Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your post has a lot of misinformation I'd like to correct. What you're stating about the current situation is factually incorrect. 1. Prop 22 gives app-based workers healthcare, minimum wage, and other protections and benefits. From the text: "For an average of 25 hours or more per week of engaged time in the calendar quarter, a payment greater than or equal to 100 percent of the average ACA contribution for the appl…
Thanks for surfacing the info on health care. EdJiang, please note this isn't to you directly (either as a poster or Uber employee), my engineer-brain is sort of thinking of loopholes and unintended consequences. I'm not expressing an opinion here. How many "real" working hours does it take to get 25 working hours? I only found one reference (Berkeley Law) that estimated 1/3 of the time is downtime, so very roughly 4…
I see your point about locking people out of access once they get past a certain number of hours. I think there are two reasons why this is probably not realistic. (1) the hourly count is over a quarterly basis, so harder to track. If a user has 25 engaged hours in week 1, why lock the app if week 2 or 3 the user may have 0 engaged hours? (2) the apps commonly have "bonuses" for hitting certain trip count goals, and you don't see apps trying to lock users out before they hit that goal.
However, Uber has put out a proposal asking governments to establish a "benefits fund" that all gig-companies are required to deposit into, on an hourly basis. That way someone working 5 hours on one app and 20 hours on a second would get benefits partially paid from both companies, without an incentive for any company to shirk their duties.
See the following link, under page 12 - "we want to contribute to funds that workers can individually direct toward the benefits that matter most to them. We are asking states to require our industry to accrue such funds":
https://ubernewsroomapi.10upcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/...