Or perhaps Uber are actually providing a useful source of work to drivers who otherwise wouldn't be working at all?
Being self employed can have its benefits but Uber drivers enjoy very few of those.
Labor can be exploited only when a corporation can sidestep the organized labor pool and tap into the pool of labor that demands no protections. If most Americans thought as you did, I don't think American corporations could get away with paying their employees such pitiful wages and benefits.
It is not easy to go and work as a traditional taxi driver in London. There are various regulations on taxis and taxi drivers in the UK anyway, and in addition, in London taxi drivers are required to pass an infamously difficult test known as The Knowledge proving that they can navigate effectively around London streets.
One of the big objections to Uber and the like is that they attempt to bypass some of those regulations and that training, and the regulations and training are there for a reason. To the extent that this confers a competitive advantage to Uber drivers over black-cabbies, it's a rather unfair one.
So, obviously those rules don't matter as much to customers as convenience, price and availability do.
In some ways, black cabs are obviously superior. To pick a few examples, their pricing is regulated by local authorities, they are required to be wheelchair accessible, and their drivers are required to have The Knowledge along with various other qualifications before being licensed.
To the extent that black cabs may be at a competitive disadvantage compared to Uber's standard (non-surge) pricing, that is in part because Uber's current financial model seems to be subsidising every journey using the vast amounts of funding they have accepted. That is not sustainable. It is also in part because of exactly the sort of issues we're talking about today, where they've been cutting their costs at the expense of their drivers in legally questionable ways, which again is hardly playing on a level field.
* Rude
* Will demand payment in cash, and only when you threaten them with non-payment repeatedly will allow you to pay with credit cards, DESPITE agreeing to it beforehand.
* Unwilling to stop where the customer wants them to
* Don't get out of the car to put luggage in the trunk
I hate Uber's labour practices, but there are major issues with black cabs.
To work as as a Black Cab in London you have to do The Knowledge - which can take several years to complete https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/taxis-and-private-hire/licensing...
Especially when they start off the wrong way or take a wrong turn and their map app dutifully encourages them around some longer path.
It doesn't mean that I can target disadvantaged people for slavery. Uber needs to be held to proper standards.
* several government sanctioned intermediaries get a cut (who, I'm sure, are entirely unrelated to the politicians running the city)
* direct tax is paid on the taxi cab licence to the government
The majority of minicab companies operate as an agency.. which keeps the operating company below the VAT threshold. Uber reduces their liability in the same way.
Mini cab drivers have private hire licence (not a Hackney carriage licence, that a taxi which trawls the street looking for a fare)... Uber drivers have he same license as Minicab drivers.
A mini cab is usually ordered by phoning up the agency, and the driver picks up at your location... Uber you use an app, but the process is the same. Neither are allowed to be hailed from the road.
With minicabs, the car and fuel is often provided by the agency.. which makes it more of an employer than uber (where the car and fuel is provided by the self-employed contractor)!
I agree with these articles: https://www.ft.com/content/7ca2f852-b5b5-11e7-a398-73d59db9e... https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/27/uber-says...
Uber is simply a better version of private hire, I don't think that's in dispute by anyone. But how does it compare against taxis seems to be what the discussion is about.
If they're employees, they get a lot of rights and protections that maybe aren't common at all in the US. Companies like Uber (and e.g. construction companies, marketing agencies, etc) will push people to become self-employed so that the employer has no obligations or responsibilities whatsoever to the employee. This will allow them to out-compete the companies (like Black Cab in London) heavily, at the cost of the workers.