Rideshare operations are being suspended in California
lyft.com
lyft.com
A much better bill could have written that could have created a healthcare and unemployment fund of gig economy workers by taxing Gig companies, without trying box everyone into the employment model
But when it comes to the vote in November, a vote to exempt Uber/Lyft from AB5 is a vote to strip drivers of all protections. Uber and Lyft will be free to go back to exploiting drivers for <$10/hr [1]. I don't think I can tell someone else they don't deserve to earn minimum wage.
Maybe you are hoping the legislature will eventually come up with that third way once forced to, but there's a lot of momentum behind a popular vote. No US legislature has proven themselves particularly effective in the last few years. Let's not leave people out to dry while hoping some politicians will do their jobs.
[1] https://www.vox.com/2018/10/2/17924628/uber-drivers-make-hou...
On the wage issue are you talking about the specifics of how prop 22 defines the earnings floor for drivers [0]? It definitely sets a standard even. It pays some for expenses ($0.30/mile) and the 120% minimum wage while on a ride covers a bit of time spent driving between rides. I could see though how if you have high expenses and don't get many rides you will not earn the minimum wage.
0 - https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_22,_App-Based...
Exploiting? Can you please cite another industry that has the capacity to employ millions of unskilled labor people at $10/hr and ALSO allow them the freedom to set their own schedule?
It's clear you've never worked a minimum wage job before. Flexibility on hours is next-to-impossible at these jobs. If people are willing to make a few bucks an hour less for that flexibility, who are you to call it exploitation?
It's not like these companies are minting profits. The alternative is these people go back to work at McDonald's and also get no benefits while being scheduled at such bizarre hours they can't even go to school and educate themselves.
Shrinking the pool of employment choices for these people does nothing to help them actually get healthcare. My mind is still blown at how the American solution to workers not having healthcare is to attack individual businesses instead of looking across the Atlantic at how the rest of the world solved this problem.
Why should employees give up rights just because it's the 21st century? Make no mistake, that's Uber/Lyft's entire advantage over traditional taxis: skirting hard-won employment regulation to lower costs at the expense of workers.
It's easy to see all the folks here who don't remember having to wait an hour for a taxi to show after calling, if it ever did. Pushing a button on your phone and getting a ride five minutes later is magic in comparison.
I don't live in CA but used to do a fair amount of work travel out there. If they don't have Uber/Lyft in the future, I'll just make work get me a rental car.
Of course, its probably not in your best interest to mention this to the company you want to work with since they'll probably just choose to work with someone outside of CA instead. Just be glad their legal counsel (if they have any) doesn't know enough about this law to cause you more headaches.
Exemptions are a leading indicator of ineptness or corruption.
It's not a profitable or a good force in an economy, it does not pay a reasonable wage for anyone to live on, it is not environmentally friendly unless done in large quantities of people,(which is called a bus).
Ridesharing exists to profit Uber/Lyft investors and management and is successful due to lower pricing than is sustainable. It is built on the back of loopholes in the law to use and abuse working class people and to lie about the true costs and profits.
The bill's exceptions exist to split apart reality from this subsidized artificial market (There are exemptions in most laws, purely due tot he idea that things are complex, by nature)
I see this as an attempt to make the Gig Economy pay all workers fairly in addition to healthcare costs and to put the onus on the company rather than their taxes. This would force Uber and Lyft to limit the number of drivers in an area by cost and profits, to deny those they cannot pay fairly. Uber currently may give you 100 rides a day or 1, you don't know which and you cant depend on it nor if you cant drive can get unemployment.
The hard problem is contracting work is not a known reality for most, they don't understand the costs. Dressing it up in pretty fonts and Ads makes it much like the alcohol or tobacco industries, you don't know the danger until you are very invested and nobody is there to save you.
The main reason I can't get on board with the rest of this line of argument is that it ultimately just comes down to paternalistic protection of the poor disenfranchised gig workers that you clearly view as being less than capable, rational adult humans. The number of gig economy workers has been growing exponentially for years? Somebody must be tricking them into taking this shit work, and confusing them about the real costs.
Gig economy workers have overwhelmingly spoken that they like this work, by continuing to sign up for it in massive numbers. Or at least that they like it more than their alternatives at the time. If it were some massive trap, don't you think the word would have gotten out by now? The ability to entirely set their own schedule and work as much or little as they choose is appealing enough to draw people in in droves, despite all of the downsides of this type of work.
Getting rid of Uber and Lyft completely throws out the baby with the bathwater here. It won't magically create alternative full time jobs that these workers will prefer to their current situation, it'll just make it much harder for many of them to have any work. Surely there are better incremental policies that could limit the downsides for many of these workers without taking away most of the positives for them too.
As with many far-leftist beliefs these days, I can't help but conclude that the driving factor for a law like AB5 is punitive anger towards successful, wealthy organizations. Just like with the NIMBYs using socialist rhetoric to justify blocking needed middle class housing, it's much more important that the organizations they see as the bad guys suffer than it is to maximize the overall, utilitarian good for the parties they claim to care about. I sincerely hope this way of thinking dies out, almost as much as I hope the current far-right way of thinking dies out.
Taxis are an obsolete service, Lyft and Uber are overwhelmingly favored by customers and businesses.
But if you do agree with that, shouldn't we resolve inequalities by directly supporting the least fortunate (with cash) rather than force parties into arbitrary economic relationships?
Great summary for this scary situation.
> I see this as an attempt to make the Gig Economy pay all workers fairly in addition to healthcare costs and to put the onus on the company rather than their taxes.
There is a new word for this class of gig workers doing precarious labor that I've started using: the Precariat.
"In sociology and economics, the precariat (/prɪˈkɛəriət/) is a neologism for a social class formed by people suffering from precarity, which is a condition of existence without predictability or security, affecting material or psychological welfare. The term is a portmanteau obtained by merging precarious with proletariat.[1] Unlike the proletariat class of industrial workers in the 20th century who lacked their own means of production and hence sold their labour to live, members of the precariat are only partially involved in labour and must undertake extensive "unremunerated activities that are essential if they are to retain access to jobs and to decent earnings".
Classic examples of such unpaid activities include continually having to search for work (including preparing for and attending job interviews), as well as being expected to be perpetually responsive to calls for "gig" work (yet without being paid an actual wage for being "on call"). The hallmark of the precariat class is the condition of lack of job security, including intermittent employment or underemployment and the resultant precarious existence.[2] The emergence of this class has been ascribed to the entrenchment of neoliberal capitalism.[3][4]"
[..]
"The British economist Guy Standing has analysed the precariat as a new emerging social class in work done for the think tank Policy Network and the World Economic Forum.[6] In his 2014 book entitled A Precariat Charter he argued that all citizens have a right to socially inherited wealth.[8][9] The latest in the series is titled The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class[2][10] where he proposed basic income as a solution for addressing the problem.
The analysis of the results of the Great British Class Survey of 2013, a collaboration between the BBC and researchers from several UK universities, contended there is a new model of class structure consisting of seven classes, ranging from the Elite at the top to the Precariat at the bottom.[11] The Precariat class was envisaged as "the most deprived British class of all with low levels of economic, cultural and social capital." This was contrasted with "the Technical Middle Class" in Great Britain in that instead of having disposable income but no interests, people of the new Precariat Class have all sorts of potential activities they like to engage in but cannot do any of them because they have no money, insecure lives, and are usually trapped in old industrial parts of the country.
The precariat class has been emerging in societies such as Japan, where it includes over 2 million so-called "freeters".[12]"
Why is the purpose of a wage to live on? Many uber drivers drive part time for fun or extra pocket change. The existence of thousands of uber drivers -- who in my experience, have all been quite reasonable, nice people -- seem to directly contradict your claim that it does not pay a 'reasonable wage'. Clearly, it does for those invested parties.
Is that something mandated by California? As far as I know, everywhere else I've been, work-schedules and anti-moonlighting are restrictions placed by the employer, not the state.
It's not that the law dictates this shift, it's that the economics do. Requiring full employment means you can hire less drivers.
If you have less drivers, you need more control over when they drive in order to make sure when customers are looking for a ride, they can find one, hence shifts.
If you're an employee on the clock, you can't be on the clock for two different organizations at the same time.
And it's not so much anti-moonlighting as not being able to work for multiple companies at the same time (hour). Right now, a driver often is waiting for both Lyft and Uber riders. If they're an hourly employee, they obviously can't do that anymore.
So no, none of this is mandated, but it's the only way a business could operate.
For example, if you were employed by Lyft as a driver, then presumably you would be neglecting your job duties if you refused to pick up a customer on the grounds that you happen to be driving a Uber customer at the time.
1 https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/FAQ_ReportingTimePay.htm
2 https://blog.accuchex.com/california-labor-laws-minimum-work...
Uber/Lyft does not exist to help the economy or the people of the US, they exist to help themselves. Otherwise they would charge and pay a working wage.
Of course the next step is to stop operating.
When an employee, you are legally the agent of the employer. Anything you agree to or do while employed is a liability of the employer, not you personally. That is why an employee at a VC firm can commit to provide capital, but doesn't have to pay it directly. Or why a manager of a company can take on debt, that is then the responsibility of the company, not himself.
You cannot be an agent of two companies at the same time. If you have both uber and lyft app running in your car, waiting for a passenger, and you get into a crash, if you are an employee working, then one of the companies is responsible for covering any damages you inflict. Of course, since you're not even on any particular 'job' at the time, who is responsible?
Moreover, you cannot have two companies paying you by the hour for the same hour.
Moreover, the law presumes that employees owe loyalty to their employer while working. So for example, if I am employed by a car dealership, but when a customer comes in during my shift, I decide to sell him my personal used car, instead of the companies, the company can actually sue me for failing to fulfill my duty of loyalty to them. You can't have someone working for both Uber and Lyft in this model. Since Uber and Lyft are competitors, by definition, you cannot be loyal to both. If you have both apps running and pick the best customer based on price, then you have shortchanged one of the companies, and open yourself up to liability. Contractors have no presumed assumption of loyalty to anyone but themselves. That is what allows them to pick the most profitable ride.
https://www.abacademies.org/articles/the-duty-of-loyalty-in-...
Uber has asked for California to come up with legal structures that provide benefits to employees while allowing their business model. This seems eminently reasonable: there are clear differences between Uber and Lyft drivers and traditional employees. It is the duty of government to innovate policy-wise so that the private sector can innovate business-wise. Unfortunately, California's legislature has failed to innovate anything and has instead decided to force innovators to use an outdated model of employment.
Just because someone is an employee doesn't mean the employer can't give them flexible hours
Why then, go through the effort? Because they should be integrated into society like all others. I firmly believe public transportation has benefits beyond efficiency.
Something about a billionaire on the 6 train next to a restaurant worker and a wheelchair-bound piano tuner[1] strikes me as poetic and noble. Whatever the costs.
[1] Headed to my place.
If it were both cheaper and best for the users (as I believe it would be) to pay for private rides, I would support that wholeheartedly. If one option were cheaper, and the other is preferred, it would seem that you'd have to engage in some type of cost-benefit analysis.
I don't see why able-bodied people should impose their view of 'social integration' on minorities at great cost, without additional justification.
So let's ask this imaginary person: Would you rather get free rides everywhere you need to go, or have to wait in the rain/snow/heat for the bus, feeling the stress of inconveniencing others with the ramp, and having to wheel yourself the rest of the distance to your destination?
That's if the bus arrives on time, which it won't. But keep in mind! silviogutierrez will feel better about themself if you take the bus! "poetic and noble" were the exact words.
i know cost is just a number to you but that’s other people’s money you’re spending
1. Accessibility doesn't just benefit wheel-chair bound people. Accessibility benefits just about anyone who has temporary difficulty walking, is carrying heavy or bulky things, is out with children, is not fully sober, etc, etc, etc.
2. NYC may indeed be a special case, because of the poor design of existing subway stations, and the difficulty of rebuilding them in the middle of Manhattan. I don't think this sort of thing would generalize to other locales.
Also, accessible transit benefits everyone with a stroller, as well as the elderly and anyone else with a temporary injury.
Cost would be basically the same as normal bus ride.
The municipalities could, you know, fund transit?
In the Valley, I was talking to some interns. It was a 50 minute walk, 40 minute bus ride, and 15 minute bike ride. Basically the only reason why you'd take the bus is you can't afford a bike?!?
I wish Uber and Lyft had focused on sustainability vs monopoly and not foisted so much of their costs off onto their drivers, but here we are.
Unfortunately it's difficult to participate in a lot of our society unless you can drive.
The ones affluent enough to afford it used private drivers.
A few years ago I was in a freak accident and ended up in a wheel chair for about 3 months. It's really hard to put into words how much more effort and hassle it is to get around that way, even when most of the people around you are willing to help. And I was relatively lucky, still having full use of my arms and no other health issues. But a decent rule of thumb is to take however long you think some activity should require and multiply that by three, at minimum.
A disabled friend of mine has often spent quite literally all day dealing with disabled transit issues to get across town for a single appointment someplace. We help him out when we can, but like most people he hates feeling beholden to the charity of friends.
Everybody deserves to be able to go where they want within their community when they want to. And we should provide these without relying on private companies with questionable labor practices.
IMO, if the California Republican party was smart they would make this a wedge issue in the next election. "Elect us, and we'll make it possible to use Uber again."
This would devastate them. Absolutely heartless move on behalf of the California government. Don’t kick the little guys while they’re down to make some political point. It’s not the time.
The road to hell...
"Oh, but Uber and Lyft were brought down by their own greed" Well, where is the non-greedy alternative in this market, employing legitimate full-benefit workers and serving their community while making earnest profits? If there really exists a market that is sustainable via the terms outlined by the court of California, why the hell isn't anyone competing in this market that famously yields no incumbent benefits?
If, on the other hand, if the math doesn't check out and there isn't a viable market, then what is being accomplished by this ruling? It's both shutting down an extremely useful service while taking jobs away from people who need it most, when they need it most.
This is a terrible decision that is so far removed from reality that it's almost laughable. While I admire the idealistic worldview of those who rule from above, this is a classic case of the road to hell being paved by good intentions.
Taxis still exist.
Given the history of Uber and Lyft drivers denying access to riders with wheelchairs, decrying the loss of their services seems weird.
There was a cheaper alternative for companies to provide up until now, so I don't think the current lack of this type of service proves that it couldn't exist. Companies will tend to provide the service that costs them the least in the absence of other incentives; that's why labor laws exist in the first place. The fact that child labor and unsafe working conditions used to be the norm wasn't due to it being impossible to make a profit without them, but due to companies having no incentive to get rid of them.
The parent post (from Lyft) looks hilarious in hindsight.
Edit: Added context
I'm sure uber and lyft drivers are also extremely upset by this, since they are only being exploited because they are vulnerable.
The fact that these drivers cannot survive without being exploited and that your sister can't be mobile with out their exploitation is not a problem with CA law makers.
Its beyond insane that so many people on HN will jump through such tremendous intellectual hoops to justify the world that they exist and temporarily thrive in. These companies might make your live easier today, but the distance from where you are to feeling that exploitation is not as far as you think.
Unions want to have fewer (unionized) people employed at higher compensation. Gig workers go against that because there is higher employment at lower compensation.
TL;DR it's easy to flip out because Uber and Lyft are big names, but there are plenty of other good services, just use those instead.
The apps were extremely buggy for both drivers and passengers causing missed rides, multiple drivers showing up to the same rider, etc. Fasten paid the best, but it still would only be marginally better if not the exact same as I was making with Uber or Lyft.
As far as what happened in Austin, there were absolutely no good replacements and us drivers (at least the ones I talked to) were very happy when they returned.
[1] https://communityimpact.com/austin/central-austin/impacts/20....
With the new requirements in place (e.g. actually hiring employees and providing benefits) the barrier to entry here is waaaaay higher than before. I would argue Ride Austin would have never even started (especially as a non profit) if these requirements were in place the last time Uber/Lyft shut down in Austin.
There's no objective "better" here. Some drivers may have done better with higher fares being passed onto them. On the other hand, 59% of Lyft/Uber riders ceased to use ride-hailing services.
There CSAT wasn't that great either; ride volume of competitors dropped significantly (Ride Austin lost 55% of riders within a week of Uber and Lyft returning).
The fundamental problem we have here is that pricing is being set by a heavily competitive market-place -- the clearance wage however is below what many see as a living wage. The most just thing to do may be to introduce a pricing floor (raise fares and raise driver income/benefits), but it's important to be honest about the trade-offs.
> Superior Court Judge Ethan Schulman ruled Monday [August 10, 2020] that Lyft and Uber's thousands of contract drivers should be given the same protections and benefits under labor law as other employees of the ride-hailing companies.
> The judge said Uber and Lyft have refused to comply with a California law passed last year that was supposed to make it harder for companies in the state to hire workers as contractors, so gig economy workers such as drivers for the ride-hailing companies would receive health insurance, workers' compensation and paid sick and family leave. As independent contractors, Uber and Lyft drivers are not provided these benefits.
https://www.npr.org/2020/08/10/901099643/california-judge-or...
This law is impacting people outside of Uber and Lyft but those two are highlighted because it thwarted the lock down many municipalities had over cab companies and they did not want to give up the side benefits of that cash into their political coffers.
Then throw in that Uber and Lyft were truly effective alternatives to unionized mass transit lines operated in many cities and you can see the entirety of the political graft that was being upended. If you want more you just jump into that this is part of undoing decades of jobs bounded up in occupational licensing which only serves to protect vested interest who again are quick to maintain their political donations.
If they were out to protect workers they had many more ways to do it.
[0]https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/California-s-gi...
The very idea that health benefits are tied to employment is the real problem. In Canada they aren’t and thus it’s far more reasonable to work as a ride share driver here. If we could go even further and add pharmacare, dental, and even basic income to the services provided by the government, then we could get rid of minimum wage laws as well. When people are truly free to walk away from any job, then the market will decide the appropriate wage. Any job offering truly unacceptable wages at that point becomes a ripe target for automation.
"We’ve spent hundreds of hours meeting with policymakers and labor leaders to craft an alternative proposal for drivers that includes a minimum earnings guarantee, mileage reimbursement, a health care subsidy, and occupational accident insurance, without the negative consequences."
That's what's so disingenuous about this campaign by Uber and Lyft. They're pretending that being an employee would take away all of this flexibility, but the reality is the legislation left that flexibility in place. This is entirely an argument about benefits and protections, but Lyft and Uber are trying to pretend otherwise.
The earnings weren’t great, but it was very helpful as an extra. I had a fuel efficient car and kept track of all my expenses for deductions and made above minimum wage.
I’ve met plenty of lovely and fascinating people and had great, enjoyable conversations. I barely had any issues with riders.
This extra income helped me buy more stocks and make just a little bit more progress towards my financial goals. These stocks are still compounding away.
I’m a bit sad that this opportunity is now taken away from Californians.
Unfortunately many gig workers don't have the privilege. I'm assuming here but you probably had another job and benefits. There are many workers who don't, and are turning to Uber or Lyft just to put food on the table and are being forced into working without paid vacation, sick leave, or benefits simply because they have no other options.
I think corporations taking advantages of the imbalances is a race to the bottom. I believe we should find a 21st century approach to fixing these imbalances so that we don't take opportunities like yours away, but also work to protect labor rights/power that has been much eroded in the last decades.
The bummer is, as usual, the policy makers aren't seeing the nuance between the two and now drivers have to suffer the consequences and lost wages until the dust settles. Either the politicians are ignorant, or they're willfully ignoring the facts. Honestly neither would surprise me, it is CA after all :)
Is that stat accurate? If so, what is the argument for imposing a model that the vast majority of drivers don't support?
So this news really sucks, as you haven't been able to schedule DMV appointments at all and it looks like it will continue to be that way for the foreseeable futuere. I understand the Uber/Lyft may have had this a long time coming but it really is inconvenient for this to happen during COVID.
I'm not needing a taxi/uber/lyft for leaving the bar. I'm not going out to a restaurant with friends. I'm not traveling for work/fun and needing an lift to the hotel.
My usage of uber/lyft/taxis went from 100s per month down to 0. If this change happened in 2019, I'd of had significant changes to my daily routine. Today, this changes nothing.
I feel your pain though... living in SF made it a little too easy to just ignore the DL thing, and then I moved to Europe and lived in big cities with excellent public transportation.
Now that I'm finally doing it I'm kicking myself for not just getting it done years ago even if I might not have used it much.
I didn't have my driver's license for 10+ years, and thought the Californian DMV would surely make me take another driver's test because of that. Nope...after I did the written test, they said my license would come in the mail.
They aren't the innocent victims of gov't overreach for us to venerate. They stonewalled participation in writing a better AB5, because they want no rules but their own.
IMHO This would be a great time for TESLA to spin up a 100% employee based human driving service in California and gobble up the demand.
That said, this particular bill is pretty bad
With the technical might that is Silicon Valley, California only needs to hold their ground for a few months, then Lyft/Uber will become an afterthought
My employer pays probably a shit ton of money for my health insurance and what I get is the most subpar, confusing, broken and sometimes blatantly extortive service ever.
I live in Austin and sometimes I think if I really need a major procedure it would be just simpler to drive to Mexico and get it done there. In fact, that's what many people in South Texas do, so there's your benchmark for how broken is healthcare in the US.
According to the NYT: "During World War II, federal wage controls prevented employers from wooing workers with higher pay, so companies started offering health insurance as a way around the law. Of course, this form of nonmonetary compensation is still pay. When the war ended, the practice stuck."
I would much rather have a system where I was paid more and got to choose my health insurance provider. That way I could keep my insurance when I change jobs or if I wanted to freelance.
I run a company that helps software engineers find contract work, and the #1 question we get is "how much should I charge?". The #2 question is "what do I do for health insurance?"
It would seem like businesses brought this on themselves by offering benefits to get around compensation limits imposed by the government. Or you could say that this was caused by the government imposing limits on compensation. Super interesting to think that the root cause of our current problem could have been created 80 years ago.
For this change, companies like Uber and Lyft will have to completely reorganize their internal systems, ranging from their relationships with drivers to their tooling for organizing their drivers.
They say things like "passengers would experience reduced service, especially in suburban and rural areas" when what they really mean is "lyft would have to pay drivers to be available in that area even when demand is low, and Lyft doesn't want to pay drivers to idle in low demand spaces". There are various solutions to this, but they would all cost Lyft and Uber money, and heaven forbid they not be able to pass those expenses onto others, such as drivers that would hang around those areas _without_ any compensation.
The real heart of the matter here is that 10 years ago Uber disrupted the taxi industry. Now that they're the incumbents, changes like these put Uber and Lyft in a position to be disrupted by newer companies that more easily adapt to regulatory changes, or possibly the taxi companies they disrupted a decade ago. What we're seeing now is Lyft taking drastic measures to try and enrage the public against these policies.
This is a kid throwing a tantrum because they aren't getting cake after refusing to their chores.
Most rideshare drivers are not properly insured — while passengers are well-covered, the drivers and their vehicles are not. Because the drivers are contractors and must navigate the insurance system as individuals, many do not possess adequate knowledge and statistically speaking, a large number are guaranteed to make mistakes when purchasing coverage.
If drivers were employees, then accident coverage for drivers and their vehicles becomes the responsibility of the rideshare companies. There would be fewer bad outcomes for drivers, but because the rideshare companies would bear greater risk, their profits would be reduced.
I think the heart of the issue is the entirely artificial split between the concept of employee and contractor. (Much like the arbitrary split between taxi and car service in nyc.)
Making everyone a contractor for every job, with the terms of the job specified in the contract, seems much more straightforward. I don’t think that the concept of “employment” needs to be one size fits all, like standard W-2 is today in the US.
It’s an artifact of tax law, the scam that is withholding (make most people not “feel” their taxes), and a dominant manufacturing economy model that no longer exists in the US.
For a lot of people who drive Lyft, catastrophic care could be a good fit, e.g. people in between jobs who expect to have a company plan at their next full-time position. This wouldn't entirely close the gap towards providing gig workers with benefits, but it would have helped.
There's also people for whom Lyft is a second job -- I'm thinking of a ride with a Chicago public school teacher who drove on weekends and breaks -- and I don't think it makes sense to force Lyft to provide them with insurance.
[0] https://www.healthcare.gov/health-coverage-exemptions/2019-e....
companies and their employees would both be better supported if we established a Universal Basic Income.
https://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/27/business/job-insecurity-o...
America does not have a stories history of being labor friendly. It’s pretty much old European pissing competitions imported anew after WW2. Identity which the country had begun to schlep off between the Gilded Age and WW1. Refugees brought it back over.
The best part of all this is Adam Smith only ever mentions markets in the context of a free labor market, buoyed by government support of equality of condition.
But Smith and Aristotle, who wrote Democracy is likely the most moral government, are cast aside for James Madison who wrote the Senate ought to protect the rich from Democracy or the people will take all the aristocrats stuff.
This is all 2,000+ years old rhetoric. Human biology hasn’t evolved so fast in that time that such concerns of the past are rendered obsolete.
I don't really understand why this is necessary. Can't there still be flexible arrangements with drivers simply clocking their work and then getting some kind of salary derived from that? Can't they still get paid bonuses for driving in particularly unwanted hours?
Sure, this would be a complex contract, but I don't see how this is impossible. But I'm not a USA citizen so maybe there is something I'm missing.
Even if drivers don't game the system, there will always be natural imbalance between supply and demand. Surge bonuses can mitigate this imbalance, but scheduling shifts is the more economically efficient way to solve the imbalance problem (hence why they say schedule flexibility will no longer be a feature in a driver employment model).
What I'm guessing is that having people waiting being paid $0 is a core principal of Uber and Lyft. They hinge on over-supply. If they have to pay minimum wage to everyone who signs on, they need to be a lot more careful about who they allow to sign on, and when.
Saying it'll go to shift work though seems a bit extreme. Sounds like a tantrum to me.
Here in Slovakia even regular taxi drivers can be independent contractors and it's perfectly OK with the law, a lot of taxi drivers here even ride for multiple companies (regular taxi dispatchers, uber, bolt, their own prices for longer trips)
* Meal & rest breaks
* Callback pay
* Split Shift premiums
* Reporting premium (if you show up to work, but less work to do than half your scheduled shift)
The only way I see this working is somebody started some "Driver Pool" company that employed drivers fulltime and then Uber/Lyft/Doordash/Grubhub/etc all use that company.
So don't.
Either give the drivers what the California politicians are saying all Californians should have as a minimum benefit, and then go to court to argue why Lyft drivers should get something else, or let Lyft drivers set their own prices as they should be able to as independent contractors.
Both companies did go to court (which is why the shutdown is happening now and not eight months ago) and Uber does allow drivers to set their own rates.[1]
The people involved in these economic transactions know what they're getting into and consent. The negative externalities created (pollution, congestion, increased accidents, road wear & tear) are paid for by gas taxes, liability insurance, and road/bridge tolls. There are positive externalities such as lives saved due to fewer drunk drivers. It seems crazy to stop consenting adults from doing an activity that, as far as I can tell, mutually benefits everyone involved.
The root issue is that health insurance is tied to employment, which reduces human freedom and distorts the economy in diverse ways.
Solve the root issue and many things become less complicated.
How does it compare?
Some want to hinder our ability to trade with Chinese firms or hire foreign workers, others want to hinder our ability to take gig economy jobs or operate our home as an Airbnb.
The idea that these authoritarians have is that economic freedom is bad.
Why not just make laws that very specifically protect the most vulnerable and foist the tax burden fairly on everyone else? It's a historical accident that employee provided healthcare is tax deductible and that workers comp and social security/medicare are funded by payroll taxes.
All of the quirky rules and perverse incentives exist because at some point in the past they benefited some established interest group.
There is a very disappointing lack of creativity and willingness to look at the simple issue at the core of all of these problems. We can't let the most vulnerable workers be victimized, but we must do everything possible to preserve their economic freedom.
I think UBI is the closest we are seeing to a meaningful rethink of how we handle entitlement spending. We need the equivalent creativity to help manage the funding side.
-- Are free from control of the company in how the job is executed
-- Perform work outside the company's normal line of business
-- Are customarily engaged in this work anyway as an independent worker
This last condition is really unreasonable I think. Basically someone can only be counted as a contractor if they already do that kind of work as their primary employment. This basically forecloses anyone from casually offering their time as a driver, even if that's a perfectly efficient and reasonable thing for people to do.
If I were cynical, I would say that this is a concession to taxi / labor lobbies to protect their wages. Which I do not support.
Strange how Sacramento representatives, in trying to fix certain failings of current laws, always try to insert something extra like this while they do it.
[1] https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/faq_independentcontractor.htm
*Suburban and rural passenger transport on a route, within the same province regardless of distance, or shorter than 100 kilometres without regards of provincial boundaries, count as medium-distance mass transportation.
*Those medium-distance bus licences are tied to vehicle and non-transferable.
*Medium-distance bus owners have to get a licence called D4, which is similar in shape to a European intercity bus company licence, however, subject to a more stringent regime. I am going to explain that below.
*A D4 licence is primarily intended for end-to-end and end-to-mid transportation. Up to 12 such vehicles is allowed to be registered to each such licence.
*In case that there are multiple overlapping such routes, shorter route takes the precedence of transporting inside the common section. For example, if you want to go from B to C, and there is a medium-distance bus covering B-C route, and one covering A-B-C-D route, the latter cannot accept you (you could also think of this as a mandatory gentleman's agreement). However, if you want to go from B to D, you can take the latter without requiring a transfer in C.
*D4 licences have their passenger capacity strictly regulated, such that you cannot have more vehicles than that, 100% demand at least one week's worth of trips each year, and 80% demand in average throughout the validity of the licence.
*D4 licences are reviewed thoroughly during renewals as if you get afresh. It takes approximately two weeks to process a D4 licence application (one week in the provincial transportation coordination centre, one week in the national D4 coordination centre).
*Those medium distance buses are usually operated by private operators, and allowed to enter the city centers more freely than long distance buses, subject to the restrictions above.So the issue is clearly not the ridesharing business. But sure, I'll bite. Let's follow this to its logical conclusion.
So you kill Uber and Lyft in California. Great. The California elite can pat themselves on the back for protecting all those workers from choosing to take "bad" jobs.
But wait. Now what? How are you going to ensure all those unemployed drivers get healthcare benefits now?
Will you go after all the fast food restaurants where they'll be forced to work part-time now (also with no benefits) to feed their children? And then after that, the next set of low wage jobs? I guess nobody thought that far.
My hunch is, the people who cared most about passing this law don't actually care about the workers. They just care about the narrative, and the self satisfied feeling of hurting the "evil capitalist" boogeyman. Once the boogeyman is killed, they will move on and leave the workers behind to fend for themselves. Because the goal wasn't to give workers healthcare. That would've been a healthcare bill.
Wouldn't it have been sensible to enforce and regulate minimum fare thresholds based on ride and distance which can be even applied on taxis?
Now they are motivating me to look for alternatives and actually give 'some random taxi app' a name.
this combined with "dont attribute to malice what can be attributed to stupidity" leads me to doubt their professionalism. I think this is a huge mistake. and if it's not a mistake but inability of the company to execute, then that's on executives.
You called some taxi company, might get put on hold, told them where to pick you up, and they would show up anywhere between 30 and 60 minutes later. Sometimes they would never show up. Many smaller cities in California had no taxi service of any kind. And good luck getting a taxi home from a bar after midnight!
Uber and Lyft made it realistic for people to expect that they could actually get a taxi in California in a reasonable amount of time, pretty much any time of day or night. That's why people used them so much. This is not something the older taxi companies or "some random taxi app" will be able to pull off.
If so, would there be an equity-based loophole that would allow it to continue operating in California under these rules?
[note: I'm not being sarcastic about calling the Facebook moms group “highly powerful”—they have significant civic clout in local politics/business/activism.]
At the end of the day, the added value of Uber and Lyft is not that amazing, and should be easy to replicate in a p2p system.
It would
1) workaround the law, there's no employer, no company, and no one to sanction 2) be impossible to regulate or shutdown
Currently drivers don't get to set their own prices and have to abide by other such things that don't make them independent contractors in the eyes on the law.
We either have "full time = forty hours of work and tons of benefits that have been shoehorned into employment because our government doesn't provide it" or "part time = less than forty hours and you get abused"
I'm not privy so I won't pretend to have the right idea, but it seems like there should be a middle ground.
1) What do services like Uber/Lyft/Doordash (who are proposing Prop 22) currently offer in terms of benefits?
2) How do current benefits compare to what will be mandated by Prop 22?
3) If there is any difference, why? Is a state law required to treat your contractors better than the bare minimum?
I mean other than the fact that it would make no money.
What could California do to the developers of such an app?
Wasn’t this a proposed example application of ethereum?
However it's likely that without changes, they will just operate in a few core urban regions rather than the widespread coverage they have today.
Sigh.
Either the driver rented the car to a middleman who rented the medallion from a rich owner, or said owner was selling and financing (most banks won't touch these medallions!) a medallion at a ridiculous interest rate to a driver that plans to use it as his retirement savings.
Pre-Uber, the more I spoke to cab drivers the more it seemed their industry was a pyramid schemed aimed at helping established rent-seeker take advantage of often poor new immigrants. Uber brought a breeze of fresh air: Someone could simply buy a car, calculate the depreciation and it's value on the market (since unlike medallions cars are relatively liquid assets!) do rideshare and calculate their profits or loss. They can get out of the game at anytime.
I really wish we could stop calling Uber ridesharing, when the majority of their business is in fact not. It cause problems for actual ridesharing, which do enjoy some legal protection in some countries.
Source: I run a company that helps freelance/contract software engineers find work.
The gov will have to weigh the benefit of people having affordable rides on demand plus people who want “side money” vs higher fares plus people who now are either out of a job or out of side money.
In other words, I as a rational consumer will use the service that is cheapest when all other factors are identical. Driver's as rational actors will do precisely the opposite - the one paying me the most - as neither platform found a way to differentiate themselves on driver benefits.
This system behaves according to market principles and as such, costs need to be constantly cut to fight off competing rideshare services.
Über needs lyft to die and vice versa. The real battle can be further abstracted to the investment firms supporting each company. Since the investors know that so long as their bet is funded and working towards one of the two endgames for rideshares (full self driving or death of competition) it doesn't matter how much money is lost per ride.
But there is no right to a business model.
Lyft is a business model that found a loophole in a previously regulated business and was able to combine a technology upgrade with a way to pay substandard compensation. That legislators closed this loophole is not a surprise. The exact legislation will never be perfect, and will probably not be changed if it is "good enough".
If Lyft and Uber want to back up their claims that they aren't livery services but simply a technology platform, then there should be no problem with eliminating the independent contractor drivers.
The fact that they have to "shut down" only proves they were misrepresenting drivers for as long as they have existed.
This makes no sense. There are industries ALL over that depend heavily on independent contractors - it's incredibly common in construction, agriculture, trade services, etc.
And yes, the business absolutely can operate without any given independent contractor, but it cannot operate without access to any independent contractors at all.
Hell, what do you think a "general contractor" does on a job site? Because the answer is basically organize a bunch of independent contractors. They also couldn't exist if legally they had to hire every plumber/painter/electrician/drywaller/roofer/framer etc full time.
So while I think uber/lyft DO need legislation to address, I think hamfisting them into the legal model of full time employment is... fucking dumb.
Why do you think they couldn't operate?
Everybody likes to complain about California. When I was born here it was about 15m people. Now its 40m. If you are unhappy, please leave to a lower cost, lower tax state. People have been predicting California's decline my entire life and the real problem is it can't handle the growth. Also, California has been sucking up employing the young and of mid-west and south for a century. Now those states get mad when "Californians" move to places like Austin. Where do you think they came from originally?
[1] - https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/8/18535627/uber-lyft-sf-traf...
[2] - https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-uber-driver-w...
Yes, you can say that increased congestion from single occupancy vehicles leads to a tragedy of the commons for those on buses. This can be addressed by making bus only lanes (and they should be bus only lanes, not bus and taxi lanes)
For the rest of the congestion, there's not much difference between rideshare vehicles and private vehicles. Rideshare vehicles might be empty while looking for passengers (net positive contribution to congestion), but also provide pooling (net negative contribution). Private vehicles also circle blocks looking for parking spaces (net positive contribution).
> For San Francisco traffic congestion increased by 60% between 2010-2016[1]
It's hard to pin this solely on ridesharing though. There have been no lack of road construction projects in the last decade. More recently, the Van Ness work has been an absolute clusterfuck for San Francisco traffic.
Wrong. Turns out, people aren't willing to pay that much for people to clean up their streets - only $1-5 on average per job. Yet it takes an hour to clean the street sometimes. That is an abysmal hourly wage, how can you expect desperate impoverished single mothers trying to work 3 jobs to live off of this?? Clean Streets ought to give a living wage and full health benefits to anyone who signs up. Oh, except... just one problem... the 1% transaction fee isn't enough to fund that, and jacking up pricing just means people stop using the app altogether.
So yes, in theory this app is great - if you can restrict its use to only non-desperate people. But desperate people would nevertheless try to make a living on it, and you would get lambasted by human rights activists for exploiting the poor. Sigh, I wish there were a way for things like this to exist.
In a difference landscape the Uber model might be sustainable, but the middle class is being completely gutted. California especially is headed toward a Hawaii-esque bifurcated economy, comprised of a wealthy minority and a massive underclass of service-industry people catering toward their every want and need.
Voters in the US also don’t want to pay for any of this.
Hence, the politicians that get elected are ones that give people education via student loans, and healthcare/unemployment benefits tied to employer/employment status. Those politicians get to claim they helped people, and they get to claim they kept taxes low.
The game is to try to reduce your tax burden as much as possible, and don’t slip up and end up in the bottom 3, maybe even 4 income quintiles.
Voters in the US are already paying for healthcare for all, plus they are paying extra to support an entire healthcare insurance industry.
The USA doesn't (generally) let people die if they can't afford healthcare (people may be driven into bankruptcy, but they won't be left to die), so those costs are all getting paid by the public. And it'd be cheaper to pay for preventative care than to wait and pay for care for those that are so sick that they have no choice but to see an expensive doctor.
Absolute insanity. Yet changing this at a fundamental level is somehow considered radical, nothing we can do etc., except what every other western country has already done. We keep telling ourselves we have the best medical care in the world, which anyone who has lived outside the US for some time can attest is complete bullshit.
But Ontario has free public healthcare based on residence status, while Cali doesn't. So a better question might be what is it that US taxes are paying for that are so important (but that the neighbor in the north can do without just fine) that it can't afford healthcare instead?
> Voters in the US also don’t want to pay for any of this.
A wealth tax is pretty popular. And we spend a whole lot in health insurance premiums.
Oh, and we could cut our defense (offense) spending in half and still be spending a good bit more than China.
There is more than enough money to go around, it's that there is a lot of it being wasted. The government and states failed to provide a good taxation and spending model. It's not the issue of the voters not willing to pay for it.
And despite the low wages both Uber and Lyft continue to operate at a loss! The business model just doesn't work and no amount of softbank cash can change that.
This goes to say that you cannot trust private companies like Lyft for critical services. The government actually has been transparent about this change and Lyft is acting like a spoilt child, not even willing to try the employee route.
Lyft pulling the rug overnight is in bad faith.
It is not that lyft is striking, their product and process is not ready yet to do full time employees yet.
The folks I spoke to were all doing hectic work trying to build it out , my understanding is they originally planned to do this by November.
Even if the tech is ready , converting 1000’s to folks full time is ton of government paperwork that is going to take time .
They first have to figure out who wants to be full time and who they want to be retain full time .
It is not like they were given a reasonable 6-12 months to comply and they screwed up . Uber is also in the same boat.
The California government is the party that's been acting like a brat here. The rideshare drivers of California overwhelmingly didn't want this approach to receiving benefits. Lawmakers got jealous that economic activity was happening in a new way that they couldn't tax and control the way they were used to, and instead of solving problems creatively, attempted to slam a non-nail with a hammer. They were warned in no uncertain terms that it'd hurt.
Easy to do now, considering the rideshare volumes are probably lower than without SIP.
If anyone builds this, there will be no way central planners (I use these two word to remain polite) can stick their nose in the free exchange of money and services between drivers and driven.