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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

#161

Post by qeternity »

ddulaney wrote: post #77
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…

I am generally skeptical about the “market-ness” of the labor market. There are many situations in which people are not as free to switch jobs as a free-market proponent might want them to be. There is the obvious example of slavery, historical and modern, but many other groups are not able to experience any real free market for labor. One that comes to mind is miners, who often develop highly-specialized skills and…

> I’m not sure if gig economy workers are in exactly the same boat, but be skeptical of free market claims when it comes to labor.

Gig economy workers have the freest movement of labor possible. If they get a better job tomorrow, they just take it...they don't even have to tell Uber. That's the whole point of the "gig" in Gig Economy.

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

#162

Post by gnopgnip »

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.

The legislature could modify existing laws and override precedent set by the courts, to the extent it is not unconstitutional. And the interpretation of what is a contractor or employee has largely not been a constitutional matter, it is about interpreting the vague, silent and conflicting labor laws. The Federal labor laws almost always explicitly allow states to set stricter limits, they do not preempt state laws via supremacy

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

#163

Post by jayd16 »

jonathan-neil wrote: post #147
jayd16 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You do know that social media accounts are primed then sold to achieve your exact reaction, no?

I am aware but if you actually look at the comments the author is posting about being an uber driver for 5 months or more interspersed with what seem like substantive comments.

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

#164

Post by jonathan-neil »

okareaman wrote: post #158
jonathan-neil wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So your source of information is that you claim to have done 2000 rides? Then yes, in this case your anecdotal "evidence" is not only nonsense, but not even believable. Come back with data and we'll chat.

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

#165

Post by xyzzyz »

Barrin92 wrote: post #134
xyzzyz wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why Uber would want that? What benefit would they get from they middleman, who’d also want to take his cut?

Uber obviously doesn't want it which is why they oppose it. but the law in a democratic society isn't supposed to be written by and for Uber, and the goal of the legislation is guaranteeing employee rights. The argument just simply takes the wind out of the sails of Uber's best counter-argument, that they somehow would need to cease operations in the state and deprive customers of their service. They wouldn't, they c…

I think you’re missing the point. Adding middleman changes nothing, because whatever that middleman could do, so can Uber itself. The argument Uber makes is that the drivers the existing arrangement is beneficial to all involved parties, and if they are required to hire drivers as employees, they won’t be able to offer as many rides as they do today with current prices, so both users will lose out on rides they are no longer able to buy, but also the drivers who now provide these rides won’t be able to. Regardless of whether this argument is any good, it is clear that adding middlemen won’t help here.

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

#166

Post by jayd16 »

gonehome wrote: post #142
jayd16 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>current issues with drivers not showing up or canceling will likely be worse. I can see how it might raise the price of worse rides but why would it cause more no-shows/cancelling?

The idea is they’ll be an incentive to do the minimum amount of rides to remain employed. I’ve already had drivers accept my ride and then just sit waiting or drive around aimlessly waiting for me to cancel so I’ll be charged for it. I suspect this will be more common if giving rides is not directly tied to making money.

Ah you're assuming the apps will go the salaried route. My assumption is they'll do the work to classify drivers as proper contractors instead.

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

#167

Post by djur »

qeternity wrote: post #154
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…

> 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 t…

Do you have a response aside from "too ironic"?

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

#168

Post by gnopgnip »

xyzzyz wrote: post #112
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, wh…

"Making minimum wage" in CA means minimum wage( for the whole time you are working, not just when you have a passenger) the employer paying a share of the taxes including unemployment, 3 days of sick leave a year if you work full time, being eligible for healthcare if you work full time(that you still have to pay for), and your employer reimbursing employer related expenses like mileage.

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

#169

Post by xenospn »

jonathan-neil wrote: post #153
okareaman wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Absolutely a shill. I couldn't find anyone who supports Prop 22, even among several of my Uber/Lyft driver friends. They seem to the ones who are most opposed to it.

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

#170

Post by qeternity »

alkonaut wrote: post #159
brian_cloutier wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 liv…

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

How does this imply that it's broken? Economies at their core are systems to distribute scarce resources. It's entirely possible (bordering on likely given pandemic) that this is the best employment opportunity for many drivers.

> The end result, and a measure of success here would be a higher unemployment.

Uh, ok...right.

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