California Uber and Lyft drivers criticize pay cuts under Prop 22 | Hacker News Reader

California Uber and Lyft drivers criticize pay cuts under Prop 22

theguardian.com

33 pointspmoriarty49 comments

Uber has been fundamentally broken at LAX, so hopefully these changes will make it better. It's so bad that taxi cabs are making a bit of a resurgence, because they win on convenience, user experience, and price. About half of people who request an Uber ride at LAX never get accepted by a driver[1].

I've been on the receiving end of that. My last time at LAX, there were half a dozen Uber drivers sitting in the lot. I kept getting notifications on my phone that I was being offered rides at increasingly high prices. When I tried to accept the driver would deny me. One driver pulled up and said that "because the app is buggy today", I wouldn't get matched with a driver but he'd be willing to drive me home for $50, paid via cash or venmo (for comparison, my Uber ride to the airport was $12). After watching the drivers a bit, SURPRISE, the app wasn't buggy. The drivers were just working as a cartel to deny every potential fare, which jacked up the prices in the app. Then they'd swoop up to frustrated travelers and offer to drive them home for an even more exorbitant rate, while also sidestepping Uber's cut.

Unlike Uber, Lyft will apparently try to match you with drivers outside of the airport. That makes it harder to artificially raise prices. A Lyft driver a few blocks away ended up taking me home for $13+tip. In the time a spent waiting for him to pick me up, not a single Uber car took a passenger.

[1]: https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Uber-may-stop-l...

I have had the same happen to me at SFO.

Last time I landed at SFO, in Feb around 8pm, it was consistently $100 to $120 to go from SFO to SOMA. I waited for 10-15 minutes then got a "bargain" price of $50 to go from SFO to SOMA in a clunky older car. The driver actually said he was in the airport parking lot waiting for over 20 minutes to get matched.

> “ A Lyft driver a few blocks away ended up taking me home for $13+tip.”

i used to do this as a price hack anyways, when i was flying between LA and SF regularly. you could take any shuttle out of the airport to a nearby hotel/parking lot, which is where you’d have the car pick you up at non-airport prices (typically giving a bigger tip to the driver too).

This goes both ways. Many passengers will cancel rides hoping the surge price drops. It’s a game. There’s no penalty for passengers, but drivers get lower incentives if we have too many cancels or declines.

If a driver declines trying to get a better rate, they’re only hurting themselves.

To be fair, LAX is fundamentally broken. The traffic design around it is from an era when only the rich and powerful flew, not today. There's what, two lanes of traffic to get into one of the most important airports in the United States? DIA has more roads into it, and it's nowhere near as big as LAX.

Frankly, not running a train from an airport the size of LAX to downtown remains a bafflingly stupid decision, in my opinion. They should've really just done like Chicago or DIA and put a train station in the airport.

> Frankly, not running a train from an airport the size of LAX to downtown remains a bafflingly stupid decision, in my opinion.

That really wouldn't be all that useful as downtown LA isn't really some useful central point. About the only thing you could do usefully would be to connect it to Union Station so that you can take the Coaster to San Diego, for example.

Everybody going to LAX is coming from all over the place in LA. And, if you're going to fly domestically, you probably go to Ontario and pick up Southwest, anyway.

Sure, but they could actually put a train station in the airport itself and connect it to a meaningful local transit hub.

The planned people mover is close to what I’d want, and it’s kind of mind boggling that it took the olympics for LA to realize that you need to bring trains closer to airports.

This could not be further from the truth. The vast majority of the time the road in, out and through LAX are not congested at all. The fact that it is in a giant circle with short parking in the center and planes leaving on the outside makes it much easier to get close and pick up or park. The denver airport is much more sprawled and needs trains to get people from some terminals to others.

Also you don't seem to realize that there are airports in burbank, orange county and oxnard. There is even a smaller airport in santa monica. LAX doesn't serve all of southern california but it does have substantial throughput.

> I wouldn't get matched with a driver but he'd be willing to drive me home for $50, paid via cash or venmo (for comparison, my Uber ride to the airport was $12). After watching the drivers a bit, SURPRISE, the app wasn't buggy. The drivers were just working as a cartel to deny every potential fare, which jacked up the prices in the app. Then they'd swoop up to frustrated travelers and offer to drive them home for an even more exorbitant rate, while also sidestepping Uber's cut.

Someone should go report the plates to the airport authorities. Pretty sure it's illegal for individuals to offer "cash-only" rides like that.

I restarted driving in the Chicago area and I’m averaging $45/hr.

I’d prefer an article that showed systemic driver responses. Not anecdotal interviews. There is no way I’ll believe most drivers want to be employees.

Again. If you don’t like driving rideshare, then get a different job. It’s not Uber’s responsibility to provide FT or benefits.

These complaints suggest they’re pro labor, but Uber is not a traditional employer. There is no law that says every business has to provide an employer/employee relationship.

If drivers don’t return to Uber, that will be the free market reset that forces Uber to adapt. If drivers take the sign up bonus and stop driving, Uber will have to adapt to that as well.

Let the market decide.

Maybe you can look at the first word in that title, it says California and earning under prop 22.

So yea not Chicago.

The comment you are replying to easily applies to drivers in other large cities in the USA.

> It’s not Uber’s responsibility to provide FT or benefits.

> Let the market decide.

I just want to spell out that these are political stances, and not universal truths.

An alternative political stance is that multiple factors conspire such that "get a different job" is for many people not a viable strategy. The situation under which a worker feels that their only viable strategy is working for Uber is beneficial to Uber.

Is it Uber's responsibility to ensure that there are multiple viable job strategies for people? No, not exactly. That's the responsibility of the government. We can't expect an entity to act against its own interests.

It can be a political stance, but that's for the commenter to decide, not you.

It is a legal truth. Uber is not legally responsible for providing FT or benefits period. You can argue they should be but as you pointed out, regulation is the responsibility of the government, not Uber.

The conversation around Prop 22 is (was) about deciding laws. I don't find it useful to invoke a notion of "legal truth", since it feels circular.

>I’d prefer an article that showed systemic driver responses. Not anecdotal interviews.

Okay, well then how about we look at-...

>There is no way I’ll believe most drivers want to be employees.

... oh.

I’m not the one writing articles in The Guardian about disaffected drivers.

Where is the evidence? Interviewing a few drivers is not evidence.

Please re-read my post and you'll see that I wasn't defending the article. In point of fact, I merely highlighted the fact that you said this article's evidence doesn't hold up, and then immediately said, "There is no way I’ll believe most drivers want to be employees."

That sounds like you would refuse to believe any other data, always and forever, if it contradicted your personal belief. Before anyone else might be able to chime in with other sources that may be more concrete, you have shut that down entirely. Your mind's made up, and that is that.

I actually have evidence on my side. The Uber driver surveys conducted by an independent firm state that near 70% of ride share drivers prefer to remain independent.

If a survey comes out that contradicts that, I'd have to review my stance, but for now, I'm skeptical.

>If a survey comes out that contradicts that, I'd have to review my stance, but for now, I'm skeptical.

Right on. That's all I was getting at. :)

> I’m averaging $45/hr.

Out of curiosity, how much do you spend on gas per hour? What are the other big expenses to cover? I'm thinking wear/tear, additional insurance, additional car washes, but having never driven I don't know.

I usually use up about 200 miles. In my car, that's 7.5 gallons at $3 is roughly $23 out of making about $200-$300. Insurance over 6 months is an additional $100, so roughly $17/month. Uber provides discounts on oil changes and tires.

Wear and tear on my car is hard to quantify, but one caveat is that I work from home for my regular IT job, so I no longer have commuting expenses. It's close to a wash in wear and tear because I only drive Uber on weekends.

Taxes are taxes. Gotta pay them no matter what.

You have to be naive to believe that Uber/Lyft has the best interest of the people rather than their share prices when they are able to write and pass their own laws.

The phrase, "don't blame the player, blame the game" comes to mind. Not that I fully believe that, but it's so easy to get a prop on the CA ballot that you get this sort of total nonsense every year. Sometimes it passes.

It's a good reason to always default to "NO" for propositions that you know nothing about.

The players are very unequal, though. The rideshare companies poured an ungodly amount of money towards this proposition. Campaign financing is an issue even outside of the California electoral system.

It sounds like this proposition was passed by California voters, just like the rest of them?

Why do you claim that anything else is the case?

Drivers say they are getting paid pennies, and riders are saying Uber is way too expensive now. What the hell is happening?

The model has never been economically sustainable, and it only thrived due to subsidies from venture capital.

Yup. The worst part is that Uber/Lyft can selectively keep subsidizing rides in markets where there's still competition from legacy taxis while charging what they want in less competitive markets.

Notice from this article that Uber and Lyft are seemingly acting in concert when cutting pay and offering subsidies. This is either both companies responding to the market in similar ways or cartel behavior. Good luck proving the latter in court however.

And subsidies from the drivers themselves, many of whom are running their vehicles into the ground, not accounting for the depreciation.

The only winners here are large Uber shareholders who got in early at low valuations.

We've had taxis for 100 years. It's obviously a sustainable business.

We’ve had terrible, smoke smelling, old taxis serving small areas compared to today, that may or may not show up if you lived a little out of the way.

I suspect many people can’t afford the level of service that Uber/Lyft have gotten them accustomed to over the past decade.

A possible solution would be to let drivers bid on trips proposed by passengers.

I like this idea. The anecdotal evidence from LAX above points to it already happening in an unsupported manner. If it was supported in the app and all drivers / passengers had visibility it would be a very clear market indicator for both the drivers and passengers. Cartel behaviour could be problematic though.

Shareholders getting paid?

Maybe driving Uber in LA is just not economically viable because of traffic.

Chicago is going through a boom in rates because there are so few drivers.

Uber isn't, and has never been, profitable.

Isn't it simply because COVID is preventing the cheap shared rides from being available?

I'm curious if people will actually decline to work for these low pay jobs.

They already have. Uber is down 80% passenger drivers. They left because of Covid, many switched to UberEats and have not come back. The O’Hare waiting lot is empty even on busy days.

"Uber is down 80% passenger drivers."

Did that result in a corresponding increase in prices and wages?

Yes. Riders are paying more and drivers are making more. But riders see no alternative. People under 30 without a car in the city will pay the higher prices.

For a long time I thought that companies like Uber, lyft and Doordash were the super rich subsidizing the lives of the upper middle class on the backs of the poor. We might never be able to retire but we can get cheap rides home from the bar. The bread and circuses of the modern age.

Having worked as an engineer at one of the above it was clear that the amount people are willing to pay for a ride or food delivery is fundamentally less than what you need to pay a driver.

Now I believe it was a ponzi scheme by the investors. If you sell hundred dollar bills for ten dollars you’ll have lots of customers. Even if you start selling the hundred bills for fifty dollars or even 95 you’ll have lots of customers and be able to claim you are the path to profitability. The numbers almost work. And it was a successful Ponzi scheme. All of the original vcs and investors were able to cash out with massive reruns. When these companies eventually (and inevitably) collapse it will be average investors and pension funds left holding the bag.

> Having worked as an engineer at one of the above it was clear that the amount people are willing to pay for a ride or food delivery is fundamentally less than what you need to pay a driver.

Every market has an equilibrium price. The old medallion system enforced a given (high) price, and the result was that the drivers had to work 12+ hours to break even due to the medallion price and the low demand.

Uber has shifted that equilibrium point. I'm not sure it's above minimum wage, but note that taxi medallions didn't enforce a minimal wage either. But nobody would be doing it if it wasn't profitable.

"nobody would be doing it if it wasn't profitable"

Not necessarily true.

Some drivers might not be figuring in the costs of depreciation and maintenance, which are the biggest expenses of owning a car, and so might not even realize they're losing money in the balance.

Not everybody's good at math, accounting, or business.

People make plenty of economic decisions that aren't long term profitable. Go to any struggling downtown, and it will probably be chock full of predatory loan and check cashing places, which are universally considered to be a horrible economic decision to use.

I'm not necessarily saying that driving Uber is quite at that level, but the fact that people are driving for Uber isn't evidence that it's a profitable thing for them to do.

Isn't the whole point of being self employed that if you can't make a living you stop? Don't go to LAX, don't accept rides there. Problem solved.

And that's why workers coop like drivers.coop are the future (at least as long as "capitalism" is a thing).

The bosses needs us, but we don't need a boss. Never forget that.

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