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fastcompany.com went bankrupt and attempted to sue fuckedcompany.com after they stole the fuckedcompany.com logo and changed it to fastcompany.com. they are crooked thieves, and the very same litigators they are seemingly demonizing. fuck fastcompany.com, and fuck hackernews for supporting them.
The rules, such as they are, seem fairly straightforward. If, in the case of outfits like Handy and Uber and Instacart, the "employer" is laying down rules, requiring certain performance, setting the price, and enforcing metrics, they are an employer and the person doing the work is an employee who should be treated as such. If, in the case of outfits like Redbeacon, the site is collecting leads and distributing them…
The laws are anything but straightforward. For starters there are 50 States with each one having different laws.
Take Florida where I have personally represented employers and employees/Independent contractors in these types of matters. The FL case law establishes, what in my opinion is the very worst kind of law, a factors test. So essentially there are a number of factors the courts put forward, I believe 7 factors by my last count, and in each instance a court would have to analyze each case on its own merits, and by case I am referring to each employee/Independent Contractor not each company as a whole.
One of the most heavily weighted factors is who the company pays...does the company pay the employee/independent contractor individually or pay a company formed by the individual. It would be evidence enough to simply determine which start-ups have a policy against paying any individual and requiring all individuals form companies. If start-up does't require their Independent Contractors to set up separate entities the start-ups deserve what is coming to them, a finding by the Courts these were employees.
"Instead, it [Handy] relies on an army of independent contractors to complete jobs, taking a 15% to 20% commission of every hour worked" This is where it doesn't feel like an employer. Employers take more like 50%. So yeah, you don't get protections, and you get higher take-home pay. It sounds like a pain in the ass when you have to buy your own supplies, handle customers, etc., but all that is not uncommon even for…
The rules, such as they are, seem fairly straightforward. If, in the case of outfits like Handy and Uber and Instacart, the "employer" is laying down rules, requiring certain performance, setting the price, and enforcing metrics, they are an employer and the person doing the work is an employee who should be treated as such. If, in the case of outfits like Redbeacon, the site is collecting leads and distributing them…
>The rules, such as they are, seem fairly straightforward. The laws are anything but straightforward. For starters there are 50 States with each one having different laws. Take Florida where I have personally represented employers and employees/Independent contractors in these types of matters. The FL case law establishes, what in my opinion is the very worst kind of law, a factors test. So essentially there are a nu…
As far as I understand the rules, the "most heavily weighted factor" you cite is in fact not an IRS employee classification factor at all. A contractor can still be classified as an employee even though they bill through an LLC. BigCo's worry about this so much that they will sometimes withhold taxes from LLCs.
In a double-sided marketplace I'm tempted to think of the actual seller as being the one that determines the price. In the case of Handy, Uber, etc... it is in fact Handy, Uber, etc. In the case of Amazon, the price is determined by the contractor themselves. Is there some major flaw in this thinking? Employees are not generally empowered to determine the price at which their work is sold, and yet contract suppliers…
http://www.careerusa.org/resources/career-files/100-resource...
In a double-sided marketplace I'm tempted to think of the actual seller as being the one that determines the price. In the case of Handy, Uber, etc... it is in fact Handy, Uber, etc. In the case of Amazon, the price is determined by the contractor themselves. Is there some major flaw in this thinking? Employees are not generally empowered to determine the price at which their work is sold, and yet contract suppliers…
For those that believe that Uber and the like are good for the US and the economy, I have a question for you:
1. What happens if we have 10% unemployment? We already have; this answer is simple.
2. We turn the screws of automation and computerization: what happens to our country/society if we have 50% unemployment?
3. What happens, when we find out that everybody's job can be hyper-specialized and broken down so robots can do them... which leads to >95% unemployment?
4. Capitalism leads to reduction of costs and risks by all means necessary. This would imply that human labor would be too expensive once more technological advances are made. So, how does capitalism work if there are few workers?
There needs to be a decentralized marketplace that gets out of the way and doesn't have everyone at the mercy of its platform. But that's hard to build. Once it's built, the two sides can compete on reputation, cost, or whatever else, crafting their own strategy and the overall wealth of the system will go up. The gatekeepers often hold the system back - even the ones who built the system. I believe that platforms sh…
You mean the Web?
Think about the problem as this: A worker sets up a website offering services. A potential customer is looking for a local purveyor of that service to hire. How does the customer find the website? If there are 25 local workers willing to do the job, how does the customer choose between them? If the customer wants to pay with a credit card, how does the worker get the money?
That's the role that Uber et al are playing. It's possible to decentralize that but it's not trivial.