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Comment by henryfjordan | Hacker News Reader

AB5 was an absolute cop-out by the CA Legislature. They should have defined a third class of workers with protections somewhere in between Contractors and Employees.

But when it comes to the vote in November, a vote to exempt Uber/Lyft from AB5 is a vote to strip drivers of all protections. Uber and Lyft will be free to go back to exploiting drivers for <$10/hr [1]. I don't think I can tell someone else they don't deserve to earn minimum wage.

Maybe you are hoping the legislature will eventually come up with that third way once forced to, but there's a lot of momentum behind a popular vote. No US legislature has proven themselves particularly effective in the last few years. Let's not leave people out to dry while hoping some politicians will do their jobs.

[1] https://www.vox.com/2018/10/2/17924628/uber-drivers-make-hou...

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> I don't think I can tell someone else they don't deserve to earn minimum wage.

On the wage issue are you talking about the specifics of how prop 22 defines the earnings floor for drivers [0]? It definitely sets a standard even. It pays some for expenses ($0.30/mile) and the 120% minimum wage while on a ride covers a bit of time spent driving between rides. I could see though how if you have high expenses and don't get many rides you will not earn the minimum wage.

0 - https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_22,_App-Based...

I didn't realize that Prop 22 added some additional protections for drivers, thank you for bringing those up! I thought it was just send drivers straight back to the basic independent contractor rules.

I don't love that Uber/Lyft basically drafted Prop 22. There are features like only paying Engaged Time and not pinning the extra per-mile rate to the IRS standard (which is $0.57 per mile in 2020) which you can tell benefit them. That being said, my argument about removing wage protections is certainly dampened by the new earnings floors.

> Uber and Lyft will be free to go back to exploiting drivers for <$10/hr

Exploiting? Can you please cite another industry that has the capacity to employ millions of unskilled labor people at $10/hr and ALSO allow them the freedom to set their own schedule?

It's clear you've never worked a minimum wage job before. Flexibility on hours is next-to-impossible at these jobs. If people are willing to make a few bucks an hour less for that flexibility, who are you to call it exploitation?

It's not like these companies are minting profits. The alternative is these people go back to work at McDonald's and also get no benefits while being scheduled at such bizarre hours they can't even go to school and educate themselves.

Shrinking the pool of employment choices for these people does nothing to help them actually get healthcare. My mind is still blown at how the American solution to workers not having healthcare is to attack individual businesses instead of looking across the Atlantic at how the rest of the world solved this problem.

> It's not like these companies are minting profits.

Possibly because they're dramatically undercharging, loss leading, to get "market share"?

Undercharging, and drivers being paid "not very much" seems like two issues that are ... very much related.

So you're suggesting...the solution is to raise prices, and then transfer the added cost to drivers to give them benefits?

I actually know of a system by which you could do that on a grand scale...for every single worker in America. Not just rideshare drivers!

It's a concept commonly found in a far away continent most Americans have only dreamed of one day traveling to, called "Europe." How it works is simple. You raise prices throughout the entire economy via taxation, and then redistribute that money back to the less fortunate via a government provided healthcare program.

...And here's the best part, studies show it ends up lowering the price of healthcare for everybody. I wonder if something like that might be a better use of our time than trying to put Lyft out of business?

This may be poe's law at work, but it's pretty disingenuous to have the conversation in this fashion. Of _course_ it would be better to raise taxes and have a universal basic income and free healthcare. That's because the ultimate problem here isn't taxes or taxis or lyft or uber, it's capitalism.

However, given the system under analysis, because corporations have a history of making it very difficult for labor to be paid a fair and living wage, it falls to the government to use the tools at its disposal to ensure (as much as possible) that employees are paid fairly and have an opportunity to spend that pay on health insurance, because corporations won't be volunteering to do that, especially if they're already burning in excess of a billion dollars a year.

Healthcare I agree with, universal basic income I don't agree with. Healthcare should be a human right but giving everyone $X a month doesn't make much sense as it doesn't promote self reliance. I have no problem helping those who can't help themselves but healthy adults really should take on some responsibility.

And why do you believe that it's important to force self-reliance onto a society that is already ultraproductive by any comparison through history? Why does it have to be punitive instead of inspirational to be self-reliant?

Because it sounds very unnatural for a social animal such as us humans to try to be completely self-reliant... We depend on others, we always have been and we probably always will, so leverage that instead of striving for some weird artificial sense of independence.

The American system is equal opportunity not equal outcomes. The latter is the euro model. Both parts of the world often underperform the stated value/goal and we American's have some work to do here. Without throwing capitalism out it would not kill to restore the pendulum back to the middle. US corporations under the rubric of maximizing shareholder value + DC support for tax accounting + liberal accommodation for globalism has given the powerful too much of a structural bias. And def not talking solutions ala Trump here. In this way universal or basic income is a no go here.

As someone who was born in the UK and lived until the age of nearly 30 in Australia, I'd be entirely inclined to agree with you.

I agree with this position. Let workers decide for themselves how best to use their time.

Here's what I don't understand about uber/Lyft and finance people who invest in them:

- they are loss makers bleeding serious money.

- Fedex tried the independent contractor routed and was required to make them employees too.

Where is the business sense here?

Is there anything on the ballot to create a third way ? I believe Prop 22 is to simply exempt some companies from AB5, right ?

I think that this would have been the right idea. We need similar for union protection (white collar/digital salaried) and for digital monopolies for big corps that don't quite fit the old Standard Oil mold

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