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Comment by blakesterz | Hacker News Reader

"Uber and Lyft say drivers prefer the flexibility of working as freelancers, while labor unions and elected officials contend this deprives them of traditional benefits like health insurance and workers’ compensation."

I was curious about what drivers think. I guess they're not happy [1] but want to be independent contractors still [2].

1. https://therideshareguy.com/uber-driver-survey/

2. (In a May online survey drawing responses from 734 Uber and Lyft drivers nationwide, 71% said they wanted to be independent contractors) https://www.wsj.com/articles/uber-lyft-ordered-to-classify-d...

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> ...Uber drivers reported earning $13.47 per hour, which means that on average, drivers report that their car is costing them over $6 per hour to operate.

If you were to drive full time, that would get you about 27k/year, which is about the average income that a taxi driver makes. Rideshare companies are asking you to take more personal financial risk than you might as a taxi driver, but giving you more flexibility.

Still 27k/year is not much money really anywhere in the country. I think this is a symptom of some major underlying problems with our economy rather than an indictment of the rideshare industry. If we can't afford to pay drivers a living wage to do their work, then the people who are using these services aren't as well off as they think they are.

Tangent:

$6/hr sounds a bit low; actual costs are probably higher.

The IRS standard mileage rate (the amount you can deduct from your taxes for each mile driven) is $0.58/mi (https://www.irs.gov/tax-professionals/standard-mileage-rates)

$6/hr operating costs means the driver is driving a max of ~10mi/hour, if costs to operate are in line with IRS guidelines.

I wouldn't be surprised if drivers are underestimating their costs. The true cost of vehicle ownership is rather murky and I doubt many of these drivers are self-taught accountants.

That's why the driver attrition rate is so high and Lyft/Uber have to constantly run driver recruitment efforts in mature service areas. After the driver ruins their original car in less than a year, they quickly realize the true operating costs.

Say what you will about the taxi business but at least taxi drivers knew that the gate fee on a leased vehicle was $100/day.

The IRS deprecation is very far above the costs in actual practice. It's a very conservative number.

I think the IRS number might be spot on.

Quick math:

   ($25,000 cost to buy car new - 
    $4,000 residual value at end-of-life
   ) / 100,000 miles usable lifetime = 

   $0.21/mi depreciation of value

   $3.22 / gallon * (1 / (17 mi / gal fuel efficiency)) = 
   $0.19/mi for fuel

   Maintenance:
     $40 per oil change / 8,000 miles = $0.01 / mi
     $600 tire change / 60,000 miles = $0.01 / mi
     $1,186 average yearly repair / 16,000 average miles driven = $0.07 mile

That all adds up to $0.49 / mi and does NOT include insurance and DMV registration fees.

But in most cases, you aren't buying a car just to drive for Uber (more than half drive between 1 and 15 hours a week [0]), you're doing it on the side. Your per mile costs for driving for Uber are the marginal costs (costs of additional insurance, fuel, marginal wear and tear, etc).

Also, if you're driving for Uber in a new car that gets 17 mi / gal fuel efficiency, you're not making wise moves. There's a reason a lot of Uber drivers are using 5 year old Prius's - this cuts the fuel cost in half, and the depreciation down quite a bit.

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

Well, no, because if you are an Uber driver the vast majority of the depreciation in the value of your car comes from driving Uber. Cars depreciate in large part due to mileage.

Finally, "marginal wear and tear" is a completely absurd concept. The cost of wear and tear on maintenance of a car has a positive derivative and thus has no margin, the more wear and tear the more expensive wear and tear gets. In other words, the limit of the cost of wear and tear as wear goes to infinity is divergent towards positive infinity. Thus, there is no marginal cost.

In the real world, you can't spend an infinite amount of money on a car. There is a limit. The margin will come up at some point unless the driver is completely irrational.

Sure, but in the real world that cost is having to buy a new car, which easily increases the cost per mile by 50% and invalidates the point that "you were already driving a car".

It's an exceptionally poor strategy to drop $25k on a new car that only gets 17mpg when your intention is to be a rideshare driver. A purely internal-combustion Civic or Corolla gets twice that. A Prius more than 3x. So do the ones that are 3-4 years old already. And the Prius will probably last closer to 200k miles.

I would guess that the ridesharing companies will buy fleets before they'll pay Chevy Tahoe rates for compact sedans.

Huh; I had no idea that the newer Prius models can get 50 mi/gallon or more in city driving. That does change the equation quite a bit, I think.

Your cost per mile for gas is way off. MPG is way higher for typical Lyft/Uber.

Usable lifetime is also pretty low. A modern car can pretty easily get to 150k miles even driving Uber/Lyft based on the mileage I’ve seen in the cars I’ve ridden in.

Those are your two biggest factors in your calculations and you can cut them both by a good 30%.

I was talking to a taxi dispatcher at some function here in Canada, and it came up that each vehicle on the road would drive about 500km/day. That's about $200-$250/day in what the per distance rate many employers give out(40¢-50¢/km) for fuel and wear on vehicle. But assuming an 22hrs of driving a day(on a taxi with multiple drivers), that's about 22km each hour or $11/hr for fuel and wear on the vehicle according to what many employers would pay in addition to time driving. This is in Canadian dollars, so $11/hr is about $8/hr in USD and works out to an average of $16USD/hr of driving(assuming (22km|13miles)/hr average)

TCO for a Prius is about 6k a year for non-rideshare applications. The link has this cost around ~13k per year, which isn't outlandish. I think you are right in general though. Uber will let you drive an F-350, but there is no way you will make money with it.

I am almost certain 6$/hr doesn't count depreciation and only part of maintenance. Just fuel costs mean that if you were to drive an average of 20mph, you would pay on average 3$ in gas (in California).

"personal risk"

This is kind of the state of the country really. Ridesharing is an OK gig until you get into an accident, you're fine without health insurance until you get injured, you don't really need a union until you start getting treated unfairly, you can pay for college as long as you consistently have a good salary... we're being statistically gaslit with the idea that most people can scrape by without higher wages and better general protections.

I think you're gas lighting us by ignoring the fact that this personal risk is taken at personal choice. If someone wanted the arrangement that comes with an employee/employer relationship there are jobs that offer that. But not everyone wants that, some people prefer, for their own reasons that are really none of your business to be an independent contractor. This is about choice plain and simple.

Not everyone has that choice, which is why so many people depend on gig economy jobs as their livelihood.

If you do not have in-demand skills for the market, have a family to feed, and the cost of training exceeds your expenses, Uber/Lyft might be one of your only job options.

We make choices within contexts other people create.

And your solution is to take away more choices from people?

The solution is to ensure the worker's employment status is within the legal definition as it's defined. Gig economy could usher in a new era of worker flexibility, but it could also usher in a new era of worker exploitation.

The gig economy keeps pushing risks and cost down the chain, while also showing signs that it may not be a sustainable model as a whole without venture capital to burn through or an end game of predatory monopolist behavior within the market region.

The choice to not have important types of insurance hurts the chooser and it hurts everyone else.

There are many situations where it's best if the societal bargain restricts the options available.

who gets to decide what's best?

Is that a real question? The government, of course. Hopefully an elected one, but no laws of physics force fair representation to happen.

Yes, we've removed lots of choices.

Like for example, it's illegal to sell yourself into slavery or indentured servitude. That's a choice you are not legally allowed to make.

Do you think people are really walking around thinking "I don't want health insurance because I prefer being destitute in the event of an injury"?

No, but there are people who would rather keep more of their paycheck than spend it on premiums or taxes for socialized medicine and take on that risk. Those folks are usually younger people who are more likely to work at these entry level jobs. On the flipside there are people who will risk life and limb doing something unnecessary (skiing, rock climbing, parachuting, etc.) and maybe some of them even feel safer because they know they are insured. Why should we outlaw one form of risk and not another?

People take risks. Life is all about risk and choices. I will never believe it is moral to take those choices from anyone.

Y'jumped to a lot of conclusions, there. I suggest you try asking some genuine questions, instead.

Personal risk isn't an isolated thing. Thousands of people taking personal risk have systemic effects, and these companies aren't paying into it, even though everyone around these "risk-takers" suffer the consequences.

> Thousands of people taking personal risk have systemic effects

How do you know the personal situation of each of Uber's/Lyft's drivers? How do we measure risk for each person in an objective way? Some people might be at no risk, some higher. We can't know! What right is there in taking away options that benefit some people because it might possibly not work well for someone who voluntarily signed a contract? This is not liberal policy. This is paternalistic, state-controlled economic oppression.

> Some people might be at no risk, some higher.

All rideshare drivers are (by definition) participating in the most dangerous activity (western) humans do on a daily basis. Every non-utilized minute they spend on the road adds risk to them as well as to other members of society.

The fact that in most places in the world there's legislation that defines requirements and responsibilities for professional drivers, from qualifications, to insurance, alcohol intake, maximum working hours, minimum rest hours, etc., Implies that it totally does exist.

I think you're gas lighting us by ignoring the fact that these types of choices aren't fully unconstrained. People aren't assuming this risk because they prefer to, but rather they have limited choices available to them given their resources and background.

> but rather they have limited choices available to them given their resources and background.

So let's take one more choice away!? Not every person looking to make some money is looking for something with as much commitment as employment. Not every business needs people to work according to their schedule at a specific place. While you think you're giving full-time employment and benefits to all of these people what you're really doing is taking certain kinds of opportunities away.

Yes! If the free market results in employers offering shitty choices that take advantage of workers with limited options, the government should step in and attempt to correct the power-imbalance that puts the workers at life- and liberty-threatening disadvantages.

Extrapolating from your logic, indentured servitude would still be allowed to exist.

Banning a form of work where workers owns the means of production doesn't seem to be in the workers interest. I'd rather they regulate it in a better way, for example rewrite union laws to make it possible for gig workers to unionize.

Where did I mention the banning of a form of work?

Uber drivers do not own the means of production, as ruled by the recent California courts, because they do not own the capital of their employers, which is the IP of Uber. This is why socialists are developing and operating open-source and decentralized alternatives to Uber in many countries, so that they will indeed own the means of production.

That said, I agree that employment laws need a rewrite for these situations, but we won't get the needed reform to get the gig-worker system to work under either Biden or Trump, so not for at least 6 years.

>While you think you're giving full-time employment and benefits to all of these people what you're really doing is taking certain kinds of opportunities away.

This is some of the most phenomenal bullshit I've ever read.

There's nothing stopping Uber and Lyft from allowing people to work their own hours and also giving them benefits if they meet hourly qualifications.

You're talking about people making <$30k a year while shouldering most of the risk and using their own cars as if they're shopping around for the best FAANG salary.

> There's nothing stopping Uber and Lyft from allowing people to work their own hours and also giving them benefits if they meet hourly qualifications.

There is, if the driver drives in bad hours making their income not come up to minimum wage uber would be forced to pay the driver anyway. In order to avoid this uber would be forced to limit when and where people can drive.

Being an employee means that the company has to ensure that the employees time is well spent so that it is worth the minimum wage and benefits at least. Being a contractor means that the contractor himself is responsible for what he is doing is profitable enough for him to live on. So changing them to employees means that now uber has to ensure every driver only drives when it is profitable for uber.

So everyone who wants to handle this responsibility themselves don't want to be an employee.

>if the driver drives in bad hours making their income not come up to minimum wage uber would be forced to pay the driver anyway

is this a California specific law? There are lots of variable hour workers out there that may skirt by below the hour threshold for a short amount of time, but generally the employer can set reasonable adjustment periods where they'd lose their benefits for continuing to do so.

Uber can simply adjust their algorithm and refuse to give shifts to drivers if there is enough drivers to cover the "bad" time period, which would be the exact equivalent of Uber drivers right now not getting rides (and not getting paid) when there is no demand.

When's the last time you've worked a minimum wage contract job? At that level of employment you're not exactly shopping around for better offers.

Uber and Lyft can offer benefits to contract workers. Do you think they don't because they want to give people the right to choose?

Could you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

Who says driving for Uber/Lyft should be a full-time job, or statutorily viable as a full-time job? If you consider it only as a second or third job, then it makes a lot more sense that your second or third job is not going to pay as well or have the same benefits as your first job. Those aspects would be expected and reasonable. The low-risk, high-reward jobs fill your primary job slot, then you seek other options as needed. (After all, if it was any different, you might quit your first job and drive for rideshare instead)

What happens in practice is that people try to make ends meet with two or three crappy part-time jobs, because that's all they can find.

(Insert plug for UBI here.)

Passing laws to eliminate crappy jobs doesn't magically make non-crappy jobs come into existence.

Unsure where UBI comes into the picture either since UBI also does not make non-crappy jobs magically come into existence.

It doesn't solve anything, but having an income stream that's not connected with your job should help make crappy jobs livable, and also increase bargaining power for workers, due to having better alternatives.

Also, increased spending does tend to result in more jobs, at least in normal times.

Can you provide a specific fairly objective definition of what a "crappy" job is?

Is it just a job you don't like doing?

How does adding UBI address bargaining power beyond a temporary fix? Eventually prices will adjust to take into account the buying power of UBI. UBI will become the new baseline and people on UBI will lose the benefits of that buying power. Not denying that UBI won't provide a temporary fix, but there is nothing about UBI prevents the market from adjusting to take into account UBI.

if only the people who were driving as an addition to their primary job, uber would be severely hampered. the ease of access and response is predicated on full time uber drivers

That you don’t bat an eyelid at people needing a second or third job to make ends meet is in itself an indictment of the general state of the US.

Who said they needed the extra gig to make ends meet? Some people might just enjoy it, or want to earn a little extra during their free time, or have a seat open on their commute.

To view temp/gig work with a full-time lens is disingenuous, imo.

Why is it necessarily better for someone to have a single job verses multiple gigs? Not everyone wants to be a shift worker or office drone. Its just an implementation detail of the economy not some sort of indicator of a problem.

If you have multiple gigs then at least one of those gigs should provide basic benefits such as insurance. What gig is better at doing it than the gig powered by a megacorp?

I was amazed at the series Breaking Bad, that a teacher would take a summer job to make ends meet. At a carwash no less.

I have brought this up here before and got all kinds of justifications : he has a big house, he has a special needs kid.

I don't think there is any teacher in NL taking summer jobs to make ends meet.

> I was amazed at the series Breaking Bad, that a teacher would take a summer job to make ends meet. At a carwash no less.

Breaking Bad isn’t supposed to be a documentary. Teachers don’t have summer jobs at car washes. Tutoring is both easier and pays better, as does summer school. Working at a car wash is an example of shitty choices, as is his entire relationship with his wife. It’s like his decision to go into drugs in the first place. He’s a public sector employee. He does not need to make drugs to get excellent health care. He does it because he wants to. Working at the car wash is not something he needs to do, it’s a way of expressing his martyr complex.

This is just repeating TNC company propaganda. Nobody is saying this has to be a full-time job. Many, many people work part-time jobs and they are all employees of their workplace. Many of these people also have second part-time jobs, where they are also legally employees of the second company.

You can't really compare yearly salaries unless you pick something to standardize on. You will notice that I didn't pick on benefits at all. I would guess that the reality is most people depending on rideshare for a living are doing multiple jobs.

This is a common logical fallacy promoted by low-wage employers. To turn it around, why should anyone be happy to make LESS per hour for the extra hours in a day they are working?

Fast food restaurants like to argue that they keep their wages low because their workers are young students who just want some pocket money for a car or concert tickets. If you’ve walked into a McDonalds lately, you may have noticed that more of their employees are middle aged folks or even seniors who are trying to supplement their retirement savings.

I often ask my rideshare driver about why they drive, how long they’ve been driving, etc. Very few of them are driving as a hobby or to pick up some side cash. For most of them, it’s their main source of income.

Our economy has become so overwhelmingly top heavy that the majority of the population is losing the ability to take part in it. The middle class used to be the mean income, but these days the mean has drifted so far from the mode that the distinction between middle class and lower class has all but vanished. Just taking a brief look at the 2014 census numbers, the mode income was centered around $22,000 a year while the mean was $75,000. Let that sink in. The largest percentage of the US population makes less than $25,000 a year.

This information is only useful if it is contrasted against the number of people who want/need/are able to work. People like the retired, teenagers, stay-at-home parents, college students, etc. all may make some small amount of income each year but generally speaking don't work full time. This isn't evidence of people struggling. It is evidence of people exercising their personal rights which include not being a worker.

You're suggesting that the retired, teenagers, stay-at-home parents, and college students make up the majority of the US working population? Yeah, not buying that one at all. The US economy is fucked right now, we've been madly spinning the plate to try to keep it going, but it's starting to wobble badly. Unless something major is done soon it's only a question of when not if things start to implode.

> You're suggesting that the retired, teenagers, stay-at-home parents, and college students make up the majority of the US working population? Yeah, not buying that one at all.

No where did I say this. What are you talking about?

My point was that the mode income, that is the income reported by the largest number of people was incredibly low. You claim that's because there are a bunch of people that don't really need/want to work, so they don't make much. That implies that that group represents the majority of the working population (in order to be the mode income). You're point might have been correct if we were talking about the mean income being very low, but in this case it's exactly the opposite.

The mode is meaningless with such a huge continuous range. A huge chunk of people are right at that income level because of minimum wage. 50% of the people still make more than 50k.

Look at a distribution graph to help visualize it: https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2015/demo/dist...

That chart is s great example of exactly what I'm talking about. Look at that 95th percentile line. It's LEFT of the center. 95% of the population is making less than HALF of the top earners.

Do you even know what point you’re trying to make? Because I don’t think this chart is saying what you’re trying to imply. All this chart shows is that there is a long tail of possible incomes to the right.

It doesn’t tell you how much that 5 percent is making in aggregate compared to the 95 percent. Put another way, you could stuff everyone on the right into a single >250k column and it wouldn’t be as tall as that 90th percentile column.

This chart doesn’t really say anything about wealth inequality (which is what “point” I think you were trying to make) and neither does the mode of the incomes.

Mode is a preposterous and arbitrary measurement to use. Median is what you’re looking for, but it doesn’t support your narrative as well.

Median is just the arbitrary mid point between the two extremes, that doesn't actually mean anything useful to the average person. If you picked someone at random from the subset of the US population that reports an income (presumably the working population) and asked them what their income is, the most likely answer is the mode value, or in 2014 about $22,000. That's reality. That's why that is important.

The median income ($53,000) is literally pointless except as yet another indicator of how unbalanced the economy is. If the economy was perfectly balanced the median and mean would be the same, but they're nowhere near that. The median was $53,000, while the mean was $75,000. An incredibly large chunk of the US is making significantly less than a handful of massive earners. And that's not even factoring in all the dirty tricks that the richest use to hide their wealth like offshoring bank accounts and shifting most of their assets into capital gains.

Median is significant because half make more and half make less. That over half of America makes over 50k is very meaningful.

Mode is just the exact number that appears most often in the distribution. Salaries are a continuous range, except for the various minimum wages. That is why the mode is so low. It doesn’t tell you anything.

>and asked them what their income is, the most likely answer is the mode value, or in 2014 about $22,000. That's reality. That's why that is important.

FFS no. That’s not what the mode means. Mode does not imply that’s the majority probability, it’s just the single highest probability out of the possible outcomes.

Statistically speaking, if you asked random people what their income was, the majority would not have an income of $22k. Let that sink in. Your whole mental model of this is deeply flawed. “Mode” != “majority”.

Consider this distribution:

1,2,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16

What is the mode? Do you see why the mode is meaningless shit when discussing what the distribution looks like?

> Rideshare companies are asking you to take more personal financial risk than you might as a taxi driver

At least in New York, the drivers carry all the risk. They pay for insurance and gas and damages and time (so they take risk of not getting fares).

And what does welfare pay? Serious question as I'm not in the USA and have no idea.

If Welfare pays less, isn't Uber/Lyft a positive thing?

And that is just the direct monetary benefit of $27K vs welfare. There are many intangible benefits to work vs welfare beyond money.

Being unemployed has mental health and life satisfaction costs (summary: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/04/is...). This is research that has existed for > 30 years.

There is significant evidence that long term unemployment REALLY hurts someone's hiring chances when applying for a job (see https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/04/co... from 2013 with linked papers). As a stepping stone to a living wage, driving rideshare likely helps people looking for better paid work, especially given you can clock off for two hours to take an interview, then clock back on. Try that working any other job.

The rideshare side of the ledger has better mental health & life satisfaction, more money and better job prospects, vs the welfare side with more free time.

I'd prefer to frame the "living wage" question as of all the people who drive Uber/Lyft, not Uber/Lyft drivers which puts their job above their humanity and implies it is a permanent state of affairs, anyway of all the people who drive Uber/Lyft at some point in their lives, will they be better off with the option of driving Uber/Lyft, or better off in a world where Uber/Lyft is not an option?

>There is significant evidence that long term unemployment REALLY hurts someone's hiring chances when applying for a job (see https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/04/co.... from 2013 with linked papers).

But in the study linked, they're really testing whether a resume gap hurts your chances of getting hired. I'm skeptical that it would translate the same to gig economy job, given you can't ask them for a reference, nor is there any indication of how much you worked (did you work 40 hour weeks? a few hours a week?), or how reliable/timely you were.

This is a good point. Gig work is unfalsifiable and worth as much as a blank period to an employer trying to see if you are a good fit.

Hell, you could lie and say that you were an Uber driver and there is literally no way for this to be verified.

People exist who are uncomfortable blatantly lying even if they can easily get away with it, and they tend to be good employees compared to the alternative, depending on the job specifics. Real gig work as a resume filling removes their disadvantage.

It's also important to note that the 13.47$ an hour is heavily biased towards expensive cities, where it really isn't much, and is actually often under the minimum salary.

Its probably also worth noting that it is $13/hour while working. Your income will fluctuate heavily with demand, which further increases your risk. This of course is also true of taxi drivers.

>I was curious about what drivers think. I guess they're not happy [1] but want to be independent contractors still [2].

If the employers don't want the change...

and the employees don't want the change...

and the customers don't want the change...

and the shareholders don't want the change...

and the residents of California don't want the change (exhibited by the threads yesterday with outcry over the decision to shut down)...

Why is the government of California trying to force the change? Is this a breach of the social contract?

I'm not a resident of California (rather, Minnesota), but I do want it to change. I don't use gig services because I think anyone doing 40[1] hours of work deserves a wage they can live off of, along all the other employment protections we've worked so hard to implement. Gig services are cheap because they don't meet that requirement. If gig services were required to meet that minimum wage and workers' rights, then I would be very happy to use them.

[1] Negotiable.

If you don't use gig services, will the gig workers become employees and make more money? Isn't it just as likely that the services will go away and the gig workers will not have a source of income at all?

Serious question: is your main complaint the low pay, or lack of benefits? If Uber increased pay to an average of $30/hour after expenses but still treated them as contractors and told them to buy their own health insurance, would you be ok with that?

Both. I'm not an employment law expert, but things like mandatory breaks, working conditions, PTO (pa/maternal leave, etc.). If you work a full time job, you are entitled to a comfortable life with a healthy work/life balance.

Am I misunderstanding, or are you saying that freelancing and independent contracting should not be permitted under any circumstances? Is there no sufficient amount of money where you'd acknowledge that workers are not being exploited in a fee-for-service structure?

And what about small business owners, who effectively have zero paid leave or vacation?

> are you saying that freelancing and independent contracting [and small business owners] should not be permitted under any circumstances

It's a good question and I'm not sure. I think my answer is some weak form of "yes." My goal is to enforce a good work-life balance, I think society benefits from a healthy workforce. So they wouldn't be impermissible per se, but they should meet those same requirements. However, obviously that's really hard to enforce for a contractor type situation, and some people genuinely thrive in their jobs in a healthy way. So, I don't know what the right balance is. I believe France has some mandatory maximum work hours regulations. Those might be interesting to look into.

I know some will argue this point, but I really do think it's clear that gig workers don't fall into those two categories, regardless. The power dynamics are totally upside-down between traditional independent contractors and SBOs, and Uber/Lyft drivers.

You've lost me now. You've gone between multiple topics and I don't really understand what your stance is. Are you saying:

- There should be a limit on number of hours worked (regardless of type of employment).

- Everyone should be an employee, and not a freelancer or otherwise independently employed

- Everyone should get benefits

Or all 3? Those are all to me at least independent things. You can have work hour limitations as a contractor or you can be an overworked employee.

> - Everyone should get benefits

Yes.

> - There should be a limit on number of hours worked (regardless of type of employment).

I'm not getting into the specifics, my point is everyone should get the worker protections we have developed over the decades. If that includes mandatory time off, great, but it doesn't have to. I pointed to France's model as one potential example of how it might apply to non-employees like contractors.

> - Everyone should be an employee, and not a freelancer or otherwise independently employed

I don't care about the categorization so long as the worker protection regulations are being met.

What about small business owners? If I open a restaurant I can only work 8 hours a day 5 days a week? I need to take 3 weeks off a year?

> So, I don't know what the right balance is. I believe France has some mandatory maximum work hours regulations. Those might be interesting to look into.

I never thought I would see the French system pointed to as a potential example. If you’re talking about the 35h week keep in mind that it is a really contentious topic there!

I wouldn't use France as a model for economic regulations. I love the country, but its economy isn't one of its strong areas. Ironically, many companies in France primarily hire contractors now because of the many onerous regulations around employees. One of Macron's big pushes has been to try to make the French economy more competitive by stripping some of that out, but it's obviously been controversial.

Also, why should a bureaucrat tell me what the appropriate work-life balance is, as an independent contractor? I'll decide that balance for myself, based on my life situation, thanks.

> Also, why should a bureaucrat tell me what the appropriate work-life balance is, as an independent contractor?

Because otherwise it tends to be a race to the bottom.

And where does that "enough money to live off of" come from? Unless the company has a lot of fat to trim, it has to come from customers in the form of higher prices, or from investors throwing more cash onto the bonfire. What happens when customers would rather not use your service than pay the amount whatever you're proposing takes?

It's very possible that this market only exists at the size that it does at a price that doesn't support what people in the US think of as "a wage they can live off of", and that by mandating more compensation, then there will be a whole lot of drivers for whom this just isn't an option anymore.

That said, I think drivers should be able to set their own prices, and that there should be a real market with bidding, but the UX will probably suffer.

> Unless the company has a lot of fat to trim, it has to come from customers in the form of higher prices, or from investors throwing more cash onto the bonfire.

Nope, there's lots more options than that. Cut executive pay. Tax high earners more and provide social services like healthcare and public transit, to reduce cost and demand on these services. And yes, prices would likely go up, because they're no longer being subsidized by gov't welfare.

> It's very possible that this market only exists at the size that it does at a price that doesn't support what people in the US think of as "a wage they can live off of"

Then the market is exploiting labor and is being subsidized by the welfare system (else the workers couldn't live, by definition). If we're going to subsidize unprofitable activities, we should do that as a society, not by funneling cash to Uber's owners.

>Nope, there's lots more options than that. Cut executive pay. Tax high earners more and provide social services like healthcare and public transit, to reduce cost and demand on these services. And yes, prices would likely go up, because they're no longer being subsidized by gov't welfare.

Executive pay, etc was what I was referring to as "fat". But what fraction of Uber's expenses do you think executive pay makes up? This is an oft-stated refrain, but anytime anyone runs the numbers, it quickly becomes apparent that those aren't large enough to make any difference across the huge number of employees involved.

I'm totally onboard with the social reforms you mention, but these are outside the purview of Uber/Lyft and this attempt to force them to treat these people as employees.

> Cut executive pay

This doesn't really work when Uber has something like 3 million drivers worldwide. Distributing the CEO's entire salary among drivers would yield them only a handful of coins worth of extra income per person per year. There's simply no way to translate exec pay into meaningful comp for drivers at this sort of scale.

I do, however, believe it's possible for the government to establish better social services (e.g. universal healthcare at similar tax rates exists just north of the border) if only the US govt adjusted its spending priorities.

I ran the math a while ago. If Uber CEO worked for free, the salary saved amounts to 1 or 2 cents per ride.

> If we're going to subsidize unprofitable activities

I must be missing something, how is Uber,Lyft being subsidized?

> It's very possible that this market only exists at the size that it does at a price that doesn't support what people in the US think of as "a wage they can live off of", and that by mandating more compensation, then there will be a whole lot of drivers for whom this just isn't an option anymore.

And that's different from many other hypothetical services how? If we accept that the floor should be lowered it should be for everyone, and if we don't it shouldn't. It should be an even playing field, not something where some companies slip through by not employing their workers.

You're right, I don't think they should exist in their current form, they don't seem to be viable without near-monopoly pricing power anyway. I'm just saying this because people act like we can just mandate that companies pay more, without mentioning that it's probably going to mean that those jobs just won't exist. There's a reason taxis were a niche service in most parts of the country - people haven't historically wanted to pay what they cost outside of eg going to the airport. Which means that almost all those people everyone is claiming to act on behalf of are probably going to have to find something else to do for money if Uber is forced to take them on as employees with full benefits and high wages.

The highest leverage way to help low income people in California is by focusing on reducing the cost of being alive. High barriers to earning money will just continue the decades long out migration of low income workers.

Do you also not eat at small independent restaurants? The owners also don't meet the same requirements, and in many cases make even less than uber drivers.

Drivers now set their own prices. Then it is the same as setting your own prices to teach piano to kids?

Set your own price higher then

In California, if they cared about that, they could move that needle with housing policy, and nationally, with an immigration program that focuses on high end talent (such as H1B’s), letting low end wages lift up. That’s a real bouyancy that would make Uber drivers better off.

“Employment protections” are not important at all for workers’ prosperity. Just imagine if they were absent. The most marginal workers would be better off.

I think the idea is that we're in a local maximum for "how good is the current arrangement for society as a whole". Any small change to the arrangement is going to make things worse for one party or another, and probably even make things worse for society as a whole. But there's a chance that a bigger change could get us to an even higher maximum, where everyone is better off, both individually and on net.

It's hard because you can't just jump there, there will be some people or entities that are worse off during the transition. Also there are unintended consequences so things might not go as you expect.

Usually to (attempt to) make changes like this, it has to be a government doing it, because it's a coordination problem and you have to force people to look past their short-term self-interest for a little while.

>and the residents of California don't want the change (exhibited by the threads yesterday with outcry over the decision to shut down)...

but didn't they also vote in favor of AB5? I'd take a referendum result over a non-uniform sampling of people's opinions.

edit: nevermind. AB5 wasn't a referendum, so citizens actually didn't get to vote on it.

No, the referendum is this November (prop 22).

Supposedly driver's unions lobbied the state government to make this change. So it's a vocal minority that's speaking on behalf of the majority that didn't want to join a union in the first place.

"I guess they're not happy [1] but want to be independent contractors still [2]."

Any normal employee or freelancer is not happy, but still goes to the job because there are bills to pay. It is normal to want things to be always better but low skill jobs are not going to be goldmines no matter what the regulation says.

This reminded be of the Planet Money episode on long-haul truck drivers [0]. It's a similar contractor v. employee (company driver) scenario. Not a happy story, unfortunately.

[0] https://www.npr.org/2020/08/10/901110994/big-rigged

> (In a May online survey drawing responses from 734 Uber and Lyft drivers nationwide, 71% said they wanted to be independent contractors)

As others are mentioning, the survey was very simplistic and most drivers don't understand the full ramifications of AB5.

That said, I still think the majority of fully-informed drivers would vote against AB5.

Enforcing AB5 will very likely result in: 1) substantial increase in benefits 2) slightly lower base pay 3) half of drivers losing their job 4) scheduled shifts.

My guess is #3 is the biggest issue for most drivers.

> I was curious about what drivers think.

This. I dislike how other people ("officials") are deciding what workers want for themselves. How about we stop patronizing the workforce and let them make decisions for themselves. People lean on Uber and it's not like they don't understand what money they're getting for their time. At the end of the day, shutting down Uber would just be a pain in the ass for the people.

That survey has been thrown around a lot, but there are a lot of problems with it. A big issue is that the survey was explicitly of people who follow a specific website (and potentially align with that websites opinions).

Another is that once you explain that California allows flexible schedules even for employees a lot of people who say they want to stay independent contractors change their mind. The biggest thing that drivers want is flexibility in their schedules, and there's a lot of misinformation saying they'd be required by law to sign up for shifts if they were employers. Once you correct for this FUD and drivers realize their favorite part of being a contractor isn't at risk anymore the answer seem to shift quickly.

Even if it was true though- most people who work at sweat shops are happy to have the job because they need the money. That doesn't mean that it's right to allow crappy conditions for them.

If the people affected are against the law then how did it make it to a vote, let alone pass? that blows me away.

California is a single party state with a supermajority of delegates. This means that Democrats can pass pretty much any law that they want without any real opposition.

The unions in California are unhappy with Uber/Lyft employees not being union members since their presence is an alternative (read danger) to some of the unions (teamsters/taxis). Unions have a lot more power with Democrats since they are some of their biggest supporters, so the legislature tends to do things that benefits unions.

Since California is effectively a single party state, the legislators that voted for this don't need to worry about things like being reelected because they are unlikely to actually see real opposition outside of a primary challenger.

Exactly what the poster said. California is a single party state. There is no choice in most elections. Due to the way elections work, you're usually choosing between democrats who believe the same thing. There is no dissent.

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