If Uber hasn't been preparing internally for the possibility of losing this suit, they've been irresponsible in the hopes that California would go "oh shit, they're gonna shoot the hostage".
Many people depend on rideshare like Uber to get to work like a public utility. Maybe if California (and this is true of other areas) actually built and invested in bike able neighborhoods and public transport, then they wouldn't need Uber.
California will lose this one eventually. You don't know what you have until it's gone.
I suspect they will if Lyft does, regardless of public statements intended to pressure the politicians.
This just isn't about Uber and Lyft but they were targets because some very big money was getting hurt by their existence.
Perhaps put that time into advocating for a living wage and universal healthcare instead of embracing Stockholm Syndrome with gig platforms. They might not be around much longer, but your government will be.
The only freedom an uber contractor has is "when to work". All the pricing and trips are decided by uber, and they can't even reject properly. They are in fact an employees in everything but legal status.
In etsy, you choose your prices, what you sell, and even to whom you sell to, it's definitely a market place.
Starting Tuesday morning, drivers at the three test airports can either accept Uber’s original price for outgoing rides, or ask for up to five times more, in increments of 10%. After next week they will have the option to ask for less than Uber’s original price.
Essentially those drivers now are bidding against one another for riders. Uber passengers will see only the lowest proposed fare range. If that driver rejects their ride request, they could see a new, higher fare range, as Uber would then show the request to the next-cheapest driver.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Uber-tests-lett...
Uber likely wouldn't be in this position if they stayed out of pricing/visibility and let passengers/drivers set whatever rates they wanted to. Just provide a platform for people to get rides and stay out of pricing entirely.
And importantly, it's not actually in effect in the entire state yet. It's still just limited to the Bay Area, with the rollout to the rest of CA happening over the rest of the summer.
I also object to this characterization of consent.
> The only freedom an uber contractor has is "when to work".
How is this not complete freedom? Loads of contracts out there specify the rate that the contractor will be paid, and both parties are expected to uphold that specified pay. Are those contracts no longer valid? In some cases with written contracts, the pay is specified as a non-negotiable condition from the paying party, and the "only freedom" the contractor has is to take it or leave it. Is that a violation? If a contractor never actually gets hired under a contract for which she sets her own rates and all of the other "freedoms" supposedly necessary for forming a contract (in CA), is she being oppressed in some other way?
No one is holding a gun to Uber drivers' heads forcing them to drive. They seem to be doing it voluntarily (this seems the case for every one I've met). Insofar as this is their only option, this is not a problem of Uber's creation, but of the overall political economy. And that, after all, is GP's point.
In some cases with written contracts, the pay is specified as a non-negotiable condition from the paying party, and the "only freedom" the contractor has is to take it or leave it. Is that a violation?
No, because one of the other factors in being a contractor was having multiple (potential) contracting counterparties (aka clients). An Uber driver contracts with just Uber, not the riders. In contrast, a contractor would generally have more than one client if they were in the business of providing that type of service as a contractor. (Part C of the ABC test. Note that Part C requires a contractor to engage in the legal formalities of creating their own business, so it's not just enough to work for both Uber and Lyft.)
But note that for Uber and Lyft, what matters is not that they failed part A and C of the ABC test, since those are relatively trivial to structure around.
Uber and Lyft fail part B of the ABC test, which is that a worker cannot be engaged in a job that is the usual course of the employer's business. Uber and Lyft call themselves transportation companies, ergo, any worker that is providing a transportation service is automatically an employee under the ABC test. Indeed, drivers are the only workers at Uber/Lyft that would be treated as automatic employees; the programmers could be employees or contractors.
Yes, driving Uber is a shit job, but for many people it is far better or more compatible with their lives than waiting tables or working retail, which are the realistic alternatives for most Uber drivers.
The simplest explanation is that for whatever reason, those better-paying retail or food service jobs were not an option.
One of those compelling things is that it seems like a better deal. Uber relies on you not doing the expenses math on things like vehicle depreciation, car insurance, unpaid time spent waiting for fares, etc.
Just because you make a new app and don't follow the rules in the hope you get to big to fail doesn't mean it works.
Uber specifically displays the current problem with new startups, they don't make things more effective, or cheaper.
They borrow money, set low prices and don't follow the law and then lobby to change them.
Uber is a taxi service I don't know why anybody would think otherwise.
You compare uber to etsy, but uber sets a price and does not even list the name of the driver till you order to pay.
One is comparable to a bazar, the other is a taxiservice with a nice app.
Yes, but the driver is similarly offered the fare, and may choose to accept or not. This is actually one of the critical distinctions between employees and non-employees. If they were an actual employee, Uber would be able to just assign the fare to them.
This is also unlike taxis, where, if your light is on, it is illegal to not accept the fare. (Although violations of these rules are common and blatant, which ironically stopped me from using taxis altogether.)
It’s certainly true that Uber operates in a grey area. When cities have explicitly banned them, they stop operating (e.g. Vancouver). It seems like California has clarified some of the ambiguity around employment, and Uber may similarly stop operating.
What matters is whether the worker can independently decide what fare to charge (even if in practice the fare is limited by market forces to what a customer/client would pay). If they can, they are almost always a contractor. If they can't, they are almost always an employee. (Note: Hollywood unions and guilds set minimum rates for work, but members are free to charge higher rates if they can get away with it, and many do. The contractor/employee distinction is largely moot because the unions/guilds took on the healthcare and benefits provisioning functions that employers would normally handle.)
EDIT: reply to ericmay since HN won't let me reply that deep. No, "accepting" a fare is not the same thing as deciding what fare to charge. Accepting a fare in the Uber/Lyft context means you take the fare Uber/Lyft offers you, or you go home; there is no potential for negotiation or other work. Deciding what fare to charge means you get to post your fare to Uber/Lyft, and customers decide whether they are willing to pay it, or conversely that a customer posts a desired fare, and the driver gets to decide whether they take it. If Uber/Lyft were truly just platforms and their drivers were independent contractors, either of those would be how fares are determined (and in fact, Uber is moving toward the former in CA as a result of this law).
If I offer someone $10 to mow my lawn and that's the only price I'm pay, are they now an employee because they can't decide what fare to charge? Do I now owe the kid down the street and all of her friends a 401k if they rotate through who mows my lawn for that price
Paying someone $10 to mow a lawn occasionally would not turn them into an employee. Terms of payment are just one of the factors in part A of the ABC test (which analyzes the worker's level of independence), so stop focusing on that single non-determinative data point.
Moreover, benefits requirements don't kick in until an employee exceeds a certain threshold of work performed (generally 30+ hours/week) for a single employer, and 401K contributions are not mandatory benefits anywhere. If a worker satisfies the ABC test for independence, they aren't an employee and benefits would not be required unless negotiated for as part of the work contract.
If I offer someone $10 to mow my lawn and that's the only price I'm willing to pay, are they now an employee because they can't decide what fare to charge? Do I now owe the kid down the street and all of her friends a 401k if they rotate through who mows my lawn for that price?
I guess I'm not following here.
More broadly, you can't compare 1 person trying to contract with 1 other person with 1 multi-billion dollar company contracting with 10s of thousands of people. Dynamics change when it's only a handful of companies hiring many people.
There's also no negotiating with me. It's $10, take it or leave it! (If they leave it, like they don't accept the fare, then so be it my grass doesn't get cut and Uber doesn't make money).
> More broadly, you can't compare 1 person trying to contract with 1 other person with 1 multi-billion dollar company contracting with 10s of thousands of people.
Why? The foundational principles seem to be the same to me here.
I think too many people want Uber to be this company that meets these certain expectations and they want that because the government has failed them and so they've turned to corporations to save people via jobs and paid benefits because they want the illusion that someone is paying their fair share. Instead you need to change the laws in your state/country/area to represent your values. If people don't have healthcare, pay money and give them healthcare. Making Uber do it simply isn't going to work here. Especially for them in particular.
To me there is no fundamental difference between me picking up an app and then getting $10 to go pick someone up and someone coming to mow my grass for $10, or someone paying me $20 to move a couch for them. I'm doing some work for some money. That's it. There's nothing more to it.
No you won't. Or at least most people won't.
>There's also no negotiating with me
Yes there is. Or at least there is with most people. Even if you are adamant on price there's plenty of other areas for negotiation like when the work will occur, subscription agreements, or the kid can try to work it out and cut your grass at the same time as your neighbors.
>Why? The foundational principles seem to be the same to me here.
You really don't see a difference in a business transaction between two people and one between a person and a multi-billion dollar corporation?
AB5 is about the relationship between the worker and the person paying them. Fundamentally, yes, it's all just compensation for work performed, but the law is all about the specific details of the work relationship not the zoomed-out overbroad simplification you've reduced it to, because at that level everybody is the same as everyone else and if everybody is the same why bother with any laws at all?
With restaurants, there’s an ongoing relationship and and expectation about shifts. There’s just a small amount of flexibility. The employee with take some good ones, some bad ones (with more good ones probably going to folks with more seniority, or those favored by the managers).
One couldn’t show up every couple weeks for two peak hours at the restaurant and expect to work. But some Uber drivers do exactly that.
Wrong
> Uber specifically displays the current problem with new startups, they don't make things more effective, or cheaper.
Wrong (https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-vs-taxi-pricing-by-city... and even more since then with Uber X expansion)
No one likes a pedant.
Uber hasn't been that cheap in years. Uber is now roughly the same or more than using a taxi in LA, and that doesn't even include Uber's original and more expensive black car service.
https://www.uber.com/us/en/price-estimate/ versus http://www.lacitycab.com/rates/
Try it
In contrast, the taxi service you linked to is the all inclusive price and is generally standard for all taxis as a matter of local law.
In the app, Uber is now more expensive than a taxi in LA for long trips.
People are voting & doing something with their democracy; that’s how this passed. And they’ll have another choice when they vote on the prop. You’re tired of people leaning a certain way, I’m tired of people coming up with really cheap shots just because they don’t like outcomes. Get a cup of coffee.
I'm not sure how my comment on this thread is any more of a cheap shot than any other comment, or how it's more of a cheap shot than telling someone you disagree with to "get a cup of coffee". I thought what I wrote was at least a coherent opinion on the matter. I'm sorry that it made you angry and that you took a negative interpretation of what I wrote. Not my intention.
> the business model won't allow you to pay people enough money
Doesn't sound viable, does it?
Do you mean to say that, after expenses and benefits are taken into account, an Uber driver working 40 hours a week makes less than minimum wage?
Etsy is not even remotely the same thing as Uber. For starters, shops choose what they want to sell, and for how much, and customers choose which shops on Etsy they wish to buy from. Other than handling payment processing, Etsy operates just like a mall.
In contrast, riders don't get to choose which driver they get; Uber chooses for them. Uber chooses how much riders pay and how much of that drivers get. Uber is not a platform, it's just a techified transportation service.
Many people depend on rideshare like Uber to get to work like a public utility.
This is an extremely warped and privileged view to have. Only people with lots of discretionary income used Uber to commute to work before COVID. They did not depend on it. And this is a very small subset of the US or CA populations; most people can't afford to take an Uber to work everyday.
I really wish people would stop giving government a pass and wanting corporations to come save them.
The problem is corporations like Uber that are exploiting their employees, not government. Corporations started paying their executives tens of millions for minimal work instead of the labor force doing the work and actually creating the value.
Maybe if California (and this is true of other areas) actually built and invested in bike able neighborhoods and public transport, then they wouldn't need Uber.
California, including especially the Bay Area, LA, and San Diego, has public transportation, and thousands of miles of bike lanes. It is possible to visit every major city and national park in CA using just public transportation.
You really had me for a moment until I realized you're joking :)
In all seriousness, public transportation in California is the real joke.
> It is possible to visit every major city and national park in CA using just public transportation.
Sure, and it's possible for me to canoe to Antarctica but it's not a reasonable way for anyone to travel.
You can get to a lot of places in the Bay Area by public transport, but the time penalty for doing and the number of services you have to use is absurd outside of downtown SF. Typically 3x driving and upwards.
Compare this to New York, or London or Amsterdam, where it can be close to parity, or on the 1-2x range. (I mention these because I have), and you’ll realize that Bay Area public transport is effectively non-existent.
CA isn't like NY or London. Our cities weren't built to the same level of density as NY or London, and systems that dense would be overkill. Moreover, given that CA's public transportation systems are geographically larger than any other public transportation systems outside of China (in the sense of geographic territory serviced), it would also be prohibitively expensive to build systems that dense in CA. A system as dense as NYC's metro in LA would cost more than a trillion dollars.
I think the point about geographic density is completely fair as an explanation for why the disparity exists, but it mostly serves to confirm the general point.
If you consider the percentage of locations or population addressable in a unit of time - e.g. in 1 hour, by public transport. The Bay Area does terribly.
This is an argument why public transport cannot substitute for ride share or car services in the Bay Area in the way that it can in other cities.
I speak as someone who has personal experience of all of these cities.
Sure, and it's possible for me to canoe to Antarctica but it's not a reasonable way for anyone to travel.
What an extremely narrow and privileged worldview you have. No wonder people hate techies so much these days...
Every day, more than a million people use CA's public transportation systems to travel between cities for work, even now during COVID. I guess they're all being unreasonable.
Trains and buses are infrequent and have terrible evening/weekend schedules. Sure, during rush hour they can likely be faster than the incredibly overcrowded Californian roads, but otherwise they're crap. They're also not exactly cheap!
It's no surprise why Uber & friends started in the bay area, and why it's so popular there. They had no competition. The transit in these places is like the bare minimum possible. It doesn't even come close to touching world-class transit systems popular all over the world.
The temporary shutdown (which will probably be reversed win or lose, but more profitably if they win) isn't so much a response to the injunction but a stunt related to the campaign for the ballot measure.
They almost certainly have fallback plans if they lose both the suit and the ballot measure, but they aren't as desirable and they'd rather operate with the rules aligned in their favor, and they are willing to accept significant short-term cost to maximize the prospects of that outcome.
They shouldn't force to operate a business that loses money, which is not going to be sustainable anyway.
You see it all over the place, and I for one hope that this trend is reversed in the next decade. It’s not good for society as a whole.
Are they better off having no income?
They may have a case in developing nations, I am not very familiar with the systems over there pre-Uber so I can’t comment on that.
I live in a developing nation that takes refugees from communist hellholes and the gig economy is helping them out big time by providing the less advantaged ones with a chance at life, all while improving the lives of its users through the service. And it's not just good economically, by creating new markets they help grow the economy and prevent the spread of xenophobia caused by foreign actors participating in a stagnant economy.
Unless you have solved poverty in your country and no one would ever willingly work in such a job you're only causing harm to other people by strangling Uber and similar companies out of existence.
Again, I am not saying that this is the same case for developing nations; there maybe was no work and/or ability to unionize in the first place. But for large parts of the world this was the case, and Uber just “disrupted” the negotiation abilities of the drivers.
I believe we’re looking at this from two different points of views, a developing nation vs a developed nation (I’m from The Netherlands).
In fact, for example in NYC, they generally had to pay to work, by being forced to rent cars from medallion owners like the charming Evgeny Freidman (aka Taxi King, formerly an owner of 900 cabs, now a convicted felon).
"The average rate a cabbie paid to take a taxi out for a 12-hour shift climbed 11 percent, to about $85, between 1990 and 1993, based on the most recent figures available from the city's Taxi and Limousine Commission. But meter revenue remained steady during the same period. As a result, the average income of drivers was about $19,000 in 1993, the same as in 1986 and less than in the peak years that immediately followed, taxi commission studies show."
https://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/09/nyregion/driving-a-taxi-d...
I’m aware that the US generally already had a very poor system for taxi drivers, but I don’t believe Uber did not make things better. And don’t forget that Uber also has Uber Eats — delivery drivers are most definitely far worse off with that than when they were working for the restaurants themselves.
Yes, Uber is more susceptible to competition than the old taxi companies. Where I live there are already three providers, and I stopped using Uber because the other takes a lower cut from the driver.
In the medallion system, you had to submit to Friedman, because even if another provider offered better conditions, they had a small number of medallions.
Competition between employers helps workers.
> I’m aware that the US generally already had a very poor system for taxi drivers, but I don’t believe Uber did not make things better.
Ok, why?
> And don’t forget that Uber also has Uber Eats — delivery drivers are most definitely far worse off with that than when they were working for the restaurants themselves.
Which restaurant replaces its drivers with UberEats? At least around here, the restaurants that already had drivers kept them, and UberEats even lets clients order from those restaurants and have the delivery be made by their own drivers. They just expanded the labor market to restaurants that did not delivery beforehand. I fail to see how can that be worse than before.