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Comment by aresant | Hacker News Reader

Think about the political clout that the Public School Teachers union carries (with ~2.7m members) (1)

The largest international employer stands as WalMart with 2.2 million employees (2).

Uber just a few days back announced a plan to hire 1,000,000 WOMEN drivers over the next 5 years (3)

Now posturing or not, assuming that somehow Uber pulled that off and they'll be the world's largest employer in less than a decade.

It's amazing that politicians seem so slow on the up-take here and the opportunity to address the people that are caught in the machinery of the sharing economy.

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_trade_unions_in_the_Un...

(2) As of 2012 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_employers

(3) http://money.cnn.com/2015/03/10/technology/uber-women-driver...

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"assuming that somehow Uber pulled that off and they'll be the world's largest employer in less than a decade"

LOL, I thought Uber was trying NOT to be classified as an employer with respect to their drivers.

Even if they hired close to that many women, the announcement seems to be more of a stunt for positive publicity than anything, their drivers lack all of the basic protections and benefits that many public school teachers receive.

In reality, the political clout of the "Public School Teachers" is much less than the total 2.7m members since they're made up of many different unions. As opposed to Walmart, which is a single company that has much more power over their control of the workplace and employees. Right now it seems that Uber has even more clout over their drivers than Walmart has over their employees.

As an aside for the subject of women drivers... last fall, I had a Muslim woman as my Uber driver for a ride. She said that she makes a point of picking up female passengers with less than five-star ratings. She thinks a lot of male Uber drivers will downrate female passengers in unfair ways, and a lot of Uber drivers in general won't give rides to passengers who have had bad ratings.

As a woman who uses Lyft often, I can confirm that I've been treated like shit by a number of drivers in ways that I can't imagine a man would be treated. Stuff like how they would park a block away from me and make me walk the whole way to their cars (invariably, the people who do this are men who come from countries where women's rights are unheard of).

I'm at the point where I'm seriously upset that Lyft doesn't allow women to specifically request a female driver. Hell, I'd be willing to pay extra to guarantee that my driver be a woman.

"It's amazing that politicians seem so slow on the up-take here and the opportunity to address the people that are caught in the machinery of the sharing economy."

Yea, I think this sharing economy caught some of my politicians off guard. After 2008, they just wanted any job creation. I don't think most of them realized how technology works, or it is just a fad?

I'm a fan of this sharing economy, but I am not a fan of exploiting naive/desperate people. I am for protections on this sharing economy. I was very happy when Uber was called out by their cute claim of Independent Contractors status.

I think most politicians, who care, recall a America where people had good jobs? Those days are probably gone? I think politicians, who care about the poor, and middle class, know the party is over? They see how divided the world has become, and at least here--want to soften the blow? Meaning they want to regulate(minimum wage, working conditions, etc.) companies that exploit desperate/naive workers.

I am glad Wallmart finally raised wages in some localities though.

> they'll be the world's largest employer

Even Uber cheerleaders get it mixed up from time to time

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