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Comment by cletus | Hacker News Reader

So here's one thing I've never understood about such measures to treat drivers as employees: how do you handle drivers who drive for multiple companies at once?

It's fairly well known that drivers will sign on to multiple apps and choose which rides they take. Like they don't know the destination but still. What if a does 2 rides for Uber and 1 for Lyft in an hour? Who pays the minimum wage here? Both?

It seems like this would be incredibly hard to police and strengthens the argument that drivers aren't employees.

EDIT: to be clear I'm not talking about, say, alternating days for Uber and Lyft. I'm talking about drivers who are signed into both and take the first that comes up. They'll also accept rides on one app while still doing a ride on another. This is really common.

This is not a "multiple part-time job" scenario.

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>I'm talking about drivers who are signed into both and take the first that comes up

FTA:

"Seattle's law will require drivers be paid at least 56 cents per minute and $1.33 per mile driven while transporting passengers."

Whoever's app they are on for the ride pays that wage.

I think what's confusing is there's two different wages being thrown around here: Are drivers guaranteed $16.39/hr, in addition to $0.56/minute and $1.33/mile driven while transporting?

The questions I think are mostly about the former, not the latter.

Yes, at least partly. Payments for mileage are definitely a separate thing from regular wages, because you own your car and your boss needs to pay you for wear and tear on it. If payment for time spent driving is also mentioned in the law, that's probably on top of their regular wage, though there could be an exception for people who's job is only driving.

Having two jobs versus one job and with a minimum wage would just have your hourly rate increase on both jobs to the minimum rate .

Just because you have two jobs doesn’t mean that the law doesn’t apply .

What just happens is the ride share companies have every hour a driver is working and if it falls below the minimum wage then they would have to increase it to the minimum.

They are working both apps at the same time, picking rides from the first that pops up. I don't see how hourly rates would work with that unless they timeslot every hour to one company, which is not how it currently works.

I haven’t seen a driver that has a ride share when one is from Lyft and the other is from Uber.

But that doesn’t matter because you would calculate minimum wage by taking the amount of time worked with the income and then computing the difference between the hourly rate.

I think it's quite common for drivers to have both the Lyft and Uber app open, and to take the first/best available ride that pops up from either app.

The question is whether you'll be paid by Uber while completing a ride from Lyft, and if the answer is "no" how that'll happen technically. Or perhaps you don't get paid for idle time - I'm not quite clear on that point.

Is that for the time effectively worked (trip time) or it includes time between trips? If a driver is sitting idle waiting for a trip who is paying, both companies or nobody?

I'm also curious about this. I wonder if they'll start requiring drivers to "clock on" and "clock off", and you won't be able to accept rides outside of that dynamic. I know it already kinda works like that, but something more formal since now they're paying you while you're "clocked on".

I also assume this means they'll be more strict about turning down/canceling rides when you're "clocked on", and they'll assume you're available to accept rides when you're "clocked on" and don't currently have a passenger.

Which of course makes them much more analogous to a traditional livery cab.

EDIT: But then also kinda not I guess? Because a livery cab driver can decline a ride before it starts obviously.

I wonder if it'll work more like food service, where Uber covers the "difference" if you make less than the minimum wage (and for better or for worse, much like food service I assume if they have to make up the difference too frequently you'll be booted off the platform).

how do you handle drivers who drive for multiple companies at once?

IF you're classified as an employee, your employer can legally prohibit moonlighting. Enforcing this is not a problem unique to ride sharing apps, so it might be worth looking into how this is handled elsewhere. However, if an employer treats their employees well enough, their workers are less likely to seek outside employment.

How does that work now for part-time work? I would assume that working at Walmart for 10 hours doesn't include a clause that says I can't work at Target for 10 hours as well.

All of this gets messier because most "normal" jobs in this space don't let you pick your hours. It's clear you can't literally be in two places at once, but you can be "on call" with Uber and Lyft at the same time if you want to, and it's somewhat beneficial to all parties for them to do so.

You probably can't have it both ways. If you decide that working for someone means being paid a minimum number of hours, paid when on stand by to work and not actually driving etc., then obviously you can only idle for one network at a time and watching two apps for the best ride isn't possible.

That really doesn't sound like the city's problem. Perhaps with a fairer wage, fewer drivers will feel like they need to work for both companies. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

There's lots of things the ride share companies could do to make it look less like a job, but they don't, because it would reduce their revenue. What's the problem with applying regulation that makes it more likely to be worthwhile for the drivers?

Or is your argument that this will destroy profitability for drivers by denying them the right to chase fares across services?

> This is not a "multiple part-time job" scenario.

But it literally is, so what's your argument against that? They'd get minimum wage at both their part-time jobs like everyone else, like contracting or temping part-time for two agencies. What warrants anything but the standard interpretation?

Traditionally, when working two part-time jobs, you aren't typically doing both part time jobs simultaneously. Like, you cant be doing counter-duty at Starbucks 10am-1pm while also be pumping gas across town at Exxon 10am-1pm -- instead you'd have to have shifts w/o overlap. Each company is responsible for paying a fair wage for their shift.

With Uber and Lyft, most drivers I've seen are on both apps simultaneously and choosing the best ride that pops up, which makes the standard interpretation obsolete for gig jobs like this which allow for parallelism.

While I support good wages for drivers, it is unclear who pays the good wage -- Uber, Lyft, or both, or half each, or some proportion as you clock-in-clock-out constantly. I'm sure there is a good answer that is fair to the driver, but I haven't heard it yet.

> Traditionally, when working two part-time jobs, you aren't typically doing both part time jobs simultaneously

Nobody is doing two jobs at once. They can only take one ride at a time. They simply alternate ate a higher frequency than other jobs. Why would this frequency have any effect on how they are treated?

> While I support good wages for drivers, it is unclear who pays the good wage -- Uber, Lyft, or both, or half each

They get paid by the company from which they take the ride from. Whoever they're working for at a particular time, for those particular miles, is who pays the rate.

But that's not exactly the same. If I'm working part time at Starbucks, but no one comes into the store, I'm still paid my hourly wage for being there. If I'm logged in to Uber and Lyft and waiting for a ride on both, and no one calls one, do I just not get paid? I'm still providing value to both companies by being online (users of the app see a quicker pickup time since I'm available). Right now, rideshares are only paying you for doing the actual tasks, while most jobs pay you for the task AND time spent being a warm body who will jump to do the next task.

I totally agree that -- under this law -- if you log in and dont get a ride, you should be paid a fair.

My question was -- what if you log in to Uber AND Lyft simultaneously (as most drivers do) and dont get a ride. Do you get 2x the fair wage?

Also, doesn't this incentivize drivers to intentionally be "on the clock" in places and at times where they won't get rides? I can't just decide that Starbucks has to pay me to be behind the counter from 2-5 AM every day, but right now, I can decide to be available on Lyft then.

Presumably this will lead to some sort of tighter geofencing, or caps on how many drivers can be active at a given time?

This is before you get into weird things around locality. If I live outside of Seattle, but drive into Seattle to do some Lyft driving, does this apply to me? What if I take a ride that starts outside of Seattle, but ends up in the city? Or if I pick up someone in Portland and drive them to Seattle?

In combination with wgerard's comment, I see what you're saying now.

I said this in a sibling comment, but I think the confusion is:

> I think what's confusing is there's two different wages being thrown around here: Are drivers guaranteed at least $16.39/hr, in addition to $0.56/minute and $1.33/mile driven while transporting?

> The questions I think are mostly about the former, not the latter.

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