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California appeals court rules Uber, Lyft must reclassify drivers as employees

reuters.com

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Re: California appeals court rules Uber, Lyft must reclassify drivers as employees

#111

Post by haroldegibbons »

brian_cloutier wrote: post #73
haroldegibbons wrote: post #36

This ruling could pave the way for a model that is good for everyone. As of now the gig economy exploits the poor[0]. Unless you think making 70% less than minimum wage is fair. 0: https://web.archive.org/web/20180302041610/http://ceepr.mit....

It's incredibly hard for me to consider this exploitation when people are freely entering into these agreements. I would not accept 70% less than minimum wage, and I'm sure these workers would all prefer to make more than 30% of minimum wage, but they have an entire labor market of other options and they have decided that this is their best option. The onus should be on you to explain why you think it's better that t…

> they have decided that this is their best option

Do you think they'd still sign up if Uber was upfront about only paying ~$4/hr?

> why should only employed people deserve than minimum standard

Why does Uber think unemployed people don't deserve the minimum standard?

> Surely our legislature is to blame for allowing people to have such a low standard of living

Do you think this ruling lines up with that?

Re: California appeals court rules Uber, Lyft must reclassify drivers as employees

#112

Post by xyzzyz »

syntaxing wrote: post #62

This has always been an interesting discussion morally. On one side, our free market should be able to allow any drivers to not work for any ride sharing company if they choose not to. On the other hand, the question I haven't been able to answer is if they truly have viable options or if the workers understand they are making under minimum wage. It's hard to balance between the freedom of choice and regulations to p…

> if the workers understand they are making under minimum wage.

The Uber workers most definitely are not making minimum wage. They actually see very well how much they’re making, and are not as gullible as HN likes to imply to not notice if they were ripped off.

It is common for people here to make argument that Uber drivers make less than minimum wage, but that typically proceeds on some very dubious assumptions, which throw the numbers way off. I don’t want to elaborate too much on nuances of actual operational costs vs IRS mileage rate, depreciation, financing and all that stuff, because there is a more obvious point. Uber drivers can always rent a car from Hertz, which partners with Uber and will rent you a car for ~$250/week. This rate includes all maintenance and repair, so if drivers go this way, their only remaining significant costs are gas and insurance. At the and of the month, they can easily tally up the Hertz bill, their gas costs and their insurance payment, and compare with earnings. Suffice to say, it is above minimum wage, assuming they worked full time.

Re: California appeals court rules Uber, Lyft must reclassify drivers as employees

#113

Post by thereisnospork »

lostcolony wrote: post #66
whyenot wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about other major cities in California, but in San Francisco, taxi medallions were free until Gavin Newsom decided to "monetize" them in 2010. After that the city sold them for $250,000 each while providing low interest loans (via a local credit union) so drivers could pay for them. When Uber and Lyft arrived, their drivers didn't need medallions and there were no limits on how many drivers either compan…

They were "free", but they've always been supplied lower than demand (that is, the number of permits grew slower than the population's need for taxis did), an arrangement that worked well for cab drivers since it allowed less competition, and a profitable secondary market for the medallions. Lyft/Uber/etc gutted that demand. Not saying 'good' or 'bad', just, you can't blame the city for the price of the medallion; it…

>Not saying 'good' or 'bad', just, you can't blame the city for the price of the medallion; it already had a high one due to the demand outstripping the supply. Makes sense that the government would seek to profit when it supplies them, given that.

I can certainly blame the city for letting the demand exceed the supply. Irrespective of 22 Uber et all was a well deserved comeuppance for the taxi industry.

Re: California appeals court rules Uber, Lyft must reclassify drivers as employees

#114

Post by fairity »

akiselev wrote: post #107
fairity wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your point? Yes, these carveouts all fall back to a version of the law that is much more lenient on the definition of an independent contractor. That should be obvious...if there wasn't any pre-existing law that defined contractor, businesses would make every employee a contractor.

AB5 can't override past precedent and Federal supremacy. That they didn't try is a sign of the bare minimum of legislative competency that I would expect from a legislature.

Source? Everything I've read suggests that past precedent is overriden by AB5 if not for the carveouts.

Additionally, take a look at AB2257 which was an update to AB5 passed last month that adds a ton more carveouts.

Example source: https://www.wagehourblog.com/2020/03/articles/california-wag...

Re: California appeals court rules Uber, Lyft must reclassify drivers as employees

#115

Post by MystK »

fairity wrote: post #98
takeda wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Uber/Lyft/Doordash etc can give them autonomy, they can make them true contractors. I also doubt that the law forces companies to have a work schedule for their employees. From what I understand it just says that benefits are provided if employee works for more than certain amount of hours. So to me it seems like it's all about exploiting their drivers (treating drivers like employees without providing advantages…

While it's true that the law doesn't force companies to assign shifts to employees, in practice, it's always the case. The reason is because ultimately, scheduling shifts is going to be both easier to manage and more cost efficient than letting employees choose their own schedule. Uber has a good idea of how many drivers they need at any given time. This ideal distribution of supply will never align perfectly with th…

If scheduling shifts were better for Uber and Lyft, they would have done it already.

Re: California appeals court rules Uber, Lyft must reclassify drivers as employees

#116

Post by greendude29 »

okareaman wrote: post #91

As a retired programmer who drives Lyft/Uber, it's always interesting to hear my liberal programmer friends take the side of the "working class" drivers against the Big Brother-ish Big Tech companies. I might have been one of them in the past. I'll probably be one of them in the future when self-driving cars replace drivers. But for now... Most of the drivers who don't make enough money are bad at their job. Californ…

Anecdotally:

100% counter to what virtually every Lyft driver who drives full-time has told me.

Data-wise:

Where is your evidence? I thought that by now, the free market would have solved all of the above problems?

Philosophically:

No one's job should be dependent on tips. Tips ALWAYS are filtered via biases that tap into sexism, racism, xenophobia, and never a financially responsible way of building an economy.

Vote no Prop 22, otherwise you are bailing out failed companies that work on unreliable business models.

Re: California appeals court rules Uber, Lyft must reclassify drivers as employees

#117

Post by MAGZine »

okareaman wrote: post #91

As a retired programmer who drives Lyft/Uber, it's always interesting to hear my liberal programmer friends take the side of the "working class" drivers against the Big Brother-ish Big Tech companies. I might have been one of them in the past. I'll probably be one of them in the future when self-driving cars replace drivers. But for now... Most of the drivers who don't make enough money are bad at their job. Californ…

Maybe if they were paid enough, and/or had to vie for a limited supply of drivers, they'd turn on AC, clean their car, do short rides, etc.

People forget that when Uber was charging a fair price, the rides and drivers were nice. The race to the bottom has squeezed a lot of the good drivers out of the normal tier, and now you get busted vehicles with dirty interiors, and drivers not suited for driving OR hospitality.

Re: California appeals court rules Uber, Lyft must reclassify drivers as employees

#118

Post by gonehome »

okareaman wrote: post #91

As a retired programmer who drives Lyft/Uber, it's always interesting to hear my liberal programmer friends take the side of the "working class" drivers against the Big Brother-ish Big Tech companies. I might have been one of them in the past. I'll probably be one of them in the future when self-driving cars replace drivers. But for now... Most of the drivers who don't make enough money are bad at their job. Californ…

I hope 22 passes.

The current incentive structure between drivers, riders, and Uber is really good.

The ability to scale up and down quickly based on demand, surge pricing, incentive to give more rides to make more, not wait around etc.

This legislation seems like it’ll make things worse for most people, except people interested in doing the minimum number of fares possible to not get fired (and the teamsters pushing the legislation for their own power).

Rides will be more expensive, harder to get, current issues with drivers not showing up or canceling will likely be worse.

Good drivers that work part time end up screwed. Taxis sucked - I’d rather not go back to that because of some grudge against tech companies held by people that don’t know what they’re talking about.

Re: California appeals court rules Uber, Lyft must reclassify drivers as employees

#119

Post by jayd16 »

lisper wrote: post #96
okareaman wrote: post #91

As a retired programmer who drives Lyft/Uber, it's always interesting to hear my liberal programmer friends take the side of the "working class" drivers against the Big Brother-ish Big Tech companies. I might have been one of them in the past. I'll probably be one of them in the future when self-driving cars replace drivers. But for now... Most of the drivers who don't make enough money are bad at their job. Californ…

And how can we know that you're not a shill?

Cursory glance at the comment history seems to argue otherwise, no?

Re: California appeals court rules Uber, Lyft must reclassify drivers as employees

#120

Post by fairity »

MystK wrote: post #115
fairity wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it's true that the law doesn't force companies to assign shifts to employees, in practice, it's always the case. The reason is because ultimately, scheduling shifts is going to be both easier to manage and more cost efficient than letting employees choose their own schedule. Uber has a good idea of how many drivers they need at any given time. This ideal distribution of supply will never align perfectly with th…

If scheduling shifts were better for Uber and Lyft, they would have done it already.

You can't legally schedule shifts for independent contractors.
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