Hacker News Reader

Comment by sixstringtheory | Hacker News Reader

I don’t believe a driver viewing the available riders is “working” any more than someone looking at prices in the apps to ride are “riding” until they accept a fare. People interview at many jobs simultaneously, bid on multiple contracts simultaneously, but they are not _working_ them simultaneously until an agreement is made.

So unless a driver has a rider from lyft and a rider from uber in the car at the same time, they are not simultaneously working for both.

That being said I don’t know if there is some employment or contract law that makes me wrong, or even just terms laid out by uber or lyft.

View on HN

Right so your point is that the driver is only an employee while on a trip. And while waiting for a trip, the driver is not an employee?

I am sure uber/lyft will be more than happy to pay minimum wage if the wage only counts when a trip begins. But the reason the companies are against the law is because the law requires minimum wage while the driver is not driving too. Which means that a driver could actually get 2 minimum wages at the same time while driving for both uber/lyft.

But of course that won’t happen. Uber/lyft will ban driving for competitor. Set up shifts such that every driver drives 37.5 hours a week. It is simply not worth the hassle of paying all these benefits for drivers who log in for an hour a day at random times.

> Right so your point is that the driver is only an employee while on a trip. And while waiting for a trip, the driver is not an employee?

I think I agree with this. Seems like you could still have the traditional, if not archaic, model where they are paid by hour of work, and simply track the time they spend en route to pick up and while driving, in place of or combination with however it's worked out today.

_How much_ they pay per hour of driving I think will still be subject to the usual market forces. Same for restrictive covenants. Uber and Lyft aren't just competing for customers, they're also competing for labor. But this is all I think orthogonal to the question of "what is the true nature of the relationship between the companies and the drivers," you're talking about outcomes of possible answers that should not have bearing on what the answer is.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com