71–80 of 119 posts
I learned within the past year that Uber sucks for drivers around NYC. The T&LC rules mean that someone who's not registered can't take pickups in NYC. They can still drop you off though, so Uber considers it valid to assign a non-T&LC vehicle to drive into NYC. Of course when that happens, the driver has an empty car going back the other way. It's awful for their pay and a big waste of energy and road space. Some dr…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Salaried !== full-time. Millions of people in the UK are legally salaried workers on "zero-hours" contracts, where they aren't even guaranteed a minimum number of hours. Paid through PAYE (payroll), have workers rights, just not a guaranteed number of hours. Most can choose when they work, many have more than one of these jobs. It's not a good way to live but it's at least possibly a better way to live than the gig e…
Yes but the UK has the NHS, it's not possible in the US where employees have to healthcare benefits by federal mandate. You can't have an employee on the payroll costing $1,500 a month in benefits who can choose to work 0 hours in a month.
And then the other part of it: the penalty for not having healthcare insurance was deducted to $0 at the end of 2018. So there is currently no penalty at all (other than the massive ones if you get sick) to not carrying insurance.
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> It also sucks for the riders and I really can't imagine Uber likes the situation either. I think the question is what does Uber do when it doesn't like a situation? Does it try to create the best user experience given the constraints, or does it make the situation shitty for everyone except themselves (maybe until it can force whatever change best serves Uber's interests, nevermind anyone else)? It sounds like it's…
Question is how many of these needs to be added for all the rogue cities
"Rogue cities," seriously? I've seen some twisted propaganda ("PR") in my life, but that takes the cake.
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It also sucks for the riders and I really can't imagine Uber likes the situation either. It's a really annoying situation because you end up arguing with some driver over text or worse in person about it. They don't want to cancel because cancelling a lot impacts their rating with uber and they will get less rides. I don't want to cancel because after a few minutes I'll be charged a cancellation fee and now I have to…
Help me understand this as I'm not in NY and I use uber about 2-3 times a year. When you use Uber you put in your destination up-front - so everyone already knows where you are and where you're going, why isn't this information used by drivers to make a decision on whether or not to accept?
Uber owns the thing that the taxi companies don't have, a complex, real time transactional application that pairs drivers with riders. They can pick and choose who they want using it(sans discriminatory, see - illegal checks). And they are well within their means to say when a driver can and can't work on their own platform. If drivers want to be rid of this menace - Uber, then they are free to become cab drivers if…
Is this the case? I was under the impression that Uber has to act as a pure play buyer-seller matching system. Otherwise the drivers aren’t independent contractors, they’re being controlled like employees.
Uber owns the thing that the taxi companies don't have, a complex, real time transactional application that pairs drivers with riders. They can pick and choose who they want using it(sans discriminatory, see - illegal checks). And they are well within their means to say when a driver can and can't work on their own platform. If drivers want to be rid of this menace - Uber, then they are free to become cab drivers if…
Is this the case? I was under the impression that Uber has to act as a pure play buyer-seller matching system. Otherwise the drivers aren’t independent contractors, they’re being controlled like employees.
My understanding is that both Uber and Lift vary the arrangement from market-to-market (sometimes within a country, but mostly between countries), but that at least in the U.S. the drivers have no ability to set their prices at all, but rather only have the ability to accept/decline a ride that has a price already attached. And if they decline too many rides (as defined by opaque decisions by the companies), that they then are penalized by being shown less possible rides.
To me this is a worst combination of being an employee and a true independent contractor.
I learned within the past year that Uber sucks for drivers around NYC. The T&LC rules mean that someone who's not registered can't take pickups in NYC. They can still drop you off though, so Uber considers it valid to assign a non-T&LC vehicle to drive into NYC. Of course when that happens, the driver has an empty car going back the other way. It's awful for their pay and a big waste of energy and road space. Some dr…
Uber drivers have been able to see the approximate destination before accepting the ride for over a year now in all markets.
F*ck Uber. I wish the United States would do what Greece did.
Negative gdp growth and a rapidly declining standard of living?
It's not great, but not exactly "rapidly declining standard of living". "Negative gdp growth" can be argued either way depending on what time window you're using.
> In emails to drivers, Uber and Lyft have blamed each other — and the commission — for lockouts. In its minimum-pay formula, the TLC calculates non-passenger time as an industry average. When Lyft drivers aren’t as busy, for example, Uber has to increase driver pay because non-passenger time is higher on average. “The city’s rule bizarrely holds Uber responsible for Lyft’s failures,” said Uber spokesperson Freddi Goldstein. “With Lyft struggling to keep drivers busy, we don’t have other options.”
But secondly, genuinely what other outcome would the lawmakers have expected?
Previously, drivers could drive whenever they wanted, and they'd make more money in periods of higher unmet demand, which would lead to more drivers on the road during times of peak demand (good), and then drivers could decide for themselves whether it was worth it to drive in times of slow demand -- even if this resulted in less than minimum wage.
Now, if there's a requirement that all drivers must make minimum wage, then during times of low demand, Uber/Lyft/etc. are forced to simply boot off a bunch of drivers so that there are enough fares left for the remaining drivers so they will be able to make minimum wage.
And there's no obvious "fair" way to do that. You can't do it with pricing like before (since that's been made illegal), so it's necessarily going to be some kind of random lottery. And since demand fluctuates in ways that aren't always predictable (like rain), you can't really plan/schedule in advance. So drivers just get randomly deactivated right now -- instead of making less than minimum wage, they make nothing.
I just don't see another way -- once a period of peak demand ends (like after morning rush hour), some drivers are going to have to be booted off if you want to maintain minimum wage.
Don't blame Uber. I don't see how the law could have resulted in any other outcome.
It's a stupid rule to require drivers to be paid simply for logging in.
The economics here are pretty pure. It seems intentional. I wouldn't call it stupid even if wrongheaded. But, to me, this cannot be an unintended side-effect. It's a feature, not a bug, of the regulatory model.
I think you're giving politicians/regulators too much credit. Skimming the media coverage about this law, the supporters' for the law is a vague sense of "we need to ensure delivery/taxi drivers are paid better". I couldn't find any serious discussions for what would the second order effects of the laws would be (ie. what would happen if uber decides to lock out drivers so they don't have to pay them)
eg.
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/nyc-minimum-wage-de...
>"This minimum pay rate will guarantee our delivery workers and their families can earn a living and keep our city’s legendary restaurant industry going strong," Adams said in a statement.
>Supporters of the city's law, which is the first of its kind in the United States, say it is needed because delivery workers in the city earn about $11 an hour on average after expenses, far below the city's $15 minimum wage.