Why would a law have to be passed for the drivers to organize?
"Uber has two potential legal arguments against the measure if it passes. The first is that federal law reigns supreme when it comes to organizing, rendering a city ordinance on the subject essentially null and void. The second is that collective bargaining by independent contractors would amount to illegal price-fixing under antitrust law."
and "the only way organizing by Uber drivers could be legal is under a so-called state action exemption from antitrust law."
They're the Silicon Valley equivalent of Walmart.
2. Uber isn't the first company by any stretch of the imagination that employes a workforce of contractors. There is nothing "evil" about that. It's supply and demand. Everyone can drive, so why should Uber pay more wages than they have to? The law will dictate the minimums they can pay.
You're probably going to post something about the lump of labor, but consider this: demand for jobs is inelastic. When have you ever seen a company prevented from doing business because their wages were too low? As long as there is a job opening, there will be people competing with each other to fill it since we have significantly more people than we do jobs, thanks to our capital-intensive economy.
Some people have invested themselves in Uber based on the pay, which has since dropped. This has happened to people such as Mr. Creery from the article.
Imagine you get hired for a job for some amount of money, pull up your roots and relocate. Then 3 months after you get there they drop your pay down by half. What a pain. Would you have taken the job if you knew that were going to happen? Probably not. And now you have a large switching cost to get away from this job if you have to move again.
Unionized workers can in theory negotiate to mitigate those kinds of scenarios.
It's even worse than that--people are taking out car loans to work for Uber.
2. No but thats not really what they are. They are working as contractors but being treated as employees.
For example they can't set their own price, they aren't allow to choose their own car, they can't subcontract which is the conditions employees normally are subject to. On the other hand they don't get ex. healthcare and have to maintain all expenses themselves. Uber works because it's managed to disrupt legislation. Sometimes thats great or necessary and the taxi medallion system surely are broken. But to ignore some of the deeper issues with the kind of disruption Uber is doing is simply ignoring some of the deeper issues of technology.
And just as we are fine with companies being able to lobby for their legislated privileges so should the drivers be allowed to organize.
2. If you are a big employer you have a big workforce that can, and should be able to wield some power as a collective. The idea here is that a company can't magically dodge having a powerful group of employees by not employing them. Paying as much as you have to means you pay the legal minimum wage, if the workforce as a collective thinks that is ok. Otherwise you pay more.
Nobody is forced to prostitute themselves, rob or steal, etc. But heh, fuck social safety nets ya know? If they existed, both Walmart and Uber would have to pay real wages.
> Uber isn't the first company by any stretch of the imagination that employes a workforce of contractors. There is nothing "evil" about that. It's supply and demand. Everyone can drive, so why should Uber pay more wages than they have to? The law will dictate the minimums they can pay.
That's right, the law will. Good luck Uber.
Safety nets do exist, that's why Uber and Wal-Mart don't have to pay real wages. The tax payers subsidize Wal-Mart and McDonalds for $153b a year [0].
We ought to account for the government benefits required by employees of large corporations and tack that on to their yearly bill -- no deductions -- and see what that does to their wages.
[0]https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/04/15/...
Agree 100%. You either bill them directly, or you create a basic income, raise taxes to support it, thereby forcing companies to pay more to bring labor into the labor force.
Basically, the low prices you see at Wal Mart couldn't exist if the company paid their workers a wage that reflected the benefits given by the government. Additionally, Wal-Mart receives a significant amount of money in the form of the SNAP payments themselves from their customers. It's basically like the government food store, except the family that runs has a net worth of more than $100B.
I don't understand your second sentence. Costco has employees that they pay $0?
True, but how does that make Uber the bad guy here? If driving for Uber is unpleasant, and they don't force anyone to work there, then it must be less unpleasant than whatever these workers are doing it instead of.
To the extent that society fails to offer a minimum baseline that isn't itself pleasant, then that's where the blame lies, not with Uber.
You want part-time workers to be paid full time. How is that fair for the employer? There is no good answer to the part-time work problem. If the supply of workers outpaces the demand for work, the employer will hire part time. It's simple economics.
None of which are sufficient compared to proper first world countries (ie anywhere developed outside of the US).
> You want part-time workers to be paid full time. How is that fair for the employer? There is no good answer to the part-time work problem.
A government doesn't exist for your business interests; it exists to take care of its citizens. If you can operate your business in such an environment, great. If you can't, tough.
Quality of life is a more important measure than your exit strategy or next quarter results.
Although there are some companies (HandUp, and a few others) started with the goal of treating the weakest members better.
If anyone's evil, isn't it the government for not providing useful safety nets?
The companies are just going along with the market rates at which their employees/contractors are willing to work.
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2013-08-27/why-walmart...
By that measure I heard that Thomas Keller pays its workers an excellent wage, while McDonald's not so much. Therefore we should shut down McDonald's outlets and replace them with Thomas Keller restaurants.
That's my understanding of the situation, which is tenuous. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.
It's mind-blowing, the amount of words written about this, yet there is no clear explanation of what exactly is going on.
Seattle seems to be using its authority to regulate transportation services to extend these protections to drivers regardless of whether they are employees or contractors.
The First Amendment just says that Congress can't do it, not that a private company you're not being forced to work for can't.
To that point, you can be fired for attempting to unionize in certain circumstances. Seattle is just trying to explicitly extend that protection to contractors.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bill_of_Rights#F...
Sure flies against the idea of "Informed Consent".
"Else I'd not have done that procedure...."
Edit: From the downvotes, I assume that people have issues with knowing medical pricing? That seems really backwards.