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Gig economy companies spent more than $200M to bankroll Proposition 22

theguardian.com

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Re: Gig economy companies spent more than $200M to bankroll Proposition 22

#181

Post by s_dev »

tasuki wrote: post #111

> The company, along with Lyft and DoorDash, spent more than $200m to deny drivers the wages and benefits we’re entitled to I wonder, why does the author think they're entitled to wages and benefits beyond what they agreed to? I'd understand the sentiment a little more if Uber was wildly profitable, but it isn't. If Uber isn't treating the drivers right, they don't have to drive for Uber. Or they can go and try to ch…

>I wonder, why does the author think they're entitled to wages and benefits beyond what they agreed to?

For the same reason a minimum wage exists.

>But no one is entitled to anything.

Workers are entitled to a minimum wage should they seek/accept a job.

Re: Gig economy companies spent more than $200M to bankroll Proposition 22

#182

Post by boomboomsubban »

dannyw wrote: post #114
Alex3917 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I feel strongly like this law was pushed by people who want Uber to be a full-time job. It’s not. Does the app give him the contact info for each of his passengers after every ride so that he can own the business relationship with them? If not then he's an employee, not an independent contractor. The number of hours worked per month is a complete red herring.

Should this binary classification, devised prior to this whole model of work was invented, still exist? It's like not updating your horse carriage road laws to accommodate automobiles; because everything is either a pedestrian or a horse carriage. If there's no horse, a car isn't a vehicle; it's a pedestrian. Makes no sense. If you think Uber drives deserve more than 120% of min wage, then you can argue that, but I d…

>Most Uber drivers, when independently polled, are for Prop 22. It's the unions that were pushing this, so they can collect union dues and grow their revenues.

The $200 million being discussed feels relevant to this claim. Didn't some companies even spread their take to their "employees" through their job apps and other direct communication? I bet even the "blame the union" came from information those companies paid for.

Re: Gig economy companies spent more than $200M to bankroll Proposition 22

#183

Post by SkyBelow »

maxehmookau wrote: post #30
googthrowaway42 wrote: post #4

"In California, one of the world’s wealthiest economies, I should be able to afford rent and pay my bills as a driver. I shouldn’t be forced to scour for public bathrooms or work 70-hour weeks to do this job. But that’s what these companies have forced upon us." "Uber may have bought itself a law, but it has not bought itself reprieve. All labor has dignity, and driving for Uber or Lyft should be no different." Cherr…

I'm detecting quite a lot of judgement in your comment. You've attacked the person rather than the argument. Do you disagree that a job should mean that someone is able to afford rent and pay your bills? Because that sounds entirely reasonable to me.

>Do you disagree that a job should mean that someone is able to afford rent and pay your bills?

Could we focus down on this question. Ignoring what led to this question being raised, I would like to better capture what is being asked here.

Is the idea that any job should be able to provide for any rent and any bills? I think that is an entirely unreasonable interpretation, but I want to make sure we are in agreement that there are some combinations of jobs, rents, and bills that aren't reasonable to be included.

If we can agree on that point, then how should we determine what pairings of job/rent/bills should be covered and should not? For example, maybe we should say that for any job, there should exist rent within 30 minutes of the job and bills that include X amenities which is affordable working that job. (For the moment let's ignore the complexities of deciding what should be included in X, especially given that people can acquire some very large bills in numerous ways.)

If for the moment we agree to the above standards for jobs, how should part time jobs work? Should it be that any part time job whose total pay when accounting for hours worked dips below the threshold we agreed to shouldn't exist? Say there was a job where working 25 hours was enough to meet the threshold, should we say that it would be illegal for the job to offer 24 hours or less a week (there would be a number of ways to enforce this, potentially having a minimum wage monthly in combination with an hourly minimum wage, but other options exist)?

I'm not trying to disagree with the sentiment. Instead, I want to better understand the details of the sentiment beyond the trivial case (all jobs, all rents, all bills) which has trivial counters, trivial to the extent that bringing them up almost seems like a bad faith strawman.

Re: Gig economy companies spent more than $200M to bankroll Proposition 22

#184

Post by caymanjim »

truculent wrote: post #108
ericabiz wrote: post #51

My husband drives for Uber, and I’m glad the proposition passed as it is. He drives the way Uber was originally envisioned. He goes out some nights if there’s a surge, and in the morning on the way to work he points the app toward our stores and grabs a person (pre-pandemic) or a food delivery (today) on his way in. It pays for gas money, car maintenance, and then some. Some months he makes a few hundred dollars. Som…

Your husband is very fortunate; I’ve never met someone who drives for Uber and is not doing it full-time. Wishing it wasn’t that way doesn’t make it so.

Just to throw more anecdata in, I've never met a fulltime Uber driver. Most of my drivers are retired people who got bored and wanted some extra cash, like to chat, and wanted to get out of the house. Others have some disability that prevents them from working fulltime. Many are doing it for extra cash, especially around the holidays. Many only selectively drive when there are events that they know will make the rates spike.

I'm sure there are tons of fulltime Uber drivers, especially if you live in a city where cab drivers have made the switch. I live in the suburbs, and I've never met a fulltimer.

Re: Gig economy companies spent more than $200M to bankroll Proposition 22

#185

Post by xeromal »

dannyw wrote: post #173
rtkwe wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what anyone is arguing for. The whole argument is that a company who treats people like employees (full control over interactions with and access to customers) should have to provide the benefits and pay the costs of an employer.

Companies who treat people like employees generally: * do not allow them unlimited flexibility into when and where they work * do not allow them to take days off, without notice, for any reason, for as long as they want * do not allow them to choose which jobs to do and not do (see: trip destination filters) but most importantly: * do not allow them to work for a competitor at the same time. If Uber is too driver-unf…

Yeah, it almost seems like a compromise would be an hourly line. If you work more than 30 hours, you become an employee but you lose freedom in the hours you choose since you're now in an employee relationship and below 30 hours, you're just a contractor. Some kind of part time tinkerer.

Re: Gig economy companies spent more than $200M to bankroll Proposition 22

#186

Post by sojournerc »

bumby wrote: post #141
tru3_power wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before Uber came along driving a cab was mostly a full time thing. My father was a cab driver for 30 years before Uber came onto the scene, and now he does Uber full time. A lot of Uber drivers I talk to are full time drivers.

Do you have insight into your father's perspective between the two? I've heard that cab driving, particularly in major metropolitan areas, was a racket in it's own sense (in terms of medallions being a form of indentured servitude) but I'd be curious if Uber has alleviated some of this or just caused people to leap from the frying pan into the fire.

I drove a cab for a summer after college, just before uber blew up.

The lease for the cab was high enough ($600+/wk) that I had to drive ~30 hours to break even, and the rest was profit, usually another 20 hours over the weekend.

Unless you were sharing a lease with another driver, it would've been impossible to work it as part time.

So I would see a benefit to uber over that arrangement except for uber if your car breaks you're out of luck. With a cab, i'd take it to the shop and get another one. Granted they were all pretty beat up crown vics.

The real winners were the owners of the cab company. Like you said, they held the medallions and thus most of the leverage.

Re: Gig economy companies spent more than $200M to bankroll Proposition 22

#187

Post by magicalhippo »

esrauch wrote: post #69
ericabiz wrote: post #51

My husband drives for Uber, and I’m glad the proposition passed as it is. He drives the way Uber was originally envisioned. He goes out some nights if there’s a surge, and in the morning on the way to work he points the app toward our stores and grabs a person (pre-pandemic) or a food delivery (today) on his way in. It pays for gas money, car maintenance, and then some. Some months he makes a few hundred dollars. Som…

It's anecdotal but I always chat with my Uber drivers and nearly 100% of them are driving full time. I assume it's a "most rides are driven by a full-timer, most drivers are part timers" situation. I don't really see why we need a third category, it should just be that some drivers are full time and some are not. I don't believe that Uber could sufficiently fulfill even half the rides with only the true part timers s…

Location dependent? I was in NY a couple of years ago, and used Uber a lot. Every single driver was part time. Not long after I visited Las Vegas, and about 3/4 of the drivers were full time or near-full time.

Then again this is a while ago so maybe things have shifted with time.

Re: Gig economy companies spent more than $200M to bankroll Proposition 22

#188

Post by xeromal »

yohannparis wrote: post #24
treeman79 wrote: post #18

Got injured awhile back. Disability decided to play hardball. Gig jobs are all that kept family off the street while I recovered. Starting and stopping anytime as my body could tolerate. Or renting out rooms on Airbnb. Sometimes it took me 4 hours to change sheets and tidy up, but it made the difference. Not saying their good companies. But gigs was crazy valuable to me.

The issue is not the gig economy but businesses that force rules and behaviours (when to work, which client, you cannot refuse jobs, etc.) without labour protection. Either you are a platform that connects you to a potential client (like a powerful yellow page), or you are an employer.

I think we need more than an either/or. Not many employers in the US allow a person to set their own hours and locations.

Re: Gig economy companies spent more than $200M to bankroll Proposition 22

#189

Post by AnthonyMouse »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #170
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a furniture company gives you a contract to build them some chairs, do they give you the contact info for each person who buys a chair from them? Why would that make the chair manufacturer an employee of the retailer? Moreover, how is this not available to the driver? They're in the car with the passenger already. The driver and passenger could exchange contact info if they wanted to, how is Uber going to stop the…

>If a furniture company gives you a contract to build them some chairs, do they give you the contact info for each person who buys a chair from them No, you put your brand on the chairs and if the customer likes them they can buy from you again. And I imagine Uber does forbid selling other services during rides. If not, I feel like Uber rides would be full of people pushing multi-level marketing.

> No, you put your brand on the chairs and if the customer likes them they can buy from you again.

In what way is this different than putting your phone number inside your car where the passenger can take it down if they want it?

> And I imagine Uber does forbid selling other services during rides. If not, I feel like Uber rides would be full of people pushing multi-level marketing.

I can't actually find the Uber driver agreement on the internet, but pyramid schemes are illegal, and drivers who peddle scummy garbage to passengers are liable to get bad reviews, so there is no reason to expect that a lack of this would have to be because Uber prohibits it.

Re: Gig economy companies spent more than $200M to bankroll Proposition 22

#190

Post by sokoloff »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #170
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a furniture company gives you a contract to build them some chairs, do they give you the contact info for each person who buys a chair from them? Why would that make the chair manufacturer an employee of the retailer? Moreover, how is this not available to the driver? They're in the car with the passenger already. The driver and passenger could exchange contact info if they wanted to, how is Uber going to stop the…

>If a furniture company gives you a contract to build them some chairs, do they give you the contact info for each person who buys a chair from them No, you put your brand on the chairs and if the customer likes them they can buy from you again. And I imagine Uber does forbid selling other services during rides. If not, I feel like Uber rides would be full of people pushing multi-level marketing.

More than half of my Ubers in Las Vegas were pushing other services, handing out business cards for me to cut Uber out of the loop for the next ride, offering to take us to strip clubs for free, or something else.

If Uber wants to crack down on this, it's openly happening in Vegas.

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