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Comment by dustinmoris | Hacker News Reader

Lots of HN comments are here like "I know people who prefer to be contractors", "My sister's neighbours little brother actually doesn't want to be treated with respect by Uber", blah

This is utter nonsense. Being a contractor means being self employed. You don't get paid leave or sick pay. It's a risk taking and doesn't make any sense in the gig economy where the wages are close to minimum rates.

If you are truly self employed then you have a skill which you can market, you can charge fees which allows one to put money aside for things like unpaid leave or sick days.

If you are truly self employed then part of your job is building customer relationship, building up recurring customers, increasing your business through marketing, word of mouth, etc.

You actually have to do entrepreneurial shit.

Uber drivers are NONE of this.

They clock into an app which belongs to someone else and they have no share in. They can't hand out business cards to customers or market their services on a board somewhere. They sit and wait until their master (Uber/Lyft) assigns a ride to them. Then they have merely the chance to accept/decline it. They can't even negotiate their own fees. That itself is fucked up. It's complete nonsense in extremely disingenuous by anyone here to suggest that an Uber driver is a self employed contractor and that this is good for them. They get paid shit and can't save up like a real self employed person, because they also have no say in the ride prices.

Fuck the gig economy. All gig workers are slaves and we should treat each other with more dignity and upgrade them to employees. It's our bloody duty as a decent human being.

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My guess is that the full story is this:

Most Uber/Lyft drivers say they don't want to be considered employees because, for most of them, this isn't actually their job. It's just a side gig. I can't really speak to larger urban areas because I tend to prefer public transit when it's a viable option, but, in the smaller cities where I take most my rideshare rides, a pretty large percentage of the drivers I chat with end up mentioning their day job somewhere in the course of the conversation. I agree that these folks, by virtue of lacking any viable way to independently contract work, cannot reasonably be described as independent contractors. But they don't quite fit the mold of "employee", either.

Then there is another portion of drivers who really are doing this full time. I am guessing that they are a small minority of individual drivers, but that, in larger cities, they may account for a majority of rideshare capacity.

Anyway, if this is how it shakes out, then, regardless of the ratios, it doesn't really make sense to speak about "ridehsare drivers" as if they're a homogeneous unit whose needs can reasonably be met with a one-size-fits-all classification. Perhaps there needs to be a tiered designation, comparable to the various employee sub-designations such as "full time", "part time", "exempt", "non-exempt", etc., that states codify.

> Most Uber/Lyft drivers say they don't want to be considered employees because, for most of them, this isn't actually their job. It's just a side gig

For some, sure. Most of my rides have been with Indian/African/East European drivers who do it basically full time. Easily 90% or more.

A small number have been part-timers, mostly stay-at-home moms and retired people. One was a retired bartender and he did Uber mostly because his joints gave out which made standing hard, and Uber allowed him to make some petty cash while talking to people. But hands-down, these were the exceptions, not the rule.

This also heavily implies that online discourse skews away from the full-timers, because:

1. They tend to be from less-online demographics

2. If 90% of rides come from drivers working 50 hours a week, and 10% come from drivers working 5 hours a week, then more than half of the drivers work 5 hours a week. Those 5-hour drivers also probably have a lot more time and energy to discuss things on the internet.

This might also explain the disconnect between "what the survey says," "what my friend says" and "what I say," and what the driver associations are saying. It's conceivable that people who are doing this full time are more likely to let an interest group do the talking for them.

Long story short, I'm inclined to say that any source of opinion that isn't breaking drivers' views down by quartiles, is a highly selective version of the story.

Non-full time employees often do not receive significant benefits. However, being classified as a contractor means paying the employer side of income taxes (yes, "self-employed" contractors essentially pay double the tax rate of employees). On your taxes your gross income compared to take home after taxes is a much larger margin for contractors as a result, disqualifying people for assistance programs and health insurance subsidies at a much lower take home pay than traditional employees.

What Uber and Lyft have essentially done here is to make their employees pay a substantial portion of what would otherwise be corporate taxes, and pocket that difference as profits while their drivers actually meet the legal criteria to require classification as employees. They shouldn't just be getting ordered to begin complying with the law, this should have resulted in a class action law suite for damages and a felony tax evasion case brought against them.

>... we should treat each other with more dignity...

You mean like respecting their decision to engage in gig work despite every other available option? That kind of dignity?

The whole issue is pretty rich coming from California. If people are struggling the answer is never that the cost of living is too high due to rediculous zoning and environmental regulations, clearly it's the greedy companies that are the problem. The whole living wage issue in California reeks of doing every gymnastic available to avoid political introspection that might lead to admitting a lot of well intentioned things aren't working.

Never mind that the state suddenly becomes mute about living wages when discussing its many illegal immigrants who work for /below/ the minimum wage. We apparently don't talk about that because leeching off desperate individuals "is complicated" and something that only companies do. If a large number of workers prefer gig work the problem isn't that they aren't making enough money the problem is that catering to them would undermine all of the previous "benefits" that they obviously don't view as a priority in their current situation. Heaven forbid that we let the actual workers decide how they want to associate.

Do people do gig work out of choice or necessity?

Just because people choose or are forced to do a job doesn’t mean they do not deserve respect

I don't see the ‘respect’ and ‘dignity’ in being prohibited from taking work because it is aesthetically displeasing to the 1%.

I feel like you're disagreeing with me but I'm unclear what we are disagreeing on.

You are mistaken, I'm not even replying to you.

I was indeed mistaken, I see that now.

The medium is probably just coincidence, but I found the "what do you want to be when you grow up" onesie an excellent meta-comment on class mobility:

https://www.teepublic.com/onesie/328209-what-do-you-want-to-...

If it’s out of necessity, it’s often because it’s their second job to some other job that _actually has a schedule_ but doesn’t schedule them full time to avoid giving them the typical benefits of full time workers. Or at least that’s what I’m hearing from business owners and part time workers... right?

I tend to think a work-as-you-want service like Uber or Lyft that pay above minimum wage couldn’t be more fitting to a self-employed / contractor description.

I had a long rambling reply to this that in retrospect I think missed the forest for the trees. Put simply, most jobs are worked out of necessity because we don't live in a post scarcity society. It's a very privileged position to have a real choice between interesting jobs that aren't just two terrible competing options.

Removing labor options by force weakens the position of low skill workers because it limits how many interests are competing for their attention (labor demand). There is nothing inherently disrespectful about independent contractor work, it's simply another option in a wider pool of choices. What is disrespectful is suggesting that these people are just to dim to see that they're being exploited rather than acknowledging that perhaps the reason they don't care about the benefits of regular work is because a job that fits into their current life situation is more valuable than the other options they looked at.

People pay you for a job because you wouldn't do it for free.

This is why so many scientists work for peanuts. This is why most game developers work 60-80 hour weeks for a salary 30+% lower than what they'd make working that boring Java job at corporation X.

There is labor that is generally understood to be unhealthy to participate in. It’s generally considered unethical to hire children outside of ones own to labor. It’s generally considered unethical to labor in the business of knowingly selling highly addictive drugs, or killing people, or robbing people, or stalking people, or scamming people.

Should we also respect and have no guardrails for people who destroy their lives via cults, MLMs, scam artists, addiction, etc?

I wasn't aware that people working in Uber/Lyft advocate for not being employees? Do you have a source for that?

Are people engaging in gig work because it has several advantages over "every other available option"? What other options do people who drive for Lyft/Uber as a day job have? And what are the advantages Uber/Lyft & working as a contractor offer?

Maybe zoning effects should be part of a discussion on the cost of living in California, exploitation of immigrants is deplorable and awareness should be raised and actions taken, but does that make Uber/Lyft exploiting workers a non-issue?

I'm not from the US and am not aware of the specifics in California, but being from a country which has faced severe economic crises I've seen people "choosing" a shitty option despite every other shitty option.

I can't say I understand where you're going with most of what you're saying, or how informed you are of gig workers situation.

I saw a pretty good movie by Ken Loach: _Sorry We Missed You_, that thought was really spot on on the issues of gig work:

https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorry_We_Missed_You

>All gig workers are slaves and we should treat each other with more dignity and upgrade them to employees. It's our bloody duty as a decent human being.

Lyft/Uber can upgrade them to employees but the arithmetic of bottom-up economics means Uber has to raise prices to cover full employment benefits. The raised fares conflict with what passengers are willing to pay. E.g. even though yellow medallion taxis often cost more than Uber (especially for suburb trips) -- those yellow cab drivers were not employees with benefits like unpaid leave and healthcare.

I believe what this really comes down to is that society is not willing to pay the higher prices for drivers to be treated as employees. Same situation as not willing to paying higher prices at hair salons so hair stylists are full employees (instead of being contractors) with healthcare. It does seem like constantly blaming Uber for mis-categorizing employees conveniently shifts the blame from the society/customers. The extra money to pay the drivers comes from the passengers.

Let's look at comparison cases: The city of Austin TX temporarily banned Uber from operating there. A non-profit rideshare (RideAustin[1]) was formed. Even though they don't have to implement the same business practices as Uber/Lyft, it's interesting that the RideAustin drivers are also independent contractors and not employees with full benefits. Also as far as I can tell, there is no worker co-op owned by the drivers anywhere in the world that treats members/drivers as employees with benefits. Why is that?

Serious question about the framing of ethics: if (some) drivers see an arbitrage opportunity because potential passengers think Uber-with-employee-drivers "charges too much" so drivers willingly choose a rideshare co-op that treat them as contractors to undercut Uber, are the co-op drivers being unethical towards the Uber-drivers-as-employees?

Yes, a judge can force Uber to convert everyone to employees but that same judge can't force potential customers to pay higher prices. The alternative entities of RideAustin and driver co-ops shows there's a limit to prices that ride shares can charge.

[1] http://www.rideaustin.com/

>Lyft/Uber can upgrade them to employees but the arithmetic of bottom-up economics means Uber has to raise prices to cover full employment benefits. The raised fares conflict with what passengers are willing to pay

Then the business is not profitable enough to exist. Simple as that.

People still need transportation.

If only there were examples of cities that operate just fine without boatloads of private car based transportation...

Like Manhattan? No one takes taxis/Uber there.

Sure. But they don't need Uber or Lyft.

You can build a robust bus system, government run and not expected to make a profit, for example. You can have registered cabs. You can have rental bikes (bonus if they are electric assisted). If you can make sure scooters don't litter the walkways, that works as well. If you already have the infrastructure in place, perhaps trams or subways are a good thing.

We could expand busses to be able to travel from city to city. Same thing with trains: Make them run on time and expand. Busses, however, use the most extensive existing infrastructure and would likely be more cost-effective in most areas.

Not all "busses" need to be large, though. In some areas or at some times of day, a 15 passenger van might be enough. We could have bonus points if we changed school bus laws so that we don't have a duplicate bus system that leaves busses unused for much of the day.

In the US, one could take a sliver of the military budget (where there is plenty of waste) to pay for it.

> People still need transportation.

Uber left Denmark after they decided that they have no interest in adhering to the relevant regulations. We still have trains, commuter trains, subways, busses, bikes, scooters, taxis and cars. People still can get to places and fairly conveniently.

It’s incredible how many people just start from the assumption that these services must exist and then work backward from that. Obviously you run into serious dissonance when you arrive at the pricing problem, where the solution is quite simple: they shouldn’t exist.

Then you can start thinking about real solutions to urban transit that have existed for more than a century.

The starting assumption is that free and rational adults are choosing to work for the wage and customers are choosing to pay a sufficient price, so it should exist. That's not working backward, or dissonance--it's an acknowledgement of reality.

It's a different unrelated group claiming that it shouldn't exist if it doesn't provide the pay / benefits they think it should.

>The starting assumption is that free and rational adults are choosing to work for the wage

And there are plenty that argue that under capitalism one isn't fully free. There is always the threat of losing the roof over your head.

Of course. It's just not relevant to my or OP's point.

I don't buy that. These rides are only as cheap as they are because of VC money and they aren't profitable. Imagine the cost of rides without VC money and more pro-worker regulations? If they aren't profitable now I don't see this ever being profitable without some radical change to the business model (driverless fleet for example).

There are some rides that are subsidized as loss leaders undoubtedly, but that's not the primary case.

The way I see it, it's already proven that riders will accept paying X dollars and drivers will work for X dollars, minus Y% for Uber's cut. Uber's Y% is likely higher than it needs to be, but at the end of the day, it's a SaaS app. Even municipalities have set up local competitors / clones.

These companies are certainly pouring a ton of money into expanding into new geographic areas, other business models, and more. But as long as riders will pay an amount even a little higher than what drivers will accept, it can be profitable.

Are we willing to allow, even to facilitate that as a society?

See heavy drugs, prostitution and violence market as some examples where two consenting adults is not enough to form a legitimate business.

I think if we're to the point that we're comparing Uber to the violence market, we're not having a meaningful discussion any more.

True: it is not the case that we should fundamentally allow any association between two consenting adults. No, this does not justify preventing it in other cases.

You know the entire purpose of the company that runs this site is to fund businesses that aren’t profitable enough to exist? Only two companies that YC has funded have gone public.

Where is the site guideline which states that I must fellate VCs?

So do you feel that none of the money losing startups deserve to exist either?

> I believe what this really comes down to is that society is not willing to pay the higher prices for drivers to be treated as employees. Same situation as not willing to paying higher prices at hair salons so hair stylists are full employees (instead of being contractors) with healthcare. It does seem like constantly blaming Uber for mis-categorizing employees conveniently shifts the blame from the society/customers. The extra money to pay the drivers comes from the passengers.

Generally I'd argue that society/customers, and in particular employees/'contractors' don't have all that much leverage over big companies, especially ones that capture a market. That's why we have regulation.

Blaming the customers for not keeping track of everything and going for the cheapest option is like blaming climate change on the consumer. It's technically sort of true, but practically speaking it makes no sense.

Consumers will keep buying cigarettes, marketeers will keep marketing them via entertainment channels, and tobacco companies will keep rolling in the money and do everything they can to encourage all this. But taxes, anti-smoking campaigns and government-enforced restrictions on where you can smoke have made a /ton/ of difference over the years.

There seems to be a trend to have 'flex-workers' (contractors) where in practice they all quack like employee ducks, without many of the benefits and guarantees. It mostly feels like a loop-hole and /of course/ the average consumer will go for cheap and convenient when they can. doesn't mean it's a good thing for society (and in particular the workers).

> Blaming the customers for not keeping track of everything and going for the cheapest option is like blaming climate change on the consumer. It's technically sort of true, but practically speaking it makes no sense.

It's part of the current US economical ideology where individual responsibility is taken as a mantra.

I completely agree with you, it's a good soundbite that any simple analysis and some thinking show how stupid it is.

Divide and conquer is very effective when the unit of measurement is the individual. I'd say this is core to what separates the 'left' in the US from the 'liberals' or 'liberal left'. For better and worse.

>There seems to be a trend to have 'flex-workers' (contractors) where in practice they all quack like employee ducks, without many of the benefits and guarantees. It mostly feels like a loop-hole and /of course/ the average consumer will go for cheap and convenient when they can. doesn't mean it's a good thing for society (and in particular the workers).

Well, instead of abstract descriptions about trends of mis-classified flex-workers and abused loopholes such that nobody can argue about it... I was trying to steer the conversation towards concrete cause & effect.

Let's look at another worker-owned driver rideshare -- Local Driver Co-op: https://localdriver.co/

It costs members/drivers $100 to join. They are trying to undercut Uber and excerpt of verbiage from their webpage: "Riders save up to 20% versus competition -- Enjoy unbeatable rates, guaranteeing your money supports the drivers and their families."

Some questions of morals and decency:

- Should a judge (or new legislation) force LDC to treat drivers as employees with minimum hourly wage and unpaid time off? Since LDC contractors are trying to undercut Uber, a proposal to force LDC re-classification to "employees" would cause some drivers to protest this. So bottom line is... should drivers even be allowed to declare themselves as independent contractors and form a platform to chase after passengers?

- If LDC drivers don't get decent pay -- and we can predict they won't because history shows that taxi drivers and rideshare drivers in every country don't get enough dignified pay to put kids through college and save for retirement and cover the wear&tear on their car -- who is to blame for "abusing* them? LDC? (That would mean the drivers are abusing themselves.) Or the customers/passengers?

- Should LDC be completely shut down and that business "should not exist" (as some commenters put it) because it pays too poorly?

Let's talk in concrete terms of how "driver protection" laws would realistically affect outcomes. Let's talk about game theory of economics where customers may not willingly play along with the intentions of well-meaning laws and will just avoid paying higher prices. Some drivers themselves may not want to play along with "drivers must be employees with minimum wage". These are the aspects we don't discuss enough.

It sounds like you're already pointing to one concrete outcome that would come from these "driver protection" laws: the proliferation of driver co-ops that are able to undercut Uber and Lyft. Assuming they aren't regulated as Uber and Lyft are(for argument's sake), this would allow drivers the choice of whether to become an employee of the big corps or remain an independent contractor by using the co-op platform.

I don't think it would be much of a stretch to assume that in this situation you would have sleek, more expensive "luxury" services competing against more humble, but cheaper, community run services. Sounds like a much more equitable arrangement that provides greater choice for both riders and drivers.

> Blaming the customers for not keeping track of everything and going for the cheapest option is like blaming climate change on the consumer.

But that's not quite it, I believe. The point isn't that customers choose the cheaper of two options, it's that non-users don't become users of a service until there's a super cheap option. Taxis/Yellow cabs were a thing before Uber, but they're more expensive than what lots of people were willing to pay.

It's not "do I want to buy X for $5 or $2?", it's "I won't buy X unless it's $2 max".

If you increase Uber's prices to those of Taxis, few people will use them. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's a thing.

I don´t know how is it in all of the world, but in many countries/cities, the problem with Taxi drivers is that there is no control, they treat you like shit, there is no one else to complain, they take you to the longest route, many have their "clocks" (that is what we call the machine they use to charge you the fare) fixed so that they charge more, and there are illegal taxis that steal from you (as in real robbery). Uber is good because you can complain to Uber, you get refunds, if drivers get bad ratings they are no longer part of Uber, and in general, it is safer than taxis. I was some days ago in another country. I didn't know any Taxi phone number, but I had my uber app, so I just requested an uberx, and it came. Problem solved.

It sounds like you'd be happy with a premium service (like Uber originally was). You pay more than a taxi but you get all the other benefits you list. Problem solved.

Taxi´s companies have existed for a while. Compared to Uber the differences are: customer support is shitty, good luck getting a refund, you need to know the phone numbers or have the apps installed of all of the cities in the world. It is more complicated. Uber is uber internationally. It is only one app, only one (relatively good) support. By the way, I don´t "love" Uber, is just that I see the value on it.

Businesses want more profit. Consumers want to pay less. Workers want to earn more. Pretty much always.

This doesn't always result in an optimal outcome. Market power, externalities, information asymmetry, etc.

This is why we have regulations. Forcing the society and Uber to pay for drivers to be treated as employees seems like a very reasonable outcome. If they don't like it they can hire less drivers, but the ones that remain will at least have some minimum standard of living that developed countries pride themselves for.

What does it mean to be "treated like an employee"? I'd like regulation to give everyone healthcare. Are non-employees not worthy?

Here's a quick overview, without getting too much into the minutia or Uber specific differences: https://employment.findlaw.com/employment-discrimination/emp...

tl;dr - "employees" enjoy a lot of benefits & protections, both legally required and provided by their employer, that non-employees (like contractors) simply don't have.

That's the current legal definition. But since we're talking about changing the law, our concepts aren't constrained by current law. I'm asking about the concept, not the law.

> I'd like regulation to give everyone healthcare

From what I understand, that would be unamerican.

The biggest difference in the US is that "treated like an employee" also means being paid a minimum wage. As an employee in the United States, your employer is also responsible for paying a portion of your social security and medicare taxes, and for making sure taxes are properly withheld from your paycheck.

Even before the gig economy became a big deal, businesses like yoga studios would attempt to classify their skilled teachers as independent contractors so they could pay them well below minimum wage, but take away their ability to teach at the location if they taught somewhere else as well. Hair salons and yoga studios sometimes go so far as to charge their independent contractors rent, which would make sense if these people were truly renting the space and could freely take their clients elsewhere, but these businesses also frequently limit the contractors' ability to collect personal contact information.

When I volunteered to help people with their taxes, a large number of Uber/Lyft/DoorDash/etc. drivers were surprised to learn that not only did they have to pay large amounts of income tax that would usually be automatically deducted from their pay check, but they also had to pay double the social security and medicare taxes because they had to pay the employer and the employee portions. Companies that classify their workers as independent contractors in this way are taking advantage of the fact it can take people up to a year to realize that taxes and car maintenance will take what little income they have made.

> Companies that classify their workers as independent contractors in this way are taking advantage of the fact it can take people up to a year to realize that taxes and car maintenance will take what little income they have made.

When I drove pizza delivery, I discovered car maintenance took what little income I made. I was a W2 employee, paid less than minimum wage, because I earned tips. Independent contractor status isn't the only method for surprising people.

I take issue with the paternalistic idea that an employee is more deserving than other types of people. The commenter above said, "This is why we have regulations." I interpreted that as beginning a discussion of what regulations we should have. If that was incorrect, I'm sorry for causing confusion. If that was the intent, then I'll reassert that focusing myopically on the distinction between an employee and a contractor is ignoring much better solutions.

No, it just means that contractors are treated as businesses rather than as people, because that's what contractor status is for.

If you hire a company to fix your car or build you a shack, they are not your employee, they are your contractor. You are not responsible for their healthcare or minimum wage or sick days. They are a business, they provide healthcare and all that stuff to their own employees who actually do the work. And this is perfectly fine, everyone ends up happy.

The problem is when individuals try to be a business, working as independent contractors. There is no "minimum profit" similar to "minimum wage", and you are essentially your own employer. Government can't force you to pay yourself minimum wage as a business owner because you'll be able to fudge it easily if you wanted to, being both the employer and employee.

What the government can do however is disallow corporations from hiring contractors for roles and in situations where in reality the contractors are businesses only on paper, where they actually are functionally just employees, like in Uber's case.

Would it be great if healthcare was paid by income taxes rather than employer? Yes, but since we don't have it yet, and since there are other issues differentiating employees from contractors / businesses, this seems like a decent approach.

Which is a perfectly reasonable position whether or not someone agrees in this particular case. We have lots of laws that, for some combination of good and bad reasons, keep services from being as cheap as they might otherwise be.

I have trouble being upset that fewer people will want to afford higher Uber prices. People managed before Uber and it's mostly a luxury good anyway. To be honest, when Uber's management changed, the sensible thing--VC money notwithstanding--would have been to start pricing the service at what it cost.

> Lyft/Uber can upgrade them to employees but the arithmetic of bottom-up economics means Uber has to raise prices to cover full employment benefits

What's the problem with that?

This is a straw man argument. Only because other jobs also have issues doesn't mean we shouldn't try to start improving somewhere at some point. Also customers NEVER want to pay more for anything, so that is hardly an argument to treat some people like slaves.

It is the duty of the strong to fight for better treatment of those who can't fight for themselves because they lack financial security or for other practical reasons. Law is exactly doing that.

>Only because other jobs also have issues doesn't mean we shouldn't try to start improving somewhere at some point. Also customers NEVER want to pay more for anything, so that is hardly an argument to treat some people like slaves.

Please don't paint my intention to describe the underlying economics for higher quality focused discussion as me being against humanity's improvement and you being the one with the moral high ground.

I was emphasizing that there's a dynamic interplay between what drivers (whether Uber or non-profit driver co-op) can charge and what customers will willingly pay. Your comment left the dynamics of out of it which can lead to a naive assumption of what law can realistically accomplish. Consider your next statement:

>It is the duty of the strong to fight for better treatment of those who can't fight for themselves because they lack financial security or for other practical reasons. Law is exactly doing that.

The law isn't just exactly that. A law that attempts to add economic advantage to one group will inevitably make another group worse. The other disadvantaged group often becomes the "unseen"[1] group. Instead of talking in feel-good sentiments that nobody can debate (e.g. "duty of strong to fight for the weak")... let's try to discuss via math/probabilities:

Uber has about ~150,000 drivers in California. A law that forces all drivers to become employees does not automatically mean 150000 get minimum hourly wage of $15 and 2 weeks of paid time off. No, what happens is that many (I'm guessing more than 50%) Uber drivers would be removed from the system to comply with the "drivers-must-be-employees" law. The drivers that remain in Uber would be the ones on profitable routes in more affluent regions of the cities than can pay higher prices. The unemployed drivers that lost income from Uber now become the "unseen". Do the unseen who get $0 because Uber can't afford them as employees get also get attention in our moral framework?

[1] Bastiat's essay on "that which is seen and unseen": https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Essays_on_Political_Economy/T...

“ Uber has to raise prices to cover full employment benefits. ”

The question is how much would this be per ride(a few cents?) and do they really? Uber and Lyft are raking in cash.

I mean in a EU country a male haircut costs 6€. In another EU country a male haircut costs at least 30€. People can live on both wages. These number are relatively arbitrary as they make sense in the ecosystem of housing and other prices. California can compensate in many ways for the fact that "people don't want to pay the gig workes more". Free/social healthcare, education and housing via progressive taxing etc. Since people in the USA don't want to be "slaves of communism" or whatever, they are wage slaves

There is no such thing as "society is not willing to pay the higher prices for drivers to be treated as employees." Society isn't a brain which thinks. There is emergent behavior.

* I am glad to be forced to pay more to have Uber/Lyft drivers treated well. I think we should have worker's right protections.

* I am unwilling to pay more myself as a one-off (e.g. through tipping). It's a Prisoner's Dilemma. That's what regulations are for.

If everyone were like me, we'd end up exactly where we are. Do I think everyone is exactly like me? No. But I think it's a similar model.

That said, the concept of treating gig workers as employees is dumb as rocks. It's reusing in 1920 mechanism to accomplish a 2020 goal. My goal is for gig workers to have health care, vacations, and so on, not that they be employees; they're not. The gig workers I know appreciate being able to jump from Uber to Instacart to other life constraints. A half-dozen 1/12th time jobs is just a bad system.

And the medallion cab system was far more abusive of drivers than Uber/Lyft ever was. The power there sits with the medallion investors. The drivers were getting shafted.

> There is no such thing as "society is not willing to pay the higher prices for drivers to be treated as employees." Society isn't a brain which thinks. There is emergent behavior.

I don't see this argument made enough, especially on HN.

I think because a lot of people realize that "brains which think" are themselves emergent behavior of a complex system, which is ultimately not really different.

I did Uber eats for a few months after I got injured.

Between that and renting out a room on airbnb, It kept us from going homeless while I recovered enough to work again.

Turns out Disability insurance is nearly worthless for any complicated injuries.

There is nothing in California employment law that prevents open schedules. Uber can have employees with exactly the same working agreement. The main difference is that Uber now has to pay into things like unemployment insurance and workers compensation.

Nope. They can't.

If I am doing 8 hours Instacart, 8 hours Uber, 16 hours part-time work, and 16 hours part-time study towards my BS, doing a bit of Amazon Turk while waiting for gigs, who pays for my health insurance? And if I'm injured on the job, while having three ride sharing apps and one delivery app open, what happens to my worker's comp?

Once you dive into detail, employment law just doesn't work here. It's not a question of more right or less rights (I'm all for worker protections). It's a question of how we get there.

Why wouldn’t taxi drivers be forced to become employees as well as truck drivers and other gig economy workers?

> Also as far as I can tell, there is no worker co-op owned by the drivers anywhere in the world that treats members/drivers as employees with benefits. Why is that?

http://www.unioncabpdx.com/

The world is a big place. I'm sure there are others.

>http://www.unioncabpdx.com/

Are you responding to the actual constraints in this discussion of _employees_ with _benefits_?

As far as I can tell, Union Cab PDX does not provide employee benefits such as:

- minimum hourly wage

- paid time off (e.g. funding 2 weeks vacation)

- unemployment payments if laid off

I don't know if it's related but Unioncabpdx recently left the CWA Local 7901 union as they weren't paying membership dues: https://nwlaborpress.org/2018/12/union-cab-quietly-goes-non-...

Yes, they provide benefits, including healthcare.

I don't know anything about them pulling out of the CWA local.

>Yes, they provide benefits, including healthcare.

But Union Cab Portland does not provide a guaranteed minimum hourly wage (a benefit that real employees are entitled to) and they are exempt like every other taxi company in Portland from the minimum wage law because taxi drivers are treated as contractors.

From http://www.rideaustin.com/faq

> RideAustin is a community driven nonprofit ridesharing company founded by local entrepreneurs. The RideAustin launch team is led by Joe Liemandt, a longtime Austin tech entrepreneur, and Andy Tryba, CEO of Crossover. It is powered by donations, with paid and volunteer hours from both the Austin tech community and the broader Austin community working together.

So it's a non-profit, with volunteers ("volunteers"), who can get a stipend.

Sounds like a legal fiction, but I'd need to know more about how much they pay, how much money the founders make, etc. The cynic in me says it's the same shit but marketed better and not publicly traded, but there may be some genuine benefits.

Was society willing to pay for workers when they had slaves?

To think that if only the Confederate states would have made that iron-clad argument back then, the civil war would have been avoided. Imagine how low the prices could be if we still had slaves.

If your business is unsustainable without taking advantage of the workers then it ought not to exist.

I don't exactly agree with your conclusions but I upvoted you anyway because you got me realizing what about the whole arrangement of Uber/Lyft really makes me uncomfortable with the "independent contractor" definition: the companies actively impede the self-sufficiency of drivers to cultivate a client base. This would be like if a massive home improvement company which subcontracted all of its labor to smaller outfits had the workers wear some kind of monitoring to watch every step the on site guys did, make sure the sub company wasn't promoting its own signage, or doing any custom work above and beyond to satisfy the client. That doesn't fly in my book. If you subcontract work, your value add is the market penetration that gets the clients in the door, and that's it. If the outfit doing the work is not an employee, then the relationship ends with the fee paid upward. If you believe that business entities have rights, which I am sure Uber's board does, why should it be legally binding in a contract for a business to sign those away any more than an individual can sign away his own?

Well. There have been stories of independent truck drivers that are being forced to leave California because they can’t be independent any more.

Jason Snell, a long time editor of Macworld, was let go years ago and decided to do podcasting and blogging full time, but he still wanted to do freelance writing. The new laws passed in California made it more difficult.

The only reason the gig economy is bad is because we have an ass backwards system where your health insurance, unemployment insurance, etc is tied to your employer.

Yes, a number of freelance writers I know, many of whom have been happily doing it for decades, were very unhappy about the California law.

Your comment reminds me of this comment[0] on HN from a developer who was complaining he couldn't accept donations in Finland because of the laws of that country.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23615853

Should people have the ability to choose to be contractors?

For example, “Accept wage X as an employee, work these set hours, and you have to bring in some multiple of X to justify your employment. Or stay a contractor, work when you want, get the benefit of surge pricing and keep a fixed % of your revenue”

As a consumer of Uber and Lyft, what differentiates them from Taxis is the ability for them to react to changes in demand. (Try finding a taxi in the rain) I can’t see them pulling this off without some portion of the workforce being contingent.

I vehemently disagree.

I used to tutor for Chegg tutors on the side--outside my main job. They paid ~$20/hr and for 5-10 hours I week I could bring in some extra money for food and rent.

They shut it down in my state because they reclassified them as employees, and Chegg was not going to do all that leg work to bring people on as part-time employees.

I didn't need benefits like sick days or unpaid leave since it was just a gig I did online for extra money. I didn't need health insurance, since my main job provided that. I didn't need job security that was provided by the inability to fire people.

I was just trying to make some extra money online.

And now I can't because Big Government decided I can't.

You know who it really hurts? The kids I was tutoring. Now there is a huge tutor shortage and kids that need help aren't getting it. There was ALREADY a tutor shortage before they cut off several states from being tutors.

If it's the law, then it's a stupid law and needs to be changed.

It's telling that Uber/Lyft drivers weren't the ones asking for this. They were fine the way they are. No Uber/Lyft driver was saying "Wouldn't it be nice if we were REAL employees??".

It's the bloody taxi companies trying to get back at Uber because taxi drivers ARE real jobs that require real benefits, and they can't compete with a better business model.

Fuck California.

If you care so much about the kids you were tutoring, why didn't you continue tutoring them yourself, without the rent-seeking middleman?

There is a lot of regulation and paperwork/fees to start your own business. Makes it hard to justify if you only want to tutor a few hours a week

Chegg provided the kids (and rightfully took a cut for it).

What am I supposed to do? start cold calling college students asking if they need help? lol

Yeah, I could start my own tutoring business, but imagine the costs: I'd have to start a website, take payments, advertise, advertise, advertise.

It'd be great if someone did all that for me and I just could log in to tutor when I wanted.

>It's the bloody taxi companies trying to get back at Uber because taxi drivers ARE real jobs that require real benefits, and they can't compete with a better business model.

Ah, yes, Big Taxi conspiracy.

I can't imagine thinking a company losing billions while subsidizing chauffeurs for rich people while skirting laws is a "better business model".

>Fuck California.

Have you considered living in a place that doesn't require you to do "gig work" on top of your regular job in order eat? Isn't that the world we want?

I've done gig work on top of my regular job to have a little extra in savings. Really helped during the virus when the stock market went on sale. Luckily I'm in a free state and don't have to worry too much about this regulation spreading

I work for a billion dollar tech company. I make plenty of money to take care of myself, but I like a little padding for extra fun things and rainy days. I also find it fun to tutor.

I have plenty of money because I don't live if a shitty place like California.

> Have you considered living in a place that doesn't require you to do "gig work" on top of your regular job in order eat? Isn't that the world we want?

I love this line because raising uber prices to meet the demands of Big Government will be cost prohibitive for most people. That means, a) uber drives get less than before, and b) fewer people will take uber, and c) the people that do will have to pay more for it.

So... you've just increased the cost of living for everyone, making it harder to live on a regular job.

While I agree with your overall message, I have met an Uber driver that was handing out cards. They really did suggest I call them back directly at any time during our stay in San Francisco. He had an actual mini-bus, not just a car or mini-van. So that guy, at least, was self-employed.

But for the vast majority of Uber's drivers, I think you're correct.

Meanwhile in Japan, We never get sick pay (treated as leave pay) nor usually leave pay even when employed...

Meanwhile Japan is also the only country which has an actual word in the dictionary to describe "Death through overwork".

It's called Karoshi.

No modern society should have such a common problem that you have to invent a specific word for it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karoshi

That's basically abuse.

Japan is a far cry from a role model of work environment, this is just another signal to it...

The fact that Japan is abusive to its workers doesn't in any way reduce the OPs point.

Japan should - and I realize that this won't make any difference - get with the times and start treating people like they are something else than lemons that need to be squeezed. It's a cultural problem.

No reason why they both can't be fixed. At least this judge got it right.

I really hope for the Japanese people that this changes with a new generation where family is family, and business is business, and that the former is more important than the latter.

> Then they have merely the chance to accept/decline it.

But isn't the definition of contractor vs employee.

Can they still reject if they are converted to an employee, because then it would be weird.

> doesn't make any sense in the gig economy where the wages are close to minimum rates.

It makes sense if it’s better than your next best option.

If the value you are able to bring to an employer is under what minimum wage requires, an employer faces the decision to employ you at a loss to them or to not employ you. Many choose the latter.

> Lots of HN comments are here like "I know people who prefer to be contractors", "My sister's neighbours little brother actually doesn't want to be treated with respect by Uber", blah

It's a willful misrepresentation to characterize these merely as anecdotes. Polls/surveys show that drivers overwhelmingly share this sentiment[1].

> This is utter nonsense. Being a contractor means being self employed. You don't get paid leave or sick pay. It's a risk taking and doesn't make any sense in the gig economy where the wages are close to minimum rates.

This is not a prerequisite for being a "contractor". That the rates are "close to minimum rates" is a reflection of the market demand for the labor.

> If you are truly self employed then you have a skill which you can market, you can charge fees which allows one to put money aside for things like unpaid leave or sick days.

Again, this is nice in theory, but not necessarily true for all self employed contractors.

> If you are truly self employed then part of your job is building customer relationship, building up recurring customers, increasing your business through marketing, word of mouth, etc.

Again, this is nice in theory, but not necessarily true for all self employed contractors.

> Uber drivers are NONE of this.

Correct, but that doesn't change the fact that they are not employees.

> They clock into an app which belongs to someone else and they have no share in.

This was true before Uber/Lyft, where taxi drivers had to pay for the privilege of driving a car with a medallion that belonged to someone else. They were independent contractors under that arrangement.

Today, Uber/Lyft drivers report to no boss and can decide to drive whenever they want on a whim. They can drive 20 hours one week, 2 hours the next, and then take a vacation indefinitely with no repercussions. When Uber/Lyft announce layoffs for cost cutting, drivers are notably not affected. Insofar as drivers have experienced less work during COVID, it’s because there are fewer riders requesting rides, which suggests a rather direct rider-to-driver relationship.

> They can't even negotiate their own fees. That itself is fucked up.

Yes, Uber drivers can’t really set their own rates (this is changing soon), but that’s also not really a prerequisite for independence. There are loads of platforms where the intermediary only buys services by providers at set rates and sells them to a buyer, where the providers are not literally employees of the platform provider, eg: health insurance. This was also true of taxi drivers before Uber/Lyft came around.

> It's complete nonsense in extremely disingenuous by anyone here to suggest that an Uber driver is a self employed contractor and that this is good for them.

This is a borderline rule breaking content on its face, but just to engage with it, how do you know what's good for them? Maybe get off your high horse and speak for yourself.

[1] https://www.cadriversurvey.com/

I don't think they're necessary treating them like "slaves" because they want to. It's a tradeoff between more jobs or fewer jobs and better pay.

Agreed mostly with you about negative impact of the gig economy. However, not seeing how the slavery element goes away with your proposal. Better regulations YES, but wouldn't you just be reinforcing the power of the slavemaster by converting his temp labor to perm?

> All gig workers are slaves

This is repulsive. You denigrate all people who have suffered in actual slavery. Follow your "bloody duty as a decent human being" and learn what slavery is actually like.

And you are unable to recognise a metaphor.

>All gig workers are slaves

If gig workers are slaves, then we must conclude that slavery isn't that bad. Nobody is forcing people to sign up to drive for these companies, and if they don't like it, then they can choose to drop out by tapping on their screen to indicate that they're out of service.

> Nobody is forcing people to sign up to drive for these companies

No single person, sure. But the inceasing lack of secure, reliable income sources remove most other choices.

"gig" work should not be the norm. It should (and always used to) be the job that the teenager does (delivering newspapers, etc) or someone does for a bit of extra cash.

But they're becoming pervasive, normalized and this should be rejected.

That's like your opinion... vs the needs of the drivers. They are free not to work there. The fact that plenty of people still work there, means that it works OK.

I mean, they (unqualified workers) can always go to work to MacDonalds or something like that but they stick with Uber.

Slaves, mmm.... yes I remember the first day that jackbooted thugs from Uber forced me to drive for the company. Every day that I felt like driving instead of doing literally anything else, these Uber slavemasters would show up with their chains and their whips. The horror... I hope Uber goes out of business so I can finally go back to my old life...

Slavery doesn't come only through the form of physical subjugation, if so there wouldn't be classifications of work analogous to slavery.

Don't be so shallow minded...

Not direct physical subjugation but if force isn’t uses somewhere along the responsibility chain then it can’t be called slavery.

Debt slavery for example, relies on debts being permanent and the state jailing people who do not pay.

If a debt can be discharged in an easy bankruptcy, you can simply do that instead of becoming a slave to someone.

>Slavery doesn't come only through the form of physical subjugation

from dictionary:

slavery - the state of being a slave.

slave - a person who is _the legal property of another_ and is forced to obey them.

The fact that you use "slavery" as a synonim to hard work and/or high dependance, doesn't make "doesn't come only through the form of physical subjugation" true.

Use a better dictionary.

slavery, n. (ˈsleɪvərɪ)Forms: 6-7 slauerie, 6-8 slaverie, 7 slauery, 7- slavery.[f. slave n. 1 + -ery. Cf. MDu. slaverie (Du. slavernij), LG. slaverei (Da. slaveri, Sw. slafveri), G. scl-, sklaverei (skl-, schlaverey).]

slavery, n.

1. Severe toil like that of a slave; heavy labour, hard work, drudgery.

1551: Robinson More's Utopia ii. v. (1895) 161 “In this hal, all vyle seruice, all slauerie,..is done by bondemen.”

1603: Owen Pembrokeshire (1891) 43 “Digginge of Coles, and other slaueryes and extreame toyles.”

1698: Fryer Acc. E. India & P. 34 “Asses which they use..to carry Packs,..and any other Slavery.”

1712: J. James tr. Le Blond's Gardening 65 “To give them continual Waterings..is a very great Slavery and Expence.”

1897: Daily News 13 Sept. 6/7 “Such people..ought never to keep servants, but do their own slavery.”

Ok, so [0]:

  slavery noun
  slav· ery | \ ˈslā-v(ə-)rē  \
   Definition of slavery
    1a: the practice of slaveholding
     b: the state of a person who is a chattel of another
    2: submission to a dominating influence
    3: drudgery, toil

Or [1]:

  slavery
  in British English
  (ˈsleɪvərɪ  )
  NOUN
  1. the state or condition of being a slave; a civil relationship whereby one person has absolute power over another and controls his or her life, liberty, and fortune
  2. the subjection of a person to another person, esp in being forced into work
  3. the condition of being subject to some influence or habit
  4. work done in harsh conditions for low pay

Or [2]:

  slavery
  Pronunciation /ˈslāv(ə)rē/ /ˈsleɪv(ə)ri/
  NOUN

  1. The state of being a slave.
  1.1 The practice or system of owning slaves.
  1.2 A condition compared to that of a slave in respect of exhausting labor or restricted freedom.
  1.3 Excessive dependence on or devotion to something.

Like others said: use better dictionaries.

[0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/slavery (Merriam-Webster)

[1] https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/slavery (Collins)

[2] https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/slavery (Oxford)

As a non US citizen that does not live in America and just looks from the outside, I'm always amazed at the rapid transformation going on in the last decade. If hackernews is a sample of the general american population, you guys are becoming communist. And it won't end well.

That's probably mostly California but yeah - it's amazing (also as an European but from a post-soviet country).

Because from Reagan on, America has been doing quite well of course...

Don’t worry, the American spirit of liberty and free market capitalism is alive and well. It’s just that most Americans are busy getting things done instead of planning everyone’s lives for them on twitter or HN.

I would be alarmed too, except I hang out in diverse US communities. Hacker News is not a sample of the general american population. Increasingly, it is not even a sample of tech workers. Tech workers tend to be rather libertarian, and this has not changed. HN is becoming a sample of Bay Area politics and/or Twitter, neither of which are representative of the USA.

Sorry about the downvotes you received. I’ve been on HN a long time. It is sad to see the great decline of HN. Check out reddit.com/r/TheMotte if you want something a bit more representative and more similar to the HN of old, with its attendant high level of discourse as opposed to the shit-flinging and downvote brigading you see on HN today.

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