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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

#221

Post by Normal_gaussian »

Ericson2314 wrote: post #40
d23 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've never understood this argument. Potential "yay" and "nay" votes are both term-limited, so the "inexperience" should cancel out? What? Take this to it's logical conclusion and imagine term limits of 1 day. No one would be making sound decisions with those yeas and nays. And why would they always be 50 / 50 and "cancel out"? If you know nothing about a fairly complex topic, it's easy to be mislead, especially by…

> Imagine term limits of 1 day. No one would be making sound decisions with those yeas and nays. I have no idea what terms limits of 1 day would do; it's not obvious to me. Please argue your point. > And why would they always be 50 / 50 and "cancel out"? I'm not talking about a vote split additive cancel out. I'm talking about how in `(termLimit * nFor) / (termLimit * nAgainst)` the `termLimit` factors cancel out. >…

> Again you seem to be imagining legislators are dead at the end of the term and born at the beginning or something.

Term limits have the effect of putting the experienced legislators in the employ of special interests - because that is the only way 'up'. The time in office becomes a portfolio for said special interest jobs, turning legislators "against the [poor] people".

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

#222

Post by rgossiaux »

omgwtfbyobbq wrote: post #61
Judgmentality wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People are commenting as if app-based ride share will no longer be available. It might cost more, but it wouldn't be much more. Uber lost $8.5 billion dollars in 2019. Think about that. Uber is losing the better part of a billion dollars every month. They are hemmorrhaging money at their current prices. It will cost a lot more for this to be profitable when you consider how much more expensive this will make the dr…

A quick search puts them at 6.9 billion rides in 2019, so profitability should come with a $2/ride increase. I think their current rates are a lot, so their current rates plus $2 are also a lot, but I think most riders would tolerate it.

If that was only in the US or other wealthy economies, maybe. But they're an international company. Some of those rides are in places where a $2 increase doubles the price of the ride. I think it would be more revealing to compare with their total receipts and see the % change that would be required.

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

#223

Post by nindalf »

dmitriid wrote: post #103
ChuckMcM wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been looking for my copy of the LA Times article on this and have yet to find it. So allow me to recount from my not necessarily trusty memory. During an investigation of the impact of term limits on the California the times talked with former "long term" members of both the Assembly and the Senate. In that discussion the people who had served for longer terms felt that you needed the time to understand what mad…

Is a term limit of, say, 10 years, enough time to "get the feel for good laws"?

Often this feel is based on past mistakes made. In this case a mistake would be a well intended law overturned by the courts.

Intuitively I feel like mistakes would be repeated on a longer time scale. So someone who remembers what we did 15 years ago would say “let’s not waste time on this, it hasn’t worked in the past”.

You can still learn with 10 year term limits but then you’re doomed to repeat the same mistakes every 10 years.

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

#224

Post by xenadu02 »

Would this even be a problem if we didn't tie benefits like healthcare to employment?

It certainly would take a lot of the administrative burden off startups and free up more people to consider starting or joining one if healthcare weren't at risk.

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

#225

Post by roenxi »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #9

This has been an interesting battle in terms of civil governance. Basically Uber & Lyft threatened to put the initiative they wrote, on the ballot if the legislature passed AB5, which they did. Uber and Lyft are now doing everything they can to get it to pass which will set up its own court fight. Watching this fight I wonder "Who is in charge of governing California?" is it the Legislature/Governor or is it special…

> Watching this fight I wonder "Who is in charge of governing California?"

The same people vote on the proposition who vote for the government. I don't like the things California tends to vote for but it is nothing short of enlightened to allow people a mechanism to directly overrule the legislature.

If the people don't like the government's labour law, who are the government to object? I can't for the life of me see why the people can't choose how they work. It is the one thing I think they are qualified to comment on.

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

#226

Post by OJFord »

Don't drivers decide when to work, just open the app and login or whatever and start driving?

IANAL and have UK perspective (and AFAIK they remain independent contractors here, but I'm not sure if it's settled) but to me, (IANAJudge though..) that's a sufficient test for the difference between zero hours contract employee and independent.

They're not getting given their hours for the week (right?) they're just showing up and working.

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

#227

Post by alickz »

jonathan-neil wrote: post #210
okareaman wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You also made up your mind so why bother making comments to others? You doing an average of 8 rides per day does not render a data set that can scientifically support even a fraction of the claims in your original post. Your claims are nonsense and you are obviously a paid shill here to spread disinformation. I am here to subvert your efforts! :D

Accusing people of being shills is against the HackerNews guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

>Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken.

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

#228

Post by okareaman »

jonathan-neil wrote: post #210
okareaman wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You also made up your mind so why bother making comments to others? You doing an average of 8 rides per day does not render a data set that can scientifically support even a fraction of the claims in your original post. Your claims are nonsense and you are obviously a paid shill here to spread disinformation. I am here to subvert your efforts! :D

I'm a retired programmer working in Silicon Valley. I'm like a kid in a candy store in some regards, such as I picked up one of the top VR developers in the world at the San Jose Convention Center and gave him a long ride. He was excited to talk about VR and convinced me to buy what he was working on. I did! I wouldn't be a shill if Uber/Lyft paid me. There's no fun in that. As I mentioned elsewhere, I really like messing around with their algorithms to see how they work. You can't subvert real enthusiasm, but nice try!

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

#229

Post by some_account99 »

CameronNemo wrote: post #182
nickpp wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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?

You realise that parent actually stated she was the architect and you disagreed about her being a teamster?

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

#230

Post by okareaman »

jonathan-neil wrote: post #200
okareaman wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You are correct. It relies on replacing the drivers they are exploiting with robots that don't require a living wage. This is absolutely that discussion, like it or not.

On that front, after I retired, I applied at Waymo as a safety driver but didn't get hired because some idiot almost hit me during the test drive while blasting his way onto the hwy 101 while merging. I did learn some interesting things though. I'd been watching Waymo cars in Mountain View for awhile. They were hiring new drivers because they needed a second driver to keep the first one awake! Apparently having the driver on camera all the time was not enough. Let's just say I'm highly skeptical that the recent opening of Waymo to the public in Arizona is not some Potemkin Village operation.
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