Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Uber and Lyft ordered by California judge to classify drivers as employees

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

731–740 of 781 posts

Re: Uber and Lyft ordered by California judge to classify drivers as employees

#731

Post by banannaise »

blaser-waffle wrote: post #727
mumblemumble wrote: post #712

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is that the full story is this: Most Uber/Lyft drivers say they don't want to be considered employees because, for most of them, this isn't actually their job. It's just a side gig. I can't really speak to larger urban areas because I tend to prefer public transit when it's a viable option, but, in the smaller cities where I take most my rideshare rides, a pretty large percentage of the drivers I chat with e…

> Most Uber/Lyft drivers say they don't want to be considered employees because, for most of them, this isn't actually their job. It's just a side gig For some, sure. Most of my rides have been with Indian/African/East European drivers who do it basically full time. Easily 90% or more. A small number have been part-timers, mostly stay-at-home moms and retired people. One was a retired bartender and he did Uber mostly…

This also heavily implies that online discourse skews away from the full-timers, because:

1. They tend to be from less-online demographics

2. If 90% of rides come from drivers working 50 hours a week, and 10% come from drivers working 5 hours a week, then more than half of the drivers work 5 hours a week. Those 5-hour drivers also probably have a lot more time and energy to discuss things on the internet.

Re: Uber and Lyft ordered by California judge to classify drivers as employees

#732

Post by jkaplowitz »

yomly wrote: post #584
jkaplowitz wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>Of course, one wouldn't be actively working for two employers at the same instant, but neither would one be simultaneously driving an Uber ride and a Lyft ride. Until someone figures out how to multiplex the cabshare part of the two apps :p

Hehe, true. :P Well I imagine both companies would kick you off their platform under either type of worker status if you did that, and being an employee wouldn't protect you (the typical default duty of loyalty probably does extend at least as far as working for just one company per ride).

Re: Uber and Lyft ordered by California judge to classify drivers as employees

#733

Post by pb7 »

xmprt wrote: post #538
pb7 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You lack imagination. Only 66 years passed between the first manned flight on Earth and man stepping foot on the Moon. And technology is accelerating at a much faster rate today.

Would you believe someone who in 1970 said, "We landed a man on the moon. In 50 years we'll surely have flying cars!" I'm sure a lot of people believed that in 1970 but look where we are now. Technology accelerates at a much faster pace but often times in ways that you don't expect. The people in 1970 probably didn't imagine smartphones with a global 4G network but instead of flying cars we got this.

The problem isn't in the availability of technology but the (lack of) problem it solves. People can barely drive on roads safely and there are infinitely more regulations and skills required for flying, even with the relative little amount of air traffic. If anything, autonomous vehicles could be precursor for individual aerial transport.

Re: Uber and Lyft ordered by California judge to classify drivers as employees

#734

Post by satya71 »

nostrebored wrote: post #372
satya71 wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Uber already chooses when they work and for how long. Uber will have to cap the hours at 8 hrs a day to save on overtime. But the "new employees" can work multiple jobs if they want. Are there employment laws I'm not aware of that require "interviews"? Most fast food works can become employees by just walking in the door, I think.

This is just untrue. Drivers are free to choose when they want to drive.

Doesn’t Uber decide who to route which ride?

Re: Uber and Lyft ordered by California judge to classify drivers as employees

#735

Post by jquery »

kikokikokiko wrote: post #623
jquery wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slaves, mmm.... yes I remember the first day that jackbooted thugs from Uber forced me to drive for the company. Every day that I felt like driving instead of doing literally anything else, these Uber slavemasters would show up with their chains and their whips. The horror... I hope Uber goes out of business so I can finally go back to my old life...

As a non US citizen that does not live in America and just looks from the outside, I'm always amazed at the rapid transformation going on in the last decade. If hackernews is a sample of the general american population, you guys are becoming communist. And it won't end well.

I would be alarmed too, except I hang out in diverse US communities. Hacker News is not a sample of the general american population. Increasingly, it is not even a sample of tech workers. Tech workers tend to be rather libertarian, and this has not changed. HN is becoming a sample of Bay Area politics and/or Twitter, neither of which are representative of the USA.

Sorry about the downvotes you received. I’ve been on HN a long time. It is sad to see the great decline of HN. Check out reddit.com/r/TheMotte if you want something a bit more representative and more similar to the HN of old, with its attendant high level of discourse as opposed to the shit-flinging and downvote brigading you see on HN today.

Re: Uber and Lyft ordered by California judge to classify drivers as employees

#736

Post by xapata »

dfxm12 wrote: post #701
xapata wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does it mean to be "treated like an employee"? I'd like regulation to give everyone healthcare. Are non-employees not worthy?

Here's a quick overview, without getting too much into the minutia or Uber specific differences: https://employment.findlaw.com/employment-discrimination/emp... tl;dr - "employees" enjoy a lot of benefits & protections, both legally required and provided by their employer, that non-employees (like contractors) simply don't have.

That's the current legal definition. But since we're talking about changing the law, our concepts aren't constrained by current law. I'm asking about the concept, not the law.

Re: Uber and Lyft ordered by California judge to classify drivers as employees

#737

Post by mumblemumble »

banannaise wrote: post #731
blaser-waffle wrote: post #727

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most Uber/Lyft drivers say they don't want to be considered employees because, for most of them, this isn't actually their job. It's just a side gig For some, sure. Most of my rides have been with Indian/African/East European drivers who do it basically full time. Easily 90% or more. A small number have been part-timers, mostly stay-at-home moms and retired people. One was a retired bartender and he did Uber mostly…

This also heavily implies that online discourse skews away from the full-timers, because: 1. They tend to be from less-online demographics 2. If 90% of rides come from drivers working 50 hours a week, and 10% come from drivers working 5 hours a week, then more than half of the drivers work 5 hours a week. Those 5-hour drivers also probably have a lot more time and energy to discuss things on the internet.

This might also explain the disconnect between "what the survey says," "what my friend says" and "what I say," and what the driver associations are saying. It's conceivable that people who are doing this full time are more likely to let an interest group do the talking for them.

Long story short, I'm inclined to say that any source of opinion that isn't breaking drivers' views down by quartiles, is a highly selective version of the story.

Re: Uber and Lyft ordered by California judge to classify drivers as employees

#738

Post by sudosysgen »

LatteLazy wrote: post #705
TheGeminon wrote: post #702

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your argument is that since Uber was classifying them as contractors, they should always be able to? According to a quick search, they have 900,000 drivers and 27,000 employees. At most 3-ish% of the people that they pay to work for them are tech employees (and we can probably safely assume most of those 27,000 are not tech).

My argument is actually the inverse: currently uber has no driver employees, the only way to change that under this law is to assume they do, then you can use that to argue any new driver is an employee. You need a first set of driver-employees to argue others are now employees. But there has never been a first set of driver-employees. Its actually a little confusing that that is required as it seems to allow Uber et…

> I'd be interested to know how many creators YouTube "employs" or how many retail workers Ebay has and what their percentages are. This is where this whole thing confuses me: If Uber drivers are employees (and maybe they are?) then basically every major tech company has millions on employees they have been misclassifying. Paying them all minimum wage with benefits and taxes deducted etc will be a massive massive change for these companies.

YouTubers are not contractors of YouTube. eBay sellers are not contractors of eBay. Uber drivers are contractors of Uber.

This is why Uber will be affected and not YouTube, nor eBay. Uber would also be free to have a system where drivers are not contractors nor employees of Uber (but it would not fit their business model).

Re: Uber and Lyft ordered by California judge to classify drivers as employees

#739

Post by Jommi »

afiori wrote: post #635
Jommi wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not true, moving to a competitor definitely applies pressure and keep both companies in check.

This is only true if either company ever risk running out of (good) drivers. As I understand it currently there are more workers than jobs, so if a driver decides to cut ties with one of the oligopsies they are unable to get the same amount of work from the competitor. So: "moving to a competitor definitely applies pressure" -> true; "keep both companies in check" -> false

There are not more workers than jobs, ive worked in the industry and this is a fact. Workers on ridhailing platforms come in varying levels of quality and amount of hours they can supply

You are thinking too much about just workers, when actually the smalelst divisible unit is hours. There is portion of drivers that barely ever switch, and then there is another portion that are constantly looking for the better deal, switching through outh the day. Its a scale.

So to keep drivers happy and on your paltform, you need to implement bonus schemes or have certain base pays.

Im not sure why so many people feel that they can comment on how the ridehailing platforms work without having any real experience in driving for them or working for them.

Re: Uber and Lyft ordered by California judge to classify drivers as employees

#740

Post by LatteLazy »

sudosysgen wrote: post #738
LatteLazy wrote: post #705

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My argument is actually the inverse: currently uber has no driver employees, the only way to change that under this law is to assume they do, then you can use that to argue any new driver is an employee. You need a first set of driver-employees to argue others are now employees. But there has never been a first set of driver-employees. Its actually a little confusing that that is required as it seems to allow Uber et…

> I'd be interested to know how many creators YouTube "employs" or how many retail workers Ebay has and what their percentages are. This is where this whole thing confuses me: If Uber drivers are employees (and maybe they are?) then basically every major tech company has millions on employees they have been misclassifying. Paying them all minimum wage with benefits and taxes deducted etc will be a massive massive cha…

Whats the difference between youtube paying creators $x/1000 views and Uber paying drivers $X per km/minute of driving? Surely they're both contractors right? What distinction am I missing here?
Post reply on HN