If this is the case, I think Lyft will die very quickly because as far as I know, most drivers prefer Uber over Lyft.
But Uber and Lyft are direct competitors. I have a clause in my contract that forbids me working for a direct competitor, but I'm a software engineer and I have knowledge of trade secrets. A driver? Not so much.
So I think that a court would find a restriction that you couldn't work for both to be an unreasonable exclusion... but I don't know.
But let's say it was legal. Uber still might not be able to do it. They need onboarding to be as frictionless as possible. Tying their hands by saying they can't also drive for Lyft might make people think twice.
Sure. But employers can prevent you from working for someone else at the same time as you are working for them.
So if you wanted to do a 6 hour shift for Uber and then after that do another 4 hours for Lyft. That would almost certainly be legal.
But the common practice today is to run both apps at the same time and pick up clients on both networks as requests come in. This is what people are talking about, and will almost certainly be banned.
If Uber wants that kind of exclusivity, they're probably going to have to pay drivers for idle time.
I don't think that's true. There are many sales employees who are compensated almost exclusively on a commission - per sale - basis. None of them can work for multiple companies concurrently.
If this were to happen in practice, you would most certainly see a drop in the number of drivers and an increase in per-mile costs to customers.
[1] https://sbshrs.adpinfo.com/blog/pay-rules-commissioned-tippe...
[] some exceptions apply, mainly related to IP I think.
If Uber or Lyft are required to legally hire these drivers as employees, they will probably develop a technology to track the drivers so that they won't take a Lyft call when there's an Uber passenger nearby, for example. This effectively means lockin.
Also, Uber (or lyft) may even compensate these behaviors by giving the drivers base salary as long as they don't take their competition's calls. Of course, this is until one becomes the dominant player and the other goes out of business.
Under an employee model, they would do this while on the clock of a particular company (and being paid by it). Sure, Uber could choose to employ a driver for 16 hours a day, but they'd have to pay for that time.
The only reason Uber couldn't dominate was because there was a factor of "choice". Now that the drivers are classified as effectively taxi drivers belonging to a taxi company, there is no choice. And the funny thing is, the drivers will actually prefer this.
This idea that uber / lyft drivers (both phones are always running) can work for BOTH companies at the same time seems ridiculous to me.
Yes, I agree, and I did not mean to imply that. What I meant is that a company has limited ability of restricting employee behavior during the time they are NOT paying them.