Are people engaging in gig work because it has several advantages over "every other available option"? What other options do people who drive for Lyft/Uber as a day job have? And what are the advantages Uber/Lyft & working as a contractor offer?

Maybe zoning effects should be part of a discussion on the cost of living in California, exploitation of immigrants is deplorable and awareness should be raised and actions taken, but does that make Uber/Lyft exploiting workers a non-issue?

I'm not from the US and am not aware of the specifics in California, but being from a country which has faced severe economic crises I've seen people "choosing" a shitty option despite every other shitty option.

I can't say I understand where you're going with most of what you're saying, or how informed you are of gig workers situation.

I saw a pretty good movie by Ken Loach: _Sorry We Missed You_, that thought was really spot on on the issues of gig work:

https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorry_We_Missed_You

It's not just Uber. All companies in the gig economy work like this. It's not only about paying minimum wage and benefits either, it's also about shifting the costs of doing business to the workers calling them independent contractors.

As independent contractors, drivers need to pay for their car, pay for gas, taxes, insurance and maintenance costs, but if they were employees from the beginning, all these costs would be getting out of the Uber's pockets.

I think the fact that people can drive 15 hrs a week if that fits their childcare schedule or drive 60 hrs of week to pay for a vacation is incredibly valuable.

You're not setting your own rates. You can't choose which rides you take. You can't follow your own rules.

Remember when Uber was giving back to back rides to drivers that had Lyft driver app installed so they couldn't effectively drive for both? That doesn't sound like freelance work to me.

Much of the pay structure is based on hitting a certain number of rides per week. So to get "decent" pay rate you need to work a certain number of hours.

Sometimes the company even owns your car and leases it to you contingent on doing a certain number of rides.

And you have no input on which rides you get once you go online.

It's nothing like traditional freelance work. It's more like high tech pizza delivery driver. And those workers are all considered employees.

If you force companies to give benefits to these Gig workers, they will not be able to continue in this way (because it will be too expensive) and there will now be a limit on how many drivers they will be able to hire (since they are now essentially employees).

The end result will be less people hired as gig workers and more restrictions on who can actually be a driver, which will leave out a large portion of people driving right now without the ability to make any money at all.

With all of the restrictions that are being put into place on companies like Uber and Lyft, we will eventually go back to what we had with cab companies where the medallion holders have a monopoly on the entire industry and we see no advances that actually improve the consumer experience.

I never understood why Gig workers should get any benefits. When deciding to actually work, it's understood by all parties that you aren't an employee and there really is no guarantee of income.

I've been contracting for a decade and pay for my own benefits. I weigh all costs and benefits before signing a contract/doing any work and everyone should educate themselves and do the same.

Delivery drivers have been moved from secure employment to the gig economy and enforced self-employment. Uber drivers would previously have been taxi or private hire drivers.

The problem comes when, after a few months, many realise that the gig role they took simply doesn't pay. Or pays significantly less than minimum wage without rights and benefits that everyone else in the economy takes for granted.

For the most part it's simply a way of larger companies outsourcing part of their labour costs to the state (via top-up benefits).

Basically, Uber and other "gig economy jobs" can only exist because of the shit economic conditions of the last however many years. They are even worse than McJobs because you're not even employed. Terrible regulations and corporate lobbying has meant wages have been terrible for a lot of decades, and people need 2, 3 jobs to survive. And in this environment Uber has arrived, with a "It's better than nothing" job (although their ads promise a lot more than that, obviously).

But the business environment is the environment.

After writing the above paragraph, I realized it seems like the problem is that Uber promised their drivers good money, but the reality is much different, the money is not enough to make a living, which is probably why their drivers are pissed off and feel exploited. (If Job A (Uber) promised you say $1000/week and job B promises you $800/week, you'd take job A. But if it turns out job A only earns you $600 plus excuses, you'd be pissed off because you would've been better off taking job B in the first place).

And add to that the psychological tricks: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/04/02/technology/ub...

If your Uber jobs start paying less throughout the day, you will just start accepting more Lyft ones.

Uber gains nothing from underpaying their workers because of the huge competition for these gig workers.

IF Ubers AI is inefficiently distributing work to its workers, Lyft will get them for free, without doing anything. That's how a market works.

However, if this so called evil algorithm increases productivity for Uber and its workers - everyone will get paid more, Uber, drivers, customers, except direct competitors like Lyft.

It's a good thing they do this. Anyone here saying its bad needs to suggest with a model, that this decreases productivity or somehow adds a market inefficiency.

For 10 years I ran my own consultancy. Every new engagement was a new "job" where I could negotiate the rules of engagement however I deemed fit. Usually lasting no more than 5 days each. Every new month for 10 years I'd think: "this is it, it's over; I have no work scheduled for next month, I'm going to have to give up and get a real job." But somehow the work always rolled in, and I did really well. By the end I was billing over $300/hr, and I worked when and where I saw fit. As far as "gig workers" go, I was about as successful as you can possibly be.

And yet my wife had to work a Real Job at a Real Company because I couldn't buy reasonable health insurance for any price. Any price at all. So I spun down my company and got a real job. The Gig Economy is an utter poopshow; not even at the very top is it sustainable.

Making Uber's bottom-of-the-barrel jobs slightly less abysmal doesn't do crap for the Gig Economy. Driving for Uber isn't a Gig. You're not negotiating your rate on each pickup. It's a carefully managed relationship with the same company each time, who pays for your service on a recurring and predictable fee-for-work basis. It's a job.

Fixing the Gig Economy means making it possible for people to make a living without the shelter of an employer. And making Uber and Lift into real employers doesn't fix it. It's not even related.

The "gig" economy seems to work by offering people a fairly open choice of pay and work. Though Uber could be more transparent about expected earnings.

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.

Gig workers, at least in the UK, are overwhelmingly from minority and disadvantaged backgrounds; they don't do it out of choice, but because they have little or no alternative.

> to work for Uber, you must have a car

This is the same as for regular taxi work (there are various arrangements, but in most cases drivers end up paying for their vehicle one way or another). In fact, Uber lowered requirements since you don't need a specific type of cars (like UK cabs) or paint jobs/registrations (in most countries). And that's why it got popular: it lowered standards even further, in a sector already predominantly staffed by the worse-off.

> My personal experience with Uber drivers [...] also does not match the description

Of course; they want your five stars, they'll all try to look and sound happy and successful - not unlike many entrepreneurs.