581–590 of 781 posts
Lots of HN comments are here like "I know people who prefer to be contractors", "My sister's neighbours little brother actually doesn't want to be treated with respect by Uber", blah This is utter nonsense. Being a contractor means being self employed. You don't get paid leave or sick pay. It's a risk taking and doesn't make any sense in the gig economy where the wages are close to minimum rates. If you are truly sel…
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An employee working 10 hours a week is already a thing, it's called part-time work. Part time employees have fewer benefits and exist in many industries, e.g. food service. A weekend barista at Starbucks is not an independent contractor.
A weekend barista is only comparable to a gig economy driver the day that they can decide on a whim to show up to work for an hour or take a 2 week break unannounced, bail in the middle of a shift, or skip a shift altogether with no repercussions.
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Having been a driver for 1.5 years my questions for you are these: 1. If Uber and Lyft allow their drivers to choose, would it be reasonable for them to make "having the other app on at the same time" cause for dismissal? I know of no other employee that is allowed to simultaneously bill time on a competitor. Contractors, absolutely. Employees, no. 2. What if Uber, instead, charged $1.00/mo for the drivers to use the…
There's nothing in the law that prevents employers from giving their permission to remain available for competitive work at the same time. Indeed, isn't that quite close to the dynamic of a union hiring hall situation, where union members are simultaneously available for jobs from any of the employers with contracts with that union? Of course, one wouldn't be actively working for two employers at the same instant, bu…
Until someone figures out how to multiplex the cabshare part of the two apps :p
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It should be illegal to pay any form of wages, whether gig work or 9to5, without paying into social security, medicare, medicaid, and unemployment insurance. This pandemic has proven that EVERYONE needs unemployment insurance, and it is already well-known that everyone needs income and healthcare in retirement. Sp sure, let people do gig work on their own time, but don't let them opt out of the basic social safety ne…
I'm not American so I'm curious, do contractors not have to pay into these systems themselves? I'm from a European country, and if you're self-employed and working contracts, when you do your taxes, all the social insurance stuff instead gets paid by you directly (so your total income tax is much higher as you're paying all the employment taxes that are normally hidden from you)
Various companies forced people to become fake contractors. They didn't pay them enough that these fake contractors actually could still have the same social benefits/security.
This resulted in the government bailing out loads of contractors. Basically the "profit for the company, losses for the government" way of working.
The judge does not understand what a "gig" is. Uber drivers can choose to drive one, twelve, or zero hours in any given day. They can suddenly stop working by simply not accepting any more ride requests. It's the ultimate remote, self-directed, self-managed job. An employee can't make such decisions; they do as they are told or they are fired. Uber drivers are private, self-owned businesses that rent out their time a…
The judge certainly does understand what is going here. Secure employment is being replaced with "gigs" to the point where a huge chunk of the country has no stable income and is one week away from homelessness.
vs
> At will employment
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I think he was arguing that the execs at Uber didn't really care about the toxic workplace stuff until Uber's founder said he didn't want to IPO, then they used it as a way to kick him out. So basically the workplace is toxic, but that's not the real reason why he was kicked out (according to the comment you were replying to).
He effort you have him ousted was led by Bill Gurley of Benchmark and several other VC investors in Uber. Essentially the board asked him to step down and he did.
It strikes me that these articles are always biased in the direction of the benefits of being an employee. I have several friends that actively choose to be contractors because they prefer the (legally protected) flexibility to decide their own hours, among other things. It's a personal decision, and there are upsides and downsides in both directions. Sure - some (non-insignificant) portion of Uber and Lyft drivers w…
Lots of HN comments are here like "I know people who prefer to be contractors", "My sister's neighbours little brother actually doesn't want to be treated with respect by Uber", blah This is utter nonsense. Being a contractor means being self employed. You don't get paid leave or sick pay. It's a risk taking and doesn't make any sense in the gig economy where the wages are close to minimum rates. If you are truly sel…
Lyft/Uber can upgrade them to employees but the arithmetic of bottom-up economics means Uber has to raise prices to cover full employment benefits. The raised fares conflict with what passengers are willing to pay. E.g. even though yellow medallion taxis often cost more than Uber (especially for suburb trips) -- those yellow cab drivers were not employees with benefits like unpaid leave and healthcare.
I believe what this really comes down to is that society is not willing to pay the higher prices for drivers to be treated as employees. Same situation as not willing to paying higher prices at hair salons so hair stylists are full employees (instead of being contractors) with healthcare. It does seem like constantly blaming Uber for mis-categorizing employees conveniently shifts the blame from the society/customers. The extra money to pay the drivers comes from the passengers.
Let's look at comparison cases: The city of Austin TX temporarily banned Uber from operating there. A non-profit rideshare (RideAustin[1]) was formed. Even though they don't have to implement the same business practices as Uber/Lyft, it's interesting that the RideAustin drivers are also independent contractors and not employees with full benefits. Also as far as I can tell, there is no worker co-op owned by the drivers anywhere in the world that treats members/drivers as employees with benefits. Why is that?
Serious question about the framing of ethics: if (some) drivers see an arbitrage opportunity because potential passengers think Uber-with-employee-drivers "charges too much" so drivers willingly choose a rideshare co-op that treat them as contractors to undercut Uber, are the co-op drivers being unethical towards the Uber-drivers-as-employees?
Yes, a judge can force Uber to convert everyone to employees but that same judge can't force potential customers to pay higher prices. The alternative entities of RideAustin and driver co-ops shows there's a limit to prices that ride shares can charge.
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> argued that they were basically doing the same work as employees I think that's case by case though. Contractors usually do finite focused projects and don't want to be employees. I myself was self-employed for 5 years doing specific contracts as a software engineer. I was "writing code" which is "the same work" as employees. Were all those companies breaking the law? > Legally, in California, they can't do that. D…
> Were all those companies breaking the law? This is actually a really good thread, because most people are surprised to discover that yes , those companies probably were "breaking the law". As other posters pointed out, AB5 is relatively new, so the test is relatively stricter now, and only relevant in California. More importantly though, employment classification is only challenged when a plaintiff files a lawsuit.…
I'll give a Dutch perspective (which perhaps applies to some degree to other parts of Europe):
Until 2016, clients had to proactively ask for a 'Verklaring Arbeidsrelatie (VAR)'. An 'explanation of the work relationship'. If I understand correctly, the contractor/freelancer had to prove that they had more clients than just that one, and it had to be reasonable. So no having five clients of which one accounted for 99% of all income.
If a client didn't ask for this 'VAR', it could cause problems down the road.
From 2016 on they changed this, but apparently the result has been a confusing mess, so in 2021 they'll try to clear up some of it.
Practically speaking, as a contractor, I've found that only the big clients (with legal teams, I imagine) would ask for a VAR, if at all.
Most of the time, whether working in Holland or Germany, I usually did the exact same work that their employees did. In some cases there seemed to be vague distinction where I worked on shorter projects and they did support and the like, but in practice that distinction was very blurry.
I suppose with some of these clients I could've caused trouble, but because I got paid well, often better than the full-timers (even with insurance and all that deducted), I didn't see any reason to.
My general impression is that NL is a bit more 'liberal' in these matters than many other parts of Europe, so I'd be curious to hear how this works in France/Germany/Italy, etc.