Something is missing from the picture. If the takeaway is that gig workers are struggling to pay living expenses, I would expect that to be reflected by working 50-60+ hours per week.
I wonder if this hours figure is calculated the same way the gig companies calculate minimum wage.
I.e. that 28 hours represents only time spent in performing the delivery task. Any waiting around beforehand when not assigned a task is not counted as working hours for the purposes of min wage calculation. If this is true (and that needs verifying) then this 28 might be a 40 hours where the person was unable to get on with their other life duties even if they weren’t technically working.
Retailers should only pay sales clerks when they are directly talking to customers!
Bus drivers should only be paid when the bus is moving!
I'm only going to pay my developers when they are writing lines of code!
All of the 'in between' time 'doesn't count as work'.
<https://www.news.com.au/travel/flight-attendant-reveals-pay-...>
"Just quit your job" / "Just move" is the absurd thing.
You think in the world of business travel someone hasn't already thought about this?
The moment you make commute a cost for the employer they're going to start discriminating based on your commute. You don't live within 5 minutes of the job? Go find another job.
Or better yet - employer offered housing! You don't want to live on the workplace-campus? Sorry! We need somebody to buy from all the businesses we contracted for our workplace campus.
Alternatively we could force employers to pay for commutes but allow them to factor that into hiring decisions. If I have to pay you as if you worked 60 hours because you have a ridiculous 2 hour each way commute I'm just going to hire someone who lives 30 minutes away instead.
You're applying a lot of judgement there. I too base all my life decisions on whether they're good for my employer.
> I'm just going to hire someone who lives 30 minutes away instead
That and the time you no longer waste from a long commute sounds pretty good for the urbanite so it evens out.
This is how every salaried person's pay already works and it should apply to hourly workers too.
But in reality, in just doesn't work.
If I don't value my time, and my employer has to pay for my commute, then why wouldn't I choose to move an hour away from work, or take a job an hour away, to make more money without actually working?
How would you solve employers discriminating against people that live an hour away or paying a lower hourly wage to someone that lives farther away?
Also, right now plenty of companies put out voluntary overtime that people don't end up taking, despite higher pay and literally the same work. Plenty of people would rather not be under someone else's command for an extra hour just to make a few bucks, and in fact, when you pay people adequately they largely don't want to do that. You always have weird outliers that think life is an idle game and try to make the bank account go as high as possible, but building systems around dumb outliers is not good systems engineering.
On average, people don't want to spend extra hours in their car, even if you pay them full wage. This is why when Uber started out they basically had to push subsidized high pay, so people would be willing to drive around all day.
Right now you can, with little experience, go make like $80k or more a year driving around all day, by being a trucker, and yet the industry is constantly struggling to keep people working, because the job is awful. If you have an employee that decides to move five hours away and waste ten hours of their day to make an extra hundred bucks, there are probably other things that make them a mediocre employee that you can fire them for.
Hyberbole aside, how would that even work? The further away from work someone lives, the more "commute time" they get paid? That has perverse incentives:
* I no longer take mass transit because driving myself is slower and I get paid more.
* I move further away, and take longer to get to work, and spend that time listening to audio books. My employer pays all that time, I'm doing a leisure activity, and I'm having a greater negative impact on the environment.
I like audiobooks and it would be nice to get paid to listen when I do. I would not trade even two hours of my day, every day I commute, by moving further away. You would have to be paid more than you value that time for it to make sense.
Why would you take any job where you don't get paid more than you value your time?
Because I didn't qualify for anything better.
Notice that you're also e.g. screwing around on the internet on the train instead of screwing around on the internet at home. People regularly already do that for four, five, six hours a day. Who wouldn't choose to get paid for it?
So both cases are worth considering, but I don't think they are comparable.
Okay, you're at home and you want to be downtown. Open the app, wash the dishes from last night, take out the trash, by then someone near you wants a ride downtown. You get paid, and then you're downtown where you can get paid again right away.
Ironically, it's demands for minimum compensation that make efficiencies like that go away. Maybe there is some demand for that but not a ton, and only at low prices. Low is better than none when you're making the trip either way. But if you're prohibited from working for less than a threshold amount of money, then you get nothing.
If it doesn't, you not only don't get paid, but you've missed the opportunity to potentially earn elsewhere too.
https://www.bristol.ac.uk/media-library/sites/business-schoo...
You're not going to get fired from Uber for being unable to cover a Friday night shift since you're at working at Lyft Friday night. Can't say the same about McDonald's and Burger King.
I bet Uber absolutely de-prioritizes "unreliable" workers.
I haven't taken Uber in last couple of years, but prior to Covid I took it ~weekly in Ottawa & Toronto. Not a single driver in years of travel for work, had it as their sole employment.
They're usually in a hurry, but delivery drivers I had a chance to chat with last few years also primarily use it to supplement their income.
So people may be doing 60 hours a week, just not solely via gig work.
Edit: I've Re-read the article, the 28 hours a week you quote is immediately followed by a clarifying "comprising 60% of their total earnings" -- so it looks like indeed they are working many more hours a week total.
Uber drivers would likewise make more money if there was less of them, so they would always have new calls waiting. But that also still means there’s less people making money, as well as far longer wait times for consumers and higher costs.
The medallion system was designed around the ideas taxis = your career, not some side gig you can start/stop whenever you like.
You could also do it by setting price floors but gov messing with prices at that fine grained level is dangerous (as Venezuela learned with food).
Taxi drivers were never working to pay the salaries of hundreds/thousands of SWEs, international sales teams etc.
The medallion system is specific to a few cities and has major issues in even fewer. People talk about taxis as if every city is New York.
https://www.nytimes.com/1985/12/16/nyregion/taxi-medallion-c...
A taxi medallion has been sold for $100,000, a record for the price of these taxi licenses, which once cost $10. The number of medallions has been frozen since 1937 so by law there are only 11,787 medallions, which license cabs to pick up street hails, in the city. But demand has been rising rapidly and so has the price.
...
The first medallion to hit the $100,000 mark was sold earlier this month to a 30-year-old Asian, Stanley Cheung, who lives on the Lower East Side. He is like so many of the city's cabdrivers over the years - energetic young immigrants able to borrow enough money to buy a medallion and a cab and take off in pursuit of the American dream.
However, according to Jay L. Turoff, chairman of the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission, a medallion has been rising in value so much that it is producing a new kind of buyer - the doctor or lawyer or other professional who looks upon the medallion simply as an investment. ...
It reads like similar pieces I saw about high priced medallions in the 2010s. I don't remember seeing articles criticizing taxi medallions in cities where they weren't expensive.
On one hand my heart completely goes out to them - they worked hard and invested in something they perceived or were assured had permanent value.
On the other hand, W.T.F. You are banking your family's entire life that... what, city will never change the model or expand number of licenses or revamp their code, basically that nothing will ever change?
So I don't know if there was an "evil medallion cartel", but there definitely was "extreme lobbying by people whose livelihood was intimately tied in shortage of transportation methods" and a little bit of "unspecified people going to uber office with bats and having a little smash-the-computers fun".
--------------
On the other topic you mention - if there indeed exist cities where "taxi is no more regulated than uber", then what IS the distinction between "Uber" and "Taxi" in such places? Can I just slap a sign on my car and pick up people?
Nothing in my post should be construed as an endorsement of underpaying people and expecting them to work every waking moment of their lives (much as it may be the actual reality for a lot of people).
Gig workers cannot control how many hours of work they receive a week. It's similar to shift work. When your manager is making the schedule and ensures that no one works 40 hours or more a week so they don't have to pay you benefits.
A major problem of low-wage, non-salaried work and gig work is that is an unreliable source of income. This breeds anxiety and stress, not to mention a host of other problems.
Ex you’re driving uber. You’re going to be “incentivized” (read: forced due to logistics) to work rush hour and bar hours. So you’re maybe working 5-7 and 10-12 on weekends and a couple weekdays. The reason being is that everyone wants to cruise around in the afternoon so the ratio of drivers to passengers gets so bad you’ll never get a ride.
And ofc if you’re sitting in your car with the app on waiting… you’re not being paid. That doesn’t count as work. So if you don’t get a ride for 2 hours bc not enough passengers - tough shit you’ve just made $4 for your 2 hours minus the cost of running your car and losing hours of your life.
But America is corrupted. Politicians let’s corps simply say “no we’re not breaking the law” and they believe them.
Anyone who’s debating that this is harmful and should be illegal is uneducated or a simp for those corps.
its amazing how all the progress was undone by pretending workhours don't count when an app says so.
I am very disillusioned by our industry, it seems half the revenue was generating by techno-cheating laws.
Besides which, this is not the equivalent of making a bartender clock out during his break. It's the equivalent of making him clock out while he stands at the bar waiting for the next customer.
It might be illegal across the USA, but I do know at least that in Oregon, this is illegal. I know someone that got several hours of backpay for unpaid lunch breaks because someone reported the business for not allowing them to leave during unpaid lunch breaks.
Requiring people to stay on premises during lunch wasn't illegal, but if the requirement was there, they have to be paid during the lunch break. If you are clocking out, then you MUST be allowed to leave.
When I was younger one manager was notorious for clocking us out while we were still cleaning at the end of the night. It went on because reporting it risked having your shifts cut or being quietly let go.
It's the same in the rental market. Where I am, viewing and application fees have been illegal for years but estate agents will still try to charge them. If you bring it up or refuse to pay they'll just find someone else who will.
If you are not paid for that time, they have no right to require anything.
Wtf is this attitude to employees as if they are property.
Companies like Uber skate along until new legislation is created that regulates them. Good luck with that.
When they are caught, hopefully, they don't pull Volkswagen, and throw engineers under the bus.
If I sign onto the app to say that I'm available for delivery, does that count as "working hours", and the company is required to make sure that I make minimum wage, regardless of how many orders are paid out?
What if I sign onto the app, but then don't accept any of the deliveries I get offered? Then they'd be required to make sure I get minimum wage, without ever doing any actual work.
I do think there's a problem as things stand, but I don't think the solution is a simple one.
That's like asking what if you don't do any work at a regular job.
If you're not doing any work, they can fire you. Once you've been fired, they don't need to pay you anything whether you're waiting around or not. But until you've been fired, they should be paying you.
>But you're not required, as I understand it, to take any of the jobs offered by the various gig work services.
There's no contradiction between not being required to take any particular job, and "if you refuse to take 40 jobs in a row, go away".
(If the jobs are so bad that most of the workforce will refuse 40 in a row, so the company can't fire them because they'd have no workers, that's the company's fault for having such a poor selection that the workers wait long times. In which case yes, pay them.)
Ok, so you take _some_ of the jobs, just enough to appear to be working reasonably. And then someone needs to figure out what "some" is. Plus half the point of a gig job is you decide when/what you are willing to work.
As noted, I don't believe there is NO solution... I just don't think it's as simple as "well, just require each person gets paid minimum wage". Because there's a lot of things to consider.
Just let the company decide it.
It doesn't cause a problem because if the company sets an unreasonably high standard for how many jobs you need to take to not be fired, they'll run out of workers.
Like it works for any other work: you get a roster of when you're expected to work and get paid for that time, and perform tasks during this time. This problem has been solved decades if not centuries ago, e.g. factory shifts or supermarket employees.
Well, most 'disruption' is actually tech exploiting a regulatory loophole.
So much for innovation, eh?
- ability to assign tasks, not leaving the worker the option to say I don't want that task
- ability to control how many workers can log in at a time, forcing Uber to pay a 1000 drivers who all logged in from 2:00 AM to 5:00AM when there aren't enough rides to be taken, isn't right
That does not follow. Suppose the gig workers are doing food deliveries. Each day, the market places X food orders at a total of $Y including fees and tips. If the market clears (no one who places a food order has it left unfulfilled), a reasonable assumption, then the food delivery gig is a zero-sum game. If all the drivers work more hours that just means they’ll be waiting longer, on average, for orders to come in. No amount of extra hours worked will create additional food orders.
Even amongst software engineers, if you asked your boss "can I work a few extra saturdays and get paid a few extra $k", the typical answer is no.
The labour market is far less dynamic than say the market for carrots, where you can of course give a few $ extra and get extra carrots from walmart.
If tried to work more you'd find yourself just waiting for jobs a lot of the time and your average hourly rate would drop even lower.
Respondents doing an average of 28 hours gig work per week will in some cases be using that to top up insufficient hours in a low wage conventional job.
- revenue = true hourly pay * hours.
- statutory hourly pay = some constant set by gov't.
Therefore:
- given revenue less than some X, we'll name it `living expenses`
- it's possible that true hourly pay < statutory hourly pay
Reading your comment, you may have also meant that you're trying to pick between that interpretation, and another one, that looks like:
Given:
- revenue = true hourly pay * hours.
- statutory hourly pay = some constant set by gov't.
- true hourly pay < statutory hourly pay
Proposition:
- Given hours worked < Y, where Y is some range, and revenue = Z, and workers continue being alive, then perhaps the statutory hourly pay is too high?
From there, to help me choose an interpretation, I'd look for more evidence of that. I'd want something damning, enough to overrule the statute / legal social contract of the population.
The overarching takeaway is that gig work doesn't offer the protections that is extended to other workers. More to your point, understand that one of the issues that Starbucks unions are fighting for is more control over scheduling.
Curious use of “but”. Has it occurred to you that perhaps below-minimum-wage pay isn’t the best use of one’s time? Besides, an hour is an hour. If I’m not paid for that hour, it doesn’t matter if I worked 1 hour or 100 hours, but you can bet that gig companies do everything they can to avoid “full time” employment of workers in markets that require benefits for such employees, so that may also factor in to the number of hours worked.
Because of this, it's possible to either not have enough deliveries/rides or to have the deliveries/rides pay too little to achieve enough money in an hour to make minimum wage.
My friends - the level of naivete on this board is beyond pale: the 'gig' economy companies are absolutely founded on the principle of having extra leverage over workers so they can be de facto considerably lower than standard net packages.
This is the business plan.
Large companies have power over individuals, which is why we have regulations, min. wage and sometimes unions (and laws for unions). Even thinks like 'weekends' are effectively legislated.
So, by adjusting the terms of contracts, putting in fine print, especially leveraging things like lack of understanding of 'hidden costs' (aka wear and tear on vehicles), etc. they can eke out a profit where there might be none otherwise.
In a magical world where we could talk exclusively about 'excess labour' aka 'everyone had a full time job and wanted to make a few bucks on the side' - this might work out in some ways, but generally speaking, it doesn't.
'Gig economy' is toxic for the working class and mostly is just a giant wealth transfer.
The people creating and investing in these companies absolutely know this, this is their 'secret sauce' or 'IP' or 'special insight' etc. that makes it work.
I think much of it would survive if min. wage were required, but not all of it.
I suggest it's not actually efficient for middle class people to have 'gig servants' in most cases, the efficiency just is not there - again 'slack labour' notwithstanding.
Finally, we may be a couple of steps away from it working - notably, there are a lot of 'hiccups' that happen with delivery, such as people not present, addressing problems, bad food selection, etc. and working through a lot of that may bring efficiency across the threshold to where the 'grocery bill' is just a 'little bit more' because the delivery guy is able to do it very efficiently, and so the economics add up.
I think we might be there with Uber but I don't think we're there with Instacart.
> ? Minimum wage is the law, not a 'market pressure'. Gig employers are not immune to that. Either they pay minimum or are fined and change their ops.
I interpreted this to you misunderstanding on how gig jobs work, not an argument for the way it should be.
If something was outlawed yesterday, and you committed thay crime today, do yoy think you would get away by claiming you need time to adjust? Why is law not optional for 'little people'?
> on average 28 hours a week undertaking gig work, comprising 60% of their total earnings.
And since it's bellow the minimum hourly wage does it matter that it's 1 hour or 60 hours ?
If there was no minimum wage, wages in some sectors wages would drop to where they are in the undeveloped world aka $2/hour. Little communities with favela-like structures with limited heating/electricity would pop up, and if you think the 'dollar store' is cheap, then wait for the '25 cent store' where they sell stuff as they do parts of India and Brazil.
It's funny how people don't think this could happen in the 'modern world', I suggest they don't know what makes the modern world modern. For a hint, go to where the illegal workers in Cali or Texas live and exist. Those communities resemble pretty much the standard of living of Central American countries, aka 'down the economic ladder'. Because they are.
Moreover, having secondary low-wage markets will put downward wage pressure on other jobs. Extra surpluses will mostly be yielded by financial asset holders.
The solution here is simple, require people pay minimum wage. If you look at corporate profits in the US for example, there are plenty of surpluses available to pay people.
Some jobs will go away, that's fine.
I can't believe what I'm reading on this thread, the only other time I've been suspicious of 'ideological paid bots' is when I see a ton of people defending the CCP.
To whom is that fine? To the people going from $2/hour to zero it certainly isn't.
I honestly cannot grasp how some people can _forcibly_ remove other people's _options_ then pat themselves on the back as some sort of armchair savior.
Yes, for some people a bad option could still be their best option. What sort of moral superpower is that that enables you to forbid a contract between two consenting adults A and B such that A wants to work for X and B that's willing to pay X, but you as a C that just won't let it happen and is willing to use force to stop it from happening
You need hard money before you attempt this.
Plenty of nation-states make different trade offs between productivity or growth or whatever and mitigating poverty. To act as if the particular style we have in America is the only possible thing that works is asinine.
You can do either in a hard currency system.
All of the UBI supporters need to do the math on it, it's 'extremely expensive'.
The 'economic collapse' part happens when 'not working' becomes normative, and socially acceptable - and be assured that it will.
The idea of 'working for a living' when you can just 'do whatever you want' is a bit glib. I suggest the only reason people would work, is to pay for that 'special thing' they want aka 'trip' or 'iphone'.
The ideological problem with UBI is the same as any broad social welfare program and that it doesn't reward material output. That is 'extremely bad'.
Finally - I do suggest that it may be possible to 'very simplistically means tested welfare' for people (to get rid of overhead) - and - to allow some of those people to have jobs so they don't get caught in that trap.
In fact, I suggest for people 65+ we'll need a program like this because they can still work, and frankly, working may be very good for their health, and they can do things that are 'extremely needed' right now, such as help to take care of the very elderly.
Ideologically, yes, your argument is sound. But I'm begging you to think through what would actually happen with no minimum wage. In reality, it would absolutely destroy the standard of living for unskilled work as there's a race to the bottom on wages.
Businesses only hire enough employees to satisfy the demand for products and services. Eliminating minimum wage won't create nearly as many jobs as you think, and instead, would merely result minimum wage earners losing their homes while they are forced to agree to work for $2 instead of losing the job entirely to someone who will.
It's downright exploitive.
Whatever number you come up with is going to be arbitrary. A country wide minimum wage is stupid because the cost of living in New York is very different from Lousiana, a state wide makes more sense, but even so, it varies greatly from city to city within the same sate, so a city wide makes even more sense, if you keep adding granularity you'll reach the individual level, because the cost of living within cities changes fast, and there's a plethora of other factors to consider.
I have worked for really low wages in the past, even the lowest of unskilled worker still provides a value. Senior programmers on NYC are worth at least $60/h, now, how much a really low skilled worker is worth? At the time I was an unskilled worker it was was around $10, and thats how much I got paid despite the minimum wage being $8, anyone could get a job for $10, so thats the value a worker with essentially no skills was able to provide. The $8 minimum wage didn't make a difference on wages, because unskilled workers were already providing more value than the minimum wage, so policy makers were behind in raising it, which they did.
Raising the minimum wage and matching it to the market price at $10 wouldn't make any difference either, however, raising it to $15 would wreak havoc, you are basically saying that any worker whose job isn't worth at least 15$ should not be working.
A Minimum wage value written on a piece of paper can't magically increase the true value of a worker, wages won't drop to $1 if you set it as $1, and also won't raise to $50 if you set it to $50.