Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Uber and Lyft ordered by California judge to classify drivers as employees

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

471–480 of 781 posts

Re: Uber and Lyft ordered by California judge to classify drivers as employees

#471

Post by dragonwriter »

macinjosh wrote: post #469
davinic wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That option is still completely possible under this law. One of the provisions that allows you to remain a contractor is "The worker is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation, or business of the same nature as that involved in the work performed." I work as a 1099 contractor under my own LLC consulting business. This is valid under CA law. The law is meant to protect people who are unfa…

> The law is meant to protect people who are unfairly classified as contractors outside of a trade. While that may be, we all know that laws aren't interpreted based on their intended meaning. They are interpreted as one or more judges sees fit.

The law at issue simply codifies (and adds some new exceptions to, allowing what otherwise would be employees to be contractors) the California Supreme Court’s interpretation of the law that existed before it was passed.

Re: Uber and Lyft ordered by California judge to classify drivers as employees

#472

Post by quadrifoliate »

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #395

The judge does not understand what a "gig" is. Uber drivers can choose to drive one, twelve, or zero hours in any given day. They can suddenly stop working by simply not accepting any more ride requests. It's the ultimate remote, self-directed, self-managed job. An employee can't make such decisions; they do as they are told or they are fired. Uber drivers are private, self-owned businesses that rent out their time a…

> Uber drivers are private, self-owned businesses that rent out their time and equipment to a corporation on a completely arbitrary basis.

As far I know, this is not true. Uber dictates the prices that drivers can charge, they cannot set an arbitrary price for their own labor. Is that not the case?

Re: Uber and Lyft ordered by California judge to classify drivers as employees

#473

Post by unishark »

Gunax wrote: post #356
kangaroozach wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Makes sense. CA is wrong to outlaw voluntary working relationships between two parties. 2. Interesting idea, but then all companies could just do this and make the same claim that their employees/contractors/vendors are just customers too! Not gonna fly.

In terms of legality I agree with the judge. In practical terms, this is trivial for uber to dodge. All they need to do is transform from a company offering rides, to a company connecting riders to drivers. It sounds like a big difference but I susoect very little about the user experience would change. For instance they could allow riders to offer different rates, but heavily favour (through ui and other soft incent…

> In practical terms, this is trivial for uber to dodge. All they need to do is transform from a company offering rides, to a company connecting riders to drivers. It sounds like a big difference but I susoect very little about the user experience would change.

There's typically an agenda behind these laws in terms of trying to increase the benefits and power of workers at the expense of the company. So I'm not sure Uber will be allowed to sidestep that goal by simply changing the way things are handled and presented. The govt could simply argue that giving users the option to choose a ride from Bob or Sally is meaningless since customers have no idea who these people are and just choose the first or cheapest on the list. Especially considering the amount of gray area already crossed to classify uber drivers as employees in this ruling.

Re: Uber and Lyft ordered by California judge to classify drivers as employees

#474

Post by zaroth »

root_axis wrote: post #428
zaroth wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economically the result is identical. The driver “sets their rate” above the market rate and drivers with lower rates get all the rides.

No, it is not at all identical because riders only get to see the prices that uber wants them to see rather than all the rates that would be available if drivers could set their own rates, thus "the market rate" cannot escape a threshold that is contrary to uber's business prerogatives.

First, there’s more than one app than just Uber.

Second, Uber is running the supply/demand auction system behind the scenes already. Prices are not fixed but dynamic and change in real-time based directly on supply and demand.

I’ve often brought up the app to check prices and decided not to ride for a while. Drivers do something similar.

> thus "the market rate" cannot escape a threshold that is contrary to uber's business prerogatives.

I’m not sure what this means. I’m sure Uber sets some reasonable floor on the price, but it’s more in the driver’s interest than their own. There are absolutely drivers who would drive for below operating cost of the vehicle because either they aren’t bothering to calculate it or they aren’t the ones actually paying for it (e.g. a car that is late on payments and soon to be repo’d).

Re: Uber and Lyft ordered by California judge to classify drivers as employees

#475

Post by nl »

lackbeard wrote: post #364
Gunax wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber is in a legal grey area. They are independent contractors in the sense that they can choose how much and when to work. They are employees in that they cannot negotiate rates. I don't think it's so clear cut.

> They are employees in that they cannot negotiate rates. Hmm... How is an Uber driver different from a plumber here? Let's say Google needs some pipes fixed at one of its offices and they tell me how much they'll pay, refusing to budge from that figure. That doesn't make me Google's employee. I can choose to do the work for that price, or I can go fix Apple's pipes instead. What am I missing?

Because Uber sets the rates the customer pays, and the driver gets what Uber chooses.

The driver doesn't have the ability to turn up a dial and say "I'm going to charge more now".

(This isn't the only distinction between an employee and contractor though of course)

Re: Uber and Lyft ordered by California judge to classify drivers as employees

#476

Post by nl »

saurik wrote: post #446
dnautics wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

okay, let's make the price higher. Let's make it $150/mo. Now we're about 10 centimeters away from your face, and not too far off from what taxicab companies do.

Yeah. I pay PayPal to process payments for me: I don't work for them. Hell: I pay Apple to publish apps to the App Store on my behalf, and they even decide whether my app is "OK" or not: when they tell me to make a change to my app, I must do that or I lose my ability to collect revenue. They even require I use certain tools that I have to purchase from the company store to do my work. I have no direct relationship w…

You set the price that the customer pays (via Apple) though. That isn't the case for Uber drivers.

Re: Uber and Lyft ordered by California judge to classify drivers as employees

#477

Post by drdaeman »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #329
aeturnum wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "it is important to understand that you never really get to 'choose' whether you're a contractor or an employee, it's determined solely as a function of the type or work you do and the nature of your relationship to the employer" I don't understand what you're trying to say here. In my experience, on both sides of this, a good deal of thought is put into what kind of position to seek / offer. I think employers and…

> I can imagine Uber offering jobs v.s. contractor positions with differing levels of support, remuneration, and expectations. Legally, in California, they can't do that. As outlined in the article, the 'ABC test' is the legal test for determining whether someone is an employee or a contractor. The 'B' part of that test is "The worker performs work that is outside the usual course of the hiring entity's business." If…

Would setting up another company that would employ drivers and provide services to Uber do the legal trick?

I don't know about Uber in US, but in Russia this is how it typically works. Drivers are hired by local taxi companies, which partner with large-scale Uber-like aggregators. This way, user-facing (aggregator) companies don't have drivers as employers, but contract other companies (or individual drivers, shall they want to act as sole proprietors) for the actual transportation services.

Re: Uber and Lyft ordered by California judge to classify drivers as employees

#478

Post by dangus »

There’s a lot of discussion in this thread about whether or not it’s a good idea to force Uber and Lyft to classify drivers as employees.

I think that discussion is a tangent the real issue.

California’s elected officials already ended that discussion by writing it into law. If you live in California and don’t like the law you can call or write your representative and see if they’ll repeal or change it.

But that law is the law. It seems unlikely that Uber and Lyft will win this appeal.

What we have here are two corporations ignoring the law because they don’t agree with it, and the “hire lawyers to endlessly fight this” number is lower than the “paying payroll tax for all our drivers” number on the spreadsheet.

Just my opinion, it’s frankly disturbing how many people are ready to jump to these companies’ defense. They’re proclaiming imminent disaster, that this business model can’t possibly work with W2 employees, but I doubt that’s true.

Nothing stops Uber and Lyft from allowing their W2 employees to make their own schedules, and nothing stops them from hiring directly from the app with quick approval. They just don’t want to pay their share of the payroll tax, and they don’t want to provide family and medical leave that their upper caste employees enjoy.

Re: Uber and Lyft ordered by California judge to classify drivers as employees

#479

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

drdaeman wrote: post #477
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can imagine Uber offering jobs v.s. contractor positions with differing levels of support, remuneration, and expectations. Legally, in California, they can't do that. As outlined in the article, the 'ABC test' is the legal test for determining whether someone is an employee or a contractor. The 'B' part of that test is "The worker performs work that is outside the usual course of the hiring entity's business." If…

Would setting up another company that would employ drivers and provide services to Uber do the legal trick? I don't know about Uber in US, but in Russia this is how it typically works. Drivers are hired by local taxi companies, which partner with large-scale Uber-like aggregators. This way, user-facing (aggregator) companies don't have drivers as employers, but contract other companies (or individual drivers, shall t…

> Would setting up another company that would employ drivers and provide services to Uber do the legal trick?

That is exactly how software development contract jobs are handled in the US. They are called contract companies (and many other names) but essentially find talent, place them at a contract position, then bill the company for that contractor. They pay the contractor directly, with or without benefits (W-2 vs 1099). And in most cases, the contractor gets to choose contract or employee status with the contract company, although at different pay.

Re: Uber and Lyft ordered by California judge to classify drivers as employees

#480

Post by jquery »

jeffbee wrote: post #293
dfdz wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but when 100k uber drivers (contractors) in California are reclassified as employees, it seem fair to say a "dispute" is happening. For the record, I am not saying the ruling is incorrect, but it does make me feel uneasy because: 1) I think that Uber does provide a public good (increased efficiency compared to a taxi) 2) If all drivers are employees, the business does not seem sustainable I think that new laws…

Uber has not ever been more efficient than the services it replaced. Better in many ways, definitely for riders and arguably for some drivers, but not efficient. Uber has simply been shoveling tens of billions of dollars in funny money into the maw of their attempt to corner a market, which has never worked. This write-up from today sums up some of the story so far. https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2020/08/hubert-hora…

From your link

> Uber was always less efficient than the traditional taxis it drove out of business

This is patent nonsense. I suspect he never rode taxis often before Uber appeared.

Also Uber’s core ride business was profitable before corona hit. Lots of businesses are hemorrhaging money right now, especially ones in travel.

Post reply on HN