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Last-minute California ruling means Uber and Lyft won't shut down today:
A California judge has granted Uber and Lyft an emergency reprieve from an order requiring them to treat their drivers as employees. The companies were facing a Thursday deadline to comply with the order. Earlier today, Lyft announced that it would be forced to shut down in the state at midnight tonight.
[...] Uber had warned that it was likely to do the same if the courts didn't delay enforcement of the law.
[...] The judge's emergency stay means that Lyft and Uber will be able to keep operating under their current model while they continue litigating whether the new law applies to them.
Previously:
California Judge Rules Uber and Lyft to Immediately Classify Drivers as Employees
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Revek on Friday August 21 2020, @11:50AM (19 children)
These services are really parasites. They need to guarantee a living wage for all of these drivers.
This page was generated by a Swarm of Roaming Elephants
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday August 21 2020, @12:06PM (6 children)
More likely: they raise another few billion and put robot taxis on the road, city by city, kicking drivers to the curb.
In the meantime, they will pull out of California and other locations if unwanted legislation gets passed or the courts rule against them. The drivers MUST be independent contractors.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Informative) by c0lo on Friday August 21 2020, @12:27PM (1 child)
See also: https://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=viewsub&subid=42889title=What+Happens+If+Uber+and+Lyft+Flee+California%3F+Look+at+Austin [soylentnews.org]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Insightful) by helel on Friday August 21 2020, @02:39PM
tl;dr - Local companies willing to follow the law sprang up and drivers made more money. Law got reverted, Uber and Lyft returned to the market with deeply discounted prices to strangle the local competition, law-abiding companies went out of business and the duopoly raised rates back to the usual while once again paying drivers a pittance.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Friday August 21 2020, @01:30PM (3 children)
I wonder, and didn't really even try to search for it, how large the California market is. It might so to speak be worth fighting for considering it's size and the amount of people and customers that live there. So it might just not be as easy as to just pull out. It might cripple their entire business model and bottom line by the amount of income it generates for the company as a whole. Pulling out might be something you can do for the minor states or cities if they get uppity. But to drop California that might be something completely different.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday August 21 2020, @02:20PM
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday August 21 2020, @02:43PM (1 child)
Uber in particular has had a history of flouting the law. Maybe they don't need to pull out.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2020, @06:14PM
That had been working for them, but if this is the result of a court ruling, then they'd likely wind up back in court answering contempt of court charges. The one thing that universally pisses off judges is when their rulings aren't adhered to by the parties to the suit. It's one thing to appeal a decision, it's quite another thing to just ignore it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2020, @12:11PM
You pay for the tracking. Or else youd just get in a random car for a ride.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday August 21 2020, @02:47PM (6 children)
Why? It's not their job. Nor did they create the high cost of living problem in California. And nobody is going to get any closer to a living wage job by losing their ride hailing gig.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2020, @05:26PM (5 children)
Because workers have very little power. There simply aren't enough good paying jobs to go around, which forces people into these sorts of jobs of they don't want to be homeless. And with an increasing share of the rental space controlled by a relatively small group of investors, there are already homeless people with full-time jobs.
The reality is that if a job doesn't pay well enough for somebody to sort themselves, out shouldn't exist and it definitely shouldn't result in the owners generating profit or taking a salary.
That may sound good to you, but that's one because you're lacking in normal human emotions and fail to recognize how easily you could fall into that yourself.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday August 22 2020, @12:00AM (4 children)
What's missed here is that workers have choices. If they're picking an gig job, it's because they consider it better than their other choices at the time. I doubt those choices "paid well enough" either, else there wouldn't be another ride hailing driver.
The "we didn't want those jobs anyway" attitude ignores that a worker isn't necessarily going to find a job of the appropriate "living wage" threshold, if you nuke every job that the worker can do. Being permanently unemployed is a ready alternative. Sorry, I don't buy the demand-driven market model. I don't buy that employers are holding out and can be forced to pay higher wages. Or any of the other fantasies that drive the policies that take jobs from poor people for their own good.
It results in a society where workers are legally empowered, but economically disempowered; where costs of living are artificially inflated; and where many repeated attempts, using the same failed paradigms, to fix this merely drag more people into poverty.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 22 2020, @12:50AM (3 children)
No, there really isn't. The alternatives are barely less exploitive. The fact that you can't see anything between virtual slavery and having a huge underclass makes it clear that you don't get it. If we had a sufficient tax rate to prevent wealth from accumulating at the top, you magically find most of jobs suddenly paying reasonable wages.
We're going to have mass unemployment whether or not companies are allowed to exploit workers, efficiency gains guarantee that eventually either way. The difference is whether or not we're going to tolerate the exploitation that you do enthusiastically support.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday August 22 2020, @01:20AM (2 children)
How is that even remotely relevant to the real world, much less this discussion? Virtual slavery is one of those throwaway terms that doesn't mean anything. Mommy makes me go on a camping trip? I'm virtually enslaved.
Having a huge underclass? Well, that means something. So I guess I can see the difference. Well, there went your fact.
You can't have a "sufficient tax rate" for a couple of reasons. First, wealthy people aren't stupid. Second, one of the ways they aren't stupid (and incidentally may have obtained that wealth in the first place) is by tapping those tax revenue streams.
Except of course, "exploit" here merely means "employ". So being allowed to exploit, merely means being allowed to employ which would make a dent in any genuine mass unemployment situation.
I think we'll find that countries which tolerate exploitation will do vastly better than the ones that don't. But that's just my opinion right? I'm sure, for example, that China's intolerance of exploitation is why they're doing better than India, even though they started way behind, 50 years ago.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 22 2020, @12:37PM (1 child)
Virtual slavery is used to describe situations like this where people aren't literally slaves, but effectively have no other option than to continue working under oppressive conditions due to a lack of any viable alternative. This is the main reason that people continue to work at places paying the minimum wage with no benefits and no time off. If better jobs were as easy to get and plentiful as people like you suggest, people wouldn't be working those jobs. But, there really aren't, especially right now, and as a result, it's work those jobs that don't even pay enough to properly afford rent or starve. It's not at all wishy washy or vague, at an absolute bare minimum it describes all minimum wage jobs as only 3 counties in the entire country have rent low enough that a minimum wage worker can afford to place to live on minimum wage. Around here we even have people working full time at minimum wage that are homeless.
Secondly, you're completely full of it if you think we can't have a sufficient tax rate to prevent that from happening. We used to have tax rates approaching 100% at the top marginal rate, for a while it was up around 93%, and guess what, very few people moved out of the country as a result of that. It's something that the rich say to avoid being taxed fairly, but in practice when taxes go up, they don't actually follow through on it. And even if they do, so what? They're the assholes that are destroying the country, the more of them that flee the country the better. Let them destroy somebody elses country.
Employing people for less than minimum wage is exploitation pure and simple. Jobs should not pay less than the cost of providing the service that's exploitation. The fact that you don't get that speaks volumes about how poorly educated you are. Having a job that doesn't pay the bills is hardly a good thing, it only happens because boot lickers like you continue to gaslight people into thinking that it's OK to have an underclass of people who are working for less than it costs to provide the service and it's what's going to lead to the upcoming revolution as people realize that they cannot win.
China isn't doing better than India, I used to live there and they'd be doing far better if they would be less tolerant of exploitation, it's a massive resource sync. It's a strategic move to try and avoid the situation where a small number of workers are being paid disproportionately to the rest and driving manufacturing out of the country. I don't personally think it's a good strategy, it would be better to not do it and use the money that the workers are getting to buy local goods, but nobody in China buys Chinese goods if they can afford foreign ones,
BTW, you're opinion and $5 will get you a cup of coffee. Reality, fortunately, does not share your ignorance.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday August 22 2020, @08:35PM
Seems to me a bad idea to get rid of those non-oppressive jobs then. I'll note that the gig jobs which you are so disparaging of, have considerable flexibility. You work only when you like. There's no obligation to punch in at particular times or show up for 40 hours. It's not virtual slavery and actually the opposite. And if you're paying for a car already, or need a second job to work around something else (first job, education, whatever), then the ride hailing sector has something extra to offer you.
This can all be explained by supply and demand. Back in 1970, the US was in a pretty good position labor-wise. But that all changed due to labor competition from Europe and the Far East (particularly Japan). From that point on to today, the global economy added something like 3 billion new workers. US (and developed world labor in general) abor naturally declined in power as a result. Virtually all labor policy since has just made the problem worse. The US would be in really bad shape now, if it weren't for the vast high tech industry, which by itself greatly increased demand for US workers (both directly and second-hand via goods and services purchased by the high tech workers).
So my take here is screw living wage. It's a moving target and as a metric doesn't help people who can't earn that level of wage. Instead, do what it takes to encourage employment. That includes culling the crap that penalizes employers for employing US (and everywhere else in the world) workers.
Let's do what works.
Sure. They're considerably wealthier and have more stuff.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday August 21 2020, @02:56PM (3 children)
It's not just a living wage, though. A really big issue for drivers is having to supply, maintain, and insure their own car, which really brings down what otherwise might look like OK pay.
Legit businesses don't require workers to pay for the privilege of working for them.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday August 22 2020, @12:08AM
Nobody is forcing them to buy and maintain cars or be ride hailing drivers. If it's not OK pay for the effort, then they can do something else instead.
Let us keep in mind one of the enormous virtues of these ride hailing services. So many people have cars and don't use them for much. They're already supplying, maintaining, and insuring their own car - there's usually a substantial commitment in the first place. Thus, the "really big issue" is much smaller marginal cost than you present it.
This gives them an opportunity to use that car for something useful - giving rides to people who need them. It reduces a source of substantial waste in society.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 22 2020, @05:04AM (1 child)
It's super simple here. Theoretically, Lyft and Uber are a SAAS company providing services to their customers, the drivers. The passengers are the customers of their customers. This is no different than SAAS companies for say, insurance agencies. The customer is the agency, and the policy holders are the agencies customers.
They've long tried to act as if they're just intermediaries. Which is perfectly fine. Independent drivers could very well benefit from a SAAS company that handles setting up routes, taking payments, performing CRM operations, etc.
The ONE distinction here is that the drivers, the real customers, have no ability to set the price of the ride. THAT is what makes all the drivers employees. Lyft & Uber make so much more money than an intermediary would, but perhaps less than what an app store rapes the developers for.
However, what independent worker, running their own business, would ever let one of their vendors dictate the prices they could charge? None.
That's why the gig economy is just fucking bullshit and more ways to not pay employees a living wage.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 22 2020, @12:41PM
Yep, I've had accounts at sites that do the equivalent of that. They connect customers with people providing a service and the people providing the service get to charge whatever they like, it's just that the site gets a cut of the money coming in. It's far less exploitative, the main issue is that since these sites are full of actual independent operators, you find a lot of them will undercharge, sometimes less than minimum wage, making it difficult for people who need to make an actual living to do so. But, they are actual independent contractors, so if they want to charge peanuts or give their services away, that's legal.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Friday August 21 2020, @12:44PM (16 children)
Public transportation in LA has always felt anemic. Every time I go there for business I have to rent a car because there's no other way to get around. Uber and Lyft have provided a useful alternative to that. If they stop operating in California San Francisco and the Bay Area might limp along on their better public transit, but LA would not fare well.
It also seems like an immediate consequence of this law will be to throw tens of thousands more people out of work in already tough economic times.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by helel on Friday August 21 2020, @02:50PM (1 child)
There seem to be a few cab companies still hanging on despite competition from Uber and Lyft in the LA area. If the demand for personal transport is unaffected by the departure of Uber and Lyft then these cab companies would even need to hire more drivers to fulfill demand, thus boosting employment and easing tough economic times.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2020, @06:26PM
but the number of medallions granted is limited and those cab companies need medallions to operate. So there is a limit to the number of drivers they can hire.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Thexalon on Friday August 21 2020, @03:31PM (6 children)
It is. And it's not just LA, lots of other quite large American cities have lousy public transportation. To pick a random but in my experience typical example here: Phoenix AZ has 5.8 million people. Its public transit system consists of a single 20-mile light rail route that runs every 15 minutes most of the time but not late at night, and about 100 bus routes that run every half-hour or hour and are pretty much by definition slower than driving. Also, if you look at the Phoenix public transit map [valleymetro.org], you'll notice significant areas of the city with absolutely no public transit services.
And when you listen to public debates about public transit systems in the US, you'll find out exactly why, and it's not mainly because of funding. A major reason public transit sucks in America is racism: If a local government proposes adding a bus route or heaven forbid a rail or subway route into a relatively wealthy and white area of town, you'll regularly bring out the NIMBY types who are afraid that having good public transit will turn their suburb into the ghetto. White suburban folks will gladly buy cars and sit in traffic for hours and take on the risk of getting into a wreck each day they go into work just to avoid the thought of sitting on a bus or train with a scary black or Hispanic dude.
The same dynamic comes into play when you talk about larger-scale projects. For instance, Amtrak has at various times proposed high-speed routes up and down California, because they get lots of business for their California routes, there's a ton of traffic between the major urban centers like San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, and there's urban centers close enough together that it would make a lot of sense. However, to build those routes they would need the approval of local governments in places like Orange County that flat-out refuse high-speed rail because of fears that it might bring "those people" into their communities. And so the LA-SD trip that should take around 1.25 hours by high-speed rail actually takes about 2 hours by car, 2.5 hours by rail, at 3 hours by bus.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday August 21 2020, @04:12PM (4 children)
> public transportation
We don't want your socialist transportation, thank you very much.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday August 21 2020, @05:05PM (3 children)
If you think it sucks so much, you don't have to use it. And you don't even necessarily have to pay for it: For instance, Amtrak is likely to report a profit this year, and thus have extra money to put into improving its services by, for instance, investing in high-speed routes, which means that it's their passengers paying for those improvements.
But I for one think it's stupid to say "No, I don't want more convenience, faster travel time, lower costs, and safer trips, because that might be socialist."
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday August 21 2020, @05:58PM (2 children)
I was joking - it probably didn't come across.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday August 21 2020, @06:54PM (1 child)
You're quite right that it didn't come across - I've met too many people who actually think that way.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday August 21 2020, @06:59PM
Sorry, I guess I was being British
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday August 22 2020, @12:11AM
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday August 21 2020, @03:40PM (6 children)
Because there's no alternative possible except Uber/Lyft or public transport?
I wonder how California managed to get along before Uber/Lyft?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2020, @06:06PM
Rail car (think Trolly) service showing up between the late 1800s and the 1940s or so. It got quashed by the automotive companies buying them up and shutting them down in order to increase demand for cars. There are still portions of abandoned lines between Sacramento and Elk Grove related to this, and supposedly the line would have extended to Stockton otherwise.
For now we have Amtrak and freight rail, but in an alternate future we could have had ubiquitous rail lines running all over the state. Unfortunately once a certain level of sprawl set in and eminent domain got (rightfully!) frowned upon here, the chances of new rail lines more or less dried up. Unfortunately that eminent domain issue i mentioned still comes up when the moneyed and politically motivated push for it, and usually results in the ED'd land being sold for a pittance a few years/decades later after the government sat on it and depreciated its sell value, while the actual land prices were increasing (you can find examples all over the state.)
For all certain individiuals talk about how 'liberal' California is, there is a lot of nasty front and back room dealing here around real estate and other unfavorable business ventures and tax breaks. Go look into how many citiies are willing to cut deals giving companies industrial quantities of water at residential rates while telling their people they are in a drought, and at the same time giving companies 10 year no tax deals only to have them leave at the beginning of that 11th year where they are supposed to start recouping taxes. Lots of obvious corruption and stupidity out here that shows the pro-business crowd is bipartisan, whatever crap they sell you on the face of it.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday August 21 2020, @07:04PM (1 child)
They have some rail (nowhere near the standards of most developed countries, but it at least exists), buses, private limo buses, cabs, car services, and of course rental cars and privately owned vehicles. Those all continue to exist without Uber or Lyft.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday August 21 2020, @07:15PM
In spite of the world's idea about Australian and East European countries, one actually get exposed to "rail..., buses, private limo buses, cabs, car services, and of course rental cars and privately owned vehicles" while living there.
(hint: those were rhetorical questions. Shoulda shouted "false dichotomy" instead of asking them)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday August 22 2020, @12:34AM
My understanding is that besides out-competing regular taxis, Uber and Lyft were quite heavily used by Millennials who eschewed car ownership.
Of course the Bay Area has BART, CalTrain, Muni, cable cars, buses, and some ferries that connect Oakland and SF to Marin County. When I lived there twenty years ago it was feasible to get around without a car, but Soylentils who live there can better chime in on how it is now.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Saturday August 22 2020, @08:03AM (1 child)
That's a fallacious argument. How did humans manage to get along before agriculture?
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday August 22 2020, @09:53AM
Because Uber/Lyft is as revolutionary in transport as agriculture was at its time, right?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2020, @12:47PM
keep going till you get one that will take a bribe.