California appeals court rules Uber, Lyft must reclassify drivers as employees • Hacker News Board

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

#321

Post by zepto » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 2:59 PM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #64

johnloeber wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No they don't. Taxi drivers are exploited end-to-end. There's a reason why the medallions eclipsed a million dollars in price. The drivers have to lease their cars on a daily basis, and start at around $160 leasing fee in the hole. They're driving for many hours before they start making any money at all. That's not "power and control", that's getting totally screwed. And every Uber or Lyft driver who has ever driven…

Have you actually talked to taxi drivers about this? Pre-plague, I've talked with hundreds about their views on their work, and at least dozens about Uber. Were cab companies beloved? Mostly not. Did drivers see themselves as being "totally screwed"? Definitely not. And they almost universally despise Uber. The daily vehicle rental approach in their eyes has advantages. Number one is zero capex. Number two is predict…

Have you talked to Uber drivers? Did they see themselves as being “totally screwed”?

AB5 was written by a union. Not by Uber drivers.

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

#322

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 3:04 PM UTC

ericmay wrote: post #293

vincnetas wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And i think it's OK. There is a reason why professional truck drivers must not drive longer than specified amount of time without taking breaks. Work safety regulations are usually written in blood.

But the work is fundamentally different. You can work 80 hours in retail for example. With Uber drivers it's not "drive down long stretch of road without a break for 8 hours".

[deleted]

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

#323

Post by gizmo686 » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 3:04 PM UTC

klmadfejno wrote: post #313

ericmay wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok so then Uber would just be paying taxes from the sale of the rides. I'm kind of confused as to why that would be an issue. But happy to hear more about it. > If there's a cap on hours, you've now got a competing interest which says there's an incentive to NOT work while the market isn't surging- because you might cost yourself greater earnings down the line. Ok so then is the cap 8 hours? 10? Is it 7? It seems to…

> Ok so then Uber would just be paying taxes from the sale of the rides. I'm kind of confused as to why that would be an issue. But happy to hear more about it. Odds are good that if health insurance benefits are pushed out of employers, you're going to see it funded by a tax on top of wages, not a corporate income tax, because the former is directly tied to the number of people the org is supporting in the United St…

> The classification of employee vs. contractor is still salient.

This entirely depends on how the tax is written. Independent contractors already pay "more" for social security to cover the taxes that the employer would normally pay. I suspect that the law would be written such that the total healthcare tax placed on an individual is the same regardless of if they are W4 or 1099.

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

#324

Post by nemothekid » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 3:04 PM UTC

ericmay wrote: post #258

nemothekid wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the risk of sounding like a stereotypical leftist, I'm struggling to see how more of the blame can be on term limits, and not just a side-effect of our current version of democracy under capitalism. Simply put, if I had 100B, and there was outside force threatening my business I would certainly invest to protect myself - this includes mundane things like investing in security and outside threats like regulation. I…

Anything can be a special interest group with the right framing. Rich individuals can act just as you’ve described. Groups of workers can get together and get bills passed specifically for their special interest to the detriment of the country as a whole. Etc.

The specific issue I was pointing out is that rich individuals are far more able to quickly move the needle in acting politically, and this problem only gets worse as inequality grows. For example, in this situation drivers are also a special interest group, however, drivers are unable to spend millions in facebook ads, tv ads and lobbyists to fight for their issue.

If your political opponent can drown your message out, then it becomes an imperative for you to also raise money and/or find a wealthy benefactor to argue your own ideas. You end up with a system that the only ideas that are seriously considered are ones that can raise enough money to not be drowned out. I don't think we are there today in our current politics but I think it's worth thinking about as it's not clear to me that government will remain impervious to this type of influence.

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

#325

Post by ralfd » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 3:08 PM UTC

jonathan-neil wrote: post #270

Cederfjard wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, but we were always talking about anecdotal data in casual conversation right, not hardcore scientific analysis? I think even the original poster acknowledged that.

No he did not acknowledge that, please quote him if I missed it somehow. He presented a long list, as fact, and when questioned for a source he dodged the question, then when asked again he claimed he drove a lot one year. But the claims he's making are about other drivers and factors he simply could not determine as a single driver in a limited region. The original post, as it was written is absolute useless ignoran…

You said to him:

> I'll ask it again and if you answer, I'll gladly answer yours as well.

You should hold up your end of the bargain.

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

#326

Post by klmadfejno » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 3:14 PM UTC

klmadfejno wrote: post #313

ericmay wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok so then Uber would just be paying taxes from the sale of the rides. I'm kind of confused as to why that would be an issue. But happy to hear more about it. > If there's a cap on hours, you've now got a competing interest which says there's an incentive to NOT work while the market isn't surging- because you might cost yourself greater earnings down the line. Ok so then is the cap 8 hours? 10? Is it 7? It seems to…

> Ok so then Uber would just be paying taxes from the sale of the rides. I'm kind of confused as to why that would be an issue. But happy to hear more about it. Odds are good that if health insurance benefits are pushed out of employers, you're going to see it funded by a tax on top of wages, not a corporate income tax, because the former is directly tied to the number of people the org is supporting in the United St…

cannot reply to the below so doing so here

> Sure, but there are ways to fix that. I'm not really a big fan of corporate taxes just because they seem to always either find a way around it, or they just raise prices. It's hard to escape.

There's no way around payroll taxes for employees. The ones they elude are corporate income taxes. If they have to raise prices to cover the cost of insuring drivers, or paying their share of social funds, then good. Because if they don't, its the public that bears the costs.

> I think the issue here is the definition of full-time work is not enough. It has to include other things, like having to physically go to a place of employment, work hours that you're told to work, etc.

There is more to it. What you're arguing for is an escape rule if hours are too low, that supercedes all of the other logic.

> Here's the actual issue. These gig workers, or contractors, or whatever you want to call them need benefits (healthcare etc.) that the government isn't paying for.

No, the government (the public) is paying for it, because Uber and Lyft aren't.

> The government needs to pay for that by raising taxes and/or lowering costs, etc. The way to do that isn't to make Uber and Lyft leave California and leave those workers without any sort of income.

The government needs to do that by raising taxes on Uber and Lyft, which is largely the point of making these people of employees. Is there a middle of the road version where uber just pays the proportion costs that drivers earn pro rated to the hours they work? Yeah, maybe, but that's likely not viable either. Uber is already in the red because their business model is bad.

If we imagined them paying their fair share, would you support an explicit subsidy to help keep them in business in CA? God I hope not.

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

#327

Post by greendude29 » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 3:18 PM UTC

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…

...no?

I wasn't making a specific claim, so didn't find the need to present data, you know, for the claim I'm not making.

> 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.

It's a failed business model because it cannot operate once these companies are asked to pay living wages - which they don't. Hence...failed. If I were to open up a factory and paid my workers $0.50/hour and then got shut down for not paying minimum wage; the burden of that failure would be on me, not the state that's asking me to pay minimum wage.

Who cares about investors?

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

#328

Post by PostThisTooFast » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 3:27 PM UTC

This ruling seems ridiculous. On what grounds did the court reject the assertion that these drivers are contractors?

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

#329

Post by benjaminjosephw » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 3:35 PM UTC

humanrebar wrote: post #312

mLuby wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we mandate [a living wage]… You're right, lots of exploitative jobs will be destroyed, and businesses will have to adapt. Thing is, they will adapt to the new market conditions, or else they'll be replaced by other businesses catering to the market's demands, or the market's demands will change. In the painful transition period, lots of exploited "employed" people will become unemployed, and lots of businesses t…

It's not exploitive to pay people a modest wage for modest productivity, especially if the role can be part of a successful career. You also ignore the point that entry level jobs provide advancement opportunities that are sometimes better for disadvantaged folks (or even folks changing careers) compared to expecting them to (re)train at four year universities, etc. People talk a lot about apprenticeship these days..…

You're not wrong as long as the definition of "modest wage" isn't subjective and is instead collectively agreed within society (i.e. a minimum/living wage).

I think you're saying the same as this Economist article[0] which says that "the workers who are most vulnerable to losing their job as a result of the minimum wage are those whose productivity is low". Empirical data on this also shows, perhaps counter-intuitively, that a "minimum wage can sometimes lead to higher rather than lower employment".

Entry-level jobs are important but so is human dignity and freedom. I don't think you need to sacrifice one for the other here - we can (eventually) have both.

[0] - https://www.economist.com/schools-brief/2020/08/13/what-harm...

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

#330

Post by 908B64B197 » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 3:36 PM UTC

youeseh wrote: post #30

cm2012 wrote: post #24

Incredibly dumb. Taxi drivers have not ever been employees, what's the difference now?

The difference is in the power imbalance. Taxi drivers hold much more power and control over their ability to earn compared to Uber and Lyft drivers.

Posted it in an other thread [0] but do we really want to go back to the medallion system? Pre-Uber, either the driver rented the car to a middleman who rented the medallion from a rich owner, or said owner was selling and financing (most banks won't touch these medallions!) a medallion at a ridiculous interest rate to a driver that planned to use it as his retirement savings (an extremely volatile asset and not very liquid).

The more I spoke to cab drivers the more it seemed their industry was a pyramid scheme aimed at helping established rent-seeker take advantage of often poor new immigrants. Uber brought a breeze of fresh air: Someone could simply buy a car, calculate the depreciation and it's value on the market (since unlike medallions cars are relatively liquid assets!) do rideshare and calculate their profits or loss. They can get out of the game at anytime, and they know exactly how much they are going to get for the car they have should they sell it.

Also, the argument on Uber/Lyft drivers not being contractors since they can't set their own rates and decide which ride they take strikes me as weird since medallion drivers were contractors, had to charge the price set by the city and could only pick-up customers in the (arbitrary) zones covered by their medallions.

And I'm not even touching the usual pain points and often discriminatory practices of medallion drivers (refusing card payments, refusing rides to non-white passengers and to non-white neighborhoods...).

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24225648