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California is cracking down on the gig economy

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Re: California is cracking down on the gig economy

#191

Post by mch82 »

kelnos wrote: post #64
kartan wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Disregarding any problems we might have with specific companies, I think ridesharing companies are a benefit to consumers. I am all for ridesharing. But Uber and Lyft, as an example, has nothing to do with that concept. It is not like your Uber driver was coincidentally going to the exact place that you were going. Ridesharing, as understood before the gig economy, was someone in the company realizing that there we…

Except we never called that "ridesharing". It was just "carpooling". As much as I hate the term ridesharing, since it doesn't actually describe what these companies and drivers do, it's not like it was a widely-used term that's been redefined over the past decade.

Ridesharing is when a group of people rent a van through a ridesharing program and one of those people drives it. The driver is kind of like a school bus driver.

Carpooling is when 2+ drivers ride together in a car one of them owns instead of everyone driving separately.

Re: California is cracking down on the gig economy

#192

Post by ghaff »

thechao wrote: post #187
ghaff wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$/hr is sort of an odd way to measure depreciation that is mostly mileage based. In the US, IRS reimbursement for business driving is 58 cents per mile and that's probably not a bad estimate to start with for vehicle costs. (It probably overstates it if you would own a car anyway and you have a vehicle that's more efficient/cheaper to operate than average, but it's a reasonable stake in the ground.)

The mechanics I lived with were boat & big diesel. Those engines (and aircraft) are maintained on an hourly basis. In fact, your car is too: you change your oil every 3000 miles or 3 months. The idea being that there is an expected speed, and you’ve accumulated (say) 100 operating hours after driving 3000 miles, or in any 3 month period. As such, all these guys computed engine/vehicle life in terms of cost-per-hour.…

Certainly there's a correlation between operating time and total mileage. It's going to be different for city driving and highway driving but there's a relationship that holds for most normal use cases.

That said, there are specific costs that are primarily about distance (fuel, tires). Furthermore, probably overly conservative oil change recommendations notwithstanding, essentially all car makers express maintenance intervals in terms of mileage not hours (which could easily be measured). I'm inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt that they know what they're doing.

Re: California is cracking down on the gig economy

#193

Post by sambull »

zrail wrote: post #173
amluto wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the exchange plans are, nonetheless, dramatically worse at a given price point than employer plans. The primary reasons appear to be the giant tax subsidy for employer plans and the fact that insurers aggressively discriminate against people who don’t have employer plans.

It's not that they actively discriminate. It's because ACA plans are lumped into one big risk pool per market and ACA plans, by nature, attract more expensive people.

Seems like the only answer would be one risk pool then.

Re: California is cracking down on the gig economy

#194

Post by jeremyjh »

dmode wrote: post #184
jeremyjh wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

eBay and Airbnb sellers are using their own capital to buy and sell goods that they own. They are not selling their labor in any sense. Uber drivers use their own cars but they are primarily selling their labor.

Does it matter whether labor or capital is sold ? The ABC test doesn’t check for that. Uber drivers also use their own capital to buy cars. The major difference is setting prices

> The ABC test doesn’t check for that.

It does. It is labor law, and it applies to labor, not to transactions performed in a market place.

>The ruling and the bill instruct businesses to use the so-called “ABC test” to figure out whether a worker is an employee.

> (b) is doing work that isn’t central to the company’s business

Workers doing work.

Re: California is cracking down on the gig economy

#195

Post by [deleted] »

CydeWeys wrote: post #183
ghaff wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$/hr is sort of an odd way to measure depreciation that is mostly mileage based. In the US, IRS reimbursement for business driving is 58 cents per mile and that's probably not a bad estimate to start with for vehicle costs. (It probably overstates it if you would own a car anyway and you have a vehicle that's more efficient/cheaper to operate than average, but it's a reasonable stake in the ground.)

You're probably aware, but it bears repeating that a lot of that mileage figure goes towards fuel costs, and there have been emergency/out-of-band updates to the figure when fuel costs have increased significantly in the middle of a year.

[deleted]

Re: California is cracking down on the gig economy

#196

Post by momokoko »

ravenstine wrote: post #125

This last year, I drove for GrubHub for about 6 months in order to pay rent while trying to build a business as well as do web development contract work(I'm now employed full time). The whole time, I was active in various gig economy subreddits. There are some people out there who only want to drive for companies like GrubHub, but most of the drivers are people who already have jobs and are using the gig as supplemen…

I really get confused about this. I wonder if it is because I'm a bit older. Plenty of part time employment is like that. For example, many people that work retail or service part time have very flexible schedules. They typically have an availability chart and then if they need a day off last minute, they are often required to find someone else to cover for them.

The reality is that the contractor part of this is to hide them(GrubHub) from the risk involved. That's what no one understands here. Bicycle messengers were notoriously the original "gig economy" job. The reason no one wanted to make them employees is that they would then be responsible for workers compensation when they got in an accident.

This is the same as GrubHub. You were lucky. You did not get in an accident. Someone else working for GrubHub somewhere else in the country probably did. And they very likely had very expensive medical expenses. Workers compensation also covers permanent long term disability payments if someone is injured and can no longer work. This can be millions of dollars.

When anyone does the math with these gig jobs, they leave out risk. That's the difference. GrubHub is pushing the risk of long term disability, and other things like unemployment due to business slowdown, entirely onto you. As well as other risks they are free from if you are not an employee.

Re: California is cracking down on the gig economy

#197

Post by sharadov »

ravenstine wrote: post #125

This last year, I drove for GrubHub for about 6 months in order to pay rent while trying to build a business as well as do web development contract work(I'm now employed full time). The whole time, I was active in various gig economy subreddits. There are some people out there who only want to drive for companies like GrubHub, but most of the drivers are people who already have jobs and are using the gig as supplemen…

In LA, a lot of drivers are struggling actors, who need flexible schedules, and nothing like working for ride-share companies.

Re: California is cracking down on the gig economy

#198

Post by hrktb »

brianchu wrote: post #31

I'm coming to the view that gig workers are neither employees nor independent contractors. Employees don't get to unilaterally set their own hours, and contractors don't get prices unilaterally dictated to them or barred from their profession if their rating falls too low. All this regulatory squabbling is arguing over whether a square peg fits a round hole or fits a triangular hole. We need a third classification fo…

> Employees don't get to unilaterally set their own hours

Doesn’t it depends on the contract ? Nothing stops a company from letting their employee set their own hours.

That’s actually close to how door to door sales contracts work in some fields, where the company doesn’t care about how long or where the salesman works, and mostly pays by the sales number.

Re: California is cracking down on the gig economy

#199

Post by wyre »

maxerickson wrote: post #176
egypturnash wrote: post #6

From TFA: Uber would likely have to reclassify tens of thousands of drivers in California as employees — something Uber drivers have been fighting for in court, unsuccessfully, for years. "Fighting for in court" links to https://www.vox.com/2019/5/8/18535367/uber-drivers-strike-20... - which includes these choice paragraphs: It’s worth reemphasizing this: Uber doesn’t want to pay drivers to take 15-minute rest breaks…

I wonder what federal law they are referring to there. I'm under the impression that there's no requirement for paid breaks. (There's a requirement that short breaks be treated as compensated time for the purposes of determining when overtime pay starts, but that's not what your quote is getting at.)

Its most likely state law in California and not a federal law. A lot of states require employers to allow paid breaks.

Re: California is cracking down on the gig economy

#200

Post by sokoloff »

dmode wrote: post #19

While I am sympathetic to Uber and Lyft drivers and other gig economy workers, I am wondering if anyone has the done the calculus on job losses vs. making something. And whether making something is better than being jobless. I met a Uber driver the other day who drives 5000 miles per month. Clearly that is close to exploitation. But if Uber is forced to pay drivers 100% more surely there will be fewer drivers. And ma…

> I met a Uber driver the other day who drives 5000 miles per month. Clearly that is close to exploitation.

It seems to me like you skipped a step or two in your explanation there. What inherently makes driving 5000 miles per month exploitation? There are many paid driving gigs (some employee, some owner-operator) that drive at least that much and I'm not sure I'd classify any of them as exploitative.

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