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Uber drivers are workers not self employed, Supreme Court rules

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Uber drivers are workers not self employed, Supreme Court rules

#121

Post by chrisseaton »

Hydraulix989 wrote: post #96
throw_away892 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A customer won't order through 3rd party app if the restaurant doesn't partner to sell through them. Same case for internet marketing. What you should feel bad about are the excessive commission fees charged by those delivery apps.

It's not always obvious to users that the restaurants listed on these apps are not the real restaurants themselves.

> the restaurants listed on these apps are not the real restaurants themselves

This isn't what is happening.

The food still comes from the actual restaurants.

Re: Uber drivers are workers not self employed, Supreme Court rules

#122

Post by biztos »

Hydraulix989 wrote: post #93
ctoth wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's 2021. If I were opening a restaurant in I think the bare minimum I could do would be to register the base domain? Okay, let's assume I don't. I'm still getting people ordering that wouldn't otherwise order? because I didn't have a website? Still just don't see what's wrong here. I don't want to mention that I'm blind in every frickin HN post but I'm blind, and Uber Eats and etc. are great. and there are restaura…

Many restaurant owners are not as technically inclined as you. They might also think just having a social media presence is enough.

This is my experience.

I have friends who own medium-sized restaurants in a couple different major EU cities.

They all have domain names, and web sites sort-of, but none of them thinks anything matters besides Facebook and to a lesser extent Instagram. The web sites are rarely, if ever, updated. Of course right now they are all forced to close anyway; but pre-Covid at least one of them tried to take the web site seriously and gave up after a while, everybody used Facebook anyway.

One of these owners is my age, the others are younger. I even know a guy who owns a catering company and doesn't bother with a web site.

Re: Uber drivers are workers not self employed, Supreme Court rules

#123

Post by vidarh »

skocznymroczny wrote: post #113
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take away the gig economy part from Uber and it becomes a regular taxi market, an industry that has been around for a hundred years already, with all the checks and balances installed already (from driver and passenger rights to ride fares to maximum amount of drivers allowed to operate in a certain area to avoid oversaturating the market). And in that environment it is not viable. Or, not viable to SF standards, in…

I know it's popular to criticize Uber and similar apps nowadays, but when they launched, they were a breath of fresh air. It allowed you to get from point A to B in a new, clean car, without having to negotiate the price and without the risk of taxi driver scamming you for money (especially tourists who don't speak local languages fall victim to taxi drivers) or taking you on a much longer route on purpose. Also the…

That may have been the case elsewhere, but in London there were already several minicab companies that had apps before Uber.

Re: Uber drivers are workers not self employed, Supreme Court rules

#124

Post by Jochim »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #103
tchalla wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if, both options exist. Option A - 100% for a dining area at a trendy location Option B - 80% w/o dining area at a trendy location There are many cases where people say it is Option B but Option A doesn't exist.

With on-premises service a restaurant must hire waiting staff and manage the tables (tablecloth, dishes, cutlery, etc). Preparing food for takeaway actually saves a lot and that's why restaurants that traditionally offer takeaway in addition to on-premises service often offer 10-15% discount for takeway as a matter of course. Deliveroo is not "robbing" restaurants if they charge 20%...

Many of the restaurants on Deliveroo were/are already exclusively takeaways though. I think that in many cases these services have the whiff of rentier capitalism. A third party has inserted themselves into a situation where you previously dealt directly with the restaurant with the intent of extracting value by making both sides dependent on them.

The other factor here is the absurd losses these players are chasing. The capital being pumped in to prop them up feels like a hugely distorting factor that is hiding the actual costs of the sector and preventing new entrants/alternatives from entering the market.

The upside is convenience. I definitely prefer paying by card/web based ordering but I wonder if there's a way of providing the benefits of these services without handing control over to that middleman.

Re: Uber drivers are workers not self employed, Supreme Court rules

#125

Post by chrisseaton »

MatekCopatek wrote: post #45
austhrow743 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20-30% to not have to have a dining area and be in a trendy location sounds pretty good.

Sure, but you could always do that and be delivery-only without paying anyone. I think the service you're getting here is primarily the exposure of being on a popular platform. That and them handling the order process.

> but you could always do that and be delivery-only without paying anyone

Ok so if that's an option then what's the problem?! I don't get the fury here.

Restaurants are free to partner with delivery companies.

Restaurants are free to not partner with delivery companies.

Delivery companies are free to buy and resell product from restaurants and add their own markup.

Restaurants are free to decline to sell product to delivery companies who add their own markup.

Everyone can do what they want here.

Re: Uber drivers are workers not self employed, Supreme Court rules

#126

Post by throw_away892 »

Hydraulix989 wrote: post #96
throw_away892 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A customer won't order through 3rd party app if the restaurant doesn't partner to sell through them. Same case for internet marketing. What you should feel bad about are the excessive commission fees charged by those delivery apps.

It's not always obvious to users that the restaurants listed on these apps are not the real restaurants themselves.

True. But that was not my argument.

Re: Uber drivers are workers not self employed, Supreme Court rules

#127

Post by stefs »

kukx wrote: post #64
habosa wrote: post #10

Really interested to see what this does to Deliveroo. I live in central London on a pretty busy street and it's really wild how many Deliveroo drivers there are. In front of most of the popular takeaway restaurants there are 3-5 drivers waiting at any given time. The increase in delivery and decrease in normal foot traffic during the pandemic has made this really stick out. Deliveroo already totally robs these restau…

"Let's pay them." Ok, with whose money? I am all for good pay for everyone. The problem begins when we detach the pay from the value created by the worker. In many cases worker may become too expensive to hire. So trying to force business to pay more may result in less people having job.

i'd be interested to see how much the pay of the delivery rider could be increased, while keeping the company profitable, if you only reduced “key management personnel” compensation to a manageable level.

is it really normal for a CEO to earn a thousand times more than a normal employee? a hundred times?

Re: Uber drivers are workers not self employed, Supreme Court rules

#128

Post by mytailorisrich »

nraynaud wrote: post #105
lovedswain wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Before Deliveroo (and similar services) restaurants did not offer delivery at all. This is far from universally true, especially Asian takeaways typically hired their own driver, but the practice was also commonplace for many actual restaurants too

And in France I was starting to see a few local delivery companies, they would own the mopeds and hire the drivers for a few restaurants and pizza joints at the town level. I guess all of these are dead now.

As someone who grew up in France I can tell you that restaurants did not offer delivery. This was mostly takeaway pizzas that did that.

Even takeaway in a restaurant was not really a thing and asking for a doggy-bag would only get you a sneer (and often still does).

When I was in Uni in both France and UK (up to early 2000s), if you wanted food delivered it was pizza, kebabs (in UK), or perhap Chinese.

This really changed over the last 10 years or so. Deliveroo was founded in 2013 and they are the ones who really made that explode.

Re: Uber drivers are workers not self employed, Supreme Court rules

#129

Post by saddlerustle »

kjakm wrote: post #23
aminozuur wrote: post #15

"This is a win-win-win for drivers, passengers and cities. It means Uber now has the correct economic incentives not to oversupply the market with too many vehicles and too many drivers," Doesn't "oversupply" lower the prices for passengers? I myself often check the Uber price, and decide if I want to take it, or use public transport if Uber's too expensive.

Oversupply might mean lower prices (or easier to get a ride) but it also means it's almost impossible for any driver to make a living. That leaves you with drivers who can only drive part time/as a second job while old fashioned full-time/one job taxi drivers slowly get driven out of the market. What's good for some consumers isn't always good for society.

Who decides which drivers are allowed to drive and which should get no income at all?

Re: Uber drivers are workers not self employed, Supreme Court rules

#130

Post by FeepingCreature »

csunbird wrote: post #110
foepys wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those delivery services employ many lawyers and bet on the fact that a family owned restaurants doesn't have the guts or money to sue. Truly despicable.

Not having access to the justice because of shortage of money should be illegal instead.

You can't make a circumstance illegal.
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