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Comment by rickbutton | Hacker News Reader

Why not? Sounds like they would also be an employee under this ruling.

Taxis are paid directly by their customers, so one of the criterions does not apply. (Note that some taxis are employees of taxi companies, but they need not be, as far as the regulation at hand is concerned.)

Whose employee? That of the taxi organisation which regulates them, but doesn't actually pay them? That of each of individual customer, who are the ones who pay them?

Does this reasoning mean that all waiters are independent contractors? They collect cash directly from the customer and reserve a portion of that before passing it on to their employer (the tip) - taxi drivers (who are members of a firm) due end up paying the firm dues for the service of having a pooled call center and possibly maintenance services.

I think trying to determine if someone is an employee based on if they receive cash from customers is a pretty arbitrary line that seems to exclude some pretty valid definitions of independent contractors like temporary workers and sales consultants.

Waiters can be employees of a restaurant. Who can taxi drivers be an employee of?

The dispatch company - the company which, generally, has their name painted on the side of the taxi.

I don’t think most taxi drivers have a connection to any ‘dispatch company’ they just pick up fares as they drive around.

I am purely speaking from my own experience and I can't speak absolutely... but every city I've ever lived in has had a few random cabbies driving around that are far outnumbered by the cab companies - whether this is yellow cab or something random like Boston's Metro Cab[1]. If you ever need to call and schedule a cab to the airport you'll be calling into a dispatch center - rather than just arranging it with a dude. My impression is that street hires are a pretty small proportion of the taxi market.

1. http://metro-cab.com/

No, you don't understand. They are customers of the dispatch company. They pay the dispatch company licensing fees and rent. Totally different, way more exploitative and way more legal arrangement.

Where, in France? Considering they are employees in the Benelux I find that implausible. Especially considering that the OP is about a French court saying that Uber was just trying to find a loophole so they wouldn't have to treat their employees like any normal taxi company.

And that is part of the reason many people also criticizes the tipping system in US/Canada. An arguably broken system from another industry doesn't make for a good comparison.

There's the obvious choice of the dispatch company they work for.

I don’t think all taxi drivers work with a dispatch company. Most just pick people up at the side of the road don’t they?

I think that's a mis-categorization - I do agree that these exist (and a lot of them fall into the "airport taxi" class since that's a reliable place to get business) and a cab operating in such a manner sounds plausible to be an independent contractor. But organizations like Yellow Cab exist and is the way most folks hail a cab, even at hotels - when you ask the concierge to get a cab for you they'll almost certainly call a local company and ask for a cab to be sent over - someone actually needs to be monitoring that phone, and the logistics of each cabbie having a phone in the car is kinda crazy "Oh ernie is currently driving someone, bart might be available I'll call him" so there is a central dispatching center with a few employees that just help make sure that the cabs are well distributed to quickly respond to calls.

> they'll almost certainly call a local company and ask for a cab to be sent over

In my experience they just step outside and wave one down.

Those mostly also belong to a bigger company that handles call in dispatches.

I don't think they've ever had radios in though, doesn't seem likely that they also take dispatches.

You don't need a radio now because of cell phones...

I said they never had radios in the past. These aren't radio taxes. They pick people up from the side of the road. That's most taxies in my experience.

No… no, they don't. O-o

Most will do both dispatched pickups and hailed pickups as I understand it.

Are you arguing from the framework provided by a presumably not Western European legal system?

An employee of who?

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