If your business model entirely relies on paying your employees poverty wages, maybe it's not a very good business model.
You could use your same argument to say that businesses don’t need to legally pay minimum wage since someone is willing to take less.
These conditions are bad for everybody and create a depressing effect on earnings for workers.
That's really not a bad idea generally. Give them full information and then treat them like adults.
https://thinkprogress.org/mcdonalds-tells-workers-to-budget-...
>McDonalds has partnered with Visa to launch a website to help its low-wage workers making an average $8.25 an hour to budget. But while the site is clearly meant to illustrate that McDonalds workers should be able to live on their meager wages, it actually underscores exactly how hard it is for a low-paid fast food worker to get by.
>The site includes a sample “budget journal” for McDonalds’ employees that offers a laughably inaccurate view of what it’s like to budget on a minimum wage job. Not only does the budget leave a spot open for “second job,” it also gives wholly unreasonable estimates for employees’ costs: $20 a month for health care, $0 for heating, and $600 a month for rent. It does not include any budgeted money for food or clothing.
But I'm sure there's many who really only have Uber/Lyft as an option. They are forced to work for them. They need a 2nd job, and they need a job that provides the flexibility in schedule that Uber/Lyft does. There's really not any other options if that's what is needed.
For example, this book review was posted on HN a few weeks ago: https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/private-government-how-employers-ru...
Well if you leave people out in the desert with nothing but a bottle of urine, they will drink it...that doesn't mean they want to drink urine.
There is a reason we have safety standard, minimum wages and child labor laws. From the sound of it you seem to argue those regulations are to protect workers from themselves, after all no one forced children to work for penny's a day in dangerous environments...but the reality is corporations make the markets not workers and so regulations are to curb those in power whose base instinct is to exploit others for their gains.
Though I’m rather annoyed at all this anecdotal data. If the bill is seriously being considered then surely there will be data to clarify what the reality is for the drivers.
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-walmart-crime/
>There’s nothing inevitable about the level of crime at Walmart. It’s the direct, if unintended, result of corporate policy. Beginning as far back as 2000, when former CEO Lee Scott took over, an aggressive cost-cutting crusade led many stores to deteriorate. The famed greeters were removed, taking away a deterrent to theft at the porous entrances and exits. Self-checkout scanners replaced many cashiers. Walmart added stores faster than it hired employees. The company has one worker for every 524 square feet of retail space, a 19 percent increase in space per employee from a decade ago.
http://www.citypages.com/news/twin-cities-legislators-say-wa...
>Rather than hiring their own security to deal with petty crimes, they say, Walmart is forcing taxpayers to subsidize security for its stores.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2014/04/15/report-...
>"It found that a single Walmart Supercenter cost taxpayers between $904,542 and $1.75 million per year, or between $3,015 and $5,815 on average for each of 300 workers."
https://beta.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/walmarts-4t...
Indicates Walmart $3.69 billion, or $1.27 per share in the 4th quarter. By comparison Apple made 11.5 Bil in the 2nd quarter last year.
https://money.cnn.com/2018/07/31/technology/apple-q3-earning...
That doesn't seem like a non-profitable company
I inferred Bostonian to mean that because Walmart is very profitable, and it has low wages, then it shows that minikites' comment of "business models having to pay poverty wages are not good business models" to be wrong.
To which I am responding that because Walmart's profit margins are tiny, implying that they have to pay poverty wages in order to stay in business, which in my opinion is not a good business model as it doesn't leave much slack or moat.
Of course, "good business model" is subjective, and some could consider Walmart's efficiency to be a good business model, but I am looking at it from the perspective of an equity owner looking for returns.
So ... $11.1 billion in profit so far this year. Sounds very profitable to me.
I suppose surge pricing and whatnot address that to a point, but if every Uber driver is scheduling their day around Uber demand, then that's hardly a sidegig.
These companies know what they're doing. Their words, like the words of so many corporations in America, are lies and deceit. Their image is a facade meant to deceive.
They very clearly are just that.
> employees need to work nearly full time to meet ends meet
Which is exactly why they're supplemental income and not full-time jobs.
Uber and Lyft tell you exactly what you're going to make before you start driving for them. If you willingly work full-time hours for them, that's your problem, not theirs.