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Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

nltimes.nl

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Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#41

Post by mithusingh32 »

junon wrote: post #8
pjmlp wrote: post #2

I love when US companies get to learn our unions and work laws are actually to be followed upon.

The US's are too, to be fair. The laws just suck to begin with, unlike most European countries'.

Or if you have enough money to by pass the laws all together.

Take a look at HSBC[1][2]....they got caught laundering money for Mexican cartel and helped NK/Iran circumvent the nuclear sanctions. They were given a slap on the wrist of 2 billion dollars in fines. (Can't find the source but they were also caught transferring money to known terrorist groups)

If anyone is interested there is a Netflix show they covers this. I think it's called Dirty Money. [3]

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSBC#Money_laundering [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSBC#US_Senate_investigation... [3] https://www.netflix.com/title/80118100?preventIntent=true

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#43

Post by Iolaum »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #38

The thing that interests me here is company valuation. The base idea is that you predict the future profits of a company and NPV that down to today, and that's how much the total share price should be. This of course is tricky, but at some point all the big regulatory arbitrage plays (uber, airbnb) etc were obvious for what they were - and I am not sure they got adjusted. In other words short term competition and PR…

Maybe invest elsewhere? (Assuming qualified choices can be found.)

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#44

Post by phicoh »

chrisseaton wrote: post #20
sktrdie wrote: post #6

Bit out of context but I just came back from US (living in Netherlands). Holy flipping hell that place is full of cars. Literally everywhere. I mean I understand using a car upstate New York where things are further apart and everyone has a huge isolated villa. But do you really need 4 lane roads in freaking manhattan? Seems like regulating "car stuff" in general is always a good thing if you ask me.

I can't understand who would want to drive in Manhattan. Like where are they coming from and where are they going? Where do they intend to park when they get there? It wouldn't occur to me in a million years to attempt to drive into a metropolis like that. I see normal private cars driving through New York and London and can't imagine who is in them and what they're attempting to do that means their best route is thr…

It would be interesting to have statistics on the number of cars driving through a city center compared to the number of people living and working there.

My guess is that even if people living there use a car once a year, you end up with a huge number of cars every day.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#45

Post by watt »

bserge wrote: post #17
Loic wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the company it costs more money, but for the employee, you are way better being employed than contractor. This is not a surprise, this extra money is effectively bringing the employee health insurance, pension, invalidity pension, unemployment benefit, maximum number of hours to work per week, paid vacations, etc. If you need to pay it out of your pocket, it turns out to be the same. In the "old" Europe, the net…

I can see the future: "New EU law: for every multipurpose robot in operation, the company must employ one human" :D

From the strikes of train driver's unions in Germany, I think that's where it is headed. "You can automate trains if you like, but the whole current workforce still must stay employed."

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#46

Post by junon »

mithusingh32 wrote: post #41
junon wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US's are too, to be fair. The laws just suck to begin with, unlike most European countries'.

Or if you have enough money to by pass the laws all together. Take a look at HSBC[1][2]....they got caught laundering money for Mexican cartel and helped NK/Iran circumvent the nuclear sanctions. They were given a slap on the wrist of 2 billion dollars in fines. (Can't find the source but they were also caught transferring money to known terrorist groups) If anyone is interested there is a Netflix show they covers th…

Okay but they were still caught and fined. That doesn't negate my point, nor is a sample size of 1 anything to write home about.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#48

Post by tomp »

jacquesm wrote: post #27

Rightly so. The 'gig economy' is abused by quite a few companies to create employment like situations without the required trappings (social security payments, employee protection, hourly minimums and so on). This was long overdue, let's hope it has precedent effect for other companies that abuse the ZZP construct.

Must is just as wrong as won't. The ideal solution is, drivers being given the choice. Wanna earn more (but less predictable), pay less tax, have less social security, work whenever you want to? Or do you want to earn less (but completely predictable), pay more tax, have unemployment security, work fixed hours.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#49

Post by lozenge »

chii wrote: post #28
brnt wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't have that freedom, you're an employee, which is what this conflict is about. Because if they're an employee, their employer must pay social insurance. The self-employed are exempted from this insurance (although highly encouraged, because, not surprisingly, the vast majority of self-employed people don't become lucky billionaires). Uber wanted to have it both ways, and, not surprisingly, it can't. Self-e…

but from what i recall, an uber driver do have the choice to accept or reject a ride. There's a penalty for rejecting too many rides - but i think that's a fair outcome. Ideally, uber also allows a driver to set the price, and allow a customer to see price comparisons between all offered drivers (and wait times etc), to truly make it a competitive market place.

Ideally for who?

According to this article drivers weren't given information on fare or destination when they were offered fares, until legally required in California. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wired.com/story/uber-change...

They won't be letting drivers set fares until legally obligated. They are a taxi service that cosplays as a "ride sharing" "marketplace" in the legal system.

Uber is all about keeping maximum control of the driver while denying them the rights of employees (or in the UK, "worker" status, which is a halfway house between employee and self employed)

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