Uber/Lyft drivers say they were misled into petitioning against workers rights
vox.com
vox.com
The only solution to this is better education that teaches critical thinking rather than mechanical parroting-exams based system that is widespread today in majority of the world.
The underlying assumption here is that everybody is capable of anything if only they were given the right 'education'.
Is probably more accurate. You can bring a horse to water but you can't make them drink. It's impossible to know but it may be that those who are willing to be educated already have been and those who are left are willfully ignorant or have low enough intelligence that education isn't possible.
As society becomes more complex, greater and greater numbers of people will be unable to successfully interact with it. What we do with them is a unsolved problem.
That is, I believe with better education we can have a substantially larger number of people who are capable of critical thinking and can navigate through trickery and misinformation at a basic level.
This is an unsolved problem, and a really important one in the modern cognitive economy, which is why theories about inherent cognitive capability have gained so much purchase recently. For my part, I think these theories are plausible, but also think that their implications are significant enough that I don't want to be too hasty and buy into them until I've been convinced that we've exhausted the possibility that thinking can be taught.
The people I’ve met who are least capable of critical thinking seem to have accepted some form of universal or protouniversal truth, usually an ideology that sort of explains all things away they don’t want to think about. Religion, strong societal rules and position, and lack of unwanted interference in your life can do that.
Some degree of oppression doesn’t seem to harm either as it seems to me it forces people to confront the fundamental sense of fairness they might want to believe in has no grounds in society. So it’s a mix of things.
Learning Socratic dialogue seems useful though.
Probably the least critical thought-inclined people I’ve met are students of economics who take the theories at face value though. Interestingly they are very often quite sheltered and privileged people, which goes into my point about oppression.
In fact I’d like to add that I said above - probably the best education for critical thinking I can imagine is teaching people about cognitive biases and heuristics.
Could you make a cup of tea if you didn't know? Probably, but you'd ruin a lot of tea bags...
As long as...
a) The politicians find it easier to manipulate dumb voters and realize that voters with good critical thinking skills are more capable of calling out their BS.
and
b) The bureaucrats deciding what gets taught in public school are ultimately accountable to people appointed by and accountable to politicians
and
c) Most of the voting public gets a public school education.
...we will never have a general public with good critical thinking skills.
Now, before anyone puts words in my mouth, no there isn't some grand conspiracy to keep the proles stupid, it just so happens that there's a disincentive to making them smart and making them smart takes resources so obviously there's no will to get it done.
You'd be surprised how much good stuff the government doesn't do is attributable to this incentive structure.
> Plenty of drivers said they understood Uber’s and Lyft’s political messaging. And some drivers who spoke to Recode made an articulate case for why they want to remain independent contractors. (A poll of 1,200 drivers by independent blog The Rideshare Guy last year showed that about 76 percent of respondents wanted to remain independent contractors rather than become employees.)
That isn't to say that there isn't an issue with deceiving workers: Uber and Lyft hardly have a reputation for ethical business practices, and I wouldn't be surprised if their messaging was intentionally unclear here. On top of that, it's possible that restrictions on labor can be positive and I'm not ruling out any degree of labor paternalism as valuable to society.
But your reductionist framing of blue-collar workers as simpletons who couldn't possibly disagree with you about _the way their own lives and employment should work_ is despicable. And frankly, the doublespeak involved in labeling restrictions on labor relationships as rights (and thus obviously and unambiguously positive) says much more about your ignorance than theirs.
E.g., I know plenty of white-collar workers in my country who believe they're being robbed by their country because their employers have to also pay for their socialized health insurance, naively assuming that if that was not the case, they could actually pocket that money.
Now don't get me wrong: I'm not some extremist hyper-individualist believer in Homo Economicus, and I think there's plenty of scope for paternalism in policy. I think that it's entirely possible to talk to a specific person about their policy beliefs and come away with the view that they don't understand what's going on and are voting against their own interests. I just think that a little humility is in order when making assumptions about other people's lives and struggles a d choices, and applying this approach en masse with blanket statements like the GP comment (and your own, to a lesser degree) is a lot more likely to be ignorant of the realities of the variety and complexity of these people's lives.
It is. It doesn't mean the justification is always wrong, much like Stalin believing 2+2=4 doesn't disprove arithmetic. I agree with the call to humility and I generally not tell individuals I know better than them how they should live their lives, but my comment is a) on the systemic level, and b) based on direct and indirect experience.
For instance, some of the evidence backing my belief is the experience of people close to me who went through periods of abusive employments, and whose stories I got to hear throughout it. For instance, one of those people was stuck under a verbally and mentally abusive boss who exploited the perception of local employment conditions to keep people underpaid and overworked. The irony is, the abused employees were also critical to that man's financial success, and they could've easily fixed the situation for themselves, if they got together. Unfortunately, they (including my close acquaintance) were all scared shitless and couldn't coordinate - everyone was essentially worried no one else would step up, and the lone person would lose the job.
Having seen or heard of cases like this, and also having read here many stories that essentially boil down to "short-term rewards prevent people from taking actions beneficial to their career longer-term" (carrots work better in our industry, for now), I came to the conclusion that it's ridiculously easy to exploit workers. Now, since the context of this discussion is Uber, a notoriously morally bankrupt company, I don't think myself or the OP are too paternalistic with this sentiment. It's not intended as a criticism of workers (myself I'm not immune to this kind of pressure either), but exploitative employers.
Anyway, thanks again!
[1] eg Webster: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ignoramus
For instance, most of organized labor may understand that "Right To Work" legislation is Luntzian doublespeak, because their orgs have policy people to unravel the lies.
But it's effective against non-union labor, editorial boards, and low-information voters. Providing much needed cover for corporate shilling legislators.
"And frankly, the doublespeak involved in labeling restrictions on labor relationships as rights (and thus obviously and unambiguously positive) says much more about your ignorance than theirs."
I don't think he said that.
Well, ok.
And then there’s a suggestion that people talking about labourers are looking down their noses at labourers. Well, that is a thing. As is people looking down at “Apple fanboys,” or looking down at “People who buy whatever marketing tells them to buy,” or “People believing whatever Fox tells them to believe.”
That is absolutely a thing, and it goes across almost all discussions about almost all topics. You can’t bring up interviewing without a bunch of people confidently stating that everyone else is doing it wrong and stupidly cargo-culting.
But I don’t see the OP talking about the way that disinformation and political dark patterns as framing labourers as simpletons.
If you want reductionism, when it comes to humans persuading other humans to do things, we are all simpletons. We all have what amount to zero-day vulnerabilities. We all can be stunningly brilliant in one area of our lives, but thicker than a block of wood in another.
I don’t think there's anything condescending or paternalistic about saying this.
The NAP is literally impossible to not break over even the most trivial of things and if you seriously believe in it or similar you're far more ignorant than the person you accuse.
Miranda rights are positive rights (you have the right to). Much of the Constitutional rights are negative (shall not infringe on...)
For example, in the Rideshare Guy survey, there's a pretty even distribution across the buckets of "How much of your total monthly income comes from driving?" About 24% responded "very little", while 19% responded "all or almost all", with the rest somewhere in between.
The ones who responded "very little" are likely using Uber/Lyft in their spare time to supplement income from another job and might be better off as independent contractors. Those who rely on driving for "all or almost all" of their income are driving as their primary occupation, and might be better off as employees. I'd imagine that what's good for the first group on this issue might be bad for the second group and vice versa.
Unions provide checks and balances against that type of abuse.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
In the programming world, how many people are convinced that white-collar desk labor is qualitatively different from assembly line work, such that unions apply to factories but would never apply to a bunch of coders in an office building?
I grew up hearing that programmers are professionals and individuals and we can all negotiate for maximal pay, and of course that's poppycock. The vast, vast majority of programmers would be well-served with a guild or union at their workplace, because most are simple laborers trading their time for dollars; exactly the same boat as people building cars or wiring buildings.
Everyone cites the rock star making bank -- you are probably not it, and even if you're on the upper tier, a union could get you a larger slice of that company pie, and could get you more of a say in how the workplace is run (no more crunch time? more schedule flexibility? more time off? more opportunities for mentoring or being mentored? pick how you want your workplace improved...).
The thing is, technical workers were headed down the path of considering themselves labor until IBM brought in union-busters that crafted this propaganda of "the nature of the work means we're more like engineers or doctors or lawyers and THEY'RE not unionized" (ignoring that they're all members of professional guilds).
So, thank IBM that we're only now, decades later, starting to see labor organizing in tech fields, and here, only in the most abusive of fields (video game development); thank IBM and our desire to see ourselves as somehow above the guys who built the buildings we're in.
https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2018/05/31/why-95-perce...
All the other people in the office see that employee as "lazy Bob". The guy who isn't around every 2nd Friday. They guy who works slower than everyone else. They guy who always seems to be randomly missing from important meetings, and then doesn't know what's going on.
A 90% time employee is worth far less than 90% to the company.
Source:. Worked at a company where employees could either take a few days off after a bout of overtime, or get paid extra. Those who took days off were seen as lazy, not committed, and wouldn't get promotions or roles of responsibility.
I for one have been working 80% for two years (Germany) and have never felt more productive and motivated. And not only that, but I've also been able to use my Fridays off to acquire skills I would otherwise not have had the time or motivation to learn.
None of my colleagues ever complained about me seeming lazy or slow, quite the opposite, really.
Anecdotal evidence is, by definition, facts that are gathered in an unstructured manner which limits their probative value when it comes to supporting broader generalizations.
So, it's quite appropriate to frame anecdotal evidence as facts, though one is on weaker ground drawing generalized, conclusions from such evidence, which was the actual problem with the grandparent post.
And depending on the country it's outright illegal.
In Switzerland, for example, which has one of the more liberal (as in employer friendly) employment laws in Europe an employer can not compensate vacation days with money, except in very exceptional circumstances (i.e end of employment and employee has remaining vacation days).
Obviously working more means you get more done (assuming you don't burn yourself out), so the cost of working less to your career is nonzero, but this is practically tautological, and the stronger claim made here that it affects your reputation beyond its actual impact on productivity is not as universal in the US as people like to complain.
I much prefer working in America, or at least with Americans - but in terms of lifestyle, Europeans have it much, much better.
I had a 90% job with a large software vendor. The deal being 20 days additional vacation for 10% less pay.
I can guarantee you that during the time I worked I was a far better and efficient employee. That's based on the simple fact that I ws much better rested, far less stressed and much more creative due to the additional time off, in which I travelled the world.
Based on my anecdotal evidence I stipulate that you're dead wrong.
But most hours reductions are of the predictable continuously reduced schedule type, which is great for occupations where a defined number of positions has to be filled at all times (pretty much everything that is more reactive than active). But in "projecty" work, that predictability is of little value, the reduced-hours teammember will count fully (or more) to team size in terms of organisational overhead and task dependency delays, but will contribute fractionally less. It's not the lower amount of total hours in that scenario, but the permanent asymmetry.
I've worked with some of the best people in the world building billion dollar systems in small teams. People have different work habits and some of the best people I've worked with worked on their own schedule and always produced world class results.
What you're describing seems to be a mediocre environment where the perception matters more than the results. And not only that, but you seem to present your perception as universal within your company.
The mileage/time rates of pay have been slashed drastically and Lyft recently removed Primetime rate increases altogether, so drivers now get essentially no additional money for driving during the busiest times.
I’m also not aware of any consensual transaction not subject to supply and demand. Could you provide an example?
You could argue Uber does this as well, as it built market share on the backs of billions in investor capital, as opposed to setting its prices based on demand and supply. In the Econ 101 world, it wouldn't be possible to scale to the size of Uber while losing billions every year, with profitability nowhere in sight.
in terms of other examples:
- minimum wages (pretty much every country has this)
- letting banks borrow from the Fed at an effective 0% rate, and letting them profit by arbitraging that capital by charging "market rates" to consumers
- minimum price guarantees for farmers (again, almost every country has this)
All of these distort the demand-supply relationship as described in economic theory, where all actors have equal bargaining power, equal access to information and where every concept must be prefaced with "all other things remaining equal". That's why it is ultimately "theory". It provides the basic conceptual grounding, but beyond that, everybody has to do their own estimations about what price to charge, because of the various distortions specific to their business environment.
Back to Uber, no, they don't need an infinite number of drivers in the US. They just need enough drivers to replace those that leave their network. They can do that by offering attractive sign-up bonuses, and then start cutting fares once the drivers are settled and it's harder for them to leave because of the potential loss of income.
[0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20090426041649/http://www.kxmc.c...
Why aren't Uber drivers considered franchisees?
Or a concessionaire? My cousin ran a concession in my town's largest sportsball stadium. The way the deal is structured, my cousin was paying Ogden (the host company) for the privilege of working there.
What we now call the gig economy.
I think the dream of the gig economy is that you can use your own tool/skill to work when you want. Think of it more like cutting the grass or shoveling snow in your neighborhood for $15-$30 bucks depending on the area (If you had a neighborhood like that).
I'm stuck on the drivers providing their own hardware to secure the privilege of working.
Other pejoratives don't quite capture this arrangement. Share cropping, dealer channel (value added reseller), multi-level marketing.
Maybe "gig economy" is the pejorative.
As an entrepreneur, it is a "bring your own tools" type of system. When I did contract development, I had to bring my own laptop, my own software, and use that to produce and bill the client. I think the challenge in this new system is that the pricing dynamics aren't fluid. You know what, as I'm typing this I wonder if building a system that lets the entrepreneurs somehow control the prices will maybe help set an equilibrium.
[1] - https://www.trupo.com
The annoying/hard part about this debate is that the law is making a distinction, and everyday speech makes a distinction, and we use the same words in both cases, even though they have different meanings and implications.
It doesn't help that the legal distinction is hard to reason about since its goal is kind of nebulous. As best I can tell, it's balancing between "ensuring that businesses pay social insurance[1] obligations for anyone who they've made economically dependent on them" and "not making it burdensome to hire sporadic workers that 'feel' like legit independent contractors".
So yes, Uber can absolutely class drivers as employees (EmploymentLaw::Employee) and then say "oh just work whenever" (LaySpeech::Contractor).
[1] an umbrella term covering a lot of things; here, unemployment insurance and worker's compensation insurance.
Edit: Rewrote when I realized you were saying the opposite and I was disagreeing.
Uber and Lyft said the right thing. If they are forced to take on drivers as employees, they aren't going to hire these random people who are driving for them now, and they aren't going to hire them to work flexible schedules.
They are going to hire the best people they can get for an employee's salary and benefits ... and that isn't going to be the same people benefitting now.
People seem to think that they are going to get the jobs once those jobs become more desirable. No, they won't. Once its a more desirable job, it's going to get the best worker willing to work for that wage. Not the hodgepodge who are driving now.
Something similar goes through the heads of teachers that demand higher salaries. If salaries get really high, existing teachers won't be the ones parents will want to hire. They'll hire really highly skilled people that are currently in other more lucrative careers. If you look at Finland where teaching is a well compensated job, the people teaching are similar to people going into lucrative consulting or programming jobs. It's not the bottom performers from third tier universities, as in the US.
"Uber drivers are not paid as well as they should. Let's mandate that wages go up!"
Expected outcome: wages change and nothing else. The people who are currently underpaid get a big raise.
Real outcome: The market adjusts and Uber only hires professional drivers, who were earning about the same anyway. Previous Uber drivers are unemployed.
Because if they're not unemployed, then if Uber suddenly starts competing for them, other jobs are being freed up.
While some individuals may be affected, it seems highly unlikely that there is enough slack in the labor supply in that market that the addition of a few benefits will let Uber suddenly make large shifts in who they let work for them.
Especially given that Uber already have a huge amount of hard data on which drivers do best with them anyway, and so it will continue to make far more sense for Uber to manage drivers based on actual performance.
Also, you mention twice "these aren't the people they will hire", in the context of Uber/Lyft drivers and teachers, but labour isn't infinite. There aren't millions of highly qualified people sitting around unemployed waiting for these jobs to pay better – those people are employed in other jobs that do pay better. If teachers were paid more it may incentivise many to get better qualifications and training (that they can't currently justify). If the US pays terrible salaries for teachers, no one is going to want to go to an expensive university and rack up large student debt in order to get a teaching job.
The causality may be the other way around from what you're suggesting.
Neither is the demand for Uber's services.
If prices for rides go up to pay for mandatory drivers' vacation and sick pay and dental insurance, the reality is they will, as a group, have even less money than before because customers will switch back to cabs, public transit, or worse, driving drunk.
To me it seems like awful public policy to let companies get away with paying too little, as society ends up effectively subsidizing competition against employers that treat their workers better, through benefits and lower taxes. In doing so we're also hiding the real costs of a lot of products and services
They are actually tied on the other side, AFAIU. It's being an independent contractor that _requires_ having that flexibility. So if Uber/Lyft want to keep that arrangement, they have the obligation (and, symmetrically, the contractors have the right) to keep their hours flexible. If the drivers become employees, Uber/Lyft no longer have any obligation to maintain that flexibility.
Like there are a lot of skilled teachers working in other domains. There may be exceptions for match, programming and some other discipline that are working in a better paid job, Also to be a teacher you also need the teaching skill and to like working with children, so you will not see a programmer that hates teaching go and work in a school because of his greed.
Why aren't we paying teachers more money already!
whats that supposed to mean?
For example, hiring a CS or Math grad as a HS CS teacher is more competitive than hiring a French Literature grad as a HS French teacher. The CS grads have a lot of other options and at any fixed compensation you will get much better French teachers than CS teachers.
Private schools have looser licensing requirements and fewer overall positions to fill, so there's a greater supply of labor competing for a lower demand. That already would lead to lower pay in itself.
They are also able to offer benefits that private schools typically cannot (such as a reduced responsibility for administrative work). Teachers who come from industry or higher education are oftentimes willing to trade a lower salary for the additional flexibility (which they can oftentimes use to pursue other adjacent work in their field.
That's why private school teachers are more likely than public schools to have teachers who old PhDs, despite the pay being higher at private schools, and despite the licensing requirements being less strict for private schools.
Not sure you're making the point you're trying to make
So yeah if all this stuff changes a Uber/Lyft drivers would be better off the people currently driving for Uber/Lyft wouldn't have a job.
There's something more deeply wrong about the state of affairs if that's the case.