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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.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday August 27 2017, @01:55PM (4 children)
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)
Compared to what? Why should they be paid more?
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)
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
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.
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
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.