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California passes bill that classifies gig economy workers as employees

nytimes.com

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Re: California passes bill that classifies gig economy workers as employees

#441

Post by linuxftw »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #426
djsumdog wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In America, you have to work until you die. The major thing the gig economy takes from people is health care. It's insanely expensive, and the Affordable Care Act is a terrible shamble of broken policy. I spent time outside of the US and came back to find health care worse than when I left it: https://fightthefuture.org/article/returning-to-america-and-... I have a friend who has been fighting brain cancer for over a…

This is why I don't understand why people take gig jobs. Think of the opportunity costs. First off, Uber drivers don't make that much. Then you have vehicle depreciation and maintenance costs. You need to carry an insurance rider that covers rideshare driving. You also need to pay for your own health care. When you add up all these expenses, plus the desire for a living wage, there is no way drivers can be making eno…

People have to eat, nothing is free in the US. People generally do whatever their best option is. If the best option is below minimum wage, that's what they do. Why is that the best option? Zero-to-no tariffs and, consumer goods produced overseas by slave labor. No reason to hire domestic workers. Even McDonalds has touch-screen ordering now.

Re: California passes bill that classifies gig economy workers as employees

#443

Post by xpe »

manfredo wrote: post #407
Quanttek wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That "flexibility" means precarity as the majority of gig employees do this full-time: >In California, the legislation will affect at least one million workers who have been on the receiving end of a decades-long trend of outsourcing and franchising work, making employer-worker relationships more arm’s-length. Many people have been pushed into contractor status with no access to basic protections like a minimum wage…

Absent that flexibility many people wouldn't be working at all. Both because their life situations don't allow them to take another job as employees, and because the companies' labor needs do not justify the cost of adding additional employees. > Uber and Lyft have repeatedly warned that they will have to start scheduling drivers in advance if they are employees, reducing drivers’ ability to work when and where they…

If you want to encourage drivers to drive enough to offset overhead costs, there are other ways besides traditional advance time-slot based scheduling. For example: (these are not mutually exclusive)

- Setup incentives (e.g. bonuses) so that drivers get paid better after they have offset the overhead costs for a month. Perhaps this could be setup as a sliding scale or threshold system.

- Reward (but do not mandate) drivers for scheduling certain times/dates in advance (e.g. to optimize driver supply)

Re: California passes bill that classifies gig economy workers as employees

#444

Post by dnautics »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #329
dnautics wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> applies to literally any company who would hire a freelancer to work on their product or service. IANAL but I imagine that's exactly the point. There are always incidentals, like let's say you're a restaurant and you need to hire a plumber to fix your toilet or if you're a real estate agent and you need to hire a programmer to do your website.

No, those examples you give would be taken care of as part of the "B" part of the test. Plumbing and website design is certainly not the main business of restaurants and real estate agents. The problem becomes if you need to hire a freelance programmer to do some work for your software development company. There the "C" part of the test becomes a lot more of a gray area IMO.

yeah that was my point.

Re: California passes bill that classifies gig economy workers as employees

#446

Post by neltnerb »

gamblor956 wrote: post #306
neltnerb wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, other than the minor hassle that they need to know how to issue a W2 and get enrolled for workers comp insurance and pay their estimated taxes for them. None are super hard, but they are barriers for people who aren't used to hiring people, which is the case for I think a lot of self-employed people. I only finally bothered to learn how to do it all last year when I needed some extra help with projects for my c…

ADP does this all for you for the low price of about $20/month/employee. It's even cheaper once you have more employees. There are dozens of other major competing payroll services providers. Why do people on HN expect others to learn PC or Internet security but themselves throw in the towel trying to learn relatively simple tasks?

I'm not complaining, it's just a barrier. I support regulation of things like this and am aware of ADP and Gusto. I am also glad that Uber and Lyft drivers will be compensated as employees if they are treated like employees.

But it's a mental leap to move from "just need to find enough clients to pay my bills" to "need to make sure the paperwork is right so I can pay someone to help me out".

I don't personally find it intimidating, but I've also done it before.

Re: California passes bill that classifies gig economy workers as employees

#447

Post by apesti »

jayparth wrote: post #282
dustinmoris wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber has no USP except the network effect. They are just a taxi company with an app essentially (givent that their self driving efforts havn't fruited at all yet). If they outsource the competency of drivers to an external provider then they are just a taxi company with an app and not even their own driver network, making them even more vulnerable to someone else coming with a better app and using the same driver pro…

He's just talking about a legal reorganization. "Uber Drivers LLC" contracts the employees which is wholly owned by Uber. I don't see how this would actually help them though. Under the new law, Amazon Flex drivers are also categorized as full time employees and the child company would still bear the costs of that

They’re actually talking about Amazon’s delivery service partner program. It’s where Amazon helps people setup independently owned delivery businesses. https://logistics.amazon.com/

Re: California passes bill that classifies gig economy workers as employees

#448

Post by beepboopbeep »

poilcn wrote: post #423
chongli wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way to protect workers is to shift the burden of health care and other costly benefits onto the government, supported by taxes. Then there is no risk to hiring a new employee beyond the wages you pay them. The US public does not want this, though, and the war of words over universal health care has led to incredibly deep entrenchment on the side of those opposed. All this despite the mountain of evidence from oth…

When an individual creates an enterprise it's expected to fail in 2 years. It does not mean death of the individual, but often it makes 'em go broke. Only one company in a hundred is successful. Other are doomed. Government-run projects do not live in alternative dimension. It is affected by the same things any private organization is affected. It is expected that a country would exist longer than an individual compa…

Wow. I hope you don't build models for a living.

Re: California passes bill that classifies gig economy workers as employees

#449

Post by dnautics »

gamblor956 wrote: post #374
dnautics wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The obvious loophole for the businesses to use is to start charging drivers for the service, which makes them customers and not employees.

How is that a loophole? They would need to redesign their entire app and business model to do that.

I guess they just fired 450 people so it'll be hard to find the programmers to implement something that even superficially gives them the argument that it's a two-sided market. e.g. let drivers set their prices (but make it really hard to change their settings) and give passengers "the best deal" (but make it relatively difficult to search for other deals).
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