Hacker News Reader

Comment by cperciva | Hacker News Reader

Companies can't unionize -- it's called anti-competitive behaviour.

Depending on who you ask, Uber drivers aren't necessarily workers; they might be independent contractors, i.e., companies.

EDIT: Also, depending on the definition of "allowed to unionize" here, it's possible that this goes beyond allowing collective bargaining to prohibiting Uber from hiring anyone who isn't "blessed" by the union.

View on HN

california most definitely thinks they're workers, even if they think they're companies.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/18/business/uber-contests-ca...

>california most definitely thinks

California is a state, it doesn't think. Please be more precise with commentary like this (e.g. state judicial rulings vs local laws vs state laws).

In this particular case it's the California Labor Commissioner's office and it's a ruling for one case. From your article:

>The ruling does not apply beyond Ms. Berwick and could be altered if Uber’s appeal succeeds.

So this is a long ways away from being a law in California.

Let me introduce you to a wonderful element of human language: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synecdoche

Or the reification fallacy - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reification_(fallacy)

I appreciate the condescension, but saying that a state thinks something when referring to an enforcement ruling from a particular office is very misleading. In particular you can say the state both simultaneously thinks that they are contractors (how the rest of the Uber employees are treated) and it thinks that they are not (the ruling outcome of this one case).

So saying a state thinks something when there are many conflicting internal positions is worthless and just ends up being a tool to push a particular political agenda.

People actually think lots of apparently conflicting ideas - a common one being believing in religion and understanding science - and in fact the person you originally responded to pointed out the supposed "conflict" here - that individual contractors, despite being "independent" companies, may have collective bargaining rights.

The comment I replied to made it sound as if the state had some kind of position on the matter, but the linked evidence was only that a particular office ruled on one single case.

>california most definitely thinks they're workers,

This is blatantly wrong.

why are both your comments greyed out?

That's what happens when comments get a lot of downvotes. You don't see a "karma" score on HN, but comments with negative number of votes get more and more grayed out until they are hardly visible.

very poor content, presumably.

It's not so much the content, it's the tone. People don't like being talked down to, even if the points are relevant.

How about this comment that is both condescending and irrelevant in response to mine? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13856422

It's not really depending on who you ask and it's very surprising for me to read comments like yours on HN of all places, the law is very clearly laid out and some protest signs in Sillicon Valley do not change the reality. You can check the IRS website if you're confused about what the distinction is between a contractor and a worker.

Sorry, I was unclear. I should have said "depending on the context and which law applies". The IRS definitions apply when you're dealing with the IRS (unless they don't, e.g., if you convince a court that the IRS is incorrectly applying the law) but they're not necessarily the same as the definitions which are legally relevant for antitrust purposes or for the purpose of Labour relations regulations.

Actually the worker / employee distinction is complex and not as cut and dried as you think.

This is a big part of the Uber/Delivered style of companies business model that is dodging the employer social security taxes.

The taxes are never dodged. Either Uber pays them (W2) or the independent contractor does (1040). The bigger issue, st least under Obamacare, was if they were elegiabke for group health insurance if they worked more than 30 hours.

Depends on country often self employed get better tax breaks in return for less benefits - this is "real" self employed contractors not faux self employment like Uber et al

Ya, depends on the country. In the USA, self employed kind of sucks because group health insurance is way cheaper than individual market insurance.

I disagree. It's not clear at all.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com