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from the employee-rules-for-contractor-pay dept.
Uber remains unprofitable at the same time its drivers work 80-hour weeks for less than minimum wage and without health care packages. They must also cover vehicle costs including fuel, maintenance, and insurance.
The ride-hailing company Uber has made its long-awaited debut as a publicly traded stock, but investor demand for the May 10 initial public offering (IPO) fell short of the company's hopes. Part of the reason is a lingering question about its workforce: Does the still-unprofitable firm deliver low-cost rides for passengers at the expense of decent treatment for drivers, and could the resulting discontent undermine Uber's business model?
The issue over whether Uber drivers are employees (entitled to company benefits such as sick pay and retirement) or contractors (entitled to nothing) has been at the center of the labor controversy since the company launched a decade ago. It is still largely unresolved.
Earlier on SN:
New Research Confirms That Ride-Hailing Companies Are Causing a Ton of Traffic Congestion (2019)
Uber and Lyft Drivers to go on Strike (2019)
Uber Posts $1 Billion Loss in Quarter as Growth in Bookings Slows (2018)
and quite a few more...
(Score: 3, Disagree) by Arik on Wednesday May 22 2019, @06:30AM (9 children)
But it clearly no longer makes sense to license taxis at the local level.
Congress should pass superceding legislation to license taxis on the same basis nationwide. The reason they haven't already probably has a lot to do with big influential cities making bank on their own regulatory schemes. NYC is a great example. But even they have to see the writing on the wall. Those taxi medallions were worth a million each just 6 years ago, but the market took a steep downturn after that.
There's no need to make a predatory medallion system like that nationwide. But require a relatively clean driving record, a clean criminal record, regular safety inspections, that kind of thing. And then make Uber and Lyft verify the drivers they dispatch to have valid licenses just like every cab company in the country has to do.
This doesn't directly address the problem of pay, I know, but a certain percentage of the drivers would fail one of those basic tests, and the remaining drivers would therefore be in a stronger position to negotiate, which is the ideal outcome. As is, there's still very little to prevent someone else throwing up another website that does the same job and lets the drivers keep more of their money, or to keep the drivers from simply moving when that happens, is there?
The more you regulate the space the harder that tends to become, at any rate.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 22 2019, @11:51AM (5 children)
Is there a need to require that when Uber/Lyft/etc already mostly have such requirements and customers can choose not to use companies that don't have those sorts of requirements?
Why does that problem need to be addressed by making jobs more scarce? My view is that if people are willing to work 80 hours below minimum wage, then there's something wrong with job supply that can be addressed by say, lowering minimum wage and otherwise reducing the cost/regulatory burden on the scarcer side.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 22 2019, @02:23PM (4 children)
Nice definition of "willing" you got here, be a
shameblessed relief is something were to happen to it.(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 22 2019, @11:04PM (3 children)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by lentilla on Thursday May 23 2019, @05:45AM (2 children)
To me, that sounds like an argument for enforcing a minimum wage, and probably increasing it as well. You see, companies still want the job done even if they are required to pay more to have it done. The net effect is that minimum wage folks don't have to work ridiculous hours to survive. There is a secondary effect: it increases the amount of jobs available. Why? Because you can have one person working an eighty hour week or two people working forty hour weeks.
I have no problem with people working hard to get ahead but to me; if regular people are being required to work eighty-hour weeks just to survive; it says that something is very wrong.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday May 23 2019, @11:17AM
They still have three other choices: 1) not do the work even if they want it, 2) automate it, or 3) move the work to a cheaper place.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday May 23 2019, @11:53AM
The huge thing missed here is why aren't these people already working jobs that make more than minimum wage? Those companies that allegedly need workers and would be willing to pay more than minimum wage to get them are already not doing so.
What again is the point of making the labor market even more wrong?
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday May 22 2019, @11:04PM (2 children)
I don't agree either.
Where I live, the taxi industry was completely deregulated* in the 1980's. Anyone could become a taxi driver, and so lots of people did.
To the point where there were taxis everywhere, and the prices were stupidly low so no-one was making any money.
This corrected itself pretty quickly however.
All the taxis companies with dirty, unreliable rustbuckets, driven by rude idiots who did not know where they were going went out of business pretty quickly, even though they were really cheap.
There is now a thriving taxi market, and if I want I can pay extra to get a luxury type car, or I can pay a bit less for a standard sort of car.
We also have Uber, but they can't really compete on price, and from what I understand are often much more expensive than a regular taxi because of their opaque pricing model, so people get annoyed and go back to using a taxi.
* To be clear, there are still regulations, but it is the drivers who are licensed as commercial drivers. Any group of drivers can form their own taxi company.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Wednesday May 22 2019, @11:42PM (1 child)
What I'm suggesting is exactly what you tell me happened locally, and you praise, except on a nationwide basis. What's wrong with that?
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday May 23 2019, @12:32AM
Yes, you're right I did misunderstand you.
I re-read your comment and what you are suggesting is what we did. When there were too many drivers, the market took care of it by putting the worst of them out of business. (Not the cheapest which is interesting).
There was a period where there was a risk of your cab breaking down before it got to your destination or your driver asking how to get there which was annoying.