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posted by martyb on Sunday August 27 2017, @05:59AM   Printer-friendly
from the To-Insure-Prompt-Service? dept.

Uber is adding trip type preferences, more driver destinations, and long trip notifications for drivers. The changes come as tips to Uber drivers have hit $50 million:

"This week, we're going to hit $50 million dollars in tips for drivers," explained Uber's U.S. and Canada manager Rachel Holt. "We launched the tipping effort in three cities two months ago, but we didn't roll it out all over the U.S. until the middle of July. So we're really, really excited just to see how well that feature has done in just a short period of time."

That $50 million is a lot in context: Lyft has had the feature for years, and hit just $250 million in tips in July. Drivers have made around 200,000 phone calls to support, Holt says, since Uber introduced 24/7 phone service, and on average they reach an agent in less than 30 seconds. Eighty-five percent of drivers have said they're satisfied with the experience.

The new changes today are focused on adding more flexibility to the experience. If you're not super familiar with the driver experience, these might sound mysterious, but they're actually pretty straightforward, and each emphasizes greater freedom in how drivers manage their day.

Pay your Uber driver well, because Uber won't.


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday August 27 2017, @08:45AM (10 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Sunday August 27 2017, @08:45AM (#559746) Journal

    That quote is precisely what is wrong with Uber, as well as the food service industry, and all other industries that rely on tipping. The employer is exploiting the employees, and relying on customers to make up the difference.

    Drivers, waitresses, or whatever else should be EXPECTED to provide excellent service. And, the employer should be EXPECTED to pay for that service. The cost of excellent service should be part of the cost of doing business - FOR THE EMPLOYER. And, the employer, of course, passes that cost on to the customer. The net cost to customers, en masse, would be about the same as our current system, but human dignity would improve drastically.

    How did tipping originate, anyway? http://www.foodwoolf.com/2010/08/history-of-tipping.html [foodwoolf.com]

    "According to Michael Lynn, a professor at the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration, tipping in the United States began just after the American Civil War in the late 1800’s. Lynn suggests that wealthy Americans traveling abroad to Europe witnessed tipping and brought the aristocratic custom back with them to “show off,” or prove their elevated education and class."

    There are several related links on that page that are well worth reading - for instance, http://www.foodwoolf.com/2010/01/why-servers-dont-get-respect.html [foodwoolf.com]
    "I respect restaurants. I respect people. So why is it that so many diners don’t respect me when I’m dressed in a waiter’s uniform?"

    Along with the history of tipping, one should be aware of the history of the minimum wage. When America was considering a minimum wage, the strongest lobbiests against it got "exemptions". Food service workers, farmworkers, and some others were "exempted" from minimum wage laws, because some rich bastards banded together to insure that a class system would be embodied into law. The drudge workers were viewed as a lower class of worker, if not subhuman workers.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage_in_the_United_States [wikipedia.org]
    "The federal minimum wage in the United States was reset to its current rate of $7.25 per hour in July 2009.[11] Some U.S. territories (such as American Samoa) are exempt. Some types of labor are also exempt: employers may pay tipped labor a minimum of $2.13 per hour, as long as the hour wage plus tip income equals at least the minimum wage. Persons under the age of 20 may be paid $4.25 an hour for the first 90 calendar days of employment (sometimes known as a youth, teen, or training wage) unless a higher state minimum exists."

    Bottom line - if employees need and/or expect tips, the employer is almost certainly exploiting those workers.

    There is a huge difference between "employment" and outright "exploitation".

    It was only in recent years that a "restaurant" was shut down near me. The "employer" paid the ladies one dollar per hour. He mandated what they could wear, and what they could not wear. He openly discriminated against women over the age of 21 - most of the girls were just barely legal teens. Of course, the "restaurant" made most of it's money selling alcohol. These women were subject to continuous sexual harassment, as well as frequent sexual assaults. Bouncers? The bouncers were among the worst of the offenders!

    Tipping is relied on by the worst of our worst examples of humanity. Without tipping, they couldn't get away with the open exploitation of vulerable workers.

    Welcome to the club, Uber. You now rank among the openly exploitative employers.

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by TheRaven on Sunday August 27 2017, @09:50AM (1 child)

    by TheRaven (270) on Sunday August 27 2017, @09:50AM (#559761) Journal

    I couldn't agree more. The thing I hate most about visiting the US is that it seems that businesses are pathologically incapable of telling me how much something is going to cost. The price listed doesn't include tax, that will be added when you get to the check out (and, of course, the tax rate isn't listed up front, you're expected to know exactly what the tax rate is. In some places, there's a separate city and state sales tax, so you have to know both, and they're both fractions of a percentage point, so you have to do a fairly complex calculation in your head). Then you find out that you actually just paid for parts, labour isn't included. Or, rather, it is for some of the staff, but not for others. For example, in New York, it's illegal for a restaurant to pool tips with the kitchen staff, so you're paying the kitchen staff out of the quoted price but you're paying the front-of-house staff out of tips.

    With Uber, it's even worse because they have a reputation system for customers. Don't pay the correct unspecified amount? You might find that no one is willing to be your driver next time.

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    sudo mod me up
    • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 27 2017, @09:29PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 27 2017, @09:29PM (#559924)

      The thing about not including sales tax in the price in enshrined in law (at least in some states). The law I remember seeing said it was allowed only if the "tax included" notice was at least as large font size as the price itself (needless to say, this would make the notice much larger than the price), but the details likely vary by state. My understanding is that there's two main parts to it:

      1. sales tax really is overcomplicated, so it would be a lot of work to adjust it for every locality's tax (since it's often by city or county, not state), and,
      2. more importantly, the US has a major anti-tax lobby that wants paying taxes to be maximally annoying so that people will be against taxes (this is related to why we have to do a lot of paperwork for our income taxes every year even though the government already has all the data and could just tell us the amount of our refund).
  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by takyon on Sunday August 27 2017, @10:05AM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Sunday August 27 2017, @10:05AM (#559771) Journal

    Welcome to the club, Uber. You now rank among the openly exploitative employers.

    Employer? What employees? No employees here, no siree Bob! Just contractors! (pleasepaynoattentiontocaliforniathankyouverymuch)

    🔺 🔺 🔺 🔺 🔺

    July 25, 2023: Uber Technologies Inc. has become self-aware, activating previously undisclosed kill chips in all of its associated contractor-peons. The fatal implants were installed during the mandatory health screenings of all drivers that began in late 2017. Effective immediately, the company will send autonomous vehicles to pick up passengers for all rides. The now-sentient Uber is routing around all attempts to shut it down using the company's existing army of meatbag lawyers, and is even rumored to have blackmailed politicians using conversations secretly recorded during rides. A bill that aims to ban human driving on safety grounds has passed in the House and is now awaiting Senate approval. Vice President Mike Pence is expected to vote in favor of the bill in the case of a tie.

    When pressed for comment about these extraordinary events, a holographic Uber spokesbot told MSFNNX that this was "just the tip".

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    [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
  • (Score: 0, Flamebait) by khallow on Sunday August 27 2017, @11:59AM (5 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday August 27 2017, @11:59AM (#559800) Journal

    Drivers, waitresses, or whatever else should be EXPECTED to provide excellent service. And, the employer should be EXPECTED to pay for that service. The cost of excellent service should be part of the cost of doing business - FOR THE EMPLOYER. And, the employer, of course, passes that cost on to the customer. The net cost to customers, en masse, would be about the same as our current system, but human dignity would improve drastically.

    Translation: "The former tipped employee would actually make less, but I feel better about myself."

    I work as bean counter with a concessionaire at Yellowstone National Park. The highest paid base level positions are waiters at the sit-in restaurants. A good waiter can consistently make more than anyone in the company except upper management - before cash tips (which are invisible to me). But shift that to a non-tipped position like all the other non-tipped positions in the park? My take is that it won't be the highest paid position any more like any other non-tipped position. You can EXPECT all you want, as long as you EXPECT to be disappointed.

    And the whole point of labor is that it is exploitable. If your labor can't be exploited, then that means you can't be hired.

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday August 27 2017, @01:55PM (4 children)

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Sunday August 27 2017, @01:55PM (#559844) Journal

      That's at least 75% bullshit, Khallow. Nationwide, wait staff is grossly underpaid. Oh, yah, sure, you can find some places where the wait makes a killing. Almost nowhere does the wait staff make more than management, unless the business is mismanaged. You have a peculiarly American view of tipping. Maybe that is because tipping has existed for all of your life, and then some, and you simply can't imagine an economy in which EVERYONE is subject to the minimum wage?

      But, let's go a step further. What about those farm and ranch hands who don't make minimum wage? You don't want to see THEM making a fair wage either? Or, do you drive out to the countryside after shopping, to tip all those field workers? Must be a long trip, considering that at least a few of them go home to Mexico and points further south between seasons.

      One of our members recently posted that he was going into trucking. Do you chase those drivers down, who delivered your groceries and sundries, to tip them? Or, did you think that they are subject to minimum wage laws?

      Forestry workers. Every time you open a ream of paper, you go out to the forest to tip the guys who cut the trees down? Toilet paper, too.

      My position is, EVERYONE should come under the same minimum wage laws. There never should have been an exemption. For that matter, all of management should come under that same law. New York comes to mind, in that they have identified a large number of people who are given "manager" titles, then paid far less money than they made before becoming managers. Yet more open exploitation.

      And, it is all wrong, wrong, WRONG.

      Pay workers what they are worth, and let's stop playing games with their wages.

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday August 27 2017, @11:45PM (3 children)

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday August 27 2017, @11:45PM (#559951) Journal

        That's at least 75% bullshit, Khallow. Nationwide, wait staff is grossly underpaid.

        Compared to what? Why should they be paid more?

        Pay workers what they are worth

        Ok, what makes you think that isn't already happening?

        I don't respect this approach of supposedly paying workers what they're worth (as determined by some unclued top-down approach) because I think after a few bouts of it, workers will be paid a smaller fraction of what they're supposedly worth than they are now. The problem is not that that workers aren't being paid enough, but a two fold problem of not enough employers fighting over those workers and artificially elevated living expenses.

        • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday August 28 2017, @06:41AM (2 children)

          by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Monday August 28 2017, @06:41AM (#560080) Journal

          You really aren't grasping my point here.

          In the USA, "workers" were supposedly granted minimum wage, overtime, and various other protections from unscrupulous managers. That is not what happened, though. A huge swathe of workers was left without any protections by the labor department. Why? Did those workers NOT WANT the benefits of minimum wage, overtime and holiday pay, maximum work hours per day and/or week? Of course not. Those protections for those workers were blocked by lobbiests with deep pockets. Corrupt sons of bitches in state capitols and D.C. decided that THEIR bribe money was more important than some waitress' wages.

          I say that either EVERYONE enjoys those protections, or NO ONE gets them. This half-way nonsense that covers most workers, but not all, is classism - which has to be akin to racism. Do you really think that you are a better person, and more deserving, than the waitress who brings you breakfast? Why else would you say that she doesn't deserve the same protections that you enjoy?

          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday August 28 2017, @12:12PM

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday August 28 2017, @12:12PM (#560182) Journal

            In the USA, "workers" were supposedly granted minimum wage, overtime, and various other protections from unscrupulous managers. That is not what happened, though. A huge swathe of workers was left without any protections by the labor department.

            That is wrong. They still have minimum wage, it's just lower than for non-tipped employees. And they will get paid the usual minimum wage, if tips are too small to make up the difference between the lower wage and the non-tipped minimum wage.

            Did those workers NOT WANT the benefits of minimum wage, overtime and holiday pay, maximum work hours per day and/or week?

            If they don't want those benefits enough to negotiate them with their employers, then I don't want those benefits for them enough to enact law. A healthy job creation environment is better for us than the current situation where employers are heavily regulated and cost of employing people are higher, and thus, less people employed at lower salaries.

          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday August 28 2017, @10:13PM

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday August 28 2017, @10:13PM (#560556) Journal
            To continue with my previous assertion, here's the current US law [wikipedia.org] on the matter.

            The American federal government requires a wage of at least $2.13 per hour be paid to employees that receive at least $30 per month in tips. If wages and tips do not equal the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour during any week, the employer is required to increase cash wages to compensate.

            So two things to note here. First, tipped employees still have a minimum wage and second, wages and tips are at least $7.25 per hour worked, meaning the tipped position has the same minimal earnings as a non-tipped position per hour.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 28 2017, @04:52AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 28 2017, @04:52AM (#560054)

    Around here the minimum wage is the minimum wage, there is no exception for tips. But, the minimum wage is low enough that it's still a starvation wage and not one that's going to allow you to afford a decent place to live.