There is room for something between the traditional 1099 and W2 categories.
Uber wants to redefine employment, labor groups are fighting back
31–40 of 162 posts
Re: Uber wants to redefine employment, labor groups are fighting back
#32I like to use comparison with labor standards in other economies. https://www.wsj.com/articles/france-uber-ruling-puts-gig-wor... is similar to this, since it involves employment status. There are various restrictions imposed on ride-sharing companies across the globe. Not necessarily labor, but related to medallions / licensure to drive taxis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_ridesharing_compan...
> Not necessarily labor
You can say that again. The result of the medallion systems was that often taxi drivers had to pay to work, by renting a medallion from wealthy owners. Even in countries where the owner of the medallion couldn't rent it, they were sold at very high prices when the owner retired, making it into a middle-class privilege.
Re: Uber wants to redefine employment, labor groups are fighting back
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Full time employment comes with benefits and protections gig work does not ( the entire point of this article ).
If healthcare is decoupled from employment, as the comment chain suggests, what benefit is tied in with full-time employment. We should be seeking to decouple benefits from employment not solidifying the arrangement. What protections does employment have? Hopefully very little.
First you solve decoupling healthcare from employment, then you can loosen things around the gig economy.
Going the other way around is massively unethical considering the state of healthcare in this country and the dependence on employment for health benefits.
Re: Uber wants to redefine employment, labor groups are fighting back
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Downvoted because this is true of any job. You cannot have a five day 9-5 work week if your salary income doesn't cover your rent, food, and healthcare and you have no other income. Gig work is no more or less special than that.
Full time employment comes with benefits and protections gig work does not ( the entire point of this article ).
So then the next question is: who should be responsible for providing the quality of life floor?
We as a society (rightly) demand a minimum standard of living for everyone, and we collectively pay for that one way or the other. Either we pay taxes to fund a welfare state (single payer healthcare, UBI, food stamps), or we pay inflated prices for goods and services to maintain wage floors.
I'd argue that paying taxes for welfare is more progressive, as the burden falls on richer people. Paying inflated prices for goods and services is regressive as it's a burden that falls equally on the rich and the poor.
What we're clearly seeing is a well functioning market driving down the cost of driver labor to the minimum possible price (ignoring for a moment the need to make sure externalities are included in the price via congestion taxes). This is good for consumers, since the good/service is now accessible to people lower on the socioeconomic ladder. If the problem is that some of these drivers aren't making enough to survive, then wouldn't a more optimum solution be to simply give them a little bit of money (or in-kind services)?
Re: Uber wants to redefine employment, labor groups are fighting back
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Downvoted because this is true of any job. You cannot have a five day 9-5 work week if your salary income doesn't cover your rent, food, and healthcare and you have no other income. Gig work is no more or less special than that.
Full time employment comes with benefits and protections gig work does not ( the entire point of this article ).
That's typically a matter of the employment agreement and not a regulatory condition:
https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/workhours/full-time
Overtime compensation tends to be regulated.
Unemployment is also sort of tied to work hours, but it's not particularly a job benefit (it's operated as insurance, so it's basically coming out of wages...).
Re: Uber wants to redefine employment, labor groups are fighting back
#36I like gig work. I like the freedom. We need fewer restrictions not more. Forcing businesses to hire only full-time workers reduces the number of jobs. They won't hire someone unless there's 2000 hours of work to fill up a year.
Uber isnt freedom. If they let you set your price, and let customers easily rebook with you, then you would have freedom. Uber want perfectly controlled interchangable cogs.
Car services have worked like that for decades. My uncle has had his same driver for something like 40 years. The driver is not an employee, he is a contractor.
Re: Uber wants to redefine employment, labor groups are fighting back
#37I like gig work. I like the freedom. We need fewer restrictions not more. Forcing businesses to hire only full-time workers reduces the number of jobs. They won't hire someone unless there's 2000 hours of work to fill up a year.
* Decouple healthcare from employment (Universal healthcare) * Enable robust safety nets so lack of enough gig work doesn’t mean someone is homeless or goes hungry. Can we find middle ground? People can’t live good lives with excessive uncertainty and stress, and quality of life is what we should optimize for (like New Zealand is attempting), versus GDP. I concede gig work type employment has a place in our modern ec…
100% agree with these. And it seems like decoupling healthcare and other benefits from full-time employment opens the door to your last point, a 4-day work week.
Right now in almost full-time job, if you want to switch to 4 days a week you need to basically get a different job. You'll lose your benefits like healthcare, paid vacation, 401k matching, so even though you'd be working 80% as many hours your effective pay at the same hourly rate would be much less than 80% of what you made previously.
The more that benefits are decoupled from work, the easier it would be view employment on a more sliding scale for many jobs - i.e here's the hourly rate, you can work 2 days a week or 5, it's up to you, but you'll still be a "full" employee in the sense that full-time workers are today.
Obviously not all kinds of work lends itself to this flexibility. If you're trying to climb the ladder and get promoted quickly you'll probably still need to work a lot. But for a lot of jobs, for instance for IC software engineers, I don't see why this flexibility wouldn't work.
Re: Uber wants to redefine employment, labor groups are fighting back
#38There are 2 big problems with on-demand/ gig employment.
#1 Our current system of coupling healthcare and other life essential benefits with employment is broken. It makes it difficult for people to work small jobs or switch jobs. In order for gig jobs to be viable, people need to be able to get survive a broken foot without going bankrupt.
#2 Gig-style businesses tend to vastly underpay employees. The early claims that Uber drivers were averaging $15-20/ hour or more were completely fabricated. The reality is most gig jobs require people use their own vehicles and don't pay them for inevitable downtime which means they are vastly underpaid. Minimum wage for gig workers should include payment for expenses (including a reasonable $0.50+ / mile for travel) and downtime between gigs.
If those things are fixed, then suddenly gig work is amazing, but that's a pretty big ask.
Re: Uber wants to redefine employment, labor groups are fighting back
#39I like gig work. I like the freedom. We need fewer restrictions not more. Forcing businesses to hire only full-time workers reduces the number of jobs. They won't hire someone unless there's 2000 hours of work to fill up a year.
* Decouple healthcare from employment (Universal healthcare) * Enable robust safety nets so lack of enough gig work doesn’t mean someone is homeless or goes hungry. Can we find middle ground? People can’t live good lives with excessive uncertainty and stress, and quality of life is what we should optimize for (like New Zealand is attempting), versus GDP. I concede gig work type employment has a place in our modern ec…
> Decouple healthcare from employment (Universal healthcare)
No, fix healthcare costs instead. Given current healthcare cost structure, even 'universal' healthcare will not decouple it from employment. Fix the cost problem, and everything else gets way easier, including safety nets.
Re: Uber wants to redefine employment, labor groups are fighting back
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
* Decouple healthcare from employment (Universal healthcare) * Enable robust safety nets so lack of enough gig work doesn’t mean someone is homeless or goes hungry. Can we find middle ground? People can’t live good lives with excessive uncertainty and stress, and quality of life is what we should optimize for (like New Zealand is attempting), versus GDP. I concede gig work type employment has a place in our modern ec…
The safety nets in the US are independent of the businesses. It's not like having a "full-time job" is a safety net. Ask all of the "full-time" employees at airlines, restaurants, hotels and other places discovered after COVID-19 hit. I'm totally cool with decoupling health insurance. I think Uber would love that. The great thing about the independent contractor life that Uber is expousing is that you can have your f…
> The safety nets in the US are independent of the businesses
I think the fact that health insurance is tied to employment is one of the few things both sides agree is bad. Decoupling health insurance from employment can go a long way to making the distinction between "full time" and "gig worker" unimportant.