171–180 of 343 posts
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That impacts whether you're eligible for overtime pay. Given that contractors are never mandated to receive overtime pay, a contractor position can never be superior in this regard.
Exempt status also impacts whether your hours are fixed or not. If they tell you that you must be in the office from 9AM to 5 PM, then you aren’t exempt.
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I'm not a fan of the whole "late-stage capitalism" meme, but I think that perfectly describes your complaint here. The ideal approach is two pronged, you raise the standard which benefits society as a whole and increase the social safety net to take care of those few lost in transition. The same principle applies to a wide variety of economic changes from increased labor regulations, to housing, to free trade, to aut…
My point is that it's impossible for us to keep up and fix everyone's problem for them. We need to empower people to make their own choices. That's the best way to help.
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I hear this argument a lot, and I wonder, would anyone who has gone through an extended period of poverty agree with it? I went through this myself, and all the worker "protection" laws just made it that much harder to get back on my feet because they limited how much I could work. Or forced me to allocate some of my pay to benefits I didn't need rather than the expensive treatment I desperately needed to stay alive…
> if you have time to protest, you're probably not that poor i dont know what protests you've been attending but the one's ive helped at for laundry and warehouse workers were filled with people that were not only supporting families on minimum wage but also contained people who were here on visas. in america you're always taking a risk by protesting an employer.
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> Part of me thinks Uber could get away with this if they just relaxed some of their current driver policies (e.g. more limited penalties for cancellations). The issue is whether doing so would drastically deteriorate the quality of the service for riders. I'm going to go with yes. The only times I use ride sharing services (Lyft, not Uber) are in high-density situations like getting to and from the airport. Dependin…
Doesn’t Uber in the USA just assign rides automatically? Or do drivers opt into the rides they want? But what you describe is how didi works in China when interfacing with taxis (you could get a taxi or ride share through the app, drivers will simply ack any rides they want to take, payment is handled normally, didi doesn’t get a cut).
[1] https://help.uber.com/partners/article/getting-a-trip-reques...
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That impacts whether you're eligible for overtime pay. Given that contractors are never mandated to receive overtime pay, a contractor position can never be superior in this regard.
Exempt status also impacts whether your hours are fixed or not. If they tell you that you must be in the office from 9AM to 5 PM, then you aren’t exempt.
That's not correct; the difference is that failure to fulfill such a requirement is a discipline issue (which can be dealt with by discipline up to an including termination), but not a pay issue based on hours worked as it would be for a non-exempt hourly employee.
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=1b7b6851-8415...
Uber's defense fails The Duck Test. They are describing a job, people doing a job, people paying for a job, and people taking a cut of the profits. They just don't use those words. I suspect if/when this gets to a higher court, the whole thing will come crashing down, because to allow Uber's weaselly redefinition of common terms, would be to allow other classes of employment to similarly become unprotected.
I do feel that driver's being able to work for multiple ride sharing companies at the same time does make it a bit different from a normal job. A majority of drivers have both Lyft and uber enabled at the same time.... so are they employees of both? How should benefits be calculated? If I am an employee of a company, they are probably not going to let me work for a competitor while I am on the clock with them.
McDonalds doesn't care if I also work at Burger King. Target doesn't care if I also work at WalMart. A plumber is generally fine if their assistant also works for another one.
All of this is subject to still doing the first job satisfactorially, of course.
I think there is more truth to their argument than people are giving them credit for. It seems like an in bad faith perspective to not give their claim some credence. It makes YOUR argument stronger to first make the best version of Ubers argument before rebutting it. Does it make me a Microsoft employee if I use Outlook to conduct business? Does it make me an Ebay employee if I sell things through ebay? Until Uber e…
Similarly, Ebay's service is less dependent on how well you provide your commerce services, it pretty much lets the market determine your prospects on its platform. On the other hand, Uber is highly reliant on the conduct of its drivers and the service the provide.
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While I agree with you that the unintended consequences of this bill will be a net negative, I take particular issue with this statement, "Uber isn't operating at a profit, so they don't have extra margin to pass on in the form of extra driver pay or employee benefits." That's not how it works. Uber isn't operating at a profit because their current-investor-subsidized-rates are below the cost of their service. But th…
If it turns out the market isn't viable at those costs (i.e. if people just stop taking rideshares altogether because it's too expensive), then it never should have existed in the first place. I think we basically agree. The dangerous outcome is that Uber becomes more expensive for end users in California, Uber drivers become employees, but they make exactly minimum wage because that's the minimum Uber can pay them,…
Which means it is inevitable that Uber will become more expensive, or it will fail. It's just a matter of time.
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This seems like a weird statement. The people driving for Uber presumably looked at their options and decided to drive instead of apply to fast food chains. If they wanted to work in fast food, they could have? Maybe I misunderstand, but what you're saying sounds vaguely like "I know what's better for you".
What I am saying is, misplaced workers (if Uber does indeed become subject to AB5 and they must be employees) is these folks will find other work. The related point is these people are fully capable of that work. Finding new work can be painful, but the damages are over-stated because there's low friction to entering work that doesn't demand specialized skills. Do you have two hands and can walk? Great, you can work…
Uber's defense fails The Duck Test. They are describing a job, people doing a job, people paying for a job, and people taking a cut of the profits. They just don't use those words. I suspect if/when this gets to a higher court, the whole thing will come crashing down, because to allow Uber's weaselly redefinition of common terms, would be to allow other classes of employment to similarly become unprotected.
I do feel that driver's being able to work for multiple ride sharing companies at the same time does make it a bit different from a normal job. A majority of drivers have both Lyft and uber enabled at the same time.... so are they employees of both? How should benefits be calculated? If I am an employee of a company, they are probably not going to let me work for a competitor while I am on the clock with them.
Having the app enabled is being on-call for potential assignments, not actually working. In my youngest years, I did that for multiple temp agencies at the same time a lot. Are they employees of both? Sure. Multiple W-2 employers is not that uncommon for people doing temp work.
> How should benefits be calculated?
In most cases, they will probably work little enough for each as to not reach mandatory benefit eligibility under most employer mandates.
> If I am an employee of a company, they are probably not going to let me work for a competitor while I am on the clock with them.
If you are an employee of a company giving on-demand assignments, they probably aren't going to consider you on the clock merely because you have indicated you are available to take an assignment if it becomes available.
If there are minimum paid shift rules in play, they may consider you on the clock and demand exclusivity for the paid period once you accept a job, even if there is a lull between assignments, though.