I guess AB5 is much more strict.

The modifications discussed in the top-level post address the A and C portions of the test, but not B unfortunately. The B clause is very broad, so likely has ramifications for many tech companies.

Taken to its furthest extent, AB5 makes Airbnb hosts Airbnb employees, Amazon marketplace sellers Amazon employees, eBay sellers eBay employees, Twitch streamers Twitch employees, etc.

[1] https://www.californiaemploymentlawreport.com/2019/03/unders...

Airbnb: no, because hosts aren't being paid for providing services, they're being paid for providing access to their accommodations. Its a subtle distinction but one that matters legally since it means there isn't a compensation-for-work arrangement. (A host can choose to voluntarily go above and beyond, but that's not required or expected.)

Amazon Marketplace and eBay: No. The Amazon marketplace acts like a real marketplace, so sellers transact with the buyers for AM purchases and Amazon acts as an agent of the seller in that transaction. Sellers determine what they sell on Amazon, how much they charge for the products they sell, and are largely responsible for acquiring sales traffic on their own. Sellers independently acquire and own the inventory they sell on Amazon, and can sell on their own websites or on competitors' websites. Crucially, Amazon isn't paying AM sellers for their labors in selling products. They only receive payment for goods actually sold, meaning again, there is no compensation-for-work arrangement.

Also, for Amazon and eBay: AB5 carves out exceptions for direct sales, in this context defined as any sales not made through a retail store, so direct sales salespersons may continue to be treated as contractors or employees as the business so chooses.

Twitch: Possibly! Twitch and streamers are in the business of streaming live video. Streamers are usually exclusive to a particular streaming service. And generally, except for the biggest streamers, they are unable to set or negotiate their own rates for streaming.

BUT...Twitch doesn't actually pay streamers for streaming; most of them do it for free. When it does pay streamers, it pays them commissions and marketing fees for any ad revenue, sales of digital products, or subscriptions tied to their channels (even if not actually arising from streaming), and marketing services and commission-based arrangements are largely excluded from AB5. And generally, for the bigger streamers, it pays them through personal companies so that AB5 does not apply (since AB5 does not apply to contracts between two legal entities).

Twitch is really the least employee vs employer relationship as payment is essentially independent of specific actions preformed by the streamer. It’s not like a streamer is paid to beat a boss, or even play a specific game it’s a question of entertaining people.

IMO it’s the closest to a ‘new economy‘ out there, though sharing roots with earlier real time online performers (porn).

But on that note, a lot of people seem to be ignoring the crucial differences in the transactional relationships between the parties for websites like eBay.

Sellers use eBay to conduct auctions and sell their goods. They have control over inventory, pricing, starting and ending auctions, accepting final bids, etc. eBay as acts the seller's agent and provides services to the seller with respect to transactions similar to how an employee or contractor would. IOW, eBay is acting as a contractor to the seller.

Similarly, for AirBnB, hosts use AirBnB as a marketplace for provider hoteling services. AirBnB is acting as their booking agent and payment collections agent for the host. IOW, AirBnb is acting as a contractor to the host. To the extent that AirBnB itself is paying the hosts (and is not merely passing along money from guests), it isn't for providing hoteling services on AirBnB's behalf, rather it's an incentive for making a property available on the AirBnB marketplace. (I know this because my former employer got paid $$$ to make certain beachside properties it owned available for booking on AirBnB, and these payments were separate from payments we received related to AirBnb-booked stays.)

For Uber/Lyft, the relationship is reversed. The driver is acting as an agent for Uber/Lyft: Uber/Lyft assigns them a ride, and they must provide the ride to get paid. Moreover, in contrast to actual marketplaces, the amount drivers get paid by Uber is not directly tied to the amount charged to the passenger; indeed, driver's generally do not know how much riders actually pay for a trip unless they ask the rider what they're getting charged. This indicates that the transactional relationship for both the driver and the passenger is with Uber, not each other. (Further explanation would dive into principles of contract law, so I leave it to you for further research if you want to go down that path.)

Hotels aren't classified as a service in the US? Or is this going along with the fiction that Airbnb is different from hotels (and not subject to regulations etc) the same way uber isn't a taxi service?

If the separation on that mindfuck is 'register a corp / LLC', then what prevents drivers making an LLC to drive for uber?

[1] https://www.ftb.ca.gov/file/business/doing-business-in-calif...

Nothing prevents drivers from registering LLCs to drive for uber, and that is in fact what the CA DOL website says is a bare minimum for satisfying another part of AB5.

So, I really don’t understand what your trying to convey.

Uber is a mess.

It clearly needs to be a franchise.

You have Mother Uber that develops the app and sells the franchise and Uber SF, Uber LA, Uber Seattle etc that hires the drivers. It's utterly unclear to me what efficiencies can be found for having one company doing all that.

Think bigger. Why should transportation infrastructure (which is a public good) be controlled by a private, for-profit corporation?

Reforming public institutions to more effectively build public transportation infrastructure seems to be incredibly difficult. Local institutions seem to have maxed out their ability to improve beyond what exists.

So why not let the private market innovate and improve? If the public institutions where smarter they'd be taking advantage of these innovations the same way as has happened in reverse when public institutions have had success with innovation.

I can see Uber desperately looking for non-obvious applications for its core software to strengthen its argument.

Suggestions?

They also have a vertical agnostic "Uber Works"[2] that lets contract workers find jobs, sort of like Fiverr or TaskRabbit.

They also partnered with the Thames Clipper to allow passengers to book tickets on the ferry in London[3]. You'd have a hard time arguing that the Thames Clipper staff would be considered Uber employees, even under the AB-5 test.

[1] https://www.uber.com/us/en/freight/

[2] https://www.uber.com/blog/chicago/uberworks/

[3] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/uber-boat-lo...

UBER could theoretically function without the technology (a taxi service) but it could not function without the drivers, yet. If the fleet was driverless, then of course, they wouldn't have these problems in the first place.

Gig companies are market makers. By their very nature they are sitting in the middle of transactions and would be without a job without the transacting parties. Are all transacting parties therefore employees of market makers?

There are existing, relatively easily identified examples: tech companies hiring (on contract) workers to provide janitorial or cafeteria services, retailers hiring contracts to fix plumbing or install fixtures in their stores, landlords hiring individuals to paint homes, and the list could go on.

The "usual course of business" has a clear legal definition under California law: "the regular and customary work of a business, performed within or upon the premises or worksite of the client employer."

In the case of Uber, "software development" and "drivers" clearly are required in the "ordinary and regular and expected course of dealings" in their marketplace. The company's entire premise is built on connecting drivers to passengers via a software platform: they don't have a business without both of those things. One might argue over whether drivers' cars count as a "worksite", or whether remote workers working from home count as working from a "worksite" or "on premise"--but those arguments would be thin and shallow.

Regardless, I see you specifically haven't addressed the market maker question. Please articulate a standard by which eBay's on-premise customary work is software development but a gig tech company's isn't. That's literally their regular and customary work of business that is performed on premise at HQ by a workforce that they can actually control (call to work and dismiss). There is no difference between those employees and drivers, huh? None at all? No market maker would have a business without participants doing their own work. The argument is neither thin nor shallow. It gets to the point of whether you can be in the business of making a market for contract labor or services. You seem to argue that that cannot be a business at all, and for what reason exactly?

That argument reminds me of the George Costanza quote, "It's not lying, if you believe it."

Regardless of what they consider themselves, everybody else thinks of them as a big taxi company.

> Taken to its furthest extent, AB5 makes Airbnb hosts Airbnb employees, Amazon marketplace sellers Amazon employees, eBay sellers eBay employees, Twitch streamers Twitch employees, etc.

I don't think it does, and that sounds like FUD. Do you have any references of those businesses actually being required to reclassify vendors as employees?

All the actions on the state's part points to bad faith.

Also, the legal wrangling over this started long before Covid.

It's fine to be politically motivated, however it's not good faith to be motivated against specific businesses while pretending to be following a broad principle that then needs exemption holes poked all over it to make work. It indicates there is no principle being followed, or at least they don't know what it should be, a situation which everyone should agree is dangerous.

Edit: corrected the year

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8134323

https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2014/01/08/big-liabi...

Raising the question that on-the-job injuries for drivers for the three could bring liability to the platform; no distinction for Sidecar:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenhuet/2015/01/06/workers-co...

So yes, I'm skeptical that there's anyone out there who would actually follow through and recognize a driver as a contractor even if they had 100% control of who they accepted that platform really were just a matchmaker.

Edit: If nothing else, I think that shows that SC was significant enough to be talked about alongside Uber.

Courts are not everyday people. For decades they gave lip service to a variety of factors, but inevitably each decision turned on one question: how are taxes handled? If the employer is managing the payment or withholding of taxes, then the worker was an employee. That is changing slowly but remains very much a determining factor.

The incentives for drivers have always been fucked. I'd rather the drivers not accept my ride than try to play a weird game of chicken to get me to cancel when I'm trying to get somewhere.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://globalnews.ca/news/3907475/taxi-driver-refuses-to-dr...

Medallion-taxis are comprehensively awful, and California seems determined to regress to where they're the only choice for riders again.

Uber was, and remains, a huge improvement over the pre-Uber status quo.

Taxi companies are monopolies allowed by the state, it sucks for the last ones who paid $300,000 for a license to operate just before Uber took off, but technology finds its way.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/postever...

In a competitive market, this should happen much less. And the big innovation of ride sharing is it gives a valuable tool to drivers judge potential fares with besides their appearance or pickup location, specifically their rating.

And if a woman for some sexist reason can refuse a fare, why can't a man refuse a fare if, e.g., he does not like the destination area because it is riddled with crime and he is exponentially more likely to be robbed?

[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/06/12/interracial...

Yes, it can absolutely happen that you pick someone up and they end up raping you. The opposite happens too, you order up an Uber when you're drunk and end up the raped one yourself. While the app might possibly offer information that makes it easier to get justice in the future, and while that may dissuade some folks, in the end crimes of opportunity like this will continue to happen.

Intelligent, self-preserving people will always use their own personal heuristics for risk management regardless of political correctness. If this ends up looking prejudiced, the problem to solve is the input information (in the form of observed events and news) that causes the prejudice, not to tell the person to just pretend that there's no reason to have such a risk calculation.

Apparently it's possible for a rather slow week to happen, in combination with rides that mean a loss for the driver.

I can't help but think that the business is quite tough.

But part of the social contract is that employees, having given up that autonomy, need someone else to advocate for them collectively. Thus... labor rights and benefits legislation.

Frankly this whole thing seems silly. They knew where this was going when AB5 was passed. Those features aren't a good faith attempt to comply with the law, they were an attempt to evade it (something very much in keeping with Uber's culture).

The only real surprise here was that the final reckoning came sooner than expected via injunction.

> Those features aren't a good faith attempt to comply with the law

There can be no good attempt to comply with this (completely terrible) law from Uber, since this law was meant to outlaw the whole business model Uber is using. Uber was founded on creating a novel working model, which didn't exist before. California decided to outlaw this model wholesale. The only "good faith attempt" from Uber to deal with it can be to stop operating in California completely. Of course the same goes for Lyft and any other company which uses "freelance employee" model.

Actually, it's very simple: treat them as employees, including granting required benefits and paying them at least minimum wage for time worked (presumably at the higher of either minimum wage or per-trip earnings for the time period).

Nothing about this is incompatible with allowing employees to pick their own working hours.

Also restaurants refuse to deliver to poor neighborhoods after their delivery person gets robbed there once or twice. I've seen this problem in New York.

The employee debate has near uniformly turned into dialing back rider protections, removing up front costs and handing drivers more control. The employee requirements will unquestionably increase ride costs and decrease driver availability. This is going to worsen access to poor neighborhoods and add costs on people who cannot afford to pay them, making ride share further restricted to "good" neighborhoods and higher income folks.

Well no, it's just the opposite. When everyone is a "contractor" you can get a ride in a poor neighborhood, you just have to pay the market rate for getting a ride there.

When you try to legislate it, then you get avoidance. The driver gets assigned and then suddenly has "car trouble" or becomes ill. You summon a ride but it doesn't show up for 45 minutes because all of the drivers avoid being anywhere near that area if it means they could be forced to go there.

Whereas if you just pay the market rate then a driver shows up right away because they're getting paid extra to do it. And if you don't like that rides cost more in poor neighborhoods then the government could subsidize it explicitly, instead of creating all of these perverse incentives by trying to force people to do something they otherwise wouldn't be willing to do for that amount of money.

Which also puts a dollar value on the subsidy and makes it explicit, so that we can see how much we're paying in order to get it, instead of sweeping it under the rug by making the cost implicit even though it's still there.

> And if you don't like that rides cost more in poor neighborhoods then the government could subsidize it explicitly

OK, how does that work? How do you write such a law such that it can't be exploited? Are there any examples of this kind of regulation you can point to from other markets or other legal regimes or nations or whatever?

I mean, this seems crazy to me, but it's also an opportunity to get you to engage on a genuine issue of social justice (c.f. "it shouldn't cost money to be poor"), so I'm willing to make the effort.

Calculating the amount is finicky because the subsidy itself is going to affect the market pricing. But in the end, as long as there is a competitive market for both drivers and ride share companies, you know whether the subsidy is too high or too low because the subsidized cost of a ride there will be more or less than it is in other places (rather than exactly the same as you're trying to make it).

Because if the subsidy was too high then there would be "too many" drivers and the subsidized price would fall below what's required, and if the subsidy was too low then the opposite.

That often even stays the case when the mail service gets privatized.

I’ve never heard of such services to originally be privatized, though, or of the service to be privatized to multiple providers (say with one company serving the large cities and another the countryside, or one doing half the country, and another doing the other half)

Also: are you sure this is libertarianism? I would think subsidies can’t exist in a libertarian world because the government doesn’t exist there.

This is a relatively new model, although makes a lot of sense (lower cost and more flexibility to operate uber pools vs empty buses late at night). It is not a stretch to assume you could get income based "discount cards" for uber usage.

Boston is incredibly segregated and in the area I live in is less than 10% white. It's not a coincidence that this is the only area in the city I've ever had trouble getting a ride to (roughly 200 total rides).

Uber eliminated that problem. It would be terrible to go back to that system where drivers can just refuse you based on where you are going or what you look like.

But in reality, that's just innumeracy.

Or any "drop me off within the ongoing protest" ride, really.

'Getting dragged out of your car and beaten'? No, unless the police do it (https://www.newsbreak.com/georgia/atlanta/news/1577488884462...).

The one where a man drove into protestors and shot one of them, or one of the four non-related-to-protest shootings in a neighborhood that had been suddenly abandoned by police and already had a high violent crime rate compared to the rest of the city?

> people beat up the car as it drives through

That's an inevitable result of somebody trying to push through a crowd that won't move. If you sit there, nobody moves out of the way, and you hit the gas anyway, people will inevitably try to damage the car to make you stop again, because you could kill somebody doing that.

I was thinking specifically of the "two black teenagers shot, one killed" incident that made the news everywhere. The fact that there were others is itself a great reason for Uber drivers to not want to drive there. (Protester's fault or something else, it's still dangerous)

> That's an inevitable result of somebody trying to push through a crowd that won't move. If you sit there, nobody moves out of the way, and you hit the gas anyway, people will inevitably try to damage the car to make you stop again, because you could kill somebody doing that.

It's an inevitable consequence on both sides. The driver sitting still who gets spooked by people banging on their windows and floors it is also a predictable outcome. (There's reasons that protests normally have streets closed off, and it's not just for the protesters containment) Personally I'd put both driving up to a crowd AND surrounding a car on foot as "play stupid games, win stupid prizes" - for exactly this reason.

Portland, Seattle and Chicago are examples of the cities which had recently well-documented examples of some areas being dangerous and carrying risk of violent encounters.

Pretending this isn't a reality or that it doesn't have an impact on someone driving for a living is pretty asinine.

  Are HN posters really so sheltered that they don't know that this is a reality in many major American cities?

The incidents reported are reality, however that doesn't mean the picture being painted isn't misleading.

They exaggerate that the mob dragged a man out of his car, and they exaggerate that he was kicked in the head and rendered unconscious. In fact, they exaggerate so much that they had to take him into the ER. To me, it paints a completely misleading picture that in Portland you could be run off the road, dragged out of the car and beaten unconscious. Surely if reported properly, they'd notice there are thousands of people in Portland who weren't beaten senseless that night, so we'd better focus on that.

Not that I want you to have a bad experience. Not that all cities are so bad, or that you're guaranteed a bad time everywhere. There's plenty of good left. But it's easy for someone who doesn't have their wits about them and doesn't know where to avoid to end up in the wrong place and have things go sideways. Don't be that person.

Also nobody is forced to do so. You can decline rides. There might be penalties after too many cancellations but it was a much better system than taxis, which were mandated by law but had no oversight and so pretty much always declined for the slightest of reasons.

At the current rate, the gig industry will be regulated out of california and other regions that follow suit (this surely sets regulatory precedence for others). The product won't be at a mass market compelling price point without a better legal framework for gig workers until self driving technology catches up. Its best hope to make it work (and what Uber is lobbying for) is a third 'worker' classification between contractor and employee like what the UK has.

These changes make Uber become more like the traditional taxi world, which is quite honestly what people hated about taxis but had to live with anyways because it was such a regulated environment and filled with cronies in many cities.

The problem is that the law does not account for ‘gig workers’, so produces are shoehorned into one extreme or the other.

I don’t think that Uber drivers should be employees, but I think the law should afford (enforce companies to give) them more protection than they get as ‘contractors’.

It’s funny - the laws and regulations changed to accommodate ride sharing, creating specific schemes for them. But it hasn’t for this new bread of worker.

Gig-working enjoyed unregulated market, which is great for efficiency. But law is catching up now.

Note - I'm not arguing that laws passed by government are correct. But they're in line with what government thinks it should be doing, and how they act in other business areas.

If "basic economics" produce a result that is clearly unethical or a detriment to society then it can be ignored.

I can think of quite a few other businesses who would love to toss out all employee protections and benefits. I'm sure it would slightly lower prices and improve efficiency here and there. Is that worth the cost though?...

This same faulty argument is made often to argue you shouldn’t reduce exploitative child or sex labor, especially in developing countries, but it’s not valid.

If Uber employment option is exploitative, you cannot use drivers’ own willingness to accept work via that platform as some tacit endorsement that “consenting adults” are each ok with the arrangement, because the exploitative nature creates a duress / desperation aspect that means you can’t differentiate between drivers who are fully aware of the situation they are agreeing to and are happy to do it vs people who were banking on Uber being very different and now find themselves underwater on a car loan and not making enough for health insurance and thus unable to stop driving and look for other work because of a nasty feedback loop or reinforcing problems.

Part of a governments job is to set up rules whereby such a situation cannot be entered into in the first place, given that by doing so you become stuck in it under duress (eg not having health insurance, paid rest periods, etc.).

You may argue the model can regress to essentially taxis. But realize that taxis work due to artificial supply side restrictions generally using a medallion system and strict limits on numbers. This is fundamentally different from Uber where there is basically no restriction on supply.

But I think in the case of Uber it’s beyond debate that drivers, as an overall class, are not better off “having the freedom” to work under Uber’s (or other firm’s) poor conditions.

I’d say the same thing of Amazon warehouse workers too.

The conditions of these employment agreements should become legally not possible, so that workers don’t become effectively indentured servants to a working agreement that makes them worse off than some societally agreed standard, and feeling trapped and having the bad working conditions create a feedback mechanism bu which they can’t realistically choose to stop that working agreement and seek betterment.

These examples, in American standards, are egregious, nowhere close to any boundary where the government is asking unreasonable concessions of Uber.

If meeting these conditions doesn’t allow Uber to remain financially solvent, then Uber is not and never was a business, only a scam.

If better jobs existed, drivers could go there now. If any company can fulfill these regulations, I would expect it to be companies that already have market share like Lyft and Uber. If they choose to shut down because they can't meet these regulations and be viable businesses, then I'm not really optimistic about your other argument either. Personally, I'd be even less likely than ever to try and do (or invest in) an Uber-like startup after this decision.

The fact that Uber was their #1 choice means Uber driving was an upgrade for their options.

There is a reason that 60% of their drivers leave after 6 months.

https://www.businessofapps.com/data/uber-statistics/

More likely people don't find out the true costs of being an Uber driver until they wear out their cars, and have to start paying for repairs and maintenance. When your car is in the shop for 3 days, you can't make any money, so you're getting a double hit.

If Uber was so great, people would be sticking around.

It's mainly this.

I did a deep dive on Doordash during the pandemic/lockdown while I was going back to school for Supply Chain and Logistics as I wanted to take a better look at how it worked. I even did a few dashes myself.

And the people I spoke to, including the owners of the resteraunts, weren't aware of the many hidden costs of these gig economy services. Which is why you have vigilantes like the guy who did that Pizza DD arbitrage and then went on to tell the the whole World about it and ended with; F' Doordash [1]. Then the taxes as an independent contractor at the end of the year are something they seldom take into account as they've never been an independent contractor before.

These systems are pretty damn predatory and I think the people (business and tech side) who work on them should have to do a mandatory couple of shifts on their own dime every month to get a perspective of what is occurring.

When I lived in Switzerland, one of the coolest things I heard about certain management roles was about how the SBB requires that management and above have to do the more 'menial' work to get a better grasp of what is occurring at the passenger level and help improve the system. My friend was a manager of one of the branches in Bern and she had to go around and collect tickets and clean the train once in a while.

She said it is humbling, but also very useful as it helps her tackle some issues she wasn't even made aware of. Gig economy work has the reputation it does, but the loftier position at these places are extremely isolated from what is actually taking place, which seems like it could be much more of a disconnect than outright malice that's occurring--or at least I'd like to believe that.

'$2 Buck Tony [Xu]' should go back and do it again himself and see how he deals with the app crashes and delayed in order processing.

1: https://themargins.substack.com/p/doordash-and-pizza-arbitra...

I agree that Uber is not so great but I'm not sure about this logic. I can imagine other reasons for people not sticking around than them being duped, perhaps that many people just start Ubering when they're temporarily between other jobs, or students doing it during the summer.

1) It was VASTLY cheaper due to VC cash subsidy attempting to become the single monopoly. That's not an "efficient market"--that's predatory--and eventually the cities will have to deal with the aftermath in the cab system when Uber/Lyft collapse.

2) My feedback could hit the driver directly--so the failure modes of cabs were prevented (not picking people up, taking too long to pick people up, not driving them where they want to go, taking stupid paths, etc.).

Not really. Most taxi drivers are 1099 contractors as well. They pay the dispatcher a cut of the fair for connecting them with the ride. They either own their cab and medallion, or rent them from the dispatch company.

It will be interesting to see if Cali prosecutors go after the dispatch companies the way they are going after uber and lyft.

Not having this was a feature for Uber's customers when they were still in Southeast Asia.

Grab (Uber's competitor, mainly in Asia) allowed drivers to see their proposed destinations, and the experience just wasn't as good.

A rideshare company could theoretically be just a pure lead generation platform but the economic forces preventing that is the nature of multi-sided platforms: The drivers don't hold all the leverage. The other actor in the multi-sided platform are passengers/customers who _pay the money_.

If Uber was only lead gen, they would be outcompeted by another company that offered all the following conveniences:

+ predictable fixed price to prevent customer anxiety of overcharging

+ integrated payment processing so no worry of drivers playing games such as, "my Square credit card processor doesn't work so you need to pay cash"

+ driver ratings for reputation

... because customers/passengers value those features.

If you create a rideshare platform that's too advantageous to the drivers (e.g. no ratings, can charge variable fare per mile, etc), it would end up being hostile to potential customers and it won't attract enough paying fares to be financially sustainable.

Or that those services couldn't still be offered by independent companies, so the customer still has them but the drivers are still contractors because they're not employees of the lead gen company nor the driver ratings company nor the payment app company. It merely so happens that the lead gen company shows the customer whether the driver accepts that payment app and is listed with that rating service.

Taxi driving contractors have less autonomy than uber drivers, but you don't see Cali prosecutors going after taxi companies.

To their drivers? They are a shittier taxi company that doesn't provide cars, yet still charges drivers 25% of fares in exchange for legal protection against taxi laws and customers/brand.

What these changes amount to is removing qualification from the leads, which to me seems like the sort of anti-consumer outcome the law should not produce.

But arguably, that was because Uber/Lyft had an unfair advantage from being able to exercise tight control over drivers while not having to obey regulations for employees, while Sidecar had more limited control over drivers. If everyone had to use the Sidecar model, it might work out, but you need equitable laws (that apply to everyone) to make that work.

All these changes Uber is doing just so that drivers are not employees.

The question here is: what is the problem with making drivers employees? How much money that will be?

Median health insurance cost is $600.

I'll focus on one particular point: allowing drivers to see where riders are going before they accept the trip. Uber, at least when I worked there, was heavily against this functionality as it allows drivers to discriminate against riders who are going to poor neighborhoods or from cities to suburbs where they may have difficulty in getting another rider. That feature is bad for the overall ecosystem. Because of it, you may not be able to get a ride to the airport during rush hour, or home from the bar when you live 30 minutes away from downtown. The overall service becomes less useful if there's doubt as to your ability to be able to use it when you need it.

This is exactly what being a contractor is though. Accepting contract work you'd like, and turning down work you don't. Otherwise you are an employee.

Where's the "sharing" in the "ride share" if the driver is forced to take any ride?

People need to get real and start calling it what it is. It's a taxi service. This is not ride sharing. The driver was not already going somewhere. The driver was waiting around for a call to pick someone up, and was going to take them where they wanted to go. Nothing is being shared. This is a Taxi service and the Uber app is the dispatcher.

If I was already going to work, and I picked someone up along the way, that's sharing a ride.

The only thing the driver is sharing is the money they are giving to their mechanic when all the around town driving wears out their car.

A true contractor in the rideshare space would have an individual contract with each rider, and could of course reject riders based on the terms of the contract (of which the target location is one). However, once a customer is accepted based on the agreed-upon terms (fare, target, number of passengers etc.) he wouldn't be able to throw the passenger out in the middle of the ride for no good reason.

If you now want to say that a rideshare contractor should not be able to reject a customer based upon the terms of the ride, I ask you: why shouldn't he? With whom does he have a contract that binds him? And you say: with Uber. And I say: yeah, and that's why your analogy is fundamentally flawed, why he isn't an individual contractor for each customer but simply an employee of Uber, with whom he has a contract that mandates him to accept all customers that Uber deems acceptable. Exactly like a plumber working at a plumbing company who also has to do plumbing work at any customer his boss sends him to, while his individually contracting plumber colleague can decide to decline or accept customers at his own discretion.

When the driver activates uber driver mode, they are initiating a contract which states they will work within the bounds of the app. The driver is able to terminate that contract at will and at any time, and reactivate it at will and at his leisure. When the contract is active, the driver has committed to operate within the pricing, pickup and dropoff structure of the platform - as in the driver has committed to minimize discrimination of their rides and accept the platform's rider oriented pricing structure.

I would doubt that, and I would also doubt that you can simply define opening an app as the beginning of a legally binding, entirely new contract with as many implications as Uber's driver contracts have. I am pretty sure that in reality, Uber signs a contract once with a new driver, after checking his background, driver license and everything, and that contract is active from that point in time until explicitly terminated by either party. Just closing the app does not terminate it, neither does opening the app create a new contract. Closing the app just amounts to the driver leaving his "workplace", opening it again amounts to the driver entering his "workplace", but the contract under which that work takes place is the same and active all the time, it just gives the driver a lot of leeway with regard to how many hours he wants to work.

That is a generous employment, but it is an employment nevertheless in nature.

If all your money comes via a single company, even if you phisically work at a different place each day, you should be an employee of that company.

...which is a positive feedback loop that should encourage them to pick up those previously declined routes. Or charge higher rates that better reflect their reluctance for those routes. Isn't that how supply & demand is supposed to work?

WRT to drivers not going to neighborhood I have a solution for you: let passengers offer higher pricers. This is not a new idea BTW

Society as a whole needs to answer the question "is it moral to roll a dice and offer a worse service to people who get an odd number?"

In my view, it is. As far as that person is concerned, they can pretend your company doesn't exist and go to another company (and maybe roll another dice)

Some other people would say "all businesses must treat all customers equally and fairly". In many ways, I don't see how this can be universally true - there is always the superstore that has run out of a product - why should Mrs Smith who picked up apples at 9am get some, when Mr Jones who tried to buy some at 9:15am finds the shelf empty? Thats unfair.

Instead I'd like to see a list of characteristics a business is not allowed to discriminate on (religion, race, etc.), and explicitly allow discrimination based on another list (random number, position in queue, length of service as a customer, etc.). Any other factor, judges can decide which list it falls into.

Companies have ALWAYS had test products that they offer to a subset of customers.

There's no legal test to be applied here.

I suspect that it will be in some cases. Does Uber have IRBs? What about other big tech companies?

If you work in a company and see them doing something immoral and possibly illegal, you should speak up or report the behavior.

1. https://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/regulations-and-policy/decision-cha...

That just indicates Uber is undercharging for these type of rides.

Incentives are not aligned.

I find it laughable to hear that Uber, the arch-enemy of the taxi business, attempts to (secretly, because obviously the customer isn't informed about drivers not seeing the target locations beforehand) rebuild this particular property of the system it aims to replace. And it's doubly laughable that they now stumble over that exact attempt, which they now can't actually continue, because in order to have the necessary authority over drivers they would need to make them official employees.

No one wants to go to airports anyway, they're a nightmare normally and are typically far from city centers and potentially further to a rider - so the fare goes up and you have surge pricing.

It's rather abusive and tyrannical to force people to do things against their will or safety. But I am guessing you live in a dangerous neighborhood because you did not "discriminate" and are paying really low rents since you don't discriminate. Right? … exactly!

But in a normal employer-employee relationship, this is totally typical. You can't sign up to be a firefighter but then refuse to go into burning buildings that you find too scary. You can't get a job as a developer and then refuse JIRA tickets you find boring, claiming that's your "human right."

In those cases, and with Uber as well, your free agency is that you can quit the job if you don't like it. But you have no fundamental right to be retained as an employee or contractor while refusing to do parts of the job you'd signed onto. The employer has their own right to terminate you if so.

Then, Uber can decide that they no longer want you to be a driver on their platform.

>should be compensated by Uber if they want that feature. Do you really think Uber has not gone through these thoughts millions of time in the past? I can personally tell you that these are things that are constantly discussed and evluated, with the primer driver of everything being the growth of the service.

In other words: Uber wants the service to be worse so they don't have to give drivers with health insurance. If people complain, that's to Ubers benefit, because they want to keep their indentured workers.

In the pay as you go system, you are at the mercy of the driver, and they are actually incentivized to take a longer route.

I've definitely had drivers take longer routes under the pay as you go system. I would complain to Uber and they would refund the money, but it was still a hassle to complain.

Upfront pricing is still calculated based on usage, but it sets a fair amount without giving up control and the potential for overages.