This is not the only way to employ workers, though.

We often think of "on the clock" employment in terms of shift work, where the worker has a scheduled, fixed-length shift with a single employer, and whether they're actively working during that time or waiting around for the employer to tell them what to do next, they're paid for the hours on the clock.

But it is possible for ridesharing companies to employ workers in "micro-shifts" that last the duration of a single ride.

So, Driver X has two part-time jobs: as a part-time employee of Lyft and a part-time employee of Uber. Driver X is ready to work, so checks the apps, and sees there's a Lyft assignment available. Driver X accepts the ride, and for the duration of that ride, he is working exclusively for Lyft, and Lyft pays him for the time worked. Once that ride ends, his micro-shift with Lyft ends, and he's now available to work for either of his part-time jobs again.

The idea of micro-shifts may seem, at first blush, more like a contractor relationship than an employee relationship. And in the past, gigs that used this model were more likely to involve a contractor relationship -- but they also gave the contractor much more freedom in terms of HOW they accomplished the work.

In contrast, if you look at Uber and Lyft, ignoring the micro-shift aspect, there is very little difference between how those jobs work and how other service-oriented part-time jobs work, in terms of the power the employer has to dictate HOW the work gets done.

In California though an issue with your "micros-shifts" is that California State Laws would apply things like call in pay for this and would also have to pay minimum hours for an employee showing up for a short shift. If an employee gets called in to do 30 minutes of work, the company has to pay the employee at least a certain amount of hours I think it's 2 or 4. So that micro shift of a 10 minute ride, Uber/Lyft would have to pay them 2-4 hours wages at a minimum. So the micro-shifts wouldn't work with current state laws. https://www.employmentlawhandbook.com/wage-and-hour-laws/sta...

That seems like a reasonable thing to change in the law

Yeah, I would much rather see lawmakers recognize that ridesharing workers are employees, and change the law to accommodate micro-shifts, than to say that because micro-shifts go against existing law, ridesharing workers can't possibly be employees.

That said, there is certainly a good reason for minimum-length shifts and on-call payments in other industries, so I'm willing to acknowledge that striking the right balance that protects workers across the board might be difficult.

This idea of micro-shifts sounds made up. Can you reference any companies that have this setup as an employer-employee relationship?

I've done tutoring for people in small increments like 15-30 minutes for questions before tests. That seems similar to micro-shifts though that is freelance. Lawyers have billable hours and work for multiple clients. Some firms do have compensation tied to billable hours as well. While it's not exactly the same thing the result feels similar to me.

Both of those examples aren't similar at at all.

Your freelance tutoring is not employer/employee work. You're a freelancer. You set your own hours and rates.

Lawyers do not work for multiple law firms, choosing which firm to work for as they see fit. Whereas drivers very often work for both Lyft and Uber (and Postmates or Grubhub, etc) at the same time.

Yes neither of my examples were exactly the same. I'm talking about feel and results and specifically I wasn't talking about how current drivers operate, I was talking about how the resulting circumstance might exist in the future.

But to go back to the tutoring example: if I was working for a tutoring company, agreed to take clients between lets say 1-5 PM, and the rate was set by the company, would that be similar enough?

No, you're a contractor in that example. There are high fixed costs to hiring an employee. You're not going to get anyone on board with these micro-shifts, period.

No, because tutoring companies don't give "microshifts" for this exact reason.

All that is true, but remember that we're operating within the realm of legal terminology here.

What the word "employee" means within the context of California labor laws is probably quite different from what we understand it to mean in everyday conversation. What one can imagine might work in an abstract sense may not be even remotely possible within California's legal framework. What is known to already happen and work well in other states isn't necessarily possible in California, either. (At least not without getting the legislature involved.)

Lawyers that do billable hours aren't the employees of the client they bill. So you actually are proving the point opposite to what you wanted to prove.

I'm not trying to prove anything, just exploring. Anyways, I'm talking about the result. I also don't know enough about CA employe law to make any claims, which I don't think I did.

>you can't be on the clock for two different companies at the same time

I mean, I don't see why not. Would create some inefficiencies. But I don't think there is a law against that.

When I was a BOFH, we had a guy working the night shift who would always be a little slow at getting processing done in time for the rest of corporate to show up and need their data. It was odd but I don’t remember anyone looking into it.

Until one time there was a problem with one of the jobs (which meant other jobs could not be run) and no one had their data in the morning. He was asked why he didn’t contact one of us for help and didn’t really have an answer.

The boss checked the cameras to figure out what this guy was doing. Turns out the guy came in, started as many of the jobs as could be run in parallel, then left to work his shift at another place, came back on his lunch break and fired off another round of jobs, left and finished his shift at the other place, then came back and finished his shift at our place (our shifts were 10-17 hours long). He was confronted and admitted it. I don’t recall if he was fired or if he quit.

Looks like his job could have been replaced with a script?

Absolutely. I wrote such a script as a proof-of-concept and was yelled at because it was considered a 'security risk' for me to use company tools to write code (as a not-hired-for-programming employee) even though I already had access to literally all the company's data and their security practices were such that exfiltrating their data without being caught would have been trivial even if I never placed any code on their systems. The place was extremely dysfunctional and there were significant trust issues that were completely irrational and inconsistent. So a script that did this job was largely out of the question.

Good for him for making the most of shitty situation.

I'm a bit more hesitant to cheer on fraud.

'Fraud' is an overstatement for someone described as doing their job sufficiently 99% of the time.

Was this employee hired to press some buttons then bugger off for a few hours? Or were they hired to ensure some jobs ran correctly? Also, were they paid to press some buttons and work for two hours a day, or were they collecting paychecks as if they'd worked for their full shift? I'm going to guess they didn't voluntarily decline 90% of their paycheck.

You can absolutely argue that the job was stupid and should be automated (it should've been) - you can absolutely argue about whether that person was feeling societal pressures to work two jobs and felt like this was the only way to make ends meet. Both of those points are tangential, though - a lot of folks face them.

He still either fraudulently reported hours (if paid hourly) or failed to meet the expectations of his employment contract. And, in the end, it actually caused other people to likely do overtime to cover up for his skimping.

I can clear things up a bit. First off, you're right. It absolutely was fraudulent. The job was being a butt-in-chair in case things went wrong more than it was typing a few keys. There were also some low priority tasks (irregular data entry, restocking printers with paper, etc.), but no one seemed to care if those jobs were done. My memory is very hazy regarding this detail so take it with a huge grain of salt, but I believe he quit because they offered him that versus being fired and charged with a crime. (There were some other shenanigans with other employees, and I can't be sure I'm not conflating things or making them up.)

> You can absolutely argue that the job was stupid and should be automated (it should've been)...

Yes. See my reply to another reply.

> you can absolutely argue about whether that person was feeling societal pressures to work two jobs and felt like this was the only way to make ends meet.

In this time and place, I worked three jobs (separately, and with my employers' full knowledge) and had all my bills paid off the first week of each month. With only (and any) one of those three jobs paying my bills off would have taken about 2.5 weeks. Each job was technically unskilled (although skills helped) and required only a high school diploma.) It was a very prosperous time with low unemployment. I've never been one for societal pressures, but this guy didn't have kids (neither did I at the time); which I think would have been the strongest defense.

> And, in the end, it actually caused other people to likely do overtime to cover up for his skimping.

It definitely had some downstream consequences... possibly overtime but I can't be sure, and although most of the people involved were salaried, on a personal level, they ended up staying later than they otherwise would have.

I’m not an expert in the matter, but I imagine that as employees, Lyft and Uber could more strictly penalize them for not accepting rides, which the driver would have to do pretty often if they were driving for multiple platforms simultaneously.

Can you expand on how that would work? Would you get minimum wage from each one?

Why can't they start the clock once they accept a ride?

Because labor law says that if you're ready and prepared to work for an employer, you have to be paid whether or not you're actively involved in something. Waiting around for a ride counts as "working", so you get paid for it.

It's the same reason that an employer can't make all their employees clock out when the factory production line stops to fix a problem.

If this is really the case (and I have my doubts) then wouldn't the two companies just create a joint employment pool by subcontracting out their workers to a third party which handled all the benefits and such and passed the necessary costs on to Uber & Lyft?

> If you're an employee on the clock, you can't be on the clock for two different organizations at the same time.

I don't see why that would not be possible.

I think here, "on the clock" also implies "available to drive" or "driving". I can't be driving two different people for two different companies at the same time, so I'm not really available to drive for both companies.

Because if they are driving someone for Uber, they can't be on the clock for Lyft.

But it is (physically) possible to be idle for both employers at the same time.

What happens if ride requests for both come in at the same time? Do you take the uber one or the lyft one? If you work for uber, you're obligated to take the uber ride. Ditto for lyft.

But it is possible to work out, technically.

Of course these companies prefer not to, because their business model is now based on exploiting workers.

This would require the employers to collude as to where to have you idling. (Employees don't get to pick exactly where they work.)

How so? That may be part of a given employment contract, but nothing in the legal definition of employment says it.

It's not part of the legal definition, it's a practical matter.

Assume the employers did not collude for an employee on shift at both employers during a given time period (say 9am-1pm):

- Uber says to idle near LAX, because that fits what Uber needs at that time.

- Lyft says to idle near BUR, because that fits what Lyft needs at that time.

Those locations are approximately 37 minutes away as I write this, despite both being quite logically in the same metro area. It's eminently reasonable to expect an employee to serve an area that encompasses (even much more than) the area between those two points, so an employee would not reasonably get a routine say in where inside the region she is asked to idle.

QED the only way to routinely guarantee that Uber and Lyft ask an employee to idle in the same location is for Uber and Lyft to collude on staffing decisions. This opens up other legal concerns (and may be illegal).