NYC sets $17 an hour minimum wage for Uber and Lyft drivers
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Re: NYC sets $17 an hour minimum wage for Uber and Lyft drivers
#2Why are these industries separate from the standard minimum wage? Honest question. Is it to include the cost of business?
Re: NYC sets $17 an hour minimum wage for Uber and Lyft drivers
#3Why are these industries separate from the standard minimum wage? Honest question. Is it to include the cost of business?
I would assume it's exactly that. A passage from the article below:
"The equivalent wage for drivers, who are considered independent contractors and have to cover their own expenses, is $17.22."
It's up from 15$ baseline so I assume 2.22$/hr is what they benchmark fuel/maintenance to cost.
Re: NYC sets $17 an hour minimum wage for Uber and Lyft drivers
#4How does an hourly minimum wage work given that Uber and Lyft drivers get paid for doing trips, not for idling in their car waiting for rides? Does this minimum wage only apply to times when I have a fare? That would mean the real hourly minimum wage is less because I wouldn't have a fare 100% of the time. If it applies when I don't have a fare too, how much idle time between fares can I have before the minimum wage stops applying? What happens if I'm driving for both Uber and Lyft, and alternate services on each ride, so my "fare density" on each service is no more than 50% of each hour?
Edit: Why am I being downvoted? These are legitimate questions. I'm not criticizing the minimum wage. I'm genuinely curious as to how it actually works.
Re: NYC sets $17 an hour minimum wage for Uber and Lyft drivers
#5How does an hourly minimum wage work given that Uber and Lyft drivers get paid for doing trips, not for idling in their car waiting for rides? Does this minimum wage only apply to times when I have a fare? That would mean the real hourly minimum wage is less because I wouldn't have a fare 100% of the time. If it applies when I don't have a fare too, how much idle time between fares can I have before the minimum wage…
It’s a fair question. IMHO it absolutely should include if you’re sitting idle. One of the biggest scams these companies are taking part in wrt labeling their workers as “contractors” is you have to work the worst hours to hit metrics. You can’t just go drive 40 hours a week when you want - it has to fall on busy times and nights. If this doesn’t make them responsible for all the hours they want people out and available, it doesn’t have much teeth.
Re: NYC sets $17 an hour minimum wage for Uber and Lyft drivers
#6How does an hourly minimum wage work given that Uber and Lyft drivers get paid for doing trips, not for idling in their car waiting for rides? Does this minimum wage only apply to times when I have a fare? That would mean the real hourly minimum wage is less because I wouldn't have a fare 100% of the time. If it applies when I don't have a fare too, how much idle time between fares can I have before the minimum wage…
From the first paragraph of the linked article: "The city's Taxi and Limousine Commission voted Tuesday to establish a per-minute and per-mile payment formula for Uber, Lyft, Via, Juno and Gett that is supposed to result in drivers earning $17.22 an hour."
So it sounds like this isn't an actual hourly minimum wage, but instead a time/distance-based formula that's supposed to be equivalent. Whether that's based on 100% ridership or past averages isn't specified. Unfortunately the article doesn't link to the actual legislation, nor does any of the other articles I found from a cursory web search, so details seem to be lacking. (I really wish news articles would link to authoritative sources...)
Re: NYC sets $17 an hour minimum wage for Uber and Lyft drivers
#7Why are these industries separate from the standard minimum wage? Honest question. Is it to include the cost of business?
I would assume it's exactly that. A passage from the article below: "The equivalent wage for drivers, who are considered independent contractors and have to cover their own expenses, is $17.22." It's up from 15$ baseline so I assume 2.22$/hr is what they benchmark fuel/maintenance to cost.
I've seen some other sources mention that the new minimum wage is actually "$27.86 an hour, which translates to $17.22 after expenses". [1]
What they consider "expenses" there isn't specified, but that would put their estimate for driver costs at over $10/hour. Which actually seems more reasonable, given the cost of fuel.
[1]: https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/4/18125818/uber-lyft-ride-s...
Re: NYC sets $17 an hour minimum wage for Uber and Lyft drivers
#8This is just the process of NYC trying to drive Uber and Lyft out of the city and to force them to be expensive and bad like the taxis that existed before them.
After a few years when they get bad enough they can start to blame the poor quality on "private corporations" and people will eat it up. Then they'll outright ban them and they'll be back to taxis.
Re: NYC sets $17 an hour minimum wage for Uber and Lyft drivers
#9How does an hourly minimum wage work given that Uber and Lyft drivers get paid for doing trips, not for idling in their car waiting for rides? Does this minimum wage only apply to times when I have a fare? That would mean the real hourly minimum wage is less because I wouldn't have a fare 100% of the time. If it applies when I don't have a fare too, how much idle time between fares can I have before the minimum wage…
It’s a fair question. IMHO it absolutely should include if you’re sitting idle. One of the biggest scams these companies are taking part in wrt labeling their workers as “contractors” is you have to work the worst hours to hit metrics. You can’t just go drive 40 hours a week when you want - it has to fall on busy times and nights. If this doesn’t make them responsible for all the hours they want people out and availa…
If a driver accepts every ride the service offers them, then I agree they should be paid for the idle time in between being offered rides. If they don't accept every ride offered them (as is their right, as independent contractors), how do you determine how much idleness is ok? Saying "if you reject a single ride you lose your minimum wage" doesn't seem ok, because that punishes them for exercising their right as an independent contractor.
This also still runs into the question of what happens if the driver is driving for multiple services? They may have relatively little idle time, but each independent service sees the driver as having a lot of idle time (any time they're on a competitor's job).
Re: NYC sets $17 an hour minimum wage for Uber and Lyft drivers
#10Bureaucracy to solve a problem created by bureaucracy in the first place.
They should really have let the free market play its hand here. To take the pressure off medallion owners, add some 0.5% tax per ride and use the collections to buy out some medallions.
Setting a min wage is the wrong way to go about it. The whole point of progress is to make things cheaper.