> Then you're not going to do it for the money that uber pays.

Then, ah... who's driving the Ubers in the Netherlands and why? Is there some credible evidence of coercion at hand?

Coercion is a bit a radical expression, I would call it dire economic straits, make a quick buck on the side.

Whatever the reason, good on the Dutch and the union not letting them trample on their values by these "honorable" folks and their values, here is the hall of shame: Wednesday February 22: Cocaine and groping. Thursday February 23: Investor betrayal and accusations of stolen technology.

Fowler, a former engineer at the company, alleged in a blog post that she was sexually harassed at Uber and experienced gender bias during her time at the company. She claimed that one manager propositioned her and asked for sex, but her complaints to HR were dismissed because the manager was a high performer. She said Uber continued to ignore her complaints to HR, and then her manager threatened to fire her for reporting things to HR.

Isolated incident? Not so Employees did cocaine during a company retreat and a manager had to be fired after groping multiple women, according to the report. Former employees said they'd notified Uber's leadership, including Kalanick and CTO Thuan Pham, of the workplace harassment.

Google, another Uber investor(!!!!), sued the company for intellectual property theft.

Uber's SVP of engineering stepped down over sexual-harassment allegations at his former job at Google.Singhal went through the standard background checks before his employment at Uber and that the sexual-harassment allegations during Singhal's time at Google never came up.

The New York Times revealed that Uber has been secretively deceiving authorities for years with a tool called 'Greyball'

Escort karaoke bar visit in Seoul, After the evening, a female Uber employee told HR that the trip made her uncomfortable.

Uber delays the investigation into workplace harrasment after information pours in from "hundreds" of its employees

Apple CEO had threatened to yank Uber from the App Store if it continued to violate the App Store's terms and conditions. As an act of fraud prevention, Uber had affixed a small piece of code that could tell if someone was using the same phone over and over again and then wiping it to take advantage of promo codes

Waymo accuses Uber of creating a shell company to bring on a former Google engineer.

Disruptive business practices, eh?

Uber is about as close to a ship of theseus as it gets.

All this stuff you're talking about is ancient news from like 4 years ago. Since then, the entire C-suite left, including Kalanick and Thuan (Singhal spent virtually no time at Uber), not to mention crazy high attrition rates at all levels, and several rounds of layoffs to top it all off.

Since then, greyball and its ilk got shutdown, the CSO got fired for hiding a leak, HR ramped up from its comically understaffed numbers, and Uber even "fired" a board member for making a sexist joke.

The only high profile scandal under new management that I recall was the Tempe SDV death, and that division got sold off to Aurora...

Nope, this excuse does not fly. First they do things clandestinely, then try to prevent any court case, then drag the court case out as long as possible and then it's supposed to be ancient?

So you are saying the new c level are something like angels and saints? https://lawstreetmedia.com/tech/uber-officers-and-board-memb...

You're the one clearly pushing an agenda, I'm just stating facts. IIRC the discussion here at the time about the lawsuit you linked characterized it as "frivolous" and "sour grapes", and other words to that effect.

If I wanted to make claims about saintness, I wouldn't bring up Tempe, I would've brought up the stuff about the CLO leading equality efforts (him being a black person), or the stuff about Afghanistan relief donation matching and other similar initiatives. But like said, I'm not interested in playing good-guy-bad-guy games, and I'm perfectly content w/ characterizing Uber as a company seeking profits just like Microsoft, Google or FB or whoever else is getting a stink eye these days.

You're free to be cynical, but doing so by cherrypicking only stuff that supports "your" side is kinda intellectually dishonest. </two-cents>

Elaboration: My impresssion is that rideshare driving is an incredibly liquid market, so its really hard to imagine a mechanism for long-term wage suppression other than external factors like an untrained workforce or poor economy overall.

Why aren't these payments taken from the employee then? In my country retirement and social security appear right in my paycheck. Why isn't it the same for freelancers (when they declare taxes)? If their wage is too low as you claim, this isn't something that will change when they become employees, so this solves nothing. If this is about a minimum wage, then the real solution is forcing freelancers to work a minimum of monthly hours, which treats the root problem.

This assumes the meaning of freelancers is being able to join and leave an employer when you want, and not being able to fix your own prices and refuse gigs like others are saying. I think you should be able to open a freelance provider with restrictions, as Uber is doing. I see no reason to outlaw that.

> This assumes the meaning of freelancers is being able to join and leave an employer when you want, and not being able to fix your own prices and refuse gigs like others are saying.

You see it that way, but the Dutch law doesn't. If the freelancer has no real choice and cannot dictate his/her own terms they are not a freelancer but an employee without the benefits of an employee. Social programs should be displayed these days on your paycheck if you are an employee. Not every (administration) company is doing it properly though.

Forcing freelancers to work more hours for less than a sustainable minimum pay solves nothing as the minimum wage is calculated on a full workweek.

I'm sure Uber is allowed to offer freelance work, but not with the current way of doing business. As soon as they let the freelancer dictate the pay (or at least properly negotiate) it looks they will be fine.

Not sure what country you are, but most also have the Employer pay on top of that too.

So you might pay a 10% social security tax, and the employer might be paying an additional 15% that doesn't appear on your payslip.

That's what Amazon, etc. are talking about when they say they pay a load of employment taxes.

That's also why a lot of countries are eying the gig economy with skepticism, it's actually often just a massive tax dodge for the company to not pay employment taxes.

I never understood why this distinction is made and why it’s not just obfuscation. The real numbers are the cost of an employee to the employer and the amount the employee gets, the difference is what the state took as a tax, and the way that cut is divided to different state budget chapters is inconsequential to both the employee and the employer

<In my country retirement and social security appear right in my paycheck

What country is that? US, the only country that its politicians actively lobbies against universal healthcare, healthcare that is successfully implemented in every! f*ing! other! Western country?!! (and quite a few other countries that are not Western, such as my full of corruption Eastern Europe one)

Plenty of countries in Western Europe too have mandatory employee contributions to various social programs.

Every country that funds social programs with an income tax has mandatory employee contributions, differing only in the visibility of the cost to the employee (up-front taxes vs. a line-item in the pay stub vs. a "employer portion" which isn't reported to the employee but directly impacts the employee's wages).

You will if it not your primary income, but used to supplement or do when you have nothing else to do.

Too many people think that the only people that drive for Uber are people that need it for Full Time employment.

There are lots of people that use it for extra income, that is who these types of laws hurt the most