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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

#181

Post by okareaman »

xenospn wrote: post #169
jonathan-neil wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I should have mentioned that your city matters. Fresno and Modesto absolutely suck for drivers. Not sure why anyone drives there.

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

#182

Post by CameronNemo »

nickpp wrote: post #150
CameronNemo wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Dude. I am a Teamster. I ran for office as an organizer and labor leader. I believe in unions to my core. Stand in solidarity with workers every single day. Bought & paid for? No... I am the union." https://twitter.com/LorenaSGonzalez/status/11340878763904286...

Alright fair enough, Lorena is a Teamster. But why would you assume that the union wrote it when she is more than capable of writing laws herself?

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

#183

Post by xyzzyz »

gnopgnip wrote: post #168
xyzzyz wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Sure, but then again, the Uber drivers know what their getting into. You might argue that they are underpaid, but it’s hard to argue that they are getting scammed or cheated: the arrangement is clear upfront, and the earnings follow not too long after.

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

#184

Post by akiselev »

gnopgnip wrote: post #162
akiselev wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 v…

AB5 is the stricter limit CA is setting, no? The legislature does have plenary power to "enforce a complete system of workers’ compensation" but no one's going to undertake the challenge of massive labor reform challenging Borello and the ABC test for Ubers' sake, especially when it's so contentious (for what it's worth, I'm slightly biased because of the fear it'll open the door to other labor law poison pills). AB5 brings the existing framework into spec with Borello/Dynamex and clarifies open questions.

That's why Uber, Lyft, et al have thrown almost $200 million behind the prop 22 marketing campaign. Even if the legislature overturns AB5, the core reasons behind the court's decision remain for future lawsuits to hammer home. AFAICT Uber's only hope is the CA Supreme Court not doing to Prop 22 what it did to Prop 8 or Federal reform. They're not going to get it from the state legislature.

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

#185

Post by Cederfjard »

jonathan-neil wrote: post #164
okareaman wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why is that an unbelievable number? Uber has been around for a decade now, surely there’s been ample time?

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

#186

Post by okareaman »

jonathan-neil wrote: post #160
okareaman wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It seems to me their business model depends on replacing drivers with self-driving cars. This is not that discussion.

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

#187

Post by benjaminjosephw »

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…

You seem to be suggesting that some people don't deserve full-time employment but should be allowed to carry out the same kind of work under worse conditions because, otherwise, those people have no other options. Endorsing systematic exploitation like this is truly worrying.

This gets even more problematic when these same hiring practices are normalized and exported to other industries where the same arguments are then made. The result would be a society where there are two classes of "employees" - those worth hiring because they are already better than most and those who aren't. This creates a feedback loop that traps the poor in poverty because they can't improve at the same rate as full-time employees.

Companies have a responsibility to train their employees so that they can "contribute work of sufficient quality". Making this entirely the problem of the workers until a certain standard is reached is really the "insidiously genius" ploy of companies in redefining their relationship with their workers. Transferring risk and investment in training entirely to the workers themselves is not a path towards a compassionate and equitable society.

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

#188

Post by okareaman »

jonathan-neil wrote: post #164
okareaman wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I did 2000 rides in a year. That works out to be about 8 rides a day. That doesn't seem so far fetched. You've already made up your mind so I don't know why you bother making comments to me.

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

#189

Post by shajznnckfke »

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?

How do we know you’re not a shill? What does this question do other than lower the level of discourse in the community?

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

#190

Post by brian_cloutier »

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…

> employers should be forced to offer such good employments that the worst jobs simply don't exist?

But why? Two people come to an agreement. Who are you to say that you know what they want better than they do?

I don't want to claim that this argument applies to all situations, there are some genuinely non-consensual or otherwise exploitive arrangements that the government ought to ban, but if someone wants what looks to me like a bad job why should I stop them from taking that job?

Before COVID I used to frequent a coffee shop where everyone needed to bus their own tables. The cost of labor in SF is so high that it's not reasonable to pay someone to bus the tables. While there I would frequently see a man outside who was clearly homeless. I'm sure he would have happily accepted less than minimum wage to bus the tables, but it's a moot question because that kind of relationship is banned, it's "exploitive". I'm not sure he's happier being unemployed than he would be being "exploited".

> A measure of success here would be a higher unemployment

I'm roughly with you on this. Technically, unemployed means looking for a job and unable for find one so high unemployment will always be a bad thing. But yes, when fewer people accept bad jobs we'll know that everyone is being taken care of.

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