IANAL, but to my knowledge, in California, a company cannot[] legally prevent their employees from working a second job in their spare time, so this kind of lock in would not work.
[] some exceptions apply, mainly related to IP I think.
[] some exceptions apply, mainly related to IP I think.
If Uber or Lyft are required to legally hire these drivers as employees, they will probably develop a technology to track the drivers so that they won't take a Lyft call when there's an Uber passenger nearby, for example. This effectively means lockin.
Also, Uber (or lyft) may even compensate these behaviors by giving the drivers base salary as long as they don't take their competition's calls. Of course, this is until one becomes the dominant player and the other goes out of business.
Under an employee model, they would do this while on the clock of a particular company (and being paid by it). Sure, Uber could choose to employ a driver for 16 hours a day, but they'd have to pay for that time.
This idea that uber / lyft drivers (both phones are always running) can work for BOTH companies at the same time seems ridiculous to me.
Yes, I agree, and I did not mean to imply that. What I meant is that a company has limited ability of restricting employee behavior during the time they are NOT paying them.
The only reason Uber couldn't dominate was because there was a factor of "choice". Now that the drivers are classified as effectively taxi drivers belonging to a taxi company, there is no choice. And the funny thing is, the drivers will actually prefer this.