around it.

Re: Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees

#543
post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please stop abusing code formatting for just about anything -Mobile users

Maybe that would not be an issue if HN had markup worth using. Like bulleted lists.

Excellent point, but in the meantime, let's not make our mobile users suffer!

Re: Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees

#544
post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When does that happen? Almost every Uber/Lyft driver I've seen lately has both logos on their car...

Why do the drivers usually have two different phones?

To have both HUD's on all the time?

Re: Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees

#545
post #59

All of this is a legal system that has a square hole and a circular hole not knowing what to do with a triangular peg. Governments job is to realize that this is a new category of work and create laws specifically to address it.

What's the new category? Currently in France there is:

- employment where you trade liberty (i.e. subordination) against protection (can't be fired at will, minimum wage, guaranteed income set in the contract...) from a company

- being an independent worker where you keep your liberty and do not get protection

If there is a third category like what Uber is currently doing, you trade your liberty (subordination) against no protection. It is not a new category, it is lowering the protection of employment. Which may or may not be a good thing, that's not my point, but I fail to see where's the new category of work.

Re: Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees

#546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Declining can adversely affect the driver's rating. How it does so, and the imolications of that rating, are unilaterally decided by Uber. There is no negotiation; as a driver, you either agree or you don't drive for Uber.

I am not aware of Uber manipulating ratings of cancelled rides. From my understanding of the platform only riders can rate the driver. Is there a published policy that would back up either of our assertions?

Not cancelled, declined. The rider can't rate the ride because it was never scheduled in the first place. From the user's perspective, they're still waiting for the app to find a driver. They revised it in 2017.

> Moreover, declining rides won't negatively impact drivers as much as it did before.[0]

Of course, won't impact as much still means impact.

[0]: https://mashable.com/2017/08/22/uber-drivers-ride-flexibilit...

Re: Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees

#547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Employee of the Month" posters around America beg to differ. "Employee of the Month" posters are hung inside your own offices rather than anywhere a competitor would be likely to see them. > In this case the drivers who provide the service are expected to come back, hence the vetting and rating. It establishes a relationship that extends beyond a single trip or "job". The relationship between the driver and the ri…

Parent seems to pivot to an argument about monopoly instead. That's a slick backslide that should be called out.

I don't see how I'm pivoting to an argument when I'm explaining the decision. Call out the French judges who clearly lack your insights and deeper understanding of local laws.

I'm giving the context of the French legal case, you're arguing from an American market stand point. Yelp or eBay are barely blips in France, Lyft doesn't even exist. Maybe Uber drivers are contractors in the US, but not according to French laws and market conditions as proven by the court decision today.

Re: Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees

#548
I'm not sure I follow.

Uber drivers can also drive for Lyft, and independently, thereby building up their own clientele. Uber connects drivers to clients and takes a cut off the top. Drivers can (and have) passed out their cards to me with direct lines. They can also get dispatches from Lyft.. WHILE entertaining offers from Uber and direct calls.

Uber drivers set their own rate by taking the job or not. The best analogy is a contractor and a GC. The GC needs work done at a certain rate, the contractor takes it or leaves it.

Drivers avail themselves to take rides or not on their own schedule, which is them setting the terms and conditions for providing their services. They aren't obligated to offer rides on the Uber platform, and can concurrently entertain offers from other platforms (Lyft, independent, etc).

We all know the intent of Uber was/is to connect people who want to ride-share in their spare time to people who need rides. It makes it easy for both parties and it's an improvement over taxis for all involved except taxi license holders. We shouldn't penalize progress because some Neanderthals want to make it their sole source of income (or eradicate ride sharing).

This is people peeing in the Napster pool all over again.

Re: Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees

#549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parent seems to pivot to an argument about monopoly instead. That's a slick backslide that should be called out.

The monopoly argument doesn't even work. Lyft provides meaningful and direct competition. Observe that the large majority of the fare goes to the driver and not to Uber or Lyft.

Lyft doesn't operate in France.

Re: Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees

#550
post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because then you would have a bunch of people without money in the vacation month ;) I'd be able to manage it personally but you will find that a lot of people wouldn't..

I find the idea of legislating how businesses operate based on the idea that people aren't expected to have personal responsibility highly distasteful.

I think the only country in the world where the general citizen have enough self control to manage this sort of stuff is Switzerland.

It might be distasteful to you but it is how people operate in real life and it would be sad if legislators ignored the real world in favour of how they wished the world to be.

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