I don't really see why we need a third category, it should just be that some drivers are full time and some are not. I don't believe that Uber could sufficiently fulfill even half the rides with only the true part timers short of driver incentives also going way up (which would benefit people like your husband).
In Houston almost everyone I talked to were - retired, raising kids, had another jobs, going to school, or had some health issues that prevented full time employment.
The vast majority of the economy is made up of jobs where a company tells you when to show up, when to go home, and tries to schedule you for 38 hrs. Why can't we have just one job for people who have life circumstances that require flexibility.
Note that I've also had a lot of responses that they are "retired" but also say they drive >30 hours per week, which I'd personally consider "switched careers" or "unretired" but it's somewhat a matter of perspective.
71% of drivers work 30 or more hours, and 50% work 40 or more.
More troubling, 53% relied on gig work for all of their income. Another 10% said gig work accounted for at least 75% of their income.
[0] https://transform.ucsc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/OnDema...
Key goal: Representative sample of on-demand _work_ being done in the city, not of all on-demand _workers_. (emphasis not mine)
The team making the study has selected parameters to examine basically exactly to produce a number where the majority of rideshare is full-time. So is it clear that most rideshare workers are full time? Definitely not. And the fact that the team has weighted their sampling in such a way makes me even more skeptical about the veracity of that fact when taken across the whole population of drivers.
As far as the distinction between work and workers, it’s who is doing the work. If most people with an driver app are idle, they’ve removed themselves from the candidate pool. They’re irrelevant. It’s no different than talking about active users versus total accounts made. In other words, if you want to know how policies affect people, you look at who is affected.
1) low sample size (219 responses)
2) usage of $10 gift cards as incentives. as an online survey, this opened up opportunities for gaming
3) targeting appears to have been geared towards members of Gig Workers Rising, a union-backed group
I think Uber's study of all of its drivers [2] in California provides a more measured picture:
74% of drivers work < 25h/week, but only account for 42% of trips
So, no, the majority of rideshare drivers aren't full-time, but rideshare companies do rely heavily on drivers who are online >25hours/week.
[1] https://workercenters.com/special-report-ca-labor-groups-fla...
[2] https://medium.com/uber-under-the-hood/which-drivers-do-the-...
Then again this is a while ago so maybe things have shifted with time.
It may seem heartless but I’m not sure whom to blame for the problems that come from treating rideshare as a full time job except the drivers who chose to do that themselves. Despite the gross advertising budget it seems like the gig economy companies were in the right.
Really, the issue is further up. It’s a universal loss of low skill labor. These people should have more real employment opportunities in society. If it was easier to get a basic job with benefits it would be way easier to accept whatever arrangement Uber was offering without legislating them. And Uber would inherently have to treat them more fairly as well.
Your 2nd paragraph is exactly what prop22 added. Now full-time drivers enjoy some benefits.
To make this a concrete example, consider a DoorDash driver. They get an order to drive to a restaurant. Clock starts, they get 15 minutes. The order isn’t ready, so they’re waiting for another 15 minutes, but the clock is stopped. Then they drive to your house, which takes another 15. A 45 minute task, but only 30 minutes counts. “But they’re not working when they’re waiting!” DoorDash cries. But they’re not free to leave, because then they’d lose the entire payout and get blackballed. It’s just a process inefficiency. If the driver worked for the restaurant, they’d still get paid while waiting.
The original law that Prop 22 replaced, addressed this down time, and because of this, Prop 22 was written.
While there maybe reasonable arguments to be made about how gig work is different from full time and traditional contractor work, the most damning part of Prop 22 for me was the 7/8s majority needed to amend the new law. That’s just bullshit.
What you are describing is completely wrong. It's incredible how short sighted people get when they want to go all out and lash at the "evil" gig economy companies. Like really, the wording is publicly available for you to read.
Engaged time is time from accepting the gig, to the time the gig ends. Waiting is included. That's it.
While I wouldn't expect anything like full-time pay, Uber/Lyft et. al. still get a benefit of having drivers on call (lower wait times for their customers). I personally would have liked to see some compensation (within reason) for time spent on call but not on a ride. Not sure how easy it would be to make both a fair and reasonably un-cheatable system, but its something that should have been considered.
However if you incentive being on call no matter what, you get drivers driving to the mountains to get their guaranteed pay.
Does the app give him the contact info for each of his passengers after every ride so that he can own the business relationship with them? If not then he's an employee, not an independent contractor. The number of hours worked per month is a complete red herring.
Moreover, how is this not available to the driver? They're in the car with the passenger already. The driver and passenger could exchange contact info if they wanted to, how is Uber going to stop them? This doesn't happen not because Uber is preventing it but because the passenger is. The next time they need a ride they don't want to have to call five drivers to find one who is in the area and available, they want to open the app and have it find one for them.
Uber doesn't claim to be a transportation company.
It claims to be a marketplace, putting transportation consumers in touch with providers. Except it "owns" the customer relationship and dictates many aspects of the provider activity and equipment.
No, you put your brand on the chairs and if the customer likes them they can buy from you again.
And I imagine Uber does forbid selling other services during rides. If not, I feel like Uber rides would be full of people pushing multi-level marketing.
If Uber wants to crack down on this, it's openly happening in Vegas.
https://www.uber.com/newsroom/uber-cargo-teaming-raise-prote...
Full stop, this is when you cross the line into baseless speculation.
Unless you have solid objective facts, it's disingenuous to continue propping up an argument with meritless speculation.
In what way is this different than putting your phone number inside your car where the passenger can take it down if they want it?
> And I imagine Uber does forbid selling other services during rides. If not, I feel like Uber rides would be full of people pushing multi-level marketing.
I can't actually find the Uber driver agreement on the internet, but pyramid schemes are illegal, and drivers who peddle scummy garbage to passengers are liable to get bad reviews, so there is no reason to expect that a lack of this would have to be because Uber prohibits it.
Multi-level marketing is still common, and often the payoff might be worth your rating getting tanked.
If nothing else, it seems like stories of this happening would be common. Even just "if you listen to my fifteen minute thing on timeshares, I'll pay for your ride."
Happens all the time, see the equate brand at Walmart or the Kroger brand at Kroger
Sure those are larger scale but there is nothing stopping Acme Furniture from contacting with Joe Woodworker to make them some chairs branded Acme Furniture where the customer has no idea who Joe Woodworker is nor is Joe Woodworker an employee of Acme Furniture
This is not uncommon in the Services industry as well, hell Software development is full of Subcontracting where Company A will contract development to Company B who will hire Freelancer C to do the work, Company A may never know who Freelance C is, and to the extend they do they may not know the contractual relationship between Company B and freelance C (i.e are they an employee or a contractor)
This happens in alot of industries and has since the dawn of employment, Uber just has a different scale
When I go to a new city, I make note of great Uber drivers. I then hire them directly. Often, they become a porter of sorts. I pay them to drive but also e.g. for taking out laundry and recommending places of interest.
Which can get them kicked off the app, and leave them with tens of thousands of dollars in car loans that they have no way of repaying. That's what makes them employees and not independent contractors, the fact that they aren't allowed to do this.
Can you cite a single example of this?
This assumes every single driver on the platform is a debtor of subprime auto loans.
It's like not updating your horse carriage road laws to accommodate automobiles; because everything is either a pedestrian or a horse carriage. If there's no horse, a car isn't a vehicle; it's a pedestrian.
Makes no sense.
If you think Uber drives deserve more than 120% of min wage, then you can argue that, but I don't see why you have to argue employee vs IC.
P.S. Most Uber drivers, when independently polled, are for Prop 22. It's the unions that were pushing this, so they can collect union dues and grow their revenues.
The auto industry successfully lobbied local legislatures and shifted public opinion through a massive marketing campaign in order to create the crime of "jaywalking". This is how our city streets went from shared spaces to the exclusive territory of drivers (much to the benefit of the auto industry).
Same thing is happening here. Perhaps a new class of labor does need to be created, but in a just world that would be happening on the terms of the workers, not the corporations.
If things would have naturally been different if only it weren't for some lobbyists, how come things aren't that way at least somewhere?
But I would say roads in developed areas are pretty much the same everywhere because cars are only made one way. The social consensus I mentioned was moving towards requiring a governor on cars that would shut their engines off if they exceeded 25 mph. If that had succeeded and endured, roads would look very different. But the economic effects that cars produce in accelerating the free flow of commodities, labor, and capital necessitated a rupture with the established order so that automobiles could continue to develop to be bigger, faster, and more powerful.
The similarities in road form and norms around the world represent an equilibrium between the current level of car technology and the amount of injury and death resulting from their use that society can metabolize.
But let's not fall into these simplistic black and white anti-establishment narratives. The automobile massively expanded personal liberty and employment options. Some of these effects were very pro-worker, like reducing the power of the dominant employers of localities, by letting workers more easily pull up stakes and find a new home in a different locality, or simply commute to a more distant employer.
No conversation about the impact of the car is complete without mentioning the benefits it provided to society.
In any case, I wasn't attempting to present a complete analysis of the societal effects of the automobile. I was only pointing out that this is another case of corporations explicitly dictating the terms of our society and using a massive outlay of cash to facilitate that and market it to us.
Increasing the market for a product/service provides greater than zero sum gains for society. For instance, creating a global market for fine art doesn't make fine art less valuable. It leads to more capital being deployed to the art market, because more people are able to acquire art that they personally appreciate.
Romantacizing the pre-market past, and taking for granted the accumulated gains brought about by non centrally planned, private-sector driven processes, is a mistake.
>>In any case, I wasn't attempting to present a complete analysis of the societal effects of the automobile.
You were definitely implying that the overall impact was negative, and that's what I was responding to.
What's your evidence for this claim?
https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/sources-of-real-wage-stag...
Anyway, the US has embarked on a massive social democracy course since 1965, so a slowdown in the rate of development is what you would expect.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-is-driving-growth-...
Annual spending growth (inflation adjusted) on various components of social welfare spending (1972 - 2011):
>Pensions and retirement: 4.4%
>Healthcare: 5.7%
>Welfare: 4.1%
Annual economic growth over the time frame:
>2.7%
This is annual growth, over a course of 40 years, resulting a massive increase in social welfare spending as a percentage of GDP.
And I didn't say the fluidity of labor implied the commodification of labor. It's the complete opposite. The motive force of the capitalist system is the growth of capital. The commodification of labor is absolutely essential to that process.
If you want to talk about oversimplification let's talk about summing up the effects of globalization as "wages increasing 20 fold […] since 1820".
I wonder if this would remain true if you weighted by the number of drives given, there certainly seems to be a distinction between part time and full time drivers. The former could be more numerous while Uber depends on the latter to provide the bulk of their supply.
The $200 million being discussed feels relevant to this claim. Didn't some companies even spread their take to their "employees" through their job apps and other direct communication? I bet even the "blame the union" came from information those companies paid for.
Whoever pays you is the entity you have a relation with.
The driver is an employee of Uber, so it would be creepy for them to have your info. If they were someone you hired, that's not weird.
You could be an employee or contractor for uber. In either case driving someone is a service you provide to Uber customers.
No. Look at https://arcade.city. Their drivers are independent business operators, because they own the relationship with the riders. Uber drivers not only don't own the relationship with riders, but they're forbidden from owning it, which is what makes them employees. It's literally against the terms of service for Uber drivers to act as independent business owners, despite the expensive PR campaigns they run for regulators and the general public.
The CEO of Uber was literally fired for getting caught on camera berating an employee who was complaining that Travis had lowered the amount of money he was earning after the employee had taken out a huge car loan. If this driver wasn't an employee, he would have been allowed to set his own prices, so that conversation never could have even happened.
The driver can set his/her own prices. When they decide which rideshare to use many use price to determine who they want to work for. If they decide Uber they get a scaling scale / surge pricing.
The driver doesn't set the customer price. They can only control the price Uber pays them.. some have asked for more and some have walked over it.
Buying a new car was not Uber's decision and he doesn't have to drive for Uber, he can drive for other companies with that same car and even during the same hours.
He can set his own price, and Uber can say no, that's too high, find someone else to sell your service to.
The "glass half full" way to think of it is that Uber bought work flexibility; and as it turns out the labor market values this flexibility with slightly lower wages.
If you think we should out-regulate that, should we ban part time jobs too? How about we ban unpaid time off?
Any barriers to work (i.e. regulation) just accelerates AI taking over all the jobs. Anything that drives up the cost of labour, just means more automation like self-serve kiosks or robo security guards today; and who knows what tomorrow.
If you want to solve societal inequality and provide a safety net, which is something I 100% back, do that through taxation + a universal basic income.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piece_work#Guild_system
Sure they did, we called them “cottage industries”. You’ve always been able to buy from a farmer’s market or small general stores (who source a lot of their merchandise from random craftsmen). Craigslist pre-dates Uber, and classified ads pre-dates Craigslist. There are stores around the world specializing in hand-made and home-made items. Independent contractors have existed since the beginning of civilization, and any city in the world will have a generic handyman service for work around the house.
My wife just sold four candles, Uber wasn’t involved with that. My grandmother knits dishclothes and sells them to a local shop for distribution whenever she decides to go into town, Uber didn’t invent that.
The lease for the cab was high enough ($600+/wk) that I had to drive ~30 hours to break even, and the rest was profit, usually another 20 hours over the weekend.
Unless you were sharing a lease with another driver, it would've been impossible to work it as part time.
So I would see a benefit to uber over that arrangement except for uber if your car breaks you're out of luck. With a cab, i'd take it to the shop and get another one. Granted they were all pretty beat up crown vics.
The real winners were the owners of the cab company. Like you said, they held the medallions and thus most of the leverage.
It makes sense in the comment above, as the cab driver actually has work expenses that they pay for out of pocket and are not reimbursed for.
Uber drivers can rent their car by the week.
We do pay into unemployment, as we are both salaried workers of our own business.
He did not take unemployment during Covid. Our stores were considered essential, so they stayed open.
That is pretty much the point of part-time driving. You have a full-time job or business that pays the bills and you just want some extra cash.
The extra cash from Uber enabled him to pay off his car quickly and continues to provide extra money for our family. It is not a full-time income, nor do we ever expect it to be.
This is our situation, and I understand that others are different. However, you specifically asked about him, so I replied with our details.
It's a 3 way relationship between driver, passenger with Uber facilitating that relationship. Uber owns the passengers and they offer drivers the ability to fulfill the potential-passengers.
Maybe this would be clearer if Uber offered an API for the driver side so they wouldn't be forced to use the app and thus muddy the relationship.
I can’t completely tell whether you are agreeing with me or not, but I think that example reinforces that Uber drivers are exploited employees with the benefit of a flexible schedule.
I was coming at it from the point of view of the customer.
Negotiating a sale price is not exclusive to independent agents. Some stores and indeed some chains will allow their employees(supervisor/manager) to accept a lower price. That is not exclusive to or indicative of an independent contractor.
Someone who drives for Uber has the agency to turn down work that Uber puts in front of them with 0 reason needed to be given (either to customer or Uber).
Related, if a software contracting firm says: 'hey, there's a gig that pays $x an hour, no negotiations - do you want it?'
I don't suddenly become an employee of the firm I'm contracting for just because I didn't get a chance to negotiate the price. I had agency to accept or decline the contract.
If I'm going for a job as an employee and negotiate my salary, they don't suddenly mark me down as a contractor.
> Related, if a software contracting firm says: 'hey, there's a gig that pays $x an hour, no negotiations - do you want it?'
That's not what is happening here. The driver and the rider are not forming a carriage contract. Uber is forming a contract with the rider, and employing drivers to fulfill those contracts. Even with the concessions Uber has offered, they are still using their platform power to control activity via incentives, and whatever games they play with the algorithm once the heat is off. At the end of the day, as long as the labor pool remains unorganized, Uber still retains pricing power.
None of these drivers own the customer relationship (again, they are not forming a contract with the riders). That means that (without violating the TOS) these drivers are not holding any equity in the business. In your proposed scenario, if you accept the software contract and do good work, there is a likelihood of more work at higher rates, and increased business through word of mouth. With no opportunity to build wealth, I can't imagine how rideshare drivers would be considered independent.
It's fine to look at the problem from a customer-centric viewpoint, and I realize that doing so has been a fairly orthodox economic strategy for the past 50 years, but that doesn't make it correct or good. None of the ride share companies seem to be able to turn a profit, even with a questionable model built on exploiting labor laws, yet they had $200M to pass Prop22. That kind of strategy only makes sense if your goal is to gain a monopoly position, and it is right to oppose these companies in doing so. Devaluing labor maybe optimal for some individuals, but it's bad for labor as a whole, which is exactly why we pass law that raise the floor.
1. Yes, in California only, effective in July of this year. I.E. regulation having an intended effect, increasing worker power.
2. The contract is still between the rideshare company the rider, not between the driver and the rider. An actual IC relationship would give the rider and driver the ability to opt-in to a provider-customer relationship and easily create future contracts with each other. Uber's model (monopoly power) necessitates their involvement, which is basically the source of conflict here. Their model is incompatible with giving the drivers actual independence.
There are many others, but these two are the most egregious.
Obviously some of us net positive into the government. That's how society works.
Her husband and Uber are gaming the system to avoid that responsibility.
Businesses got billions in forgivable loans to simply not fire the people they'd hired, it seems reasonable that self-employed people get some help.
And this is the case… why? I could just as easily say “I understand that some people want Uber to be part-time, but I wish they would stop trying to make it something it’s not.”
Lots of labor laws exist that prevent people from working jobs they could work without those laws. This individuals will likely be against those laws. It doesn't mean those laws are bad for society.
If not, then the problem with Uber isn't the part-time-ness, and forcing the job to be full time is a very awkward way to try to fix the exploitation.
Just like we need to protect the 12 year old who voluntary enters a coal mine, we might need to protect the Uber driver who voluntary gets into their car.
By "protect" you seem to suggest "outlaw the thing they want to do".
Can you imagine how outraged you'd feel, to be treated the way you're suggesting treating others?
How would you like for the state to say:
"Hey, /u/slg, for your own protection, you're not allowed to eat sugar anymore. It is now illegal to buy and sell sugar. You'll be fined if you try to purchase sugar, and if you're found with sugar in your house, you'll be taken to jail. These threats are, of course, for your protection, as the harmful effects of sugar are well-established."
I don't personally agree with the US's war on drugs for example. There is probably an argument that on total sugar is more damaging to American society than marijuana. If society decided to ban sugar, I wouldn't be thrilled, but I would understand it.
This isn't a win for small government.
The big problem I see is that it is perfectly clear that the decision factor was money put into political campaign done not by politicians, which are sort of accountable for what they do (they might not just get elected), but by people who simply had enough money.
Democracy sort of worked because elected representatives were supposed to make law based on justice and ethics and common interest. Right now law is made because someone was able to pull out enough money to buy particular regulation.
There is some democratic ceremony around all this, but this is just a ceremony. The ancient Rome citizens also thought that they have democracy in the times of triumvirate, but this was also a show.
The ballot initiative failed around 55%-45%, despite a massive difference in fundraising (and presumably associated spending).
Your belief on that is based on reporting bias, reporters never talk about when an initiative's that went counter to the HUGE amounts of money poured in (for or against), for example the Right to repair in MA which has huge money from all the major auto manufacturers, and an ad campaign claiming that if you voted for right to repair rapists would get your garage codes...
It is click bait to talk about how "company X bought regulation" but it is rarely true, even in CA there were a few ballot measures this year that failed even with massive amounts of money being spent on supporting them.
Money in politics if often used as a scapegoat to explain away why some issue failed, or some issue succeed with out having to accept the fact that majority disagreed with you, as it often hard to admit that the majority rejects your world view
According to you. It's clearly a full time job for most drivers. The fact that you think it shouldn't be doesn't change that.
What do you expect full time taxi drivers to do exactly? Go back to working for local taxi companies and get zero customers?
Depreciation is a real cost. If at the time you sell your car your car, you get $X, but driving for Uber caused you to have more miles and thus sell for $X-$Y, then Y is real cost. Even if you don't sell your car and instead drive your it into the ground, the extra miles you're driving for Uber cause your car to fail faster.
I get the sense that many part time drivers think they're making money when instead they're losing it (or maybe making less than minimum wage after expenses).
Prius, probably the most common ride sharing car, has a total cost, including fuel, depreciation, and maintenance, of about $0.39 cents per mile.
That seems to be sorta missing the point. People don't want "Uber to BE a full-time job", they just want it to be possible for it to replace one.
> I still think we need a third class of employment, but that’s not what was on the table here.
Really what this is proof of is that employer benefits are a fundamentally broken idea. Employers will always, ALWAYS find ways to cheat their way around providing them when they can. Regulation will always be catching up.
Back in 2009, I thought the hippies were crazy to be staking so much on their failed quest for a public option in the ACA. Now? Sign me up as a M4A proponent. The system's just broken.
Especially in terms of congestion and efficiency, the "piggyback" model solves many problems and is complementary to clean air campaigns that governments spend millions on.
HN isn't a California local's site.
Yes, according to Boomer legend, fast food joints used to be exclusively staffed by high school students for whom $8.25 is more than enough for an adequate weed supply.
But that's just not true anymore, is it? And yet, its used as argument to deny full protection (for Uber) or not raise minimum wage (my fast food example).
At the very least, it should be uncontroversial to include these assumptions in legislation: require full benefits, but only for drivers driving > 15h per week. If your assumptions hold, Uber shouldn't need to oppose this, considering they have few drivers it would apply to.
Which is why all such regulations are ridiculous. You "help" someone by requiring higher pay for overtime, the employer responds by prohibiting overtime. The worker still wants more than 40 hours, so they take a second job, still don't get any overtime, but now they have the expense of a second commute and get paid less because the second job has to duplicate all of the employment benefits the first job was already providing instead of paying that money as wages.
A lot of the 'employee choice' arguments depend on an illusion of free association when the employer has almost all the power to set work conditions and can let the employee go at will with no compensation.
The "illusion" existed at a time when there were company towns and a Big Three automaker cartel and you really couldn't just go work for somebody else. It's a pretty outdated argument when if you don't like working for Walmart you can realistically just go across the street and take a job at Target.
Even in low paying 'fungible' jobs the threat of losing your job and the gap between one minimum wage job and the next stops all sorts of laws from being properly enforced because employees can't afford to lose their job in retaliation while waiting for a payout. Take basic wage theft one of the largest loses of money for people in the US every year totaling possibly billions of dollars. Companies are paying below minimum wage, refusing to pay over time, requiring off clock time, etc and employees feel like they can't come forward because they can't afford any interruption in their wages because of a number of things but chief among them is if you're living paycheck to paycheck even missing one week's wages can put you in a debt spiral.
When companies are about to pull this off I find it hard to believe that things like overtime protections and hourly limits are 'limits on choice' more than they're protections against abuse.
https://www.epi.org/publication/employers-steal-billions-fro... - just minimum wage violations
But for better jobs that aren't paying minimum wage, the rules don't really change anything. Most of the better jobs pay salary instead of hourly anyway, and even for the ones that don't, if you're making non-trivially more than minimum wage then you can negotiate around the restriction anyway.
Averaging $25/hour because you worked 80 hours at $25/hour is the same result as having a base pay of $20 and working 40 hours of overtime at $30. So if you were getting paid $25/hour and want more hours, you can offer to work for $20/hour, get the extra hours and still average $25, i.e. in practice you can waive the overtime premium because doing so doesn't put you under the minimum wage.
> Companies are paying below minimum wage, refusing to pay over time, requiring off clock time, etc and employees feel like they can't come forward because they can't afford any interruption in their wages because of a number of things but chief among them is if you're living paycheck to paycheck even missing one week's wages can put you in a debt spiral.
These are really just unlawful methods of avoiding the negative effects of the prohibition on choice.
There exist employers who don't do those things, so why don't those people quit and work there instead? Because their existing job has some countervailing benefit. Maybe it's less of a commute, or has more flexible hours, or the alternative job is higher stress or more dangerous. It's not legal to have you work 50 hours and pay you for 40, but when the alternative is that you lose the job because it can't actually command that hourly wage, prohibiting that choice (or the equivalent one where you get paid for all your hours but at a lower hourly wage) isn't actually helping. Because then you get stuck with the alternative where you work for 40 hours and get paid for 40 hours but spend 12 extra hours a week commuting, which might be legal but does nothing for you than to cost you an extra two hours a week and $150/month in fuel.
When the 41st hour costs as much as the 39th, yes. When it cost more, one hires more people. Or a temp agency.
Most of those regulations were written in blood, toil, and tears - they deserve more respect than that. You are correct - regulations often limit an individual's ability to maximize their own gains in order to lift the overall floor. If you want to maximize your income, start a private car service and build your own clientele like an actual independent operator.
Alternatively, we could offer public healthcare, social housing, and food guarantees, decoupling work from survival. Then the regulations would be ridiculous.
The problem is they regularly fail to lift the overall floor. Prohibiting your existing best available source of employment will, as a rule, leave you with an alternative which is even less good. Something with more pay but a longer commute that eats that pay and then some. Something more dangerous, or less convenient, or less stable, or more stressful. And then you get paid a little more in exchange for losing something that was worth more to you than the money.
> Alternatively, we could offer public healthcare, social housing, and food guarantees, decoupling work from survival.
Or a UBI. Which is what we should do.
Most importantly, you don't want others get the protection they deserve because it works fine for your husband.
Just to illustrate the point with fake numbers..
If 90% of drivers are doing the gig thing, maybe they’ll be driving Uber an hour a day on average. Then if 10% of drivers are doing 12 hours a day, most rides will be from the small minority of full time drivers.
It’s exactly the same as the experience most people have that flights tend to be overflowing with people, when the airlines claim many flights are totally empty.
Students, retired people, and my favorite was a guy who would take 1-2 trips on the way home from his job to put into a travel savings so he and his family upgrade their vacations.
Every market is different though, I can definitely believe that the situation could be very different in California.
I'm sure there are tons of fulltime Uber drivers, especially if you live in a city where cab drivers have made the switch. I live in the suburbs, and I've never met a fulltimer.
One of the Uber drivers I had when visiting New York rolled up in a expensive German SUV (Mercedes IIRC) and was very well dressed.
Chatted and found out he was a lawyer by day, but drove Uber in the evenings when he was bored.
He didn't _need_ the $10-12 bucks we paid for the trip to the restaurant, but he did appreciate the chat.
Why is someone's beer money more important than someone else's full time subsistence?
Should it be illegal for me to offer that service?
* do not allow them unlimited flexibility into when and where they work
* do not allow them to take days off, without notice, for any reason, for as long as they want
* do not allow them to choose which jobs to do and not do (see: trip destination filters)
but most importantly:
* do not allow them to work for a competitor at the same time.
If Uber is too driver-unfriendly, drivers can switch to Lyft. Or maybe Amazon Flex. There's a very, very real choice that you do not get with a traditional employer-employee relationship.
Uber is in between an employee, and an IC. I believe the appropriate treatment is also somewhere in between.
Have to be careful not to accidentally burn your hours by being logged into both apps at once.
I'm not sure that's actually better for drivers; it just makes for more paperwork and regulations to track.
He drives the way Uber was originally envisioned. He goes out some nights if there’s a surge, and in the morning on the way to work he points the app toward our stores and grabs a person (pre-pandemic) or a food delivery (today) on his way in.
It pays for gas money, car maintenance, and then some. Some months he makes a few hundred dollars. Some months over $1000. He can work when he wants, and make as much or as little money as he needs.
I feel strongly like this law was pushed by people who want Uber to be a full-time job. It’s not. I understand that some people want it to be full-time, but I wish they would stop trying to make Uber something it’s not. Had the law passed, people like my husband would have had to quit working for Uber. It would have unfairly punished the part-time and “free time” drivers in favor of full-time drivers.
I still think we need a third class of employment, but that’s not what was on the table here.