"Game the system", ha ha. Pretty sure "employers" that push for a gig economy are doing a bit of gaming themselves. Unionless, benefitless, interchangeable employees…

> Should your employer tolerate you working another job while you are being paid to do yours?

That argument goes both ways:

Should your employer be able to have you on an exclusive contract with a salary so low that you cannot pay your own bills?

Probably not.

The fallacy in your argument is that you're assuming that people like to work. They don't, they do it out of necessity.

It’s not really a gig job if you’re locked to one employer and paid hourly like any other job though.

Should it depend on the what that other job is?

An Uber driver doing DoorDash or Lyft between Uber work would be working for a direct competitor, whereas an Uber driver doing errands that require a car from TaskRabbit would not be working for a direct competitor.

>> Should your employer tolerate you working another job while you are being paid to do yours?

When the company fights hard & dirty for decades to classify you as a contractor to externalize the majority of the costs in their business model? Yes.

A decent margin of voters (41% to 58%) in California (in an election with 80% participation) voted to keep classifying them as contractors:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_California_Proposition_22

Maybe with an asterisk mentioning the 200+ million dollars Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, etc allegedly spent on it.

you can stop working at any time, so that's what they do, and then start working for another company. Any employer can't have a problem with working a second job, so long as you're not violating a non-compete.

Pretty tough to have a non-compete when you're casual and/or a contractor. Some jurisidctions make this illegal in even more of an employer/employee relationship, most aren't going to enforce it in an Uber-style job, and it would never be cost-effective for Uber et al. to go after a contractor. They would just kick the "offender" off the platform - which might still be very bad for them.

Yeah, that was my point to the original comment. there are no non-competes and they're fulfilling their obligations under their contract.

>in most regions Uber drivers are being paid an hourly wage so yeah I think this makes sense.

I did not know this. Is this verifiable? I thought the whole reason Uber and other “gig” businesses work is because they can pay piecemeal and not have people classified as employees. There were multiple high profile court cases and even attempts to legislate that Uber drivers are employees, but I believe in the US they are still independent contractors, hence they can work for whoever they want, whenever they want.

Maybe in Los Angeles? Someone with more knowledge should answer though. I may be mixing Uber up with higher minimum wages for fast-food in California.

Frankly, if you are driving around doing your job by simply being available, you are doing your job. If you are, e.g. not doing your job by picking up door dash and then an Uber that takes you out of the way and you deliver the food in an even colder state than if you drove to the DoorDash destination directly, then no, you are not doing your job and it should be apparent to DoorDash that you are not performing as is expected.

But what is your apparent assumption that Uber, dorodash, or any other employer owns your body or time. Frankly, that's both a holdover and also a bit of a crack that reveals that what we call slavery, is really just exploitation and abuse and it comes in many forms. Today it takes many other forms, but one of them is what you may unintentionally have internalized, that when you are "working for someone" you are effectively owned by them and you are not free to do anything but what you are told when you are "on the clock", like a part time slave, only with worse benefits.

It's an odd characteristic of seemingly all of humanity to varying degrees, but for whatever reason, one set of humans is not only exploited, but often even participates in their own exploitation (be it the "gig-economy" types or the corporate cheerleader types) while another set of humans enjoy the fruits of that exploitation and facilitate it with things like abusive, narcissistic manipulative language like "freedom of choice" and "democracy" and "gig-economy" and any other of the manipulative, word-smithed terms and buzzwords the PRopaganda people come up with.