Uber CEO says its service will probably shut down temporarily in California • Hacker News Board

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

#531

Post by sneak » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 8:29 PM UTC

dtech wrote: post #442

thu2111 wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But was Uber unfair and unsafe? That's very hard to argue, especially when compared to the prior reality rather than a theoretical perfection.

Safe and maybe fairer for consumers yes, not so much for the employees. That's why they are getting ruled against with employment law. I can think of quite a few other businesses who would love to toss out all employee protections and benefits. I'm sure it would slightly lower prices and improve efficiency here and there. Is that worth the cost though?...

Nobody is forced to drive for Uber. If they are, presumably they feel Uber’s existence is better than Uber’s nonexistence, otherwise they would be doing something else.

The fact that Uber was their #1 choice means Uber driving was an upgrade for their options.

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

#532

Post by Consultant32452 » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 8:31 PM UTC

rubatuga wrote: post #446

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…

This is horrible for customers, the worst part is when drivers don't want to pick you up.

We're just regressing back to black people not being able to get a taxi.

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

#533

Post by Slartie » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 8:32 PM UTC

PunchTornado wrote: post #445

ProAm wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as it allows drivers to discriminate against riders who are going to poor neighborhoods or from cities to suburbs where they may have difficulty in getting another rider. This is exactly what being a contractor is though. Accepting contract work you'd like, and turning down work you don't. Otherwise you are an employee.

A ride is more like a task. I've been a contractor and I couldn't refuse jira tasks. You've signed a contract with the company, you should do all the jira tasks they throw at you.

But you could have refused the customer in the first place. Nobody forced you to make a contract with him. Of course, once you did, you are compelled to keep up your end of the bargain, and that probably included you doing those jira tasks (you could have probably refused to do entirely different work, like walking the dog of the manager, when you were originally contracted for doing IT development work).

A true contractor in the rideshare space would have an individual contract with each rider, and could of course reject riders based on the terms of the contract (of which the target location is one). However, once a customer is accepted based on the agreed-upon terms (fare, target, number of passengers etc.) he wouldn't be able to throw the passenger out in the middle of the ride for no good reason.

If you now want to say that a rideshare contractor should not be able to reject a customer based upon the terms of the ride, I ask you: why shouldn't he? With whom does he have a contract that binds him? And you say: with Uber. And I say: yeah, and that's why your analogy is fundamentally flawed, why he isn't an individual contractor for each customer but simply an employee of Uber, with whom he has a contract that mandates him to accept all customers that Uber deems acceptable. Exactly like a plumber working at a plumbing company who also has to do plumbing work at any customer his boss sends him to, while his individually contracting plumber colleague can decide to decline or accept customers at his own discretion.

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

#534

Post by twblalock » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 8:34 PM UTC

runako wrote: post #490

twblalock wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it wasn't targeted, then why are there so many exceptions written into the law? Lawmakers added exemptions for dozens of different types of businesses. If this was intended to be a generic law about worker classification they wouldn't have needed to do that. They really had Uber and similar companies in their crosshairs, and they intended to apply this law narrowly to them.

Thanks for the clarification! (I am definitely not an expert on this law.) Just reading up on it, I see exemptions for (simplifying a bit) a) highly-paid professions and b) commercial fishers, repo agencies, and people who drive for driving clubs(?). The first category absolutely makes sense if the aim is something like "companies shouldn't abuse the 'contractor' classification to take advantage of low-paid workers".…

Here is a list of some of the exceptions: https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/exempt-job-categorie...

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

#535

Post by a13n » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 8:34 PM UTC

slipheen wrote: post #494

Them shutting down is a perfectly acceptable outcome. California has essentially told them "You're doing an illegal thing". They're response is essentially "Oh yeah? Well then, we'll stop doing the illegal thing!" Thank you? That's what you were asked to do in the first place? If they aren't interested in operating legally, then pivot or disband the company.

I think this puts pressure on the government to find a compromise, because Californians will be pissed that Uber stops working.

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

#536

Post by nrmitchi » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 8:35 PM UTC

bgorman wrote: post #466

SrslyJosh wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A lot of drivers were sure forced to drive for Uber for lack of other alternatives but that is not Uber's problem. They did not add to the problem. Uber ignored local laws to force their way into the taxi market without having to compete on the same terms as existing businesses. Uber also classified their drivers as contractors to avoid having to pay fair wages and provide benefits. They've been criticized for this…

Drivers aren't forced to drive for Uber. Anyone driving for Uber is doing it because they want to do so. What makes something a fair wage?

> Anyone driving for Uber is doing it because they want to do so

Or, they have very limited other options.

The entire concept of Minimum Wage laws are put in place to address the points you're making.

As FDR stated in 1933:

> It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.

You can argue about what you think a fair wage is, but it has been decided that the absolute floor value you are allowed to argue for is set as the minimum wage.

It is unclear, that after accounting for all time spent "driving", and paying all expenses related to driving, that drivers are always paid even minimum wage.

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

#537

Post by ApolloFortyNine » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 8:37 PM UTC

ivraatiems wrote: post #348

chrisseaton wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't 'lay off' people you don't employ in the first place.

Like the State of California, I reject your premise that Uber drivers are not employees. But what would you call it, and how does that change the argument about why they're doing this?

Honestly, how do you expect Uber to, overnight, suddenly change their entire business model, and interview and choose who to hire on full time? And this is in addition to determining benefits, over time, managing those new employees, etc etc.

There is so much that needs to be changed for this to happen, it would be more shocking if Uber didn't shut down.

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

#538

Post by julienb_sea » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 8:38 PM UTC

newacct583 wrote: post #460

rubatuga wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is horrible for customers, the worst part is when drivers don't want to pick you up.

I think that's absolutely true, and it's one of the reasons that society benefits from the idea of an "employee" relationship, where you can rely on a single corporation, beholden to some kind of public consensus, to enforce a uniform set of rules. A world where everyone is a "contractor" is one where everyone is subject to the tragedy of the commons. (e.g. "You can't get a ride in a poor neighborhood") But part of t…

I don't really understand this. Firstly before this whole contractor vs employee situation, Uber was extremely strict on drivers and enforced a high degree of rider privileges. Drivers were penalized for rejecting rides without reason, rider destination was hidden and surge pricing was uniform and purely demand based. These policies objectively improved availability to and from poor neighborhoods, and reduced the opportunity for profiling passengers.

The employee debate has near uniformly turned into dialing back rider protections, removing up front costs and handing drivers more control. The employee requirements will unquestionably increase ride costs and decrease driver availability. This is going to worsen access to poor neighborhoods and add costs on people who cannot afford to pay them, making ride share further restricted to "good" neighborhoods and higher income folks.

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

#539

Post by AnthonyMouse » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 8:38 PM UTC

newacct583 wrote: post #527

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A world where everyone is a "contractor" is one where everyone is subject to the tragedy of the commons. (e.g. "You can't get a ride in a poor neighborhood") Well no, it's just the opposite. When everyone is a "contractor" you can get a ride in a poor neighborhood, you just have to pay the market rate for getting a ride there. When you try to legislate it, then you get avoidance. The driver gets assigned and then s…

So... most of what you wrote is just standard-issue libertarianism and I know how those arguments go. But this part intrigued me: > And if you don't like that rides cost more in poor neighborhoods then the government could subsidize it explicitly OK, how does that work? How do you write such a law such that it can't be exploited? Are there any examples of this kind of regulation you can point to from other markets or…

So the hardest part is calculating the amount of the subsidy. Once you know that you just make it a deduction from the fare the customer pays and the government pays the difference.

Calculating the amount is finicky because the subsidy itself is going to affect the market pricing. But in the end, as long as there is a competitive market for both drivers and ride share companies, you know whether the subsidy is too high or too low because the subsidized cost of a ride there will be more or less than it is in other places (rather than exactly the same as you're trying to make it).

Because if the subsidy was too high then there would be "too many" drivers and the subsidized price would fall below what's required, and if the subsidy was too low then the opposite.

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

#540

Post by nrmitchi » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 8:39 PM UTC

qeternity wrote: post #496

SrslyJosh wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A lot of drivers were sure forced to drive for Uber for lack of other alternatives but that is not Uber's problem. They did not add to the problem. Uber ignored local laws to force their way into the taxi market without having to compete on the same terms as existing businesses. Uber also classified their drivers as contractors to avoid having to pay fair wages and provide benefits. They've been criticized for this…

So Uber driver’s are too dumb to realize they’re being paid unfair wages? Why would anyone work for such a company if they have better alternatives?

I am not going to state that "drivers are too dumb", but as far as I know it is definitely not clear that it is clear to a (potential) driver what they are actually being paid after all expenses. It is not unreasonable that any given person will not immediately understand the full cost of being a driver, including insurance (like ensuring that their existing auto insurance is even valid if you're ever driving for a company), gas, vehicle maintenance, general vehicle wear-and-tear, as well as any required cleaning/upkeep.

It's not unreasonable that someone who is driving for Uber/Lyft (especially if, as you claim, they have no better alternatives) is aware of the deferred costs that they are incurring.