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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

#481

Post by randomswede »

vidarh wrote: post #457
dahfizz wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this has never been a problem in a major city in recorded history. This _has_ been the case in major cities around the world before Uber took over. NYC has the yellow cab monopoly. London had the black cab monopoly. These companies grew large enough to buy up all available labor (this was made easier by the medallion system). Uber is no different. It _already_ has a dominant market position. Other rideshare compani…

There is no "black cab monopoly". Black cabs are not operated by a single company. It's a number of companies, and a huge number of individual operators, competing with dozens of private hire companies.

And there is not (unlike the medallion system, as I understand it) any specific limit on how many can pass The Knowledge (the test you have to do to become a black cab driver; before that, you can get a taxi license and work for a minicab firm). The reason it's not instant is that it is one of those "requires a substantial investment of time" scenarios.

So I don't think painting "London's black cabs" as a monopoly holds water.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#482

Post by jacquesm »

bko wrote: post #315
goodpoint wrote: post #254

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…

There is a very simple litmus test to decide if someone is an entrepreneur or not: do they own the customer relationship? If they do they are an entrepreneur otherwise they aren't. This is the core of the dispute with the app stores and various companies as well: they don't want to end up at the mercy of a third party for their customer relationships.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#483

Post by etchalon »

dantheman wrote: post #327
etchalon wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agree. Universal healthcare would empower a lot of entrepreneurs, make it easier to attract talent for smaller companies, and free me of a completely ridiculous amount of paperwork and oversight each year. If someone told me, as a business, I could just pay a tax and know my employees had access to the same quality of care as everyone else, I'd sign up in a heart beat.

How about we get companies and government out of healthcare?

If you can show me a working health care system, without any government regulation, I'll pretend this is a valid option.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#484

Post by etchalon »

com2kid wrote: post #461
etchalon wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government does enforce its own social programs. It's found the most efficient/popular way to do that is through businesses.

> It's found the most efficient/popular way to do that is through businesses. Not at all, look up the history of health insurance in America, companies providing it was not by design, it was in fact done to get around government laws on wage caps during the great depression. Now days the system is entrenched, there are a large # of corrupt players who leech of the healthcare ecosystem in America, and they pay good $…

I did not say it created the most efficient health care system.

I said it was the most efficient way to enforce the laws.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#485

Post by lotsofpulp »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #475
lotsofpulp wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sort of, although the most efficient and effective implementation in my opinion would basically result in a universal basic income.

Even with a real UBI system, having random fluctuations in earnings when you get a cold or break a leg is not reasonable. Additionally, this idea will incentivise employers to destroy human capital - like an employer could drive their employees to burnout and then discard them because they bear no consequences. This is already happening to a large extent thanks to gig economy- Uk employers have cut their investments…

Why would they be able to drive the employee to burnout if the employee can quit since they have UBI?

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#486

Post by simonh »

tekknik wrote: post #477
simonh wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is basically the line of reasoning that changed my opinion on this issue. Previously I thought, well it's up to people when they want to work and how much for. The problem with that is these services are only viable because there is a core of drivers that work long hours and have this as their primary source of income. Part time casual drivers are also an important part of what makes services like this effective…

So then what happens is these drivers move onto other employment, which then increases the rate they pay, which then attracts people back. This is also gig work, the person that made a full time job from gig work didn’t understand what gig work is in the first place.

Fair enough, but gig work is still work. They're still doing a job, and so the standard expectations of a liveable wage and fair treatment should apply, as for any job.

I'm a lot more relaxed about minimum wages and such than I used to be. Here in the UK we've ramped up minimum wages over the last decade or so and the feared impact on jobs for low wage earners never materialised.

I'm a conservative and free market liberal because I'm primarily interested in what works. Ideology be damned, and I've been slapped in the face by a reality check that actually some basic wage floor rules and employment standards work just fine. Those minimum wage rises? Conservative government.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#487

Post by nybble41 »

School-Cotton wrote: post #255
unnouinceput wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What country is that? US, the only country that its politicians actively lobbies against universal healthcare, healthcare that is successfully implemented in every! f*ing! other! Western country?!! (and quite a few other countries that are not Western, such as my full of corruption Eastern Europe one)

Plenty of countries in Western Europe too have mandatory employee contributions to various social programs.

Every country that funds social programs with an income tax has mandatory employee contributions, differing only in the visibility of the cost to the employee (up-front taxes vs. a line-item in the pay stub vs. a "employer portion" which isn't reported to the employee but directly impacts the employee's wages).

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#488

Post by riffraff »

devcpp wrote: post #280
riffraff wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because it ignores the reality of european society: it's not a libertarian utopia, it's a society where the states do dictate things. More specifically, it's blind to the fact that the parent comment is about existing regulation which is being abused. It's like arguing with someone saying "you can't drive at 100 km/h in a residential area" with "well I am a CAN person myself, and I don' think we should say CAN'T".

Driving at 100km/h in a residential area harms others with a high probability. Can you say that of someone working the way they want to with transactions consented between two adults?

that is not the point I was making, the point is that it's stating an opinion that a regulation is wrong versus an argument that the regulation is being infringed.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#489

Post by nybble41 »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #475
lotsofpulp wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sort of, although the most efficient and effective implementation in my opinion would basically result in a universal basic income.

Even with a real UBI system, having random fluctuations in earnings when you get a cold or break a leg is not reasonable. Additionally, this idea will incentivise employers to destroy human capital - like an employer could drive their employees to burnout and then discard them because they bear no consequences. This is already happening to a large extent thanks to gig economy- Uk employers have cut their investments…

> Even with a real UBI system, having random fluctuations in earnings when you get a cold or break a leg is not reasonable.

You should have enough savings set aside that going without a paycheck for at least a week or two won't put you in dire straits—the official recommendation is actually several months. Anyone who is self-employed is already managing their own (unpaid) vacation time and medical leave. It is the expectation that income is guaranteed even when you aren't working—that you can safely live paycheck-to-paycheck without planning for the future—which is unreasonable.

UBI doesn't really count as "planning for the future" unless it's somehow contractually guaranteed for life and not subject to being curtailed as a result of shifting politics. A social program instituted with the passing of a bill can be limited or revoked in the same way at any time. If the goal is to ensure a predictable income stream then a fully-funded, non-revocable trust or annuity for the benefit of a specific person is a much more stable option.

> … like an employer could drive their employees to burnout and then discard them because they bear no consequences.

Just assume that an employer will take whatever an employee is willing to give regardless. It's the employees' responsibility to push back and manage their own work-life balance. It would be unreasonable (as in: an obvious conflict-of-interest) to expect employers to prioritize employees' welfare over their own.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#490

Post by nybble41 »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #429
devcpp wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then it's stopping you from working for a company that forces you to take clients at a given price without an employment contract and all its implications. What if that's what I want? I think some Uber drivers appreciate the work mobility.

You want to be forced to take clients you don't want. You want someone else to decide a price you might not want. You want to be unable to get employment benefits you might want. I mean, that's some niche requirements there, I would categorise it as serfdom. I am onboard in principle - I want try all the psychedelics, fly a plane without a licence and experiment with explosives for education purposes, but as R v Cope…

What you want is to work with a service that customers will choose to rely on. This implies that sometimes—to get the benefit of being "an Uber driver" and not just some random guy with a car taking people for rides—you need to accept clients you wouldn't have chosen on your own, at standard prices set by someone else. It's not that you wouldn't prefer to pick and choose your clients or set your own prices, but if you insisted on doing things your own way all the time you wouldn't have nearly as many clients since they couldn't trust your service and your revenues would be much lower. Uber sets standards for drivers, which means clients can expect a certain quality of service, without which they would be much less inclined to accept rides, even from the same drivers.

You can certainly take that approach if you want, though. As an independent driver you own all the capital equipment in this business (your car) and you can stop working for Uber at any point without penalty and start offering rides under your own brand, on your own terms. However, you'll find that you still need to meet certain standards as to price and reliability if you want people to choose you over calling an Uber. Working for yourself doesn't mean you get to do whatever you feel like all the time without any commitments.

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