Instead, platforms like Uber dictate rates, dictate how, where and when the work gets done, and penalize workers if they don't take the clients Uber wants them to take. Uber even dictates what cars they can and can't use.
Uber does not let you choose your clients because they discovered discrimination occurred based on who the client was and where they were being picked up from. You are free to cancel but repeatedly cancelling means Uber will remove you from the network (you aren't putting in anything good to the system...so maybe the system isn't for you)
The work gets done when someone requests it, you don't get to negotiate that as a driver. You are able to look at customers who want future work done (scheduled rides) and book those at your convenience. If you are working in an on-demand contract role, the work has to be done...on-demand.
The ride has to be done in the same way as every ride as that is the expectation of the product. Uber doesn't tell you how to drive, doesn't tell you to set your car up in a certain way, but it does tell you some basic ground rules for doing the work.
Dictating what car you can and can't use is like regulating the equipment on the platform. You can't use 2-door cars, cars past a certain age, and a few completely reasonable restrictions (https://www.ridesharingdriver.com/uber-vehicle-requirements-...)
These are all completely reasonable things to require from a company/customer point of view. It’s completely unreasonable to demand these things of independent contractors.
Large scale marketplaces like this are quite unique and probably deserve a look at how we employ/give work to folks in them.
This assumes that the only solution for Uber is to stop drivers from selecting who they pick up and where they pick up from.
Another would be for Uber to allow drivers to make the choice, but subsidize rides from discriminated areas using money from desirable areas.
It was pretty well known that getting a cab from certain (non-white) neighborhoods and just hailing one as a PoC was very hard pre-Uber.
You could always lodge a complain at the centralized taxi authority where some bureaucrats would input it in "the system". But in the end it achieved nothing. Uber kicking out racist drivers probably did more than decades of complains.
If you need to either be at the edge of the law and discriminate or be the edge of the law and misclassify employees as contractors, to make your business work, then maybe your business model is flawed.
Uber has no inherent right to exist and do business. If the existing laws preclude your prefered business model, you need to get the law changed BEFORE you go into business.
Each requested ride is a new job. The contractor can choose to not take that job, for any number of reasons.
The fact that the job has a set rate is not abnormal at all. The fact that the client will “punish” you for not being available is also not abnormal at all.
Additionally, the contractors are able to work whenever they want, wherever they want, and for whichever companies they want.
The only real oddity here is that the contract work is dependent on the ride sharing companies. There should be an additional classification for dependent contractors. These drivers are definitely not employees, under any definition.
An Uber driver can certainly decide how and where their work gets done by using the car of their choice, except they aren't allowed to. Uber decides what vehicles they can use.
> Seems to be we're fundamentally trying to force an old classification to a new set of jobs.
There's nothing new about delivery driving and taxis. What's new is that companies are pretending that an app means that they shouldn't have to play by the same rules as every other employer.
This. The cars have a bare minimum requirement to ensure a good passenger experience and for safety (no older than X year of manufacturing, etc.), but beyond that, you are welcome to use whatever car you want. Uber has no issues with letting you use any car of your choice, as long as it meets the minimum requirements (which seem to be pretty reasonable).
I've seen regular Uber drivers (not Uber Black or any other more premium services) pull up in anything ranging from a few years old Priuses to pretty much brand new Teslas and Audi Q-series SUVs.
After all, the defaults have to be set to something, they might as well be set to the current values. You can even have a first launch "Choose defaults" setting.
Then people can go up and down the scale of what they want but no one practically will. And Uber can promise premium service only for things that meet some minimum standard.
Then none of you would get no questions asked refunds and I would. And everyone would be happy.
WWE wrestlers are independent contractors yet are instructed to perform certain moves and even deliberately lose matches
Surely it at least means being independent from some of the rules that you have to follow if you have a full time job, or why do it? If it doesn't at least mean setting your own price, then what in the world is the point?
Imagine you are freelancing on a software project but you can't ever make any good money because, strangely, the price you're allowed to charge is set by Stackoverflow and not you. Seems kind of presumptuous of them to decide that for me, no?
I don't understand why so many people in tech will bend over backwards to not notice the most obvious, basic nature of the economic arrangement between these firms and the people who do all the work. Just look at this stuff straight on. It's obvious what it is. Imagine yourself as a worker instead of a boss for once.
There is an Upton Sinclair quotation that fits.
There's the John Oliver's video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8UQ4O7UiDs
And also a journal article in response to the video
Which concludes,
"But in the end, the totality of the evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of wrestlers being more accurately classified as employees."
So the workers can negotiate when, how and for how much they'll work for their clients? I've got an '01 sedan collecting dust, can I decide that's how I'm going to pick up my clients via Uber?
When I worked as a contractor, it didn't matter that I used some shitty laptop or OS to get my work done, because I had the freedom to decide how and where I completed my work. Workers using Uber are denied that freedom.
This isn't a reasonable comparison. Your shitty laptop or OS was likely not part of the product. If I want a website I don't care what your laptop looks like. If I am being driven somewhere I certainly care about what condition the car is in.
If a client hires me to build a web app, I get to decide how, when and where it is built. That means I get to choose if I use, say, Django or Rails on the backend, and maybe React on the front end. These are certainly part of the product.
If I started "Daniel's Ruby Shop", collected money from clients, and paid it to you if you made Ruby websites that met standards I set, and required you to Skype me at specific times or forever be banned from "contracts" you're not an independent contractor, you're my employee.
No thats not really true, for all cases of contracting.
I, as the client, could absolutely tell you to use rails, and if you don't use rails, I can "fire" you the contractor.
Sure, some clients might not care. But some would care, and they can tell you want to do, and control what you use, and not work with you if you don't do what you say.
Right, so sounds like Uber sensibly wants their representatives on the street to project their desired corporate image.
Thus, employees.
That said, I'm not really sure what the solution is. If drivers that drive more than X hours per week have to be employees, I wouldn't be surprised to see Uber attempt to limit hours for each driver.
There are millions of part-time employees in the US who choose their own hours.
The fight here is not about whether Uber should be setting the hours that their drivers/employees work it is about: 1. Who pays the relevant employment taxes 2. Do the drivers qualify for state/federally mandated benefits like time off, unemployment, workers comp, etc.. (note: all of those things cost money, plus time to administer) 3. Do they come under rules about treating all employees the same (e.g.: do drivers that work full time get the same 401k program as Uber programmers)
All of this is really about Uber and the like trying to shift costs and burdens away from themselves. In many cases trying to eliminate them from their business model. We as a society have put protections in place against this because we saw how horrible things got, and this is an attempt to end-run those protections. I am open to figuring out how we should re-jigger how we run this, but not like this at the expense of workers.