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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

#181

Post by paul_f »

airza wrote: post #12
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.

There is a great youtube channel called "Not just bikes" which talks about urban planning in the netherlands and how it results in much more livable cities than the US.

Keep in mind, the Netherlands is the flattest country on Earth. If livable == mostly bicycles, it might be a somewhat unique situation. I am from Atlanta, GA, which is literally built on top of the Eastern Continental divide. There are no flat spots.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#182

Post by lr4444lr »

elgfare wrote: post #7

Uber says the majority of drivers don't want this, which I'd call bs on, but has anyone heard from actual drivers what they want?

Yeah, actually, I bring this topic up with almost every uber driver whose car I get into, and they tell me they do NOT want to change the freelance arrangement. My brother in law drives for Uber and tells me virtually no one he knows wants it changed either.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#183

Post by fallingfrog »

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 visited the Netherlands a couple years ago and the convenience and practicality of the public transportation was eye opening. I sure wish we had something like that in the US! But it would cost money, money paid by taxes, which means that rich people would have to pay more than they benefit, so politically it’s impossible. In America we try to push all social costs to the individual, which in practice means the middle class and the poor. Therefore because the public transportation is so bad, only people who can’t afford cars use it, which means you have lots of homeless people using the bus as a dry place to take a nap, and so forth. It’s usually dirty and the bus is always late. So it has a really bad reputation.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#184

Post by capableweb »

fallingknife wrote: post #171
capableweb wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone is abusing everything. We've seen time and time again companies abusing employees with hard work, long schedules, unsafe environments and skimping on safety, which is why we have laws for safe working environments now. Sometimes work is physically hard, and the effect of that type of work usually doesn't show until you've done it for a longer time. So not only should you get money for the time and effort you…

That's not so much an effect of years of hard work as it is that as you get older your capacity for hard work declines. Also we already have government pensions. So why should a company have to provide them? The economic effect of this is that workers have to wait years for some of their pay instead of getting it right now.

> That's not so much an effect of years of hard work as it is that as you get older your capacity for hard work declines

Sure, if you're a programmer this might be true, but for most of physical jobs out in the world, the physicality of the job is literally tearing down peoples bodies one way or another.

> Also we already have government pensions

Yeah, so not "A job should trade work for cash and no more" but "A job should trade work for cash + pension" as pension is a social benefit.

> The economic effect of this is that workers have to wait years for some of their pay instead of getting it right now

No, the economic effect of this is that workers get paid for their work now, and the effect of that work in the future.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#186

Post by eplanit »

gilrain wrote: post #167
eplanit wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole appeal for the drivers was "employment-like" opportunities with more freedom for themselves. This takes that away. If they wanted regular jobs they would have sought that.

You are badly out of touch. People take the jobs they have to take to survive. The choice you imagine does not exist for most of humanity.

You make it sound like the job situation in the Netherlands is desperate. From what I can tell by searching, unemployment is only about 3%. Where's the desperation in that?

Uber drivers I've talked to didn't join because they were desperate -- they joined to have more freedom and control.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#187

Post by tzs »

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…

Or Uber could start actually offering the service they claim to offer: providing a marketplace where independent freelance drivers can offer rides and people needing rides can buy them.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#188

Post by gjulianm »

LatteLazy wrote: post #159
gjulianm wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It no longer works in on demand economies, with variable hours and self employment and people working multiple jobs. Why? There are people who work variable hours, self employment and working multiple jobs. They're called freelancers. You can freelance in most countries, and it's not a problem. What is a problem is Uber and gig economy companies saying that the people that work for them are "actually freelancers" a…

There are 1000s of small ways it doesnt work: * In the uk, you and your employer pay national insurance if you earn over a given limit. Thats fine for an uber driver who becomes an employee instead of self employed. * but your employer only pays if you earn over X. So employers have a big incentive to stop you earning over thst limit. You see this in the US with workers being kept at 1h less than full time to avoid p…

None of the issues you mentioned are fundamental to the employee system. I am not familiar with the issues you mentioned in Spain, for example.

You can see issues in any system. But that doesn't mean it isn't working fundamentally. I'm all for reviewing and improving the system, adapting it for new jobs and ways of working. But those changes cannot be an excuse to slash benefits and worker rights, which is what Uber has been doing for years.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#189

Post by Telluur »

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…

Uber could pull out from NL, and not be missed, as the country is not super car dependent to start with. Taxi's (or uber like services) are rarely used here. People mostly walk, bike or take public transport.

As for the implosion of the gig economy, I doubt it too. We've had a neo-liberal gov for the last 12 years, and they've pushed the gig economy (successfully) within the boundaries of north western EU social democracy (Dutch: ZZP).

What we are witnessing here is the courts pushing back on companies abusing the system. They can't have it both ways; wanting flexible workers with those kinds of wages, with demanding 'contracts' akin to employee contracts.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#190

Post by belter »

adventured wrote: post #148
Jochim wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are some of these drivers not working for other companies also? In that case they really are freelancers/entrepreneurs not employees...I think the decision will be appealed. That's a pretty bad test on it's own. Plenty of people working in restaurants work for multiple companies, they're still employees.

> Plenty of people working in restaurants work for multiple companies, they're still employees. And do they cook one food order at a restaurant they work for, then 15 minutes later walk across the street and cook for a competing restaurant for 30 minutes, and then immediately walk back across the street and cook a food order for the other restaurant? No, of course that's not normal. This will ultimately accelerate th…

Speaking about financials...The court ruled that in certain cases drivers can claim overdue salary. Uber had according to statistics approximately 5,200 drivers in NL on December 2019.
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