I drove for Uber and it was seriously the only job I could get and it saved my life. I know of many other drivers who are battling disabling conditions who drive for Uber as well. Jobs that are as flexible as Uber are non-existent.
I find it really disappointing how many people debate this issue without ever actually listening to the people in poverty. That means talking to real people doing the job. Not just the protestors in the streets. And frankly, if you have time to protest, you're probably not that poor. The poorest of the poor work whenever they can and do not spend time on things that don't earn them money.
i dont know what protests you've been attending but the one's ive helped at for laundry and warehouse workers were filled with people that were not only supporting families on minimum wage but also contained people who were here on visas.
in america you're always taking a risk by protesting an employer.
This is, ultimately the major reason why the status quo never changes here: people dont want to acknowledge their class.
The ideal approach is two pronged, you raise the standard which benefits society as a whole and increase the social safety net to take care of those few lost in transition.
The same principle applies to a wide variety of economic changes from increased labor regulations, to housing, to free trade, to automation. Your complaint here is mainly that we haven't followed through on protecting those caught in transition. We shouldn't fall into the trap of mistaking that for a valid criticism against raising the societal standard.
I think the best way to increase wages is more and more jobs so that workers have bargaining power. I've used Uber as a fall-back and it dramatically increases my bargaining power.
People don't work in sweatshops because they love the job, they do it because its better than any of their alternatives
A group of people have been living off the land for centuries. At some point a government comes in and takes the land from them to sell to a factory owner so the government can profit. With no land to farm, working at that factory becomes their best option. But the workers get abused. Women get raped. Their pay is stolen. Still they don’t have a better option. They try to unionize. The government police come in and kill the union leaders. The people keep working there because they have no better option. That does not mean the situation isn’t horrible.
It’s not enough to say they chose this job freely. A lot of coercion goes on. How prevalent is this stuff? I’m not sure. But don’t assume most sweatshop workers just decided this was best with no coercion. People like you and me aren’t paying much attention and a lot of bad stuff happens when we’re not looking. It doesn’t help that corporations benefit greatly from reduced labor prices and so the media and advertisers don’t want to talk about these issues.
Here’s a great documentary on some of these issues: https://youtu.be/PxFwA-jw3X4
Rural life is dull, you have a limited social circle and limited access to culture. And you have few opportunities. People today still crowd into overpriced cities with poor living conditions, because they dream of 'making it', and they can't bear the thought of toiling away at agriculture (or at a lesser job).
In China, an entire generation has been uplifted out of poverty by voluntarily relocating off of farms and into manufacturing jobs, and it's been so successful that it's cited as a reason for the popularity of current authoritarian leadership.
We're not talking about subsistence farming vs driving for Uber here.
>People don't work in sweatshops because they love the job, they do it because they are desperate
>People don't work in sweatshops because they love the job, they do it because its better than any of their alternatives
The first statement is often part of a moral argument against exploitation and expressed in conjunction with a an desire or indifference to eliminating the job. The second is usually used in an argument which frames the worker as a rational actor and lacks the moral judgement.
A common, if inflammatory, example is sex work. On one hand, sex workers can be seen a desperate, vulnerable, and forced by circumstances into an inherently exploitative relationship. Those that hold this position often believe that sex work should be made or kept illegal to protect the individuals from this exploitation.
The alternative framing is that sex workers choose the job because it is the least bad of the available options. Removing the option will only push workers into a less preferable occupation.
- what appears like sweatshops are actually significantly preferable working conditions for the local population; workshops are hot and crowded sure, but it’s sheltered and beats back-breaking farming, where pests can eat your yearly revenue overnight; (that point you agree with, as far as I can tell)
- so much that, in some conditions “sweatshops” are a positive thing and local people are excited over it: they show up early, some singing, in their best clothes; (I have no evidence of this handy right now, you might disagree but if you read the first point, it shouldn’t be a surprise); example of that is the young rural Chinese workers who were happy to be hosted on bunk beds at Foxconn and others because that meant they could save more money, talking about it like Facebook grads talk about free food; that effect might not last, doesn’t appear to have for Foxconn (or Facebook);
- in the early conditions, “sweatshops” are great and external political forces trying to ban them, or more often regulate them out of profitability i.e. existence, comes off as horribly misguided attempts; an extreme version of “better is the enemy of good” difficult to parse for a population without many options;
- adding expensive controls works against workers’ expressed interests that could be either a. legitimate but conditional (they need the money and the local standards are low, working fast is a tiring but reasonable way to achieve their goal) or b. the capitalist version of Stockholm syndrome. In my experience, it’s nowhere easy to sort the two edge-cases apart. If that’s the case, a market-liberal option is to let bad employers loose their workers by making sure there’s low employment overall, the places with real opportunities can poach them away. Also essential: personal growth needs to happen; I wasn’t super hopeful that “the market” would deliver until Lambda school.
That line of reasoning has been the first criticism of trade and workers’ unions since the XIXth century and the vertiginous growth of the Industrial revolution: they defend current tradesmen and employees against newcomers. I think trade unions can do amazing things to help spread the wealth but I would be wary about that edge.
There are newer arguments in favour of Uber in that sense:
- how easy it is to get a job, fast even: a massive upside of Uber is that you can enrol under a day and get paid within seconds of dropping your passenger; people with stranger schedules, deaf people, with non-violent criminal background have testified in that sense; anyone familiar with “Growth”, especially on a platform would recognise the approach;
- at this point, “unintended” consequences are widely documented; public servants should expect rules like that would back-fire, and adapt their rulings; Uber’s margins or lack thereof are public; other similar companies have left markets, leaving their workers in the dust; it’s easy to confuse the valuation of an IPO with free cash, to mistake Growth for Profit (God knows every reporter covering tech makes that mistake) but I doubt that Uber can afford to raise compensation by a lot;
- there are now many alternatives in the gig-economy: bad employers cannot retain workers; e.g. Amazon’s warehouse would not retain anyone if they were that bad. I’m less familiar with Amazon and convinced by that one, but if you go on money-making/saving forums, you’ll notice how so many contributors have tried and compared dozens of gig-platforms. The common thread? Everyone there started by being excluded from the standard employment market by personal circumstances, unintended consequences of regulation, prejudice or sometimes just being a terrible human begin. But that’s the starting point.
I really don’t think that the gig economy is the solution: banning 29-hour limits, having incentives to accommodate for handicap, family life, etc. for any business that can shift hours also need to be in place. Few people want a series of gigs; for the few who do, what many of those companies have done isn’t worse than the alternative. For the many who want a stable, predictable job, I don’t think the solution is to regulate industries where tasks are, say, very time-specific.
Disclaimer: I’ve worked for Deliveroo (the non-US equivalent to Doordash) and dealt with those questions a lot. I’m overall proud of the work there, from many personal contacts with riders; I also have a litany of complaints handy, mainly because it was my job to prioritise them all (and there were a lot and many were really bad but not as bad as unemployment/dealing drugs/failing to make it as a Grime singer).
I would have a more critical take against Uber Taxi, mainly around how they abused the financial illiteracy of their workers. That’s one aspect I would certainly want to see regulated.
If the government really care about worker well being then the government should directly help them, instead of using company as middleman. For example by providing universal health care or universal basic income.
What is the purpose of the labor protection in the first place ? To help the worker right ? Then why not just directly help the worker.
Instead of forcing company to provide health care to their worker, why not the government itself provide health care directly.
Just because the fix is easier and more likely to achieve but if it doesn't address the core issue, its useless.
This shows up anytime people try to make some sort of progressive improvement to society, people come out of the woodwork to complain that it's not the right solution, without doing anything (other than complaining I guess) to motivate a better solution.