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Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

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Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#71

Post by chrisseaton »

brnt wrote: post #57
chrisseaton wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Isn't the car proven to be the slowest form of transport in Manhattan anyways? Or at least, not faster than the metro, and not (significantly) faster than a bike? I recall a similar study about London putting the average velocity of a car solidly on-par with the average cycle velocity.

Where is everyone parking? Like you can't just pull up outside a shop on Regent's Street, park your car, pop in to grab something, and then come out again. So who are all these people driving up and down it?

I can't imagine the logic of thinking 'I need to go into central London to do something today... I know I'll drive'. Not even just from an environmental standpoint - even without that the stress of navigating London and parking and then leaving your car in such a busy place.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#72

Post by have_faith »

weijoi wrote: post #60

Soviet Union also successfully required that everyone will be officially employed.

This isn't mandating that uber has to hire these people, or that these people have to have jobs, it's that if Uber wants them to work an amount of hours equivalant to a full time emlpoyee then they need to not pretend that they're not full time employees.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#73

Post by t0mas88 »

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…

> I have not dug into their IPO documents but it must be in there.

Any IPO document I've seen had several pages of future risks, so I'm almost certain that Uber has put the regulatory thing somewhere in that chapter.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#74

Post by dang »

laurent92 wrote: post #26
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…

> this extra money is effectively bringing the employee health insurance, pension, invalidity pension, unemployment benefit, Yes, but about half that money gets “lost on the way”. You don’t contribute for yourself. You contribute for “others”, but “others” is defined with very specific conditions so you can never be part of them. It’s a way to take money from the people who sweat and eventually die at their workplace…

Please don't take HN threads into political or ideological flamewar, and especially not religious or race flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: when an account crosses into using HN primarily for ideological battle, that's when we ban it - regardless of which ideology it's battling for or against. So please don't do that. Again: it's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#75

Post by axkdev »

I hope über goes bankrupt and we forget about all of this insanity. In Germany where I live the taxi service is amassing, at least in my city can't say for whole country. They are quick clean the drivers are professionals and not some randos who will break rules to get there faster or drive so insanely that you want to puke. They know the city by heart and don't use navigators. Due to being professionals they are compensated more fairly than in other countries and they have benefits like all other employees. Also if you like using apps you can do that with normal taxi as well.

In my home country (Eastern Europe) I took übers that made me think I'm gonna die in them.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#76

Post by throwawaycities »

avsteele wrote: post #53
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.

Does there exist any company that allows their employees to work any number of hours they want, whenever they want?

What does that matter?

Just because you can pick your own hours/work schedule, that doesn’t make you an independent contractor. At least it’s not determinative in the US under federal law nor any state that I am aware, but maybe that is the Dutch law and the court just got it wrong here

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#77

Post by bserge »

lozenge wrote: post #55
bserge wrote: post #13

Why doesn't Uber employ them and guarantee minimum wage, anything extra is a bonus? Is it just the extra employee costs on the company side?

The most noticeable difference between Uber and other services in my city was the waiting time. 3-6 minutes versus 15-20 minutes. This is achieved by having a lot of underpaid drivers idling or parked nearby. Minimum wage kills that advantage.

I see the advantage of a lot of unpaid drivers, but they also aren't morons.

Most Uber drivers say they make good money (all that I've met, too), which imo means better than a minimum wage job like warehousing or w/e.

They wouldn't do the job if it meant idling without pay. They couldn't, as it would just burn money.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#78

Post by sbilstein »

SMAAART wrote: post #61

What we have here is a unique, unprecedented, real life experiment in Game Theory. Possible outcomes: - Uber could pull out from the Netherlands - Drivers in the Netherlands could organize themselves, but they will need a structure similar to Uber - Other countries will follow the Netherlands ruling We could see the implosion of the gig economy (doubt it) or - most probably - some places like the Netherlands will be…

I think the competitive advantages of Uber will weaken with all these legal challenges. In NYC, as Uber prices increased dramatically after the pandemic began to wane, folks just starting catching cabs again. The cabs use ride hailing apps. I no longer care about the rating system or any of that. It is fine.

In Israel, we use Gett. It's fine.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#79

Post by WJW »

avsteele wrote: post #53
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.

Does there exist any company that allows their employees to work any number of hours they want, whenever they want?

Yes, Uber, since their gig workers are now employees. \s

Under Dutch law, to be classified as an independent contractor you also need to be able to set your own prices and have a "significant" (the law is fairly specific but it is too long for a HN comment) say in exactly how you provide your services. The court ruled that Uber drivers do not meet this bar and are therefore not independent contractors. TBH, the "ZZP" construction used has always been a fairly transparent attempt by Uber and the other gig companies to evade labor regulations for their own profits and I'm glad that the court has issued a clear statement about it.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#80

Post by 988747 »

> "We know that the vast majority of drivers would like to remain independent," said Maurits Schonfeld, general manager of Uber in Northern Europe

That's funny, because the court's reasoning was that drivers in their daily work are almost completely dependent on Uber, which calls all the shots.

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