Taxi driving is not skilled labor. It simply isn't worth much; certainly not what its full-time drivers are demanding.
Can we also complain about Mechanical Turk? I'd like to earn first-world wages classifying pictures of cats full-time.
Neither scenario is what the gig economy is supposed to be about. If a job doesn't pay sustainably, don't do it.
We tried to regulate taxis such that driving one paid wages on par with costs of living, but then some asshole company undermined that with a populist smartphone app.
It seems to me that if Uber is unable to pay its drivers a living wage, they don't actually have a sustainable business model. They have a business model that relies on regulatory arbitrage (avoiding minimum wage or other employee-protection laws by skirting the Independent Contractor line as much as feasible), externalized costs (letting the government pay for things like food stamps and housing assistance), and good old fashioned exploitation of the working class.
I mean, I understand that uber started because the taxi market was protectionist. But on the other hand, do taxi drivers have better pay and a better union? Often, yes. There may be a middle ground here.
(* note that this argument applies to a lot of the gig-economy jobs out there, including lyft, doordash, and so on, not just Uber)
I know of no one who drives for Uber/Lyft who doesn't think they are doing well. Seriously, where did this meme come about where they are all slaves to Uber? Between what two bring in each week and their mileage deductions they are tempting me at times.
the real tripe in the gig economy is all the pontificating coming down from top how they all care about rights of people, except it only is Western people they care about while those in China and other countries get run over by their governments.
The simple fact is, no employer has to make the job solve all your financial needs. It is up to you to find the job that fulfills your requirements and you can perform safely and well. if that takes more than one job then so be it, many of us have been there before and did it. you don't get anywhere waiting for someone else to fix your life
Gig work is already not feasible. The only reason anyone undertakes it is financial illiteracy. Uber is largely funded by the irrational sacrifice of numerous individuals of the residual value of their own cars.
The fact remains that Uber drivers and the like are pretty much the definition of freelance workers and NOT regular employees.
If my neighbor puts an ad in Craig's List for someone to drive her to the grocery store for $10 and I take the job, neither she nor Craig's List owes me benefits. If I mow my neighbor's lawn, I don't expect a 401K plan out of it.
This entire movement amounts to abolishing contract work entirely, which is straight-up stupid.
Perhaps if you cannot pay your employees minimum wage - regardless of the sort of work they are doing, perhaps you shouldn't be in business. I don't care if Uber is making money or not.
If there is need for more adequate public transportation and taxis, perhaps we should work on that issue. If the system is robust enough, merely having a personal driver (uber/lyft/taxi/limo) should be a luxury and a choice.
This has nothing to do with data, but principle.
And it isn't like Uber has been a good player in all of this: I truly don't agree with their attitude towards laws, and do truly believe they are in business because they exploit people and eschew their responsibility as employers both by offering gig-only employment and refusing to classify drivers as employees: Their business obviously relies on the drivers.
I think it sucks that Uber drivers aren't direct employees of Uber. Were they once upon a time? I forget. Anyhow, it's just a bullshit game for Uber to avoid regulations. It'd be much better for everyone involved if drivers could just be salary employees.
Some people work for Uber full-time because regulation restricts supply, thus providing the service becomes too profitable and generates enough income to make a living working full time.
I also have a hard time trying to see the point of this sort of argument. Are taxi services suddenly bad, and driving a taxi for a living something to frown upon?
I tend to agree with a lot of this article. Cab driving is not a particularly well paid occupation and Uber is making it considerably less so.
There's something a bit ugly about chiseling away at a low paid worker's wages that leaves me uncomfortable. I know I wouldn't like it if it was happening to me.
When I was a cab driver I picked up a guy first thing in the morning and took him to the airport. He told me that he worked for an insurance company and they were flying him out to somewhere in India to train someone to do his job. I pointed out that when his job moved overseas he would be made redundant. My customer told me that it wasn't important because of two things. One, if he didn't do it someone else would. Two, he got the free holiday anyway.
Working for UBER in any capacity is self-harm.
This company is bent on taking VC money and subsidising the workers who are paving the way for their own redundancy.
Not just UBER, others too. When robots/ai/automatons take all our jobs, how do we earn money to live on?
Taxi drivers are actually employees in some places? I had assumed most drivers were already under some non-employee structure in most jurisdictions pre-uber.
That's certainly the case here in Australia where taxi drivers were making under minimum wage with working conditions that would not be allowed were they employees. It's hard to see Uber as any worse than what existed before.
As a customer I don't care about economic theory. What I care about is that I take out my mobile, press a couple of buttons and I know the price and time of pick up. This is innovation. Before über nobody was doing this. This has been a huge efficiency gain. The service is safe and reliable and trackable. This really has nothing to do with employees vs contractors. If the government legislated that uber drivers had to be treated as employees, the innovation that uber brought to the market would not disappear. Might be a bit more expensive but we would not be going back to hailing random taxis on the street or calling numbers and negotiating with call centres.
A lot of the conversation here is based on anecdata (interactions with uber drivers or cabs) or people projecting what its like to be a driver on uber and they are unwittingly being exploited.
I worked at a company that provided products to uber, lyft and doordash drivers, and personally interviewed well over 200 drivers, (along with having access to detailed data on a much larger dataset). The vast majority of drivers we talked to did not feel like they were being 'exploited' and generally liked the flexibility of the gig economy. Most workers were part time, working to supplement income from other jobs or in between other gigs, in fact when i was there, most drivers worked less than 6 months before stopping. I would say these people have a much better sense of whether they are being exploited than people who are not in their shoes.
There was a small but important minority (we called them 'professionals') for whom driving had become their full time profession (most were not cab drivers before) who were perpetually annoyed by uber and their main gripes tended to be the changing promotions systems, and algorithmic changes that reduced/limited profitable rides (like airport pickups) and just general loss of control.
This is just such a weird fight. As someone who freelanced for long stretches of time, I think there are a lot of positives about freelance / gig work, and I also think that the majority of people who take these jobs understand the position they’re in and are happy with it. They chose to freelance and drive for Uber for reasons.
The legit concern is whether Uber or any other freelance company misleads its gig workers on their earnings, and to me the best solution to that is not to force reclassify them as employees or prohibit gig work, but to regulate transparency in compensation. For example, require freelance employers to include expense tracking and calculate workers earnings after expenses. That by itself would fix most of the problems for the percentage of gig workers who don’t realize they’re extracting depreciation from their car more so than getting paid by Uber.
The other issues of healthcare, etc., the US needs to solve at a societal level, not an employer level. I think humans have a right to health care. But I don’t think people have a right to a particular job, nor an entitlement for that employer to provide a particular mix of benefits.
This idea that we need to provide our social contract / safety net exclusively via employers is so strange to me, compared to simply owning that if we want these to be rights of our citizens then the government should be providing them as tax-paid services.
I'm not a fan of all these moves to treat drivers as employees for one simple reason: you can drive for more than one company at the same time.
Here's what I don't want:
- I don't want quotas as NYC is doing. This is just recreating the taxi medallion system.
- I don't want each company to be forced to pay a minimum wage per hour that then means a driver loses the flexibility to drive for multiple companies at once.
- I don't want regulations to keep smaller competitors out of the market. There's a real risk of this.
- I don't want drivers to lose the flexibility to do this on a casual or flexible basis. Quotas and the like will mean the only option is to drive full-time. I'm all for people being able to supplement income. I feel like this is useful to a lot of people.
Note: I do want drivers to earn a sufficient income from this. It's just that quotas and company minimum wages aren't the way to do this.
What other job can you think of where you can work as much as you want, anytime you want? Need a break? Click a button anytime you feel like it. Take as long or as little time as you wish. Want more work? Click a button anytime you feel like it. No timecards to punch. No boss breathing down your ass for being late. Its freedom on a level beyond practically any other major job category you can think of. What more could you ask for?
Sure you're probably not going to be raising a whole family with a white picket fence on Uber alone. They NEVER claimed you could AFAIK. Its never been portrayed as anything more than supplemental income. PROTIP: Uber is a job for the bored college student looking for a little extra spending money not the main means of survival for a struggling single mother of 10 kids. If you're at the point where you're relying on CA to force Uber to pay you more so you can put food on the table or get kidney surgery you're doing it wrong and you have far bigger problems than a company that has done you no wrong other than existing and not paying very much.
Now we're going to destroy this unique business model forever because of the greed of the taxis and people who can't understand that not every single job on earth is meant to earn you a solid middle class income.
Do any of the naysayers ever actually talk to their uber/lyft drivers? I've never met a single one with bad things to say about the job. Most seem to enjoy the social aspect, and many foreigners take it as an opportunity to practice English while making some spare cash.
Who are you people to presume that these rational agents need to be restricted from earning money in a way that they deem convenient? Especially when their work is at will and unforced? Do you really feel that there is some kind of net good to the loss of work that comes with forcing uber to pay minimum wage, when it means that many content drivers will lose work?
What a low effort rebuttal. Why are you comparing gig work to indentured servitude? Is Uber forcing people to drive cars? If your argument is people don’t have any other options, is that really uber’s fault or is that fault of the society?
Agreed, but is it better for these people to have fewer choices for work?
And who is in the best position to decide? The person making the choice to drive for Uber, you or I, politicians?
I go back and forth about this on a high level, but don’t necessarily support outright bans on gig work. Maybe just a bit more sensible regulation to help people understand potential earnings vs. all their costs (ex. car payment, insurance, repairs, etc.) and maybe some way to allow them to accrue sick pay based on hours worked. Just to put a slight hand on the scale to help people deciding on gig work. But we’d have the problem of who would pay for any such benefits; Uber may pass the cost along to end users. Maybe funded by taxes somehow
I make a habit of talking to taxi drivers about Uber. Consistently they say they drive taxis because there is no money in driving for Uber (which of course that tells us less than it seems, because they are self-selected to be people who prefer driving taxis). One told me something new: I asked, as I often do, if they don't make money then why are there so many Uber drivers?
This man said that some Uber drivers are trapped by car loans: They are working-class people who took out loans to buy their Uber cars. All cars lose value the moment they are driven off the lot and these cars are driven hard and for high mileage, so their resale value is low. He said these drivers keep working for Uber because they have to try to pay off the loans. (I know nothing else about that story other than what one random driver told me; I'm hoping others can contribute some better knowledge about it.)
It struck me: Not only does Uber treat their workers like contractors and give them no benefits or other employee protections, but they ask (often) working class people to provide Uber's capital. Arguably, it's like General Motors calling factory workers 'independent contractors' and asking them to bring their own machinery. In contrast, taxi drivers lease the cab for a shift, AFAIK; they have no long-term capital investment or debt trap. It's almost as if Uber's main business proposition is a loophole in labor rules that allows them to shift almost all costs onto their own workers.
That said, I hesitate to pile on, even for a company I don't like personally (which is why I take cabs). Let's not let the hype exceed the reality.
Can we also complain about Mechanical Turk? I'd like to earn first-world wages classifying pictures of cats full-time.
Neither scenario is what the gig economy is supposed to be about. If a job doesn't pay sustainably, don't do it.
We tried to regulate taxis such that driving one paid wages on par with costs of living, but then some asshole company undermined that with a populist smartphone app.
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