Where are you taking Ubers? I'm surprised by this since even low level entry jobs, like hostessing(sp?), working at the grocery store, delivering pizza, all pay better than Uber.

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.

I have the most experience in the greater Boston area, but a spattering all over the US (but maybe to/from airports is a biased sample too).

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.

In Oakland there are a lot of Uber drivers who seem like they don’t speak English well enough to get a job like a grocery store checkout clerk. From my time working in retail I have also known many people who couldn’t get enough hours at their primary job, but its scheduling constraints meant it was hard for them to find a second job that fit in with it. Uber or similar gig work seems ideal for these situations.

My experience with Uber drivers here in CZ is that they are guys who like to drive.

According to a survey of SF drivers[0]

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...

Not only are the authors of that survey biased, but they are outright admitting to manipulating the data to suit their ends. From the slides:

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.

Just because you don’t like the findings, doesn’t mean that it’s biased.

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.

Beyond what was mentioned above, some further criticism of the survey acknowledged by the lead researcher himself [1]:

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-...

The problem with Uber they kinda spoiled drivers. It was a low-skilled job but for many years even my friends were making around 6 grands a month with a help of tax optimizations and hefty bonuses. And none of them were ready to switch to any other low skilled job and get like $20 per hour ~ $3200 a month before taxes.

Location dependent? I was in NY a couple of years ago, and used Uber a lot. Every single driver was part time. Not long after I visited Las Vegas, and about 3/4 of the drivers were full time or near-full time.

Then again this is a while ago so maybe things have shifted with time.

People treating it as a full time job are suffering because it wasn’t meant to be a full time job. And they are clogging the system because there are often not enough rides for all the drivers. The biggest complaint I hear from drivers is about downtime. They want to be making money while in the car not waiting at the gas station for a rider.

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.

You can literally blame the companies who aren't giving them benefits...

I have the complete opposite anecdotal experience.

Your 2nd paragraph is exactly what prop22 added. Now full-time drivers enjoy some benefits.

Full time drivers already enjoyed benefits under California law. While Prop 22 talked about giving benefits, that’s not what the law does in practice at all. In fact, it actually removes protections. The key to this surprising revelation is that Uber et al wrote proposition so that only when you’re actively driving do the minutes count towards the amount you need to gain the benefit. In other words, to get the 25 hours of engaged time, you need to be available for 40+ hours. That’s a full time job.

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.

Did you even read the wording of the prop?

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.

However, what isn't covered (and this is especially pertinent for ride sharing) is the time between ending a job and taking the next job.

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.

They essentially do this at times with their bonuses, for example to setup a new geo area or to ensure rides in a certain area.

However if you incentive being on call no matter what, you get drivers driving to the mountains to get their guaranteed pay.

This is correct. Although it's also true that drivers may have to spend quite a bit of time waiting for a job to become available, which doesn't count as engaged time.