Uber wants to redefine employment, labor groups are fighting back • Hacker News Board

Re: Uber wants to redefine employment, labor groups are fighting back

#51

Post by GaryNumanVevo » Wed, Apr 08, 2020, 10:09 PM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #43

ogre_codes wrote: post #38

There 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 t…

> Our current system of coupling healthcare and other life essential benefits with employment is broken. Is it not possible to purchase your own healthcare independently of an employer? And opt-out of employer healthcare? Or are only employers allowed to insure you? If it's a matter of scale could a buyer's union buy it bulk like an employer but not linked to your employment?

Buying healthcare as an individual is very expensive, since you're not buying in bulk. Some larger unions do have healthcare for members, but it's more of a bargaining chip to keep workers paying dues.

Re: Uber wants to redefine employment, labor groups are fighting back

#52

Post by bhupy » Wed, Apr 08, 2020, 10:10 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #26

tathougies wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I am entirely happy to revisit employment arrangements....once universal healthcare has been delivered, and not a moment sooner. It is an atomic commit.

And I am entirely happy to revisit universal healthcare once employment arrangements are fixed, and not a moment sooner. It is an atomic commit, after all.

This line of uncompromising thinking is not really constructive.

Re: Uber wants to redefine employment, labor groups are fighting back

#53

Post by nickff » Wed, Apr 08, 2020, 10:10 PM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #43

ogre_codes wrote: post #38

There 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 t…

> Our current system of coupling healthcare and other life essential benefits with employment is broken. Is it not possible to purchase your own healthcare independently of an employer? And opt-out of employer healthcare? Or are only employers allowed to insure you? If it's a matter of scale could a buyer's union buy it bulk like an employer but not linked to your employment?

Many unions used to administer and provide healthcare to members, before the Great Depression and WWII; but union-sourced healthcare is now heavily disadvantaged from a tax perspective. I say 'healthcare' because there were many non-insurance arrangements.

In some ways, having a union provide healthcare makes more sense than having the employer do it. In industries with many small firms, and fewer large unions (like construction), the union will probably have better bargaining power. Members of a given union also probably have more (means and needs) in common with each other than employees of a given company.

Re: Uber wants to redefine employment, labor groups are fighting back

#54

Post by zozbot234 » Wed, Apr 08, 2020, 10:10 PM UTC

ogre_codes wrote: post #38

There 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 t…

> Gig-style businesses tend to vastly underpay employees.

Low-productivity services tend to vastly underpay employees. This is to be expected. The question is whether one can have "gig"-like work that's more worthwhile than driving around for services that can't even make a decent profit and are just spending money they get from their VC funders.

Re: Uber wants to redefine employment, labor groups are fighting back

#55

Post by beefalo » Wed, Apr 08, 2020, 10:10 PM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #43

ogre_codes wrote: post #38

There 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 t…

> Our current system of coupling healthcare and other life essential benefits with employment is broken. Is it not possible to purchase your own healthcare independently of an employer? And opt-out of employer healthcare? Or are only employers allowed to insure you? If it's a matter of scale could a buyer's union buy it bulk like an employer but not linked to your employment?

It is possible but prohibitively expensive. A "good" price for health insurance for an individual still has ~$1000 monthly premiums. This isn't far off what employers pay. A good plan can easily be $15k - $20k per year in premiums paid by an employer.

Re: Uber wants to redefine employment, labor groups are fighting back

#56

Post by kube-system » Wed, Apr 08, 2020, 10:10 PM UTC

strictnein wrote: post #36

CJefferson wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That might be true, but in a nutshell, the IRS classifies employees based upon how much control the business has upon the worker.

It is a very grey area, but every point of control is an argument for being W2.

https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/employee-or-independent-contrac...

Your uncle may also have been miscategorized. Uber isn't the first company to play fast and loose with worker classification. It wasn't uncommon before the modern 'gig economy' either:

https://hbr.org/2017/07/lots-of-employees-get-misclassified-...

Re: Uber wants to redefine employment, labor groups are fighting back

#57

Post by mirimir » Wed, Apr 08, 2020, 10:13 PM UTC

majormajor wrote: post #8

airstrike wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I like the freedom. You do you, but I just wanted to provide an alternative view: that freedom might be great when you're young and equally free, but IMHO it doesn't work as well when you're 40 years old trying to ensure stable income to support your family

That's less about uber or employment status and more about "disruption" in general. Rapid innovation is great for advancing the state of the art but terrible for all the people in society who had made a life around doing work for a decade or two that is suddenly no longer a viable career. We (as a civilization) need to take care of the people who aren't the ones making the new fortunes.

> We (as a civilization) need to take care of the people who aren't the ones making the new fortunes.

OK, outsider here. But it's my impression that people "making the new fortunes" are a much smaller subset of the startup economy than many think. It's arguably similar to the common US middle class belief in being temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

Re: Uber wants to redefine employment, labor groups are fighting back

#58

Post by DamnYuppie » Wed, Apr 08, 2020, 10:14 PM UTC

xrendan wrote: post #45

aphextron wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If those things are fixed, then suddenly gig work is amazing, but that's a pretty big ask. There is no fixing these things. They are a feature, not a bug. The entire viability of these businesses exists within the margin created by stripping away any vestige of traditional employment stability, allowing desperate people to exchange their long term wellbeing for short term cash.

Eh, a significant portion of the first problem is solved by simply having single payer healthcare like most developed countries (except the States) has.

You do realize that in fact most developed countries actually have a healthcare system much like the US. Also most of the countries with a single payer health system have 3rd party health insurance that can be purchased. A true one payor only plan is the exception not the rule.

Re: Uber wants to redefine employment, labor groups are fighting back

#59

Post by bvandewalle » Wed, Apr 08, 2020, 10:14 PM UTC

ogre_codes wrote: post #38

There 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 t…

> #2 Gig-style businesses tend to vastly underpay employees.

Yes and as said below, that's by design. Uber/Lyft for example would not survived if they priced their service to allow a fair pay for the gig worker after accounting for vehicle costs. This whole system is built on underpaying workers and making people believe that a ride could "really" be that cheap. It isn't. There is a reason why taxi rides were expensive before Uber became a thing.

Re: Uber wants to redefine employment, labor groups are fighting back

#60

Post by rhapsodic » Wed, Apr 08, 2020, 10:14 PM UTC

bgorman wrote: post #47

xrendan wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, a significant portion of the first problem is solved by simply having single payer healthcare like most developed countries (except the States) has.

Or we could simply remove the tax break for employer based healthcare and let the market readjust.

And while we're add it, make health insurance premiums paid by individuals 100% deductable from their federal income tax.