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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

#351

Post by shajznnckfke »

lisper wrote: post #343
shajznnckfke wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The OP repeated a claim being made by the large gig companies without providing any references or actual data. If anything is lowering the level of discourse here it is parroting a politically-loaded factual claim ("Up to 70% of drivers are like me and ... would like you to vote yes on Prop 22 if you are in California.") without citing any independently verifiable data to support it. Asking how we can know the OP is…

My feeling on this sort of thing is that you can find a real person who supports virtually any political position. In opinion polling, 40% of the state’s voters support prop 22. That’s millions of people, and it shouldn’t be hard to believe that some of them are are techie Lyft drivers commenting here. Accusing them of being shills is bad argumentation and violates the rules of the community. They did already explain that they are driving for these companies, which is a good explanation for why they would know stats that the companies are peddling.

Mindfully exercising theory of mind to figure out why someone might honestly have a different opinion is always a useful practice. In the context of a debate, it will help you argue more convincingly. If you’re just trying to understand what’s happening in public opinion, it helps develop a more accurate world model.

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

#352

Post by La1n »

xyzzyz wrote: post #183
gnopgnip wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Even if they know what they are getting into its minimum wage, not suggested minimal wage.

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

#354

Post by lisper »

shajznnckfke wrote: post #351
lisper wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OP repeated a claim being made by the large gig companies without providing any references or actual data. If anything is lowering the level of discourse here it is parroting a politically-loaded factual claim ("Up to 70% of drivers are like me and ... would like you to vote yes on Prop 22 if you are in California.") without citing any independently verifiable data to support it. Asking how we can know the OP is…

My feeling on this sort of thing is that you can find a real person who supports virtually any political position. In opinion polling, 40% of the state’s voters support prop 22. That’s millions of people, and it shouldn’t be hard to believe that some of them are are techie Lyft drivers commenting here. Accusing them of being shills is bad argumentation and violates the rules of the community. They did already explain…

As I was trying to clarify in my first reply to you, I was not taking the OP to task for expressing an opinion. I was taking him to task for making a factual claim without evidence, a factual claim that also happens to part of a PR campaign funded by one of the parties in the dispute. That makes the claim a priori suspect, and repeating it without a reference subject to valid criticism.

I will own the fact that I phrased my criticism inartfully at first (it was late), but I stand behind its substance as clarified here.

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

#355

Post by viridian »

jonathan-neil wrote: post #266
okareaman wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 me…

Cool backstory.

Don't be a passive aggressive asshole.

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

#356

Post by dragonwriter »

smaryjerry wrote: post #345
dragonwriter wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are making this out to be a political argument which it is not. No, I'm not. I'm making it out to be a factual argument about the causes of the present political situation, which it very much is. You seem to be unable to separate evaluation of the factual causes and effects of political situation with moral evaluation of the involved actors. > The point is when all levels of government align under one party, wh…

The way you are trying to dissect bits and pieces of this and not the point itself is proof enough of your bias here. You are literally splitting sentences in half and debating them separately. Really, you are even trying to debate an undisputed point of “bad” and go on to explain how wrong that is and that it is republicans “poorly chosen..etc.” Again that partisan politics has nothing to do with the point. What are…

> The problem and point of what we are saying is what RESULTS from that occurring not a discussion on how it occurred.

Explanations of both the cause and the results have been offered, and I have given arguments on both of those points, which you have responded to with irrelevancies as to arguments you imagine I might want to make about how good or bad the Republicans are (and then, bizarrely, having raised that imaginary argument, complained that I reacted to it and described it as misplaced and said it was an "undisputed point" that I was "trying to debate", when literally the reverse was true: it was a point I never made that you were trying to debate.)

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

#357

Post by proc0 »

benjaminjosephw wrote: post #187
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 t…

Why do companies have to train you? Is this law or God's mandate? Is there even evidence that providing some safety net for your employee somehow creates a better employee and/or company?

Ultimately this is about controlling others vs. not wanting others to control you. IMHO people need to fail in order to learn properly, and safety nets remove this risk which in turn also removes the learning, effectively preventing those who would otherwise be successful. We think we are helping workers by forcing them into some contract that is supposedly beneficial, but really people are the ones making those choices. Safety nets and forcing companies will just reinforce the bad decisions some people make and will affect the whole industry in the long run because quality will go down and prices up.

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

#358

Post by coolspot »

fairity wrote: post #110
not2b wrote: post #16

If Uber and Lyft don't win their proposition, they can either agree to classify their drivers as employees, or some company that is willing to classify drivers that way will take over the market. 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.

> It might cost more, but it wouldn't be much more. It will cost substantially more. Employment taxes and benefits alone add another 30% to Uber's cost structure. On top of that, paying drivers for downtime (which will be inevitable in an employment model) will add who knows how much more. I wouldn't be surprised if prices rise by 50%+ in suburbs.

They don’t have to make drivers employees, they can treat them as contractors if they follow limitations on how to work with a contractor.

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

#359

Post by takeda »

solidasparagus wrote: post #126
takeda wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Uber/Lyft/Doordash etc can give them autonomy, they can make them true contractors. I also doubt that the law forces companies to have a work schedule for their employees. From what I understand it just says that benefits are provided if employee works for more than certain amount of hours. So to me it seems like it's all about exploiting their drivers (treating drivers like employees without providing advantages…

> But Uber/Lyft/Doordash etc can give them autonomy, they can make them true contractors. How? As far as I understand, this is literally impossible with AB5, unless they get an exemption like all the other contractor-based industries.

They could make drivers independent, allow them receive payments directly (if they chose so) and instead charge them for using their apps. Kind of like it is normally done.

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

#360

Post by strawberrypuree »

atomi wrote: post #317
dragonwriter wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Watching this fight I wonder "Who is in charge of governing California?" is it the Legislature/Governor or is it special interests who can spend enough to put bespoke laws into effect and make bespoke changes to the state constitution? Neither. It's the people, who, after all the spending choose both the legislature and the governor, and choose the results ofinitiatives and referenda, and who have, on making all th…

No kidding. Did op forget that it's actual people who are voting on these referendums? California allows any coalition to initiate referendums and bring the vote to the people, if that's not democratic, I don't know what is. Edit: And it's a bit insulting to say California voters don't have the wherewithal to digest political advertisements and make their own decisions.

> And it's a bit insulting to say California voters don't have the wherewithal to digest political advertisements and make their own decisions.

On top of this, voters don’t even need to digest political advertisements. The state sends a booklet that describes all the proposition, the pro position, rebuttals to the pro position, the con position and rebuttals to the con position, plus how much money was spent from each side, plus who made those contributions. All there, in black and white, in your mailbox.

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