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Comment by danboarder | Hacker News Reader

But people I know who are trying this gig economy part-time can pick their own "clientele": Uber, Lyft, Postmates, Door Dash, etc... they work for whichever client they want, on their own schedule. As an "employee" of Uber, I doubt they will want you working for competitors.

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See, this is key. If Uber has to class them as employees, it should also be able to deny them from working on other platforms. It should also be able to set working hours. And deny drivers the ability to refuse rides if they wish to keep their job. It could provide a daily salary and not let drivers decide or see fares.

Because this is what employment typically entails.

If Uber has to class them as employees, it should also be able to deny them from working on other platforms.

Why? In America, there are tens of millions of people who work more than one job. They're still employees; just employees of more than one company.

Fred's Plastic Fork Factory can't tell me I can't moonlight at Alice's Diesel Cafe and Firing Range.

Fred's Plastic Fork Factory can tell you that you can't moonlight and can fire you if you do.

Such a clause is pretty common in employment contracts.

I've seen these precluding secondary employment with competitive entities, but it seems there'd be little competition between Fred's and Alice's businesses (based on name alone).

there is competition between uber and lyft though, you can driver for both at the same time

> In America, there are tens of millions of people who work more than one job.

not simultaneously, or even interleaved in 30 minute increments.

As someone who has the ability to work 2 tech jobs if I wanted to, I could context switch every minute if I wanted to due to the technology allowing me to do so. Why should other people be unable to do this if the tech is there to support it?

Yes, but this is due to the fact that most jobs require your physical presence, Uber does not.

which is actually an argument that they are not employees.

No it is not and never was. Sales people - going back a very long time and include fully traveling ones - are not employees? How about traveling service technicians, not infrequently located all over the country, far from any company office? Home office - not uncommonly full time even, e.g. the company I work for does not even have an office but people employed all over this and other countries - are not employees? Please don't arbitrarily redefine "employment" to make your point.

You are the one who has been entirely disingenuous... the previous post made a very good point which you have not contradicted.

TIL: on-call doctors are not employees.

Anti-Moonlighting clauses are perfectly legal, though not without controversy:

https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/legal-and-compliance/...

In France, an employer can set working hours and working conditions, as long as both comply with the law. There are restrictions for safety and health reasons for example.

However, if the work is part time, employees can’t be restricted from working at another part time job, unless that job is for a direct competitor of the employer, in which case the restriction is sometimes allowed. (The idea being there could be a conflict of interest or loyalty.)

Uber can now restrict drivers from driving on other platforms ? This will impact both the consumers and drivers for the worse.

I don’t know if Uber would be permitted to do that, I just know that in some cases it’s allowed. The term used is “concurrence déloyale” or “unfair competition”. In practice, if there was a dispute, the courts would decide if a part-time employee driving for another platform constitutes an act of “concurrence déloyale”.

In any case, I read in Le Monde this morning that this recent decision by France’s highest court may mean that Uber will just stop doing business in France (although it’s too soon to know for sure).

Here’s the link to the article in Le Monde for those who read French:

https://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2020/03/05/pour-la-c...

Edit: Punctuation. Also, the article is behind a paywall. Sorry about that, I didn’t notice, as I have a subscription.

Great, let Uber do all that. Set working hours, deny them from working on other platforms, deny them from being able to refuse rides.

And let the free market compete for drivers by allowing other "gig-economy" companies to not have any of those restraints and seeing which company attracts drivers and which one dies.

Uber does penalize drivers for rejecting too many rides.

Are they going to pay more, cover health insurance due to this exclusivity clause?

> pick their own "clientele": Uber, Lyft, Postmates, Door Dash, etc...

They aren't clients, they are the "platforms". The clients are the people paying, not the people collecting.

How are they different?

Except they are the clients paying the driver. Uber, Lyft, etc pay the driver, so they are the client as they are the ones paying. The rider pays Uber directly, not the driver, so from the driver's perspective the gig companies like Lyft, Door Dash, or Uber are the clients they can choose to work with at any given time.

Uber does not let you pick your clients. Drivers get a request for a trip that they can either accept or deny, and they also penalize drivers for rejecting too many trip requests.

pretty much it is the same in consulting or any other freelancing industry, the customer always picks given the parameters ( availability, price, skill, experience etc) are acceptable. You can only choose to accept or deny as freelancer. It is always a demand driven, not supply driven.

You can choose to drive for other platforms today, you can directly engage customers ( uber drivers in my country occasionally ask you to cancel and pay directly) all of this would be illegal if they are employees.

Since Uber drivers are using their own equipment (cars), that also means they are not employees.

Since Uber drivers are using their own equipment (cars), that also means they are not employees.

This is not true. There are plenty of professions where employees bring some or all of their own equipment.

True. I'm a developer, and I only once got a company provided computer. And one (1) testing device (mobile dev).

do you bring your own servers too?

No, lucky me. Either I'm doing mobile and don't care wether it's an actual server behind those APIs or a hamster going crazy in it's wheel. Or I'm doing backend, in which case I only do serverless.

One colleague of mine did end up using his own server to run daily data processing and numbers crunching jobs for work though. It also served the internal analytics web UI. Apparently went on for years.

It is just one of the criteria. There are several.

And none of the other criteria fit, so it's a moot point

Is this different than if I worked as an employee at a pizza restaurant as a delivery driver and I use my own personal car for making the deliveries?

I have in fact delivered pizzas as a W2 employee, and had to use my own car. While I didn't ask if they'd provide a car for me, because I've never heard of such an arrangement, I highly doubt the answer would've been yes.

You should be compensated for that. Sounds illegal, at least in Europe.

I've done the same job. They pay the employee per mile, an amount that is intended to cover fuel and maintenance for a typical car. The rate they pay is presented to you before you accept the position at the company and if it is not agreeable to you then you don't have to take the job.

As mac01021 said, they do pay a commission, but you aren't going to get that job or the commission unless you already have a car.

I've worked as a W2 employee delivering pizzas in my own car.

I was definitely an "employee", if anyone is.

Crucially, this meant that I had to work the hours specified by my boss and make whatever deliveries he specified during that time period, else risk being fired.

In my opinion this was a very sensible arrangement. It was a good job and paid my college tuition. And pizza demand varies widely from time to time. It would be silly for the company to maintain a fleet of cars large enough for peak demand and then leave them in storage most of the time.

I've also worked as a software engineer, on salary, with a contract forbidding concurrent employment elsewhere, but done all the work on my own computer.

In light of the above, I don't think ownership of equipment is necessarily a meaningful consideration.

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