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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

#391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It gets even hairier: suppose you are sitting on both apps (or even more) waiting for a ride. Do you get to double-bill two companies for minimum wage hours? IMO this is a no-brainer, the answer is yes, double-bill. The same applies if you get two remote jobs, you bill both.

In many cases this will be a felony, FYI.

I appreciate the concern but I don't do it. What are the statutes against this?

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#392

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.

Double edged sword. Dutch people use Uber because it's cheap. If that stops being true it's back to bicycles and buses.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It gets even hairier: suppose you are sitting on both apps (or even more) waiting for a ride. Do you get to double-bill two companies for minimum wage hours? IMO this is a no-brainer, the answer is yes, double-bill. The same applies if you get two remote jobs, you bill both.

> The same applies if you get two remote jobs, you bill both. That's definitely illegal.

I appreciate the concern but I don't do it. What are the statutes against this? Is it a felony or misdemeanor?

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#394
post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the conundrum is that either Uber pays for downtime (employee model) or it doesn't (contractor model). It's literally impossible to be actively driving passengers for a solid 40 hours a week while maintaining reasonable work hours. For the model that pays for downtime, it needs to make it up somehow since it wouldn't be able to afford people just sitting around doing nothing in the middle of nowhere. Typicall…

What's blocking them from doing metrics based payment, but with employee like protections? Pay people for the time they mark themselves "available" (regardless of if there's any rides), and require that drivers take anything you give them while they are available. I imagine you could put in a cap and a floor if you really wanted to. You could even allow drivers to reject a certain percentage of rides if you felt like…

GP wants the option to decline rides even while available - you’d be taking that option away. I doubt GP is alone in this.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does Lyft even operate in Holland? Here in the UK Uber drivers have Uber stickers on their cars. I rarely get picked up by a driver without them. What imaginary other company are they working for that would tolerate that? It might not be the case in America, but over here it certainly seems most drivers are working for one company.

Is Uber the only rideshare company available in Europe? In America, every rideshare car has uber and lyft stickers, at a minimum. Just about every driver keeps both apps open and takes rides from wherever they come in.

I think GP has a good point, I took a slightly america-centric POV on the issue; topic is specifically about Dutch legal system. Nonetheless the end bit about 'strategies' is likely to be applicable across jurisdictions.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#396
post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they really are freelancers/entrepreneurs not employees Taxi drivers are not knowledge workers, or artists and clearly not entrepreneurs. They are easily replaceable "cogs in the machine", like many non-specialised factory workers, office clerks, retail employees and so on. There's a reason why humanity introduced protections for vulnerable workers in almost every society.

> Taxi drivers are not knowledge workers, or artists and clearly not entrepreneurs. Of course they're entrepreneurs. They have to own or finance a car. They choose when and where to work and for what company to drive for. They can also work for black car in addition to ride share and can even manage private rides. They have some ability to accept or reject fares. > There's a reason why humanity introduced protections…

> Of course they're entrepreneurs. They have to own or finance a car.

That's such a broad definition of entrepreneur that includes 99% of freelancers and self-employed.

> No one is restricting "knowledge workers" from being able to strike a contract.

The job market does, unfortunately.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It gets even hairier: suppose you are sitting on both apps (or even more) waiting for a ride. Do you get to double-bill two companies for minimum wage hours? IMO this is a no-brainer, the answer is yes, double-bill. The same applies if you get two remote jobs, you bill both.

In many cases this will be a felony, FYI.

IANAL, but my understanding is: Double-billing hours is probably illegal, but many remote programmers likely have two "full time", salaried, jobs with no stipulation about "you must work X hours"... at the very least a legal grey area, and if you breach some contract clause, you are most likely in breach of contract, which is a civil suit, and most likely you'll just be dismissed, no severance will be offered, and they might try to take away any unexercised options grants.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#398
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So do drivers for grubhub/doordash/uber eats. They see the final payout and have the choice to skip the order if it doesn't pay well enough.

Except for the part that the companies will punish them for rejecting orders, and that they can't negotiate the price of the orders nor set any price themselves.

1. Doordash does not penalize for skipping orders. They give the total payout first to allow people to skip orders in the first place. It’s a feature. 2. Because you see the price before accepting an order, you are effectively negotiating the orders you want to take based on price. You can sit in your car all day declining orders until you see a price you agree with.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can employ drivers and still give them the freedom to accept or decline tides as they wish.

Yes, that would be technically possible. But it will not happen because of how the incentives are set up. If Uber now has to bear the cost of being an employer, it will need to exercise its power over the employee drivers and force them to work.

Will need to, or will feel justified in doing so?

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#400

If this ever happens in the U.S. I won't bother with driving Uber anymore and this would probably put them out of business. The Taxi industry will win back from the disruption that Uber caused. This has nothing to do with worker's rights. No one gave a crap about Taxi driver's work standards and they are/were treated worse than Uber drivers. This is all about the Taxi industry fighting back. 75% of all ride share dri…

A recent study suggests Chicago drivers earn less than minimum wage. > After accounting for driving expenses and self-employment taxes, the average TNP driver in Chicago earns about 3% to 5% less than minimum wage. In 2019, drivers earned $12.30 per hour, or 5% less than the city’s minimum wage of $13 per hour at the time. In 2020, drivers earn slightly above minimum wage, but the hourly rate of pay was artificially…

So it's unskilled labor that offers the same (+/- a single digit percentage) pay after expenses as compared to other minimum wage jobs, but offers substantially better flexibility of hours. I can still see why plenty of people would prefer it to flipping burgers.
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