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

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

#601

Post by znpy »

jasode wrote: post #589
dustinmoris wrote: post #577

Lots of HN comments are here like "I know people who prefer to be contractors", "My sister's neighbours little brother actually doesn't want to be treated with respect by Uber", blah This is utter nonsense. Being a contractor means being self employed. You don't get paid leave or sick pay. It's a risk taking and doesn't make any sense in the gig economy where the wages are close to minimum rates. If you are truly sel…

>All gig workers are slaves and we should treat each other with more dignity and upgrade them to employees. It's our bloody duty as a decent human being. Lyft/Uber can upgrade them to employees but the arithmetic of bottom-up economics means Uber has to raise prices to cover full employment benefits. The raised fares conflict with what passengers are willing to pay . E.g. even though yellow medallion taxis often cost…

> Lyft/Uber can upgrade them to employees but the arithmetic of bottom-up economics means Uber has to raise prices to cover full employment benefits

What's the problem with that?

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

#602

Post by chrisseaton »

root_axis wrote: post #323
chrisseaton wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If a driver wants to offer their services for more or less than uber decides, they cannot, and are forced to lower or raise their price in order to gain access to the market. The drivers can ask for any price they want from Uber. Uber can either accept it or not. That’s a negotiation. What more do you think it needs to be a negotiation? That’s just like a normal contract. I may want my fence painted but I’m not pay…

Uber drivers don't have the option to set their rates. They cannot "ask for any price they want from Uber", they agree to accept the rates explicitly set by Uber: that's the contract; not every employment contract meets the legal definition of "contract employment"

> they agree to accept the rates explicitly set by Uber

Like any contractor!

If I offer to pay $500 for get my fence painted, a contractor can either accept that or not.

If you want to hire a web developer for $500 a day, a contractor can either accept that or not.

The fence painter, the web developer and the Uber driver, can all set their own rates by either accepting the job or not, can't they? I don't understand what you think is the difference between the first two and the last one?

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

#603

Post by ethanbond »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #591
jasode wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>All gig workers are slaves and we should treat each other with more dignity and upgrade them to employees. It's our bloody duty as a decent human being. Lyft/Uber can upgrade them to employees but the arithmetic of bottom-up economics means Uber has to raise prices to cover full employment benefits. The raised fares conflict with what passengers are willing to pay . E.g. even though yellow medallion taxis often cost…

>Lyft/Uber can upgrade them to employees but the arithmetic of bottom-up economics means Uber has to raise prices to cover full employment benefits. The raised fares conflict with what passengers are willing to pay Then the business is not profitable enough to exist. Simple as that.

It’s incredible how many people just start from the assumption that these services must exist and then work backward from that. Obviously you run into serious dissonance when you arrive at the pricing problem, where the solution is quite simple: they shouldn’t exist.

Then you can start thinking about real solutions to urban transit that have existed for more than a century.

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

#604

Post by aflag »

nl wrote: post #476
saurik wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And, perhaps more importantly, the user sees your app and branding in the end and they can choose to pick you again. Which is not the case for uber either.

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

#605

Post by aflag »

eru wrote: post #511
nl wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You think, if Uber let drivers bid on customer fares, they could classify the drivers as contractors again?

I think giving the ability for one driver to promote their services over other drivers is also a key feature. Each driver needs to be able to differentiate themselves and not be essentially interchangeable.

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

#606

Post by Broken_Hippo »

bohm wrote: post #596
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Lyft/Uber can upgrade them to employees but the arithmetic of bottom-up economics means Uber has to raise prices to cover full employment benefits. The raised fares conflict with what passengers are willing to pay Then the business is not profitable enough to exist. Simple as that.

People still need transportation.

Sure. But they don't need Uber or Lyft.

You can build a robust bus system, government run and not expected to make a profit, for example. You can have registered cabs. You can have rental bikes (bonus if they are electric assisted). If you can make sure scooters don't litter the walkways, that works as well. If you already have the infrastructure in place, perhaps trams or subways are a good thing.

We could expand busses to be able to travel from city to city. Same thing with trains: Make them run on time and expand. Busses, however, use the most extensive existing infrastructure and would likely be more cost-effective in most areas.

Not all "busses" need to be large, though. In some areas or at some times of day, a 15 passenger van might be enough. We could have bonus points if we changed school bus laws so that we don't have a duplicate bus system that leaves busses unused for much of the day.

In the US, one could take a sliver of the military budget (where there is plenty of waste) to pay for it.

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

#607

Post by piva00 »

mercer wrote: post #595
jasode wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>All gig workers are slaves and we should treat each other with more dignity and upgrade them to employees. It's our bloody duty as a decent human being. Lyft/Uber can upgrade them to employees but the arithmetic of bottom-up economics means Uber has to raise prices to cover full employment benefits. The raised fares conflict with what passengers are willing to pay . E.g. even though yellow medallion taxis often cost…

> I believe what this really comes down to is that society is not willing to pay the higher prices for drivers to be treated as employees. Same situation as not willing to paying higher prices at hair salons so hair stylists are full employees (instead of being contractors) with healthcare. It does seem like constantly blaming Uber for mis-categorizing employees conveniently shifts the blame from the society/customer…

> Blaming the customers for not keeping track of everything and going for the cheapest option is like blaming climate change on the consumer. It's technically sort of true, but practically speaking it makes no sense.

It's part of the current US economical ideology where individual responsibility is taken as a mantra.

I completely agree with you, it's a good soundbite that any simple analysis and some thinking show how stupid it is.

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

#608

Post by piva00 »

neetrain wrote: post #578
dustinmoris wrote: post #577

Lots of HN comments are here like "I know people who prefer to be contractors", "My sister's neighbours little brother actually doesn't want to be treated with respect by Uber", blah This is utter nonsense. Being a contractor means being self employed. You don't get paid leave or sick pay. It's a risk taking and doesn't make any sense in the gig economy where the wages are close to minimum rates. If you are truly sel…

Meanwhile in Japan, We never get sick pay (treated as leave pay) nor usually leave pay even when employed...

Japan is a far cry from a role model of work environment, this is just another signal to it...

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

#609

Post by piva00 »

jquery wrote: post #592
dustinmoris wrote: post #577

Lots of HN comments are here like "I know people who prefer to be contractors", "My sister's neighbours little brother actually doesn't want to be treated with respect by Uber", blah This is utter nonsense. Being a contractor means being self employed. You don't get paid leave or sick pay. It's a risk taking and doesn't make any sense in the gig economy where the wages are close to minimum rates. If you are truly sel…

Slaves, mmm.... yes I remember the first day that jackbooted thugs from Uber forced me to drive for the company. Every day that I felt like driving instead of doing literally anything else, these Uber slavemasters would show up with their chains and their whips. The horror... I hope Uber goes out of business so I can finally go back to my old life...

Slavery doesn't come only through the form of physical subjugation, if so there wouldn't be classifications of work analogous to slavery.

Don't be so shallow minded...

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

#610

Post by dragonwriter »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #499
shrimpx wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> argued that they were basically doing the same work as employees I think that's case by case though. Contractors usually do finite focused projects and don't want to be employees. I myself was self-employed for 5 years doing specific contracts as a software engineer. I was "writing code" which is "the same work" as employees. Were all those companies breaking the law? > Legally, in California, they can't do that. D…

> Were all those companies breaking the law? This is actually a really good thread, because most people are surprised to discover that yes , those companies probably were "breaking the law". As other posters pointed out, AB5 is relatively new, so the test is relatively stricter now, and only relevant in California. More importantly though, employment classification is only challenged when a plaintiff files a lawsuit.…

> AB5 is relatively new, so the test is relatively stricter now

AB5 is looser than preexisting law, since it adopted the preexisting ABC test from the Dynamex decision, but added new exceptions.

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