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Uber wants to redefine employment, labor groups are fighting back

latimes.com

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

#111

Post by joppy »

gok wrote: post #99
grecy wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are 2 big problems with on-demand/ gig employment The only developed country where they are a problem is the USA. Other countries have healthcare regardless of employment status, and minimum wages high enough to live a good life ($19.48 AUD/hr in Australia, for example). They can, and have been fixed elsewhere.

That's US$12.12/hr to save anyone interested the time looking it up

It's more like US$13.50/hr if you take the exchange rate from a few months ago, before the COVID-19 crisis.

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

#112

Post by bhupy »

catalogia wrote: post #109
bhupy wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: "These expenses include: Insurance: This includes personal insurance and a rideshare or commercial insurance policy. Car/lease payments: The amounts a driver pays to drive their vehicle. Drivers either own their own vehicles or lease one from Uber or a third-party provider. Tolls, license, permit fees: Drivers pay for all of these fees. Passengers pay an added surcharge when drivers must incur toll…

Vehicle maintenance is not the same as depreciation.

I think it's debatable whether vehicle depreciation is a cost that needs to be included.

For the majority of Uber/Lyft drivers, the vehicle is a sunk cost — they would have bought a car Uber/Lyft or not. These drivers use these cars for personal use when they're not driving on gigs. There are even drivers that buy cars just so that they can drive for Uber, but if Uber/Lyft didn't exist, those folks would still need to buy a car to meet their own personal transportation needs.

Depreciation is going to inevitably happen to anyone that owns a car, whether or not they are a rideshare driver. It's like saying that you need to include the cost of a daily lunch in the equation.

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

#113

Post by catalogia »

bhupy wrote: post #112
catalogia wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vehicle maintenance is not the same as depreciation.

I think it's debatable whether vehicle depreciation is a cost that needs to be included. For the majority of Uber/Lyft drivers, the vehicle is a sunk cost — they would have bought a car Uber/Lyft or not. These drivers use these cars for personal use when they're not driving on gigs. There are even drivers that buy cars just so that they can drive for Uber, but if Uber/Lyft didn't exist, those folks would still need t…

> Depreciation is going to inevitably happen to anyone that owns a car, whether or not they are a rideshare driver.

Depreciation is partially a function of miles put on the car. Rideshare drivers put miles on their cars a lot faster than they would have otherwise.

Either way, sfkdjf9j3j is right. Your source doesn't account for vehicle depreciation.

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

#114

Post by Barrin92 »

bhupy wrote: post #107
Barrin92 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>there is some method by which it is possible to determine that a particular salary/wage is "fair" and that "fair" wage there is one and that is relatively simple, it's what people negotiate under symmetric information . The behaviour of some full-time uber drivers is simply irrational and that is effectively being exploited by companies like Uber. If one includes the cost of operating and maintaining the vehicle, no…

> The behaviour of some full-time uber drivers is simply irrational and that is effectively being exploited by companies like Uber. Irrational to you . > If one includes the cost of operating and maintaining the vehicle, not to mention the depreciation, the risk of losing work if it actually breaks down and so on you're not arriving at a salary that is even remotely sane or competitive. There are a lot of reasons why…

It's actually not the same everywhere, and not even Taleb considers this a 'black swan' but a white swan, because people have been warning everyone about pandemics just about the last twenty years. And there's a black swan now every ten years anyway.

In parts of Europe the employment situation is significantly less bad, in particular in countries with proper corporatist structures. In Germany unemployment went up by 250k. The US has seen 10 million unemployment claims already, mind you per capita that's worse by a factor of ten.

And yes I would consider this an abrogation of responsibility by Danish and Canadian employers. It doesn't matter though because Denmark has a few million people in it and the government can basically jump in every time anyway.

The fact aside that the US lacks this sort of generosity for many reasons, what the gig economy has produced is a permanent precariat and tech companies without obligations. You have an army of semi-employed service workers who get wrecked by every crisis, be it a mortage crisis or a virus because there is no security in such a society.

You don't need to pray for a potiticized safety net if you have employers and companies that take care of their workers and invest into their long term human capital and don't lay them off during the crisis, that is you have organisational capacity, something the American labour market lacks completely. It's everyone for themselves as soon as the alarm bells go off.

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

#115

Post by notatoad »

gwright wrote: post #66
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…

I'm not going to tackle #1 other than to say I do agree that health insurance shouldn't be provided by your employer. But for #2, you seem to be asserting that there is some method by which it is possible to determine that a particular salary/wage is "fair" and that "fair" wage must be mandated for all people. You've asserted that gig businesses are underpaying and yet lots of people continue to take those jobs. Are…

>Are you asserting that all those people are incapable of determining what is best for them?

If you give somebody a choice between working a little bit and not having a job at all, most people will take the little bit of work they're offered. The "people continue to take these jobs" argument is only valid if there's an abundance of other jobs available, which there is not.

Whether or not a job is underpaid is not determined by whether or not somebody is willing to do it for that amount of money. If people aren't being paid a living wage, they're being underpaid, and their wages will have to be subsidized by social assistance programs if their basic needs are going to be met.

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

#116

Post by kube-system »

bhupy wrote: post #80
kube-system wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Protections? Tell that to all of the "full-time" workers that were laid off within days of the economic crash. Full time employees get benefits like unemployment, health insurance, COBRA, FICA contributions etc. And tons of other legal protections that contractors do not normally get.

> Full time employees get benefits like unemployment, health insurance, COBRA, FICA contributions etc. A huge part of the problem is that full-time employees get benefits like health insurance and COBRA. They're all band-aids on top of one cardinal sin: that benefits are tied to employment. We don't really talk about employees receiving car insurance benefits, or food benefits, or housing benefits.

> We don't really talk about employees receiving car insurance benefits, or food benefits, or housing benefits.

I don't know why we don't talk about them, but it's not because they don't exist. These benefits aren't even really uncommon.

They're just more frequently called: 'company cars', 'employee meals', and 'corporate housing'.

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

#117

Post by hkmurakami »

bhupy wrote: post #70
GaryNumanVevo wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Buying healthcare as an individual is very expensive, since you're not buying in bulk This is a common refrain, but it's actually not true. Individual plans operate as a giant "group" with other individuals, and the size of that group is often larger than most employer groups. There are a host of reasons why healthcare is expensive in the US, and the "bulk purchasing" is not really one of them. Source: I work in he…

What we really need now to level is to make individual health insurance effectively a pre-income-tax item like it is when you get it via employment.

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

#118

Post by bhupy »

Barrin92 wrote: post #114
bhupy wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The behaviour of some full-time uber drivers is simply irrational and that is effectively being exploited by companies like Uber. Irrational to you . > If one includes the cost of operating and maintaining the vehicle, not to mention the depreciation, the risk of losing work if it actually breaks down and so on you're not arriving at a salary that is even remotely sane or competitive. There are a lot of reasons why…

It's actually not the same everywhere, and not even Taleb considers this a 'black swan' but a white swan, because people have been warning everyone about pandemics just about the last twenty years. And there's a black swan now every ten years anyway. In parts of Europe the employment situation is significantly less bad, in particular in countries with proper corporatist structures. In Germany unemployment went up by…

> In parts of Europe the employment situation is significantly less bad, in particular in countries with proper corporatist structures. In Germany unemployment went up by 250k. The US has seen 10 million unemployment claims already, mind you per capita that's worse by a factor of ten.

The US saw 10 million unemployment claims because the official policy of all governments (Federal & State) was forced unemployment. The CARES stimulus includes a $600/week unemployment insurance _on top of_ the existing state UI. The state with the least generous UI is Mississippi, at $940/month — with the CARES stimulus clocks in at $3340/month. You can see the full break-down here [1]. In every state, the unemployment benefit is actually higher than the median wage. Businesses know this, and proactively lay off / furlough their employees so that they may collect this benefit (which extends to gig workers as well).

In European nations, the approach has been to offer stimulus packages to employers to keep their employees paid while they temporarily shut down.

The net effect is the same, people are getting money to be able to sustain themselves during a global social distance shutdown. In America, because half the stimulus is in the form of direct insurance payments to people, and unemployment is the means of receiving that, you will see high unemployment numbers. Not only is this expected, it is intended.

> You don't need to pray for a potiticized safety net if you have employers and companies that take care of their workers and invest into their long term human capital and don't lay them off during the crisis, that is you have organisational capacity, something the American labour market lacks completely. It's everyone for themselves as soon as the alarm bells go off.

This seems directly at odds with your point about Coronavirus. In a Coronavirus world, if governments are forcing enterprises to pause their business, the only way to make sure people don't starve is to have a politicized safety net. Either it is in the form of corporate subsidies to keep employees on payroll, or it's in the form of direct cash to people. Right now, the US is doing both[2].

[1] https://imgur.com/a/AifRmdD

[2] https://imgur.com/a/db2DC2s

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

#119

Post by sethammons »

bhupy wrote: post #92
reaperducer wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every Uber/Lyft driver earns well in excess of that. No. For most, it's not even close. The only way to make that kind of money was to collect kickbacks from bringing tourists to strip clubs. Plus, many states have a minimum wage much higher than $7.25/hour. Source: Drove for Uber for eight months.

Sure, in some states like CA and NY, Uber drivers earn closer to $15/hour. Anecdotal Source: I've driven Uber too. Actual Source: https://www.ridester.com/how-much-do-uber-drivers-make/

Note that the $15/hr figure from the source includes tips, but does not count gas, insurance, nor vehicle wear and tear

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

#120

Post by bhupy »

kube-system wrote: post #116
bhupy wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Full time employees get benefits like unemployment, health insurance, COBRA, FICA contributions etc. A huge part of the problem is that full-time employees get benefits like health insurance and COBRA. They're all band-aids on top of one cardinal sin: that benefits are tied to employment. We don't really talk about employees receiving car insurance benefits, or food benefits, or housing benefits.

> We don't really talk about employees receiving car insurance benefits, or food benefits, or housing benefits. I don't know why we don't talk about them, but it's not because they don't exist. These benefits aren't even really uncommon. They're just more frequently called: 'company cars', 'employee meals', and 'corporate housing'.

> They're just more frequently called: 'company cars', 'employee meals', and 'corporate housing'.

Sure, and we are fortunate that such perks are in-frequent, and unexpected. In a world where that's not the case, cars, food, and housing would be prohibitively expensive to those that are unemployed, and we would call for nationalization of the auto, food, and real estate industries.

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