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Uber CEO says its service will probably shut down temporarily in California

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Re: Uber CEO says its service will probably shut down temporarily in California

#351

Post by icebraining »

thinkharderdev wrote: post #249
frenchman99 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at this page, it seems like they can't set their fares, but only a "fare multiplier", so effectively, Uber still decides.

Are there any restrictions on what the multiplier can be? If not then they can effectively set the fare. The "standard" fare is $X per mile and I want $Y per mile. I just set the multiplier to Y/X

They say the "fare multiplier can range from 0.5x to 5.0x in increments of 0.1". Not fully free, but being able to set over 5x the regular price seems mostly academic.

Re: Uber CEO says its service will probably shut down temporarily in California

#352

Post by Grimm1 »

dangus wrote: post #340
Grimm1 wrote: post #297

Uber has generally seemed like a net benefit and I've taken a lot of rides (hundreds to low thousand) and have generally conversed with most of the drivers I've had and the gig work has been beneficial to them, they make a decent standard of living for a HCOL area enough for a family and get to set their own hours. Hard pass on regulation like this and good to see Uber push back with the levers they have. I will add…

You can set your own hours with W2 employment. There’s nothing that says that Uber can’t give their W2 employees that flexibility. They could hire W2 employees right through the app, there is no technical barrier. Uber just wants to avoid their fair share of payroll taxes and employee health regulations that their upper caste office employees enjoy. They want to provide benefits to some employees but not all, purely…

You're only partially correct I as a salaried employee could technically set my own hours but If my employer pinged me at 2am and asked me to do something and I said no I wouldn't have recourse if they fired me. If I'm a contractor I can set those hours in the agreement with the company with legal backing if I then refuse to work during hours I've said I do not wish to work.

But you're debating regulation in general and I'm specifically arguing AB5 is overly restrictive.

Edit: I can clarify as well, it may very well be the case they are employees but this isn't the regulation to do it because it is actively harming workers in multiple industries besides ride sharing.

Re: Uber CEO says its service will probably shut down temporarily in California

#353

Post by TrackerFF »

ekianjo wrote: post #83

> "What worker doesn't want to have access to paid sick leave?" Becerra said. "What worker doesn't want to have unemployment insurance at a time of Covid-19 crisis? What worker doesn't want to know that they'll get paid for overtime if they work 60 hours in a week or 12 hours in a day?" Since when are we reasoning about workers starting from what they want? If we go by that reasoning, "What worker does not want to be…

Work only exists in a narrow space between a consumer and a service.

And to be quite frank, not all services have a right to life.

If some employer/business can't meet the bare minimum of workers right, well, sucks to be them. Hopefully a competent competitor will pop up.

It's downright toxic that we live in a world where consumers get cheap products and services, on the backs of either rampant workers rights violations, or heavily subsidized VC-money.

Re: Uber CEO says its service will probably shut down temporarily in California

#354

Post by imperialdrive »

kirykl wrote: post #237
pininja wrote: post #166

I work at Uber outside of the rides/eats business and observed many feature releases to adjust the business after AB5. What I saw released: - Enabling drivers to see where a rider is going before accepting the trip [0] [2] - Removed a main penalty for declining rides, “No More 85% Acceptance Rate Requirement For Uber Pro” [2] - Drivers get set their own fare with a multiplier [1] (the article details screenshots and…

Ridiculous that it takes a legal battle for Uber to offer these customer and driver friendly features

Seems reasonable to me. Cause and effect. It's a compromise that gets mixed feedback from all sides... rather ideal, and a sign this industry is maturing. I still happily ride my bike but am thankful these services exist for my aging parents, and for the economy that could use any help it can get.

Re: Uber CEO says its service will probably shut down temporarily in California

#355

Post by AnimalMuppet »

jamiequint wrote: post #319
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the first point, could you supply a bit more than just "wrong"? That's not a very convincing argument. Do you have data? Evidence? Anything besides just "wrong"?

The claim that Uber is illegal in every country is so stupid it doesn't even merit a response.

And yet you gave it a response. You just gave a totally pointless and worthless one.

Re: Uber CEO says its service will probably shut down temporarily in California

#356

Post by tathougies »

rfw300 wrote: post #309
jquery wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber doesn’t “deny basics” any more than I deny basics when I hire a plumber and pay the plumber in cash instead of hiring them on as an employee. EDIT: Uber isn’t the “plumbing company”. It’s a marketplace for transportation solutions, and accepts job offers and then sends the jobs out to contractors who have indicated they are interested in accepting such jobs. This isn’t just a “polite fiction”, this is fundamenta…

You’ve got the wrong side of the analogy. You hiring the plumber makes you the rider in this analogy. The plumbing company is Uber. AB5 says that the plumbing company can’t just hire the plumber as an independent contractor every time your toilet breaks and send them to you to avoid giving them employee benefits.

But what if the plumber is a sole proprietor?

Re: Uber CEO says its service will probably shut down temporarily in California

#357

Post by [deleted] »

thewebcount wrote: post #206
xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> California, including especially the Bay Area, LA, and San Diego, has public transportation You really had me for a moment until I realized you're joking :) In all seriousness, public transportation in California is the real joke. > It is possible to visit every major city and national park in CA using just public transportation. Sure, and it's possible for me to canoe to Antarctica but it's not a reasonable way fo…

With LA you might have a point. We have it but it's young and still growing and not as convenient as it should be. But SF? Are you kidding me? I can take busses, trains, etc. to get anywhere in that city and out to the valley. It's awesome!

[deleted]

Re: Uber CEO says its service will probably shut down temporarily in California

#358

Post by tathougies »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #2

Seems like a fair outcome to me. If they can't operate within the law, they shouldn't operate.

One can question whether the law should exist without claiming that uber should violate the current law. Indeed, the content of the law seems bad.

Re: Uber CEO says its service will probably shut down temporarily in California

#359

Post by gamblor956 »

zepto wrote: post #328
thewebcount wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With LA you might have a point. We have it but it's young and still growing and not as convenient as it should be. But SF? Are you kidding me? I can take busses, trains, etc. to get anywhere in that city and out to the valley. It's awesome!

Either you aren’t being serious or you just haven’t lived in a city with real public transport. You can get to a lot of places in the Bay Area by public transport, but the time penalty for doing and the number of services you have to use is absurd outside of downtown SF. Typically 3x driving and upwards. Compare this to New York, or London or Amsterdam, where it can be close to parity, or on the 1-2x range. (I mentio…

Zepto, prior to covid, it was faster to take LA Metro between Santa Monica and LA, or Hollywood and LA, or Pasadena and LA, or Long Beach and LA, than it was to drive those same distances. During rush hour, it was approximately 1 hour faster to take Metrolink between LA and OC destinations than it was to drive the same distance. In the Bay Area, it was at least 1 hour faster to take BART cross-bay than to drive, especially if you were headed to places like Dublin or Pleasanton. Traffic is just that bad in CA.

CA isn't like NY or London. Our cities weren't built to the same level of density as NY or London, and systems that dense would be overkill. Moreover, given that CA's public transportation systems are geographically larger than any other public transportation systems outside of China (in the sense of geographic territory serviced), it would also be prohibitively expensive to build systems that dense in CA. A system as dense as NYC's metro in LA would cost more than a trillion dollars.

Re: Uber CEO says its service will probably shut down temporarily in California

#360

Post by CountSessine »

defterGoose wrote: post #305
twblalock wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. AB5 hurts a lot of small businesses that weren't doing anything wrong. It's a classic case of unintended consequences.

I mean, technically those small businesses using child labor weren't "doing anything wrong" before the law was passed either.

No, that's not true. They were doing something wrong, because children are generally recognized as not being fit to give consent for all sorts of things. The laws against child labor merely recognized this.

The case for AB5, a law against consensual adult labour is murkier.

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