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Comment by ilaksh | Hacker News Reader

Companies had come to the conclusion that they could just save lots of money by using contractors or freelancers as cheap long term employees since they didn't have to pay benefits. It was obviously wrong, but everyone was doing it, and no one was stopping them, so it became normalized as a business practice.

There are some companies like Uber that have their entire business model based on misclassification.

The issue of people blacklisting California freelancers though now becomes a real problem for some people.

Maybe other states will make similar laws.

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> It was obviously wrong

It sounds obviously wrong by the way you phrase it, but it's not so black and white. As a freelancer myself of the past 5 years, I prefer the independent life, being able to negotiate things as I'd like, having more varied work and having more freedom to work when and where I like. Perhaps I could make more and have better benefits as a regular employee, but that's not what I want. Maybe you don't understand and so this is "obviously wrong" to you, but not everything can be bucketed into "wrong" and "right" for everyone. This may help some but it will definitely screw over others.

The concept of freelancers isn’t the problem. It is entirely legitimate to be a freelancer and entirely legitimate to hire a freelancer.

The problem is de-facto employees who are classed as freelancers as a way of avoiding taxes and worker-protection laws.

Yes, I would be classified as an employee according to this CA precedent for some of the clients I've worked for. I don't want this.

> But it’s part B that presents a problem for freelance journalists: someone is an independent contractor only if they perform work “outside the usual course of the hiring entity’s business.” In the archetypal example, a plumber fixing a restaurant toilet clearly qualifies. A freelancer journalist writing a column for a magazine? Not so much.

In my case, I've been a contract developer working for agencies before. Sometimes I want work like this.

My understanding (and experience as a contractor) is that for the service provider the benefit is being able to control the what and how of the work. This is better for the client as well especially if there is asymmetric knowledge as is often the case in tech.

However, if your are working full time and end up being made to follow the client's schedule, don't get to address technical debt, have useless meetings etc. then you might be considered an employee anyway. Which I can't understand why you _wouldn't_ want that, because it could mean overtime pay for all those crunch times that result from bad management.

So independent contractor is probably best for a tech worker if you're able to set boundaries and have autonomy, but not at all if having to work overtime and not take vacations.

> then you might be considered an employee anyway. Which I can't understand why you _wouldn't_ want that

Because it comes with a significant reduction in flexibility. If the employer has to provide health insurance then they'll pay you proportionally less, even if you already have health insurance through your spouse. If they have to pay you overtime then they may cut your hours instead, or lower your base pay to compensate, which may be worse for you than being able to continue working at the original wage.

Meanwhile if you did prefer some aspect of the arrangement the law would require then there is nothing stopping you from negotiating that to begin with in exchange for the correspondingly smaller amount of cash money. Few employers have any objection to providing you with health insurance in lieu of the same amount in cash that they would otherwise still have to pay you in order to get you to work for them.

But some employees would prefer the cash -- and the employers take some of the loss when not being able to do what both parties prefer makes the employee walk away, so they don't like it either.

I understand better than you.

I've been a freelancer, temp, or contractor for most of my working life. This spans about 20 years. For the past 10 years it's been almost all remote freelancing.

I also prefer freedoms to the degree that I can get them.

I've also lived in California for most of my life.

In about 75% of the projects I have been brought into, projects were not short term, and the non-employee status was maintained long term as a way to avoid paying for benefits. In some cases I was also building a startup, i.e., I was effectively serving the role of technical cofounder over a period of many months or a few years, but the freelancer status was leveraged as a way to ensure I did not try to gain any business interest or profit.

I'm sure people will say that it's my fault for allowing people to take advantage of me. However I do the best I can and since I do not have a large social network or savings, it has almost never made sense to quit a project and therefore drop my only source of income, on the basis of not receiving benefits or equity or whatever.

> I'm sure people will say that it's my fault for allowing people to take advantage of me.

Yes. It’s not binary, as you describe.

Doesn’t seem fair, the way you’re describing companies that operate like Uber/Lyft/etc...

Drivers opt-in on their own accord and it requires zero skill whatsoever. You can work whenever you want for as long or as little as you’d like.

How is this somehow unethical or immoral? You used the word wrong.

These people are not employees, they’re temporary/ephemeral contractors. If you work for an hour a month - you’re not my employee - and I’m not going to give you health insurance.

The percentage of Uber drivers that work for an hour a month is close to zero. Obviously those people should not get health insurance.

Sure, but what about people that work 2-4 hours a day, to supplement their main job? Or once a day on the weekends? Or a mom whose daily routine is to drop the kids off school, and drive Uber until the kids are done with school?

This is the problem with extending employee benefits to gig workers. Employee benefits are an overhead cost, so now it becomes unprofitable for Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, etc. to have workers working sporadic hours. If their workers get classified as employees, then they'll have to start setting hours for employees. This put a lot of people who need flexible hours out of work.

The problem is health benefits are typically tied to and provided through employers...

By and large they don't exist.

They are the vast majority of Uber drivers.

Those who stick around are driving more than occasionally. The "vast majority" of those buying into this "gig economy" bullshit only last a few months at most.

https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/06/uber-fails-to...

Low wages correspond to a high turnover rate. While more than 800,000 people drive for Uber in a year, the average driver lasts around three months and drives less than half time, or only 17 hours per week.

Ok, but that doesn't refute anything I said. The whole point is that it's not a FT job.

Most drivers are work for a few hours a week in addition to their other job/school/etc. It's perfectly valid for people to drive when they need extra income and stop as their situation changes. That's what the flexibility is for.

The whole point is that it's not a FT job.

It is a full-time job in that the so-called "core" drivers drive for Uber full-time. There are a lot of part-time employees too, and they're just as deserving of minimum wage, social security contributions, workers comp insurance, unemployment insurance, health insurance, and the whole host of other benefits that come with being classed as not-a-contractor.

It's perfectly valid for people to drive when they need extra income

There've been part-time jobs with flexible schedules since before Boober was even a glimmer in Kalanick's horny eyes. The difference is that when you work as a part-timer for a real company you are subject to things like minimum wage. Driving for Uber is nowhere near as profitable as their marketing is claiming. For instance:

https://www.extremetech.com/mobile/243102-uber-fined-20-mill...

Across all of those cities less than 30% of the drivers are making what Uber claims they can make. That's before the usury that Uber engages in (20% APR on a new car lone? for fucks sake).

Employee vs contractor is not about time, it's about control.

You can work on a freelance project for 40 hours a week but that doesn't suddenly mean you're an employee. If you want flexibility then you're a contractor. Part-time isn't an answer because it still has the strict control of FT.

Most drivers of uber want flexibility, not a job where they have to show up at certain hours. You're arguing for something without even discussing it with the people you're supposedly arguing about.

Okay so where is the line? Not zero and not 40 hrs.

So where do you draw the line?? The reason Uber and the like operate the way they do is they don’t need to worry about that overhead. It’s simple and easy, unlike having people on your permanent staff.

So you say: well, we don’t like that, we will stop it. If a person works more than X hours a week for you, you owe them benefits. “Okay no problem,” Uber says, “drivers can no longer drive more than X hours per week in this municipality” and then boom supply goes down and pricing (revenue) goes up and then people start getting fake accounts etc... or just get fucked like this article eludes.

So in the end the business will always succeed and protect itself, the “employee” or “contractor” gets the short end of the stick.

Sucks that this happens.

Do you realize that anyone can be a full-time driver? The job has been available for a century now, and has plenty of demand still.

The people driving for Uber do not want a full time job, that's the point. They want the flexibility of working whenever and wherever they can, usually because they have a day job, are retired, in school, or some other situation. Ask your next Uber driver if they want an 8 hour shift where they have to show up on time at a location that Uber chooses. See how that goes.

The low rates are due to an over-supply of drivers, something that happens because it is low-skill flexible work. All that Uber needs to do is limit the drivers on the platform, but that has its own challenges which is why it hasn't been done.

Ask the tens of thousands or perhaps million of full time taxi drivers that had to quit their jobs and start 'freelancing' for Uber because there was no more business.

Being a taxi driver was never a good job but taxis still exist, along with limos, shuttles, buses, trucks, ambulances, construction vehicles, and many other transportation positions.

Jobs change over time. Driving for a living is slowly declining in demand and you can't legislate your way out of it. How to give people new job opportunities is real valid concern but completely separate from the fact that the vast majority of Uber drivers are not looking for a fulltime driving job.

> limos, shuttles, buses, trucks, ambulances, construction vehicles

You realise they all require a more expensive, more limited and different form of driving license, one that usually requires many thousands of dollars to acquire, right?

Sure. If you want a job then you have to be qualified for the job.

The people complaining about Uber destroying taxis were the taxi companies who owned the medallions. The drivers themselves were paid crap before and they still are. They actually get a higher percentage of the fare now than they did as a taxi driver. But now the fares are lower because the medallion owners aren't artificially constraining supply, which means more people can be drivers.

In principle this should result in higher compensation for drivers, because without a huge margin wastefully going to the rent seeking medallion holders there is more demand for car service, which means more demand for labor, which means higher prices for labor. But Uber drivers may not be a large enough percentage of the overall unskilled labor pool to move the needle much on their own, so the low wages are still low.

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