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.
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.