I do see a potential problem here of the interests of people who do this as their job being unnecessarily put into direct conflict with the interests of people who don't do this as their job.
A business model that relies on unfair business practices is not a viable business model. We just need to make sure that the employees caught in this transition have a social safety net that protects them from the financial repercussions of implementing these higher standards for all employees.
Why would someone work 2 part-time jobs at $12/hr instead of one full-time job at $12/hr?
It’s the very same thing as say a driver can’t give a passenger a ride for Uber at the same time they are giving a ride for a Lyft passenger.
> It's usually not feasible to work for both, because they both might end up scheduling you in the same time slot.
You are essentially trying to argue no one Can work 2 jobs because of potential scheduling conflicts. Plenty of people work 2-3 jobs, often times for competitors in the same industry.
The best solution is for the state to end the distinction between independent contractors and full-time employees. I wonder if there's a way to manipulate state corporate taxes and credits to essentially nullify the federal employee status rules. Increase corporate state income tax, use the revenue to credit the employer's portion of social security tax and the independent contractor's excess social security tax. Put a state sales tax on group medical insurance plans and use the funds to provide a public option. Could get complicated, but there's probably a way.
I drove a taxicab for more than a year back in the 90's. That's the way it worked then. Most drivers were shift because they "rented" the car from the company and shared it with other workers. A few drivers were owner-operators who got to set their own hours. This is closer to the model that Uber & Lyft operate under today.
So when Lyft claims that they would be forced to enforce shift work on their owner-operators, this is a lie. There is already a model for this type of driving that predates Uber & Lyft and they're just choosing to ignore it now because it serves their current interests.
You can check their S-1 filing for the “economics” of it...Uber before going public was losing money and acknowledged the legal risk they had been misclassifying drivers as contractors and should drivers be reclassified as employees it’s an existential threat to Uber.
That’s the economics of it...Uber knew they were in the wrong, they knew the day of reckoning was coming and investors took the damn thing public for maximum profits and to cash out and leave others holding the bag.
But the reality is the whole employee/independent contractor issue is just a scapegoat for investors to point their finger at regulations and say that’s why the business failed, but the truth is even without the illegal classification of drivers Uber would never have turned a profit.
You took a potentially objective point and added a ton of spin to it :/
Of course they don’t admit they misclassifying the drivers, but Under the S-1 risk factors:
The independent contractor status of Drivers is currently being challenged in courts and by government agencies in the United States and abroad. We are involved in numerous legal proceedings globally, including putative class and collective class action lawsuits, demands for arbitration, charges and claims before administrative agencies, and investigations or audits by labor, social security, and tax authorities that claim that Drivers should be treated as our employees (or as workers or quasi-employees where those statuses exist), rather than as independent contractors... Nevertheless, we may not be successful in defending the independent contractor status of Drivers in some or all jurisdictions... any such reclassification would require us to fundamentally change our business model, and consequently have an adverse effect on our business and financial condition.
In fact the IPO includes citations to multiple lawsuits including one they settled for $20M for improper classification.
What really needs to happen is that conversion rate needs to be established for this kind of work. So if an average driver can do 20 fares per day, times 20 working days per month, then a "full time" uber employee drives 400 fares per month. Or figure it out on a per-mile basis - like the average fare is 4 miles (let's say) so the average driver does 1600 miles/mo.
Figure out the per-ride or per-mile fee and roll that into the fares. Done and done.
(frankly this is being generous - delivery drivers and waitresses are paid "per fare" too, and we still expect their employers to pay for their benefits.)
Really what needs to happen though is we implement government-provided universal healthcare and maybe a basic income, and then you can have all the wacky gig-economy payment schemes you want.
Is there anything in CA law that prevent Lyft from basically doing exactly what they had been doing but also paying payroll taxes on driver income?
It's not that the law dictates this shift, it's that the economics do. Requiring full employment means you can hire less drivers.
If you have less drivers, you need more control over when they drive in order to make sure when customers are looking for a ride, they can find one, hence shifts.