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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: 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.