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

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

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 423 posts

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

#151

Post by gonehome »

jmspring wrote: post #148
gonehome wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

7/8 needed to modify things. Fuck this over reach. That simple thing will kill the bill. Right/left friends that is a power grab gone too far.

Often propositions require a new proposition to change, so 7/8ths is actually more permissive than normal.

That said, I think the proposition system is often problematic and I typically default to no. Though this time 22 and a few others seemed important enough for yes.

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

#152

Post by smhost »

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…

Respectfully, you're paying for a ride, not for someone to make eye contact with you while sucking your dick. And even if they do make eye contact, it doesn't actually mean that they like it. Forcing people to feign pleasure under threat of poverty may work to a certain extent, but it's harmful to social cohesion in the long run. It breeds resentment and humiliation, and it's harmful to mental health and self-esteem, and as we are already living in the most unequal time since before the civil war, it's not very safe for your corporate masters to be fanning the flames of class antagonisms.

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

#153

Post by jonathan-neil »

okareaman wrote: post #128
greendude29 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Are you aware that the majority of drivers don't drive full time? If full time drivers don't like it or don't make enough they should apply for employment at a company that meets their needs. A lot of service workers depend on tips.

Do you have any data to back that up? You have made claim after claim on this thread with absolutely zero references for the information. Impossible not to classify you as a shill at this point.

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

#154

Post by qeternity »

greendude29 wrote: post #116
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…

> Anecdotally:

Just before...

> Data-wise:

> Where is your evidence?

Too ironic.

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

I love this. You're conflating a business model that doesn't work under a set of (possibly) onerous regulations to a failed business model. Who has it failed for? And don't say investors, because these are smart people who believe there is a path to profitability.

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

#155

Post by auggierose »

schalab wrote: post #145

Lets say I have a club I own, but I need to keep the riff raff out. I cant openly ban poor or low society people from entering which would be considered "evil". But what if I mandated every service from a staff must be tipped with atleast 100$, because we value our workers more here. This achieves the same purpose and I get to pretend to be egalitarian. If this law is passed, ride sharing apps will still exist. They…

"ride sharing" is not how people use it. People use it as a cab.

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

#156

Post by [deleted] »

CameronNemo wrote: post #124
nickpp wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AB5 was written by the Teamsters - an multinational Syndicate who couldn’t include and collect Uber drivers membership fees unless they were actual employees. Its main architect, Lorena Gonzales, is a Teamsters woman through and through, by her own admission. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Brotherhood_of_T...

This is so off base. It sounds like a regurgitation of a Red State post. If anyone wants to read about Lorena Gonzalez-Fletcher, just check her Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorena_Gonzalez#Early_life,_ed... She was involved with the AFL-CIO, but I see no mention of involvement with the Teamsters union.

[deleted]

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

#157

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#158

Post by okareaman »

jonathan-neil wrote: post #140
okareaman wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many rides have you done as driver? Passenger?

You must have missed my question. I'll ask it again and if you answer, I'll gladly answer yours as well. Do you have any evidence for the claims you made, or should we continue to assume its anecdotal nonsense at best, shill lies at worst.

You said "my experience." I'd be glad to talk to you if you are a driver. I've done over 2000 rides (not a lot compared to other drivers I know) all over California. My anecdotal evidence isn't nonsense.

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

#159

Post by alkonaut »

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…

> It's incredibly hard for me to consider this exploitation when people are freely entering into these agreements.

But then

> they have an entire labor market of other options and they have decided that this is their best option

So obviously the problem was that the labor market was broken if the best they could find was that?

> Surely our legislature is to blame for allowing people to have such a low standard of living that they feel forced to accept such terrible jobs.

Agree, this is definitely a 2 way problem. But I think it should be attacked from both sides: Unemployment benefits, healthcare for unemployed and so on should be so good that people don't take the worst jobs. But also: employers should be forced to offer such good employments that the worst jobs simply don't exist. The end result, and a measure of success here would be a higher unemployment. Having a low single-digit unemployment isn't a mark of success.

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

#160

Post by jonathan-neil »

okareaman wrote: post #130
MAGZine wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Some people are bad at their jobs. Every company has great workers, adequate workers and subpar workers. Why should Lyft and Uber be any different?

Its not different. But its also not the reason for why their business model is unsustainable, great straw man though.
Post reply on HN