Uber Is Locking Out NYC Drivers Mid-Shift to Lower Minimum Pay | Hacker News Reader

Uber Is Locking Out NYC Drivers Mid-Shift to Lower Minimum Pay

bloomberg.com

77 pointsaspenmayer115 comments

"...making it difficult for drivers to plan work shifts and treat Uber as a full-time job."

So which is it they want flexible gig work that they can do at their own schedule in their own pace, or do they want planned work shifts in a full-time job. It seems what drivers are really asking for his money without any work. Because taking flexible gig work means you have the flexibility to work when you want without planning. So why wouldn't your employer also demand that same flexibility to say too many gig workers we're going to kick some of you out and you can't get back in.

It seems to me that this is just the nature of what we call "day laborers". I know the "on an iPhone" phenomenon people think this idea of day labor or gig work is new. It's not it's been around since the beginning of time. Day laborers show up at a certain spot people who need day laborers show up at that spot pick who they want leave behind those that they do not want and that's that. This is literally no different. Uber drivers wanted that flexibility day labor gig work and then started crying because they wanted a more stable income than what day labor provides. So they got the law involved to say well you got to pay people for standing around. Uber says fine you're no longer standing around for us so you don't need to be paid.

If you want a steady job get a steady job if you want day labor work you show up and sometimes you get picked for the day labor and sometimes you go home broke.

There isn't an "Uber driver" in that sense any more than there is a "person". Early on it was part-time and more gig labor. When you're being leased the vehicle via Uber themselves [https://www.uber.com/us/en/drive/vehicle-solutions/] it's definitely pushing towards real job. I wonder how many of those locked-out drivers are paying for those cars on the lease program, or if they get preference.

Take a taxi, people!

But you're acting like this is an "on an iPhone" experience that's new to the world. The idea of being leased equipment from someone for contract or gig labor is not new and hasn't been new for many many decades.

So if you're complaining about the idea that companies who hire contract labor or gig work style labor can also lease out equipment necessary to do that labor, should the person choose to lease it from them, then where have you been for the past 50 60 years or more. Because no one is required to lease equipment from Uber in order to work for Uber it's just an option. There are great many professions that work like this and have for much longer than Uber has been a thing. Often times mechanics are this way. They can lease their tools through an employer-sponsored program but they have no control on whether the employer needs them to work every day and if they'll get paid in many situations. Because often times that that work is also gig work if no one needs their car fixed you can show up and not get anything. That's only one of a great many examples of jobs that are like this. When you have flexibility your employer has flexibility as well.

I think there's a great many jobs that have stupid conditions on employment and I wouldn't work them unless I absolutely had no other option. Uber is one of those things. People like the flexibility but flexibility can cut both ways. Often I hear Uber drivers talking about how they're their own Boss but if you're accepting work orders from someone else you're at the mercy of them for the work. This is the same thing in many salons. To work there you have to buy a seat and pay for that and pay for equipment oftentimes that is on a loan or a lease and you're your own Boss but you have a very limited control on when or if you will get customers. Which is another job that I wouldn't work unless I had no choice at all.

So this is not pushing toward a real job in any sense anymore than any of these other flexible gig work style jobs which permeate our society. So if you're against this as a whole then you should have been against it for the past 70 plus years. But if you feel this is some new Uber phenomenon you are greatly mistaken and need to learn how many of the jobs in the market work.

How was that comment acting like this is an "on an iPhone" experience that's new to the world?

That's a strange take. Please provide evidence for how I'm acting? I wondered about something, that's all I see.

I think Uber is a pain to many for both making a market and setting the terms. Let the market decide what the prices and availability should be, that would be more "ride-sharing". They're just a super-informal taxi company. The fact that they weren't prosecuted for breaking laws along the way shows what hold money has on policy-making.

A driver is a contractor of some form to Uber, Uber sets the prices. Uber can screw around as much as they like, because they set all the terms. I'm not disagreeing with the day labor analogy, though it's not even a day here, it's just whenever Uber throws them a bone. You can say the drivers are all stupid if they thought it should be any different. I'd never be an Uber driver except if I thought I could get someone to split gas money with me for some trip, actual "ride sharing".

Taxis suck swamp ass. Until they can’t scam you by taking circuitous routes, they are severely inferior.

Tangential, but about three years ago my wife and I went to Mexico for two weeks to deal with some immigration stuff. We made very liberal use of the "Didi" app, which I actually recommend because it was generally quite good, and most drivers would take us on direct paths and it was fine.

One day, when returning back to the hotel from Walmart, which was about a 15 minute drive, we got a Didi, the driver came, and it took more than 45 minutes because he was taking the longest path he could find. There was no traffic as far as I could tell, and Didi would still pay a "per mile" charge.

The exchange rate in Mexico is so in your favor as a US citizen that I didn't really complain about it because it only ended up being an extra $6 or so, but I did feel a little taken advantage of.

I greatly prefer knowing my cost before I get in the cab.

I begrudgingly take a taxi whenever I leave the Seattle airport (it's significantly faster than Uber/Lyft because they're already queued). I'm continuously blown away by how it's still a dice roll to see if we're going to do the "credit card machine no work" game at the end. Pair that with the general disgusting state of the cars and, yeah, I ain't takin' no taxi unless it's the only option.

To me this just means the workers need to be able to negotiate for either a standard or driver-selected minimum shift duration for billing purposes, just like most independent contractors can achieve by negotiating the terms of their contracts when finding clients. Every time I hire a moving company the hourly rate bills a contractual minimum number of hours per job regardless of actual time needed. Nothing about this concept is incompatible with flexible gig work.

I realize that individual drivers have far less power in setting the terms of the relationships with Uber and Lyft than individual moving companies have over their client relationships, so drivers’ negotiations here will require either union-style collective action or advocacy for changes to NYC’s rules here.

I'm not saying it shouldn't change. What I'm saying is this is more commonplace than what people believe. Hair stylists, auto mechanics, construction workers in many places, they all work under these conditions and have for many years. There's many more professions that offer flexibility that also work under these conditions.

Often times these same people because they're individuals do not have any collective bargaining to make a better deal. They simply take the deal that's available and hope to make it work. Often times it doesn't work but for some it does and works consistently.

I do think there's a general expectation that a flexible work when you want styled job should only be a benefit to the employee. They seem to feel that the employer shouldn't be able to tell them when their work is no longer required. Because there are other jobs besides Uber and if they wanted to work those less flexible jobs they could. Those less flexible jobs tend to come with the kind of contractual stability you're talking about.

For example your hiring of a moving company is something you can track for in advance. That contract is in place they can provide the laborers when and where they're needed. I don't believe it's a fair example to compare to Uber. Uber would be more akin to a pool of day laborers. Contractors show up they need five guys to roof a house. When they get to the job site maybe they realize that nothing is ready so they all go home with a pittance if anything at all. And that is the risk of the flexibility of day labor.

Is it right? Well that kind of flexibility in your work comes with risks and downsides. Because sometimes the contractor will show up and they'll need 25 guys to frame five houses that day but there's only a pool of 10 people. So that risk cuts both ways.

Hair stylists, auto mechanics, construction workers [..] all work under these conditions

Please specify under what conditions you mean here, because I know of no hair stylists nor construction workers that work by only doing the jobs that are allocated to them by a single company yet have no employment contract with that company. Either they own the hair salon/garage, or they get paid whenever they are available for work at said hair salon/garage by said owner.

>because I know of no hair stylists nor construction workers that work by only doing the jobs that are allocated to them by a single company yet have no employment contract with that company.

Can't a rideshare driver work for both uber and lyft? Moreover, how much job hopping actually happens for hair stylists or auto mechanics?

For a long time I used a hairdresser (aka barber or hair stylist - but I’m male with simple short hair) who worked at two salons (aka barber shop from the mindset of customers like me) every week. It definitely happens. A typical model in that area (NYC) for hairdressers who didn’t own the salon was to rent a chair at a salon, but they weren’t employees and were totally allowed to do part-time chair rentals at multiple salons at once.

Her contract with my salon prevented her from telling me her other salon, so I had to switch hairdressers instead of staying with her when she stopped working at that salon.

The other hairdresser I switched to later bought the salon from the previous owner when he retired, complete with a rename of the salon from his name to hers. I still use her when I need a haircut and am in NYC. And yes, there are still other hairdressers working there, presumably each renting a chair as she previously did.

>Contractors show up they need five guys to roof a house. When they get to the job site maybe they realize that nothing is ready so they all go home with a pittance if anything at all.

I worked in construction for about a decade, including with companies that supplemented crews with day labour when required, and we were always required to pay at least 4 hours (even if we sent them home after 5 minutes).

> Nothing about this concept is incompatible with flexible gig work.

Your example (movers) assumes the workers are already paired up with a customer.

They don’t get paid if there isn’t a customer.

The analogy doesn’t hold. The only way to support minimum shift durations would be to average out fares collected and distribute them to everyone who was technically working a shift, even if they weren’t driving. So the people actually driving would receive less payment in order to subsidize the people not driving.

Once you open the door to paying people for not driving, the game becomes to find a way to park somewhere that allows you to participate in a shift while minimizing the number of customers assigned. Immediately, you’d get drivers strategically parking in far away locations to reduce their chances of picking anyone up, because if you’re getting paid for the time on shift you’d rather sit and do nothing than actually drive.

So actually, the concept is completely incompatible with gig work.

Nah, the idea just needs additional elaboration to protect it against gaming the system like you describe, without introducing systemic discrimination against passengers in less trendy areas.

Here is a quick brainstorm of one possible fix, without any promises I didn’t overlook a flaw in this idea: maybe the minimum wage per some suitably granular time period when not currently or recently driving a passenger could be made to vary somewhat depending on whether enough other vehicles from the fleet are in the area, and could then potentially have a percentage penalty subtracted for not accepting and timely arriving to a high enough percentage of offered ride opportunities.

Plus, of course, if some drivers game the system, Uber and Lyft can notice those abusive patterns in the data and stop working with them, disincentivizing other drivers from similar abuse. That’s the biggest countermeasure. The problem we are discussing is only Uber and Lyft abruptly locking out a driver mid-shift purely to save money. Nobody is objecting to Uber ending a relationship abruptly due to documented driver abuse or even doing so without driver misconduct but with reasonable notice.

And no, I don’t assume that movers are already paired up with customers. They present the minimum number of billable hours per visit as part of their standard terms during the first conversation with a new potential customer, and at least in the residential moving space, customers don’t generally argue with it.

The reason customers don’t argue with it is largely because movers can easily get another customer by doing almost nothing (at least in the big cities where I’ve lived) whereas it’s a hassle for customers to juggle too many different potential moving companies when planning the move.

But another factor is that the minimum hourly rate billings are reasonable, typically 1-3 hours per visit in my personal experience, likely because there is enough competition among moving companies that offering unreasonable terms will lose them customers.

I completely realize the power dynamic is different in the ride-sharing space, and I acknowledged that in my previous comment. But that just changes how the negotiation has to occur in order to balance out Uber and Lyft’s disproportionate power, not whether it can work in a gig worker context.

Obviously, what people want is full time jobs. That's what the whole political battle over these platforms is about.

Not everyone though - freelancers and contractors in particular want to work on their terms.

I think the issue is that in this case the drivers want to work on their terms, and Uber/Lift want to be able to limit the number of drivers at certain times (i.e.: work their terms) in order not to pay minimum wage to lot of drivers when there are too many drivers logged-in (and thus just sitting around).

There are aspects that are unfair for both parties... and this is exactly the sort of situation that Uber/Lift have setup: it is going to be exploitive to someone. The companies just thought it could always be them doing the exploiting.

Some people do, some certainly do not

Maybe all of these issues would be solved of they were salaried employees, who could drive when they wanted...

What?!? Would you employee people full-time and let them work whenever they felt like it?

Salaried !== full-time.

Millions of people in the UK are legally salaried workers on "zero-hours" contracts, where they aren't even guaranteed a minimum number of hours. Paid through PAYE (payroll), have workers rights, just not a guaranteed number of hours.

Most can choose when they work, many have more than one of these jobs.

It's not a good way to live but it's at least possibly a better way to live than the gig economy.

Yes but the UK has the NHS, it's not possible in the US where employees have to healthcare benefits by federal mandate.

You can't have an employee on the payroll costing $1,500 a month in benefits who can choose to work 0 hours in a month.

I think you are missing a part of the Federal Healthcare Insurance Mandate (part of the ACA): the mandate is on the worker, not the employer. Many employers have no insurance benefits for their employers.

And then the other part of it: the penalty for not having healthcare insurance was deducted to $0 at the end of 2018. So there is currently no penalty at all (other than the massive ones if you get sick) to not carrying insurance.

This is simply not true. Any employer with 50 employees has a mandate to provide healthcare for employees.

I think you just misunderstand what salary means? If you do not have guaranteed hours you are not a salary employee, salary means you get paid the same amount on a certain schedule. You are describing hourly employees

It’s very different from day laborers in that day laborers get to work for a day; and these drivers get to work until Uber says so. And one can guess that Uber is trying to minimize the hours worked per driver due to regulatory concerns.

The day laborer knows when they’re not picked to work. The Uber driver needs to keep checking all day presumably

"If you want a steady job get a steady job if you want day labor work you show up and sometimes you get picked for the day labor and sometimes you go home broke."

If it was that easy right?

Nobody wants to be 'day labor', that is only done in countries with a large surplus of labor (desperate to live labor) that allows companies to treat humans more like cattle.

Dude, nobody wants the instability of a gig job. It’s just all there is at the bottom. Uber will actually pay you something, unlike other taxi or driver jobs which have dried up. It’s folks fighting over crumbs: I bet you Uber drivers would love a stable taxi job, there just isn’t one.

With day labour the clue is in the name, you get hired for the day. They can't send you home halfway through, or at least they still have to pay you a full day.

You're setting an incredibly low bar for what we should accept. We're talking about people's livelihoods here - their ability to put food on their family's table.

Companies are not obliged to hire people so they can feed themselves.

More nihilistically/pragmatically, reality is not obliged to ensure humans can live happy lives or even survive.

(And the difference between reality and fantasy is that reality asserts itself even if you don't accept it.)

By your reasoning literally every job is “gig work”.

I learned within the past year that Uber sucks for drivers around NYC. The T&LC rules mean that someone who's not registered can't take pickups in NYC. They can still drop you off though, so Uber considers it valid to assign a non-T&LC vehicle to drive into NYC. Of course when that happens, the driver has an empty car going back the other way. It's awful for their pay and a big waste of energy and road space.

Some drivers will just deal with it, but many end up asking if you're going into NYC. If you're lucky they will cancel the ride immediately, but if not then you have to wait for them to drive by your pickup spot before canceling the ride (which I have to assume is so they can say that they couldn't find you).

When I do need a car into the city and it's serviced by a non-T&LC driver, I now make sure to leave a huge tip to make up for Uber not giving drivers an option to not be matched with people going into NYC.

Uber drivers have been able to see the approximate destination before accepting the ride for over a year now in all markets.

Yeah, which is why it's confusing that my mom had two drivers reject her the last time she needed to get to the airport when I wasn't able to give her a ride to JFK.

Wow, we've gone full circle. I remember when being able to reliably get an Uber to JFK was a selling point over taxis.

Isn't there a subway connection or something? I mean, it is an international airport and a big city...

Taking the subway with potentially heavy check-in bags isn’t always possible. I wouldn’t say it’s the most convenient trip and I can understand why someone would prefer an Uber or taxi option.

It's always possible, just rarely preferred and almost never easy.

The US has bizarre funding rules that made it effectively impossible to have a through ride from municipal public transport to the airport until recently.

LMFAO welcome to New York.

We have three major large scale airports, and none of them are connected to the subway. It would be comical if it wasn’t so sad.

That's not really true.

You can take the subway to JFK -- it's the A train. Or even faster, take the LIRR. For both, you have to transfer to the AirTrain for the last short stretch, but that train brings you directly to each terminal so you'd need to get on it anyways.

And you can take NJ Transit light rail from Penn Station to Newark, it's 3 stops. It's not technically the subway -- but it's better because it goes faster and there are less stops.

LaGuardia is the only airport you can't get to by train -- there was an attempt [1] but it was cancelled last year. But one of the big reasons for cancellation is that it was crazy expensive and you can already get to the airport pretty easily if you're willing to hop on bus connection from the subway or LIRR.

So I'd say the situation isn't that sad. For Newark and JFK it's totally fine, and for LaGuardia you just need to add a bus.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirTrain_LaGuardia

Yeah no. You can take the subway to a LIRR station called Jamaica or a parking lot in Howard Beach. Neither is actually at the airport let alone within a mile of an actual check in counter.

NJ transit isn’t a subway, and even so you still can’t take it to Newark Airport. You can get off a mile or two from the nearest terminal. Utterly inexplicably, the PATH train, which is reasonably described as a subway system, stops an entire stop short of even doing that, despite the tracks continuing onwards to that AirTrain station.

Once you get off each of these subways, in a location that is near to, but definitely not in, an airport, you may choose to take a slow and oddly expensive rubber wheeled bus that sort of is a monorail (and is certainly not a subway) device onwards to a terminal.

And of course at LaGuardia you can’t do even that.

So yes, it is “really true” that you can’t take the fucking subway to the airport.

All you have to is try it, get off the subway, and then ask “am I in an airport now?” and if the answer is no then you’ve figured out the problem.

You're being unreasonably pedantic.

What does it matter whether it's technically a "subway" train or a train that is not technically a "subway" but works the same?

The point is, you can take the train to two of NYC's three major airports.

(And no, AirTrains are not buses. That's a bizarre and false thing to say. They're trains.)

The difference is that the subway is the main transit mode. OP is very reasonably complaining that every reasonable public transit option to NYC airports is multi agency and multi modal.

Most major cities I've been to have a train to the airport that is not part of the regular subway system. That requires a different type of ticket, etc.

This is especially because airports are frequently further out from a city than the subway system goes -- you need light rail.

But the A train is a subway that actually connects directly to the AirTrain which goes around the terminals at JFK.

So I don't think it's a reasonable complaint that you have to connect to an AirTrain that goes around the terminals, or that getting to Newark requires NJ Transit instead of MTA. This is entirely normal.

Also, the subway is not "the main" transit mode. For a huge proprotion of people in the metropolitan area, they rely just as much on NJ Transit, PATH, LIRR, and even Metro-North.

LaGuardia is honestly the only one that's annoying, because the connecting bus is more annoying.

Maybe it's not a bus, but it definitely ain't a train either. It's about as fast as, and the same capacity as, a standard MTA articulated bus.

I think the proper term is people mover. I might suggest "amusement park ride" as an accurate description as well.

Either way it fucking sucks. Go to continental Europe some time if you want to see examples of how to run local transit into airports.

It's literally a train. It runs on a track.

Big deal if it doesn't run as fast as you'd like. That doesn't make it not a train.

Also, MTA buses run at a normal vehicle speed. So I don't even know what you're complaining about. You really need to get to your terminal, what, 5 minutes faster? You need a bullet train between terminals or something?

Yes I know what trains in Europe are like. You're changing the subject. Your point seemed to be that NYC airports aren't connected to convenient public train transportation, but the fact is that 2 out of 3 of them are.

Even if it's not technically the MTA subway itself that is the train that brings you directly to your terminal. Still, quite literally, 100%, a train.

The US has a peculiar bit of transit bureaucracy that (until 2021) made it difficult to fund integrating airports into wider transit networks. Airports could charge fees to passengers to fund transportation improvements, but only if those transit networks were exclusively for transit to and from the airport, so you couldn't just add a subway stop. JFK, for example, has its own train ("Airtrain JFK") that goes from a near-ish subway station to the airport.

That makes it take more than an hour on transit (including ~2 transfers and 15 mins of walking) to get from Grand Central Station to JFK. It also costs more than $10 total, as opposed to the $3 that a subway ride costs.

Yes, but my mother doesn't live in New York proper, and getting there via public transit would require, uh, I think four different things? Bus to the train to the subway to the airtrain.

Some drivers just don't like going to airports. It's not that confusing. It's possible that the fact they could see the destination is precisely why the rejected it.

Maybe I don't understand how Uber works, but why would they have accepted it to begin with?

Drivers are often assigned their next ride while they are still dropping off their current passenger(s), so if they are a good driver they won't look at the details of the next ride until they have dropped off their current passenger(s). Once they are stopped and able to safely look at their device again, they can at that point decide they don't want the next ride. At that point, the app has to play roulette to find another driver.

Why don't drivers want to go to the airport?

If you didn't have to go to the airport, would you want to go? Taking a single rider to the airport chews up a lot of time OR you can possibly pick up multiple shorter rides in the same span of time without having to deal with an airport.

But there are ALWAYS people looking for rides to AND from the airport. And they're generally good long rides.

And some people like licorice. Not really sure the point you're trying to make.

> in all markets.

I am an Uber driver. I do not see the approximate destination prior to pickup. I don't know what percentage of Uber markets actually have that feature.

You're very confident about this, aren't you?

It also sucks for the riders and I really can't imagine Uber likes the situation either.

It's a really annoying situation because you end up arguing with some driver over text or worse in person about it.

They don't want to cancel because cancelling a lot impacts their rating with uber and they will get less rides.

I don't want to cancel because after a few minutes I'll be charged a cancellation fee and now I have to start all over with another driver and a dice-roll if i'll get another driver who refuses to go to NYC again. If I want my $5 back I also have to argue with some AI customer service rep for an hour.

Terrible user experience.

Lyft seems to do better with assigning only TLC cars to NYC rides, but, not 100% -- Uber also biases towards TLC cars for NYC routes but there isn't always one available of course so sometimes you get assigned another one, just anecdotally Lyft seems to get you a TLC car more often.

TLC are the only ones winning here.

> It also sucks for the riders and I really can't imagine Uber likes the situation either.

I think the question is what does Uber do when it doesn't like a situation? Does it try to create the best user experience given the constraints, or does it make the situation shitty for everyone except themselves (maybe until it can force whatever change best serves Uber's interests, nevermind anyone else)?

It sounds like it's totally within Uber's capabilities to make this situation better (add a "TLC car" flag to their system, and only use those cars for NYC rides), so why have they chosen not to do that?

Question is how many of these needs to be added for all the rogue cities

> Question is how many of these needs to be added for all the rogue cities

"Rogue cities," seriously? I've seen some twisted propaganda ("PR") in my life, but that takes the cake.

Help me understand this as I'm not in NY and I use uber about 2-3 times a year. When you use Uber you put in your destination up-front - so everyone already knows where you are and where you're going, why isn't this information used by drivers to make a decision on whether or not to accept?

Evidently it varies by region how much information about the destination is given to the drivers.

You are describing an example of how Uber works in your region. That is not how it works in every jurisdiction. Uber often hides information from drivers to prevent them from choosing only profitable rides. Other gig companies do the same thing.

Uber could certainly throw additional tech at this problem, but, realistically, the problem is the fault of NYC, not Uber. If NYC got rid of their antiquated laws, this would be a non-issue, and, rides would likely be cheaper and easier to obtain.

Not to mention you really don't want big names like Uber/Lyft to be the only players that can enter the game because they have the resources to enter a complex regulatory market.

> Uber could certainly throw additional tech at this problem, but, realistically, the problem is the fault of NYC, not Uber. If NYC got rid of their antiquated laws, this would be a non-issue, and, rides would likely be cheaper and easier to obtain.

No, you've got it ass-backwards. It's Uber's job to provide the best customer experience given their constraints, it's not NYC's job to bend over backwards to adapt its laws to Uber's model.

The problem is the fault of Uber.

> Not to mention you really don't want big names like Uber/Lyft to be the only players that can enter the game because they have the resources to enter a complex regulatory market.

It sounds the additional tech required to "enter a complex regulatory market" is a boolean flag.

>No, you've got it ass-backwards. It's Uber's job to provide the best customer experience given their constraints, it's not NYC's job to bend over backwards to adapt its laws to Uber's model.

>The problem is the fault of Uber.

Are you claiming that the government can do no wrong regardless of what laws they pass?

> Are you claiming that the government can do no wrong regardless of what laws they pass?

I'm not claiming that, but I agree it is an Uber problem. Uber chose to enter this market knowing the rules in advance. They didn't petition the system to get an exception to operate as they wanted, they just "disrupted" and did what they wanted operating under the ask for forgiveness not permission mindset. If you're not going to play by the rules, you don't get to cry to your mummy about the rules being unfair.

>I'm not claiming that, but I agree it is an Uber problem. Uber chose to enter this market knowing the rules in advance.

but the law in question (ie. the one mandating minimum pay for workers) were passed in 2023, well after they entered the market? Moreover, despite all the vague gesturing that they broke some sort of existing law, I'm not aware of any successful lawsuits against them[1]. At best you could argue that the broke the spirit of the regulations.

[1] from wikipedia: Taxi companies sued Uber in numerous American cities, alleging that Uber's policy of violating taxi regulations was a form of unfair competition or a violation of antitrust law.[80] Although some courts did find that Uber intentionally violated the taxi rules, Uber prevailed in every case, including the only case to proceed to trial.[81]

T&LC = New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission

First of all, this is partially the result of clearly terrible lawmaking:

> In emails to drivers, Uber and Lyft have blamed each other — and the commission — for lockouts. In its minimum-pay formula, the TLC calculates non-passenger time as an industry average. When Lyft drivers aren’t as busy, for example, Uber has to increase driver pay because non-passenger time is higher on average. “The city’s rule bizarrely holds Uber responsible for Lyft’s failures,” said Uber spokesperson Freddi Goldstein. “With Lyft struggling to keep drivers busy, we don’t have other options.”

But secondly, genuinely what other outcome would the lawmakers have expected?

Previously, drivers could drive whenever they wanted, and they'd make more money in periods of higher unmet demand, which would lead to more drivers on the road during times of peak demand (good), and then drivers could decide for themselves whether it was worth it to drive in times of slow demand -- even if this resulted in less than minimum wage.

Now, if there's a requirement that all drivers must make minimum wage, then during times of low demand, Uber/Lyft/etc. are forced to simply boot off a bunch of drivers so that there are enough fares left for the remaining drivers so they will be able to make minimum wage.

And there's no obvious "fair" way to do that. You can't do it with pricing like before (since that's been made illegal), so it's necessarily going to be some kind of random lottery. And since demand fluctuates in ways that aren't always predictable (like rain), you can't really plan/schedule in advance. So drivers just get randomly deactivated right now -- instead of making less than minimum wage, they make nothing.

I just don't see another way -- once a period of peak demand ends (like after morning rush hour), some drivers are going to have to be booted off if you want to maintain minimum wage.

Don't blame Uber. I don't see how the law could have resulted in any other outcome.

>during times of low demand, Uber/Lyft/etc. are forced to simply boot off a bunch of drivers so that there are enough fares left for the remaining drivers so they will be able to make minimum wage.

You are claiming a false binary. They could hire drivers as employees. Or work together as an industry to make things work out, the same way they cooperate to oppose any legislation that threatens profits or promises worker rights.

Yeah, that's how it worked previously with taxi medallions. They "worked together as an industry" and medallion owners extorted drivers and it was impossible to get a cab at rush hour and taxis were dirty and reeked of cigarette smoke because there was no competition.

The simple fact is, if you want enough vehicles to meet peak demand, then a lot of those drivers and vehicles aren't needed the rest of the day. That's just economics. It's not a false binary, it's simply how supply and demand works. You either kick a bunch of them off or lower the pay until they a bunch of them kick themselves off.

Or you go back to not meeting demand so that all drivers can work full time, and it once again becomes impossible to get a ride during rush hour.

>You are claiming a false binary. They could hire drivers as employees.

Isn't that what's essentially happening today? They're forced to "hire drivers as employees" (insofar as being guaranteed pay even if there's no work to be done), and the results were predictable: the firms simply refuse to hire all the drivers. Previously they were willing to take on anyone they can, because they didn't have to pay for them even if they didn't have work for them.

If the company is dictating the terms of what work they take and when, that makes the workers employees.

The key differentiator for an independent contractor is they choose what work to take, and when.

Truly independent contractors would be able to access and accept jobs via Uber, from any client, whenever they wanted.

Uber and Lyft are trying to eat their cake and have it, too: saying, "you're independent contractors [and thus have full control of what work to take and when]", but then turning around and saying, "_actually_, we need you to work only these jobs, only within these hours, for the good of only the company", which obviously makes them employees.

Okay but to be fair that wasn't the original model. Before the minimum wage law uber drivers could take rides any time they wanted. It was only due to the minimum wage law, which essentially forced uber to pay for time even if there wasn't any riders, that caused uber to restrict when drivers could take rides. Using this to claim that uber wants to "eat their cake and have it, too" therefore makes little sense.

> Okay but to be fair that wasn't the original model

That is true: initially the business model exploited people and society before we could mobilize our slow government to force them to be more decent and less exploitative.

We as a society, acting through our government, aren't under an obligation to make sure every business model that everyone wants to use is legal, and we decided their old one shouldn't be, because it was exploitative.

> It was only due to the minimum wage law... that caused uber to restrict when drivers could take rides.

The law didn't cause that. Uber's decisions caused that, and they could have decided differently. Indeed, the decent response for Uber and Lyft would be to figure out the spirit of the law, and comply with that as well as the letter. Treating drivers decently, as employees, would be one way to accomplish that. Another way might be lowering ride prices when supply exceeds demand.

In contrast, the companies are trying to eat their cake and have it too, by continuing to be exploitative with these actions in the article. Unfortunately they will need to be slapped down again, because the actions are illegal, as pointed out in my post above.

> the minimum wage law... essentially forced uber to pay for time even if there wasn't any riders

Correct: that is precisely what we wanted when we passed the law. This isn't an error that we need Uber and Lyft's help fixing. If Uber decides what work its workers can do and when (perhaps because it's more profitable for Uber that way), then that makes the workers, employees.

Uber and Lyft underpriced their car service for years and years, killing off a lot traditional competition, i.e., independent taxi and limo companies.

Now, both Uber and Lyft seek to be profitable... so they are squeezing every possible penny out of riders and drivers.

If it looks, smells, and tastes like a Doo-Oh-Poh-Lee, it probably is one.

https://archive.is/x5Ywo

I feel like I often hear these kinds of stories about Uber, but rarely about Lyft. Is Lyft actually better, or are they just more under the radar?

It's a stupid rule to require drivers to be paid simply for logging in.

The economics here are pretty pure. It seems intentional. I wouldn't call it stupid even if wrongheaded. But, to me, this cannot be an unintended side-effect. It's a feature, not a bug, of the regulatory model.

>But, to me, this cannot be an unintended side-effect. It's a feature, not a bug, of the regulatory model.

I think you're giving politicians/regulators too much credit. Skimming the media coverage about this law, the supporters' for the law is a vague sense of "we need to ensure delivery/taxi drivers are paid better". I couldn't find any serious discussions for what would the second order effects of the laws would be (ie. what would happen if uber decides to lock out drivers so they don't have to pay them)

eg.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/nyc-minimum-wage-de...

>"This minimum pay rate will guarantee our delivery workers and their families can earn a living and keep our city’s legendary restaurant industry going strong," Adams said in a statement.

>Supporters of the city's law, which is the first of its kind in the United States, say it is needed because delivery workers in the city earn about $11 an hour on average after expenses, far below the city's $15 minimum wage.

Uber owns the thing that the taxi companies don't have, a complex, real time transactional application that pairs drivers with riders. They can pick and choose who they want using it(sans discriminatory, see - illegal checks). And they are well within their means to say when a driver can and can't work on their own platform. If drivers want to be rid of this menace - Uber, then they are free to become cab drivers if they wish. Or use Lyft. Nobody gets paid for not producing which is what these drivers seem to want.

Is this the case?

I was under the impression that Uber has to act as a pure play buyer-seller matching system. Otherwise the drivers aren’t independent contractors, they’re being controlled like employees.

That was the case before NYC instituted laws that mandated drivers be paid for idle time, converting them to basically employees.

That is a great argument... but one that has not yet completed its way though U.S. courts.

My understanding is that both Uber and Lift vary the arrangement from market-to-market (sometimes within a country, but mostly between countries), but that at least in the U.S. the drivers have no ability to set their prices at all, but rather only have the ability to accept/decline a ride that has a price already attached. And if they decline too many rides (as defined by opaque decisions by the companies), that they then are penalized by being shown less possible rides.

To me this is a worst combination of being an employee and a true independent contractor.

T+LC cabs use Curb, which can call taxis and be used only as a payment method.

https://www.gocurb.com/

Company is minimizing its costs. News at 11.

F*ck Uber.

I wish the United States would do what Greece did.

Implement a 6 day work week?

Negative gdp growth and a rapidly declining standard of living?

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank?...

It's not great, but not exactly "rapidly declining standard of living". "Negative gdp growth" can be argued either way depending on what time window you're using.

Miraculously, the US has managed to achieve positive gdp growth and a rapidly declining standard of living.

Agreed. Yellow cabs were and are great. Have lived in NYC all 36 years of my life. Delivery drivers used to get paid fairly before door dash too.

All these rent seekers need to go.

Lol having also lived in NYC my entire life yellow cabs were not and are not great. And I don't know a single person who would say it is.

Delivery drivers never got paid fairly either.

Idk what imaginary version of NYC you live in.

> At the heart of the move, say the two companies, is a six-year-old pay rule in New York that, among other things, requires firms like Uber and Lyft to pay drivers for the idle time they rack up between rides.

Remember, Uber and Lyft were created to get around labor laws, and here we see the companies continuing to try to skirt labor laws. It is a standard move of capitalists to fight regulations tooth and nail to try to protect their profit margins. These are fundamentally unprofitable businesses built on exploiting vulnerable workers.

Seems like they are following the letter of the law.

If this were true, how would you explain that both drivers and riders enter into the relationship voluntarily. Most of my uber drivers have been intelligent and knowledgeable about their options - quite the opposite of exploited and vulnerable.

How do you explain a College Student with no disposable income signing up for a Credit Card?

I drove for Uber/Lyft for a while. I fully understood I was converting the equity in my car into meals and rent. Most people don't get that at all.

Adults are free to make a wide array of legal, ethical, but nevertheless terrible decisions. An example is poor dietary choices.

All jobs are a conversion of time/skill/knowledge/strength/etc. into a fungible token, money. That fungible token is then used to meet other needs: food and shelter being top of the list. In many parts of the developing world, a person cannot eat if they don't work that day.

In the best case scenario, you come out ahead - where the resources you put in are returned n-fold. An I-Banker grinding out 80+ hour weeks is giving up time with friends and family and perhaps compromising health. Is that person exploited?

Anybody who has driven for a ride sharing company understands that their vehicle will take on excess wear-and-tear and they have to pay for gas. They presumably compare against other jobs and pick ride sharing driver freely.

I would say it is rather condescending to refer to adults making informed decisions in their own self-interest as vulnerable and exploited.

> They presumably compare against other jobs and pick ride sharing driver freely.

That's like saying people presumably read EULAs before agreeing to them. We have a system where we pretend everyone is a rational actor while teaching them none of the skills that would let them actually behave as such. Is there any high school that covers economic topics like depreciation and opportunity cost?

>Most people don't get that at all.

What makes you think that?

Let’s put it this way, second time I drive for Lyft, it was with a free car. They provided the rental for $180/week and waived the rent if I met a ride quota. Driving about 60hrs/week my check from them was about $650 per week. Fuel was about $250 per week. Before taxes, had to deal with that on my own. And I figured out how to surge-mine the bar closings on the weekends.

If someone during the current period of time can’t figure out they can do similar money for less time at McDonald’s, they do not possess the financial literacy required to “get that”.

Uber was created because taxis blew due to corruption. It should not cost 100k to become a taxi driver, that was absolutely insane.

Like it or not, in the current US Capitalist's Environment (as opposed to some mythical earlier time when corporations were supposed to have some social responsibility), in this current environment, Humans are a Commodity.

If there is a human surplus, the cost(pay) goes down.

If there is a human shortage, the price(pay) goes up.

When there are fewer desperate humans needing Uber to eat, and Uber can't find drivers, then suddenly Uber will start paying and treating people better.

This is only newsworthy because Uber by its nature of having all independent contractors with a very obvious 'market' linking drivers to passengers. Makes this clear.

It becomes very starkly clear the value of the driver and how much a human is worth. And that Uber can tweak their algorithms to minimize how much drivers are paid, thus providing a 'market' price for humans.

Uber isn't special, it is just this human value is starkly on display.

LOL

I would like more feedback.

Am I being downvoted by 'Capitalist's', because it sounds like I'm anti-free market? When really, I'm just outlining what a market is, how things are?

Or Am I being downvoted by 'Socialist', because it sounds like I'm advocating that Capitalisms is the natural order and humans are commodities, and is just how things are?

It is very hard to tell what line is being crossed.

>Like it or not, in the current US Capitalist's Environment (as opposed to some mythical earlier time when corporations were supposed to have some social responsibility), in this current environment, Humans are a Commodity.

Is that supposed to be bad? "Commodity" just means something that could be bought and sold. Is it bad that I can buy people's time, or that I can sell my time? Was it better in communism where you couldn't buy or sell labor because it was all controlled by the state, and you still had to work? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_parasitism_(offense)

I don't think I mentioned communism anywhere, even once. Or made any argument supporting it.

I simply explained what a market is.

I guess even not having the correct 'stringent tone' in favor of capitalism can make you a communist now. It is super hard to tell, not the first time I've simply explained a free market and been called a communist. It's almost like you have to express cult like warship for the 'idea' of a free market or you are communist.

"buy people's time"

Sounds so benign, but from the thread, I think it was pretty clear that we aren't just talking time. Some of the other examples used are really about "people so desperate they would do anything", which is also as you say not "bad", lives are "just something that could be bought and sold".

Again, I'm not saying anything in favor of communism. I'm just outlining a market. Companies are people right? Time is money, life is time. Desperate times call for desperate measures, all's fair, and on and on.

Lets not be all pro-free-market, then clutch our pearls when it leads to some questionable choices.

>Sounds so benign, but from the thread, I think it was pretty clear that we aren't just talking time. Some of the other examples used are really about "people so desperate they would do anything", which is also as you say not "bad", lives are "just something that could be bought and sold".

Hyperbole about equating selling your time to "lives [being] bought and sold" aside, I'm not sure what exactly the issue with such a trade is. Did the market cause such desperate circumstances in the first place? Would the people be better served by not being able to work for money, and (presumably) starve instead? Moreover, if you're upset at the prospect of having to trade a non-trivial proportion of your life in exchange for resources, shouldn't your displeasure be directed at the universe for having entropy (which all living beings must expend time/energy to fight against) in the first place?

It's about control and freedom isn't it?

If the economy is run by just a few oligarchs, mega corps. Then there really is no longer freedom to be mobile and the 'work somewhere else' arguments are gone, then the market breaks down and wages are no longer free floating based a supply/demand basis.

And typically, free markets tend towards monopolies, unless there is push back, some anti-competitive laws to break up big companies, or stop them from forming (like Ticketmaster). To keep injecting competition. Because big corps, really don't like competition, and lobby against it.

But in todays environment, anybody standing in the way of big corps getting bigger, are called communist. Any argument at all that capitalism should be regulated, and you are called communist. Really, any argument for employees having any rights, is communist. So yes, " Did the market cause such desperate circumstances in the first place?" , Yes, if un-regulated, it does lead to these circumstances.

Though, honestly, I'm not sure where you are coming from. You seem to bring in Entropy sarcastically, but also it sounds like maybe you are leaning into the E/ACC arguments. There is no good/bad, just survival of the fittest, and Pure Free Markets are a form of Entropy that we can't stop and should stop trying.

Maybe. I do tend to agree that efficient markets are most productive (efficient doesn't mean un-regulated chaos freedom). Efficient markets can have losers, and at that point it does seem that for overall productivity of a society, social programs actually help efficiencies (healthy and educated workers are more productive). But, of course, education and health care are communist, and we can't have that. I'm really not sure what the free market game plan is if everyone is sick and can't read. Where do the E/ACC people think they will get all of these dedicated educated people.

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