I think the law will be bad for the people it affects, so this is good news for Uber drivers. Uber isn't operating at a profit, so they don't have extra margin to pass on in the form of extra driver pay or employee benefits. If Uber has to shrink their business in California or exit entirely, that won't be good for drivers either.
It reminds me of before my software engineering career, when I was working at The Gap. The job wasn't great, but a lot of people really needed more hours. Unfortunately, there was a rule that nobody could work more than 29 hours a week. Everyone hated it. Employees hated it the most because if they needed extra money they couldn't take an extra shift. The managers hated it too because it was just more rules for them to deal with.
Apparently, this rule existed because there was a law saying that past 30 hours a week, employees had to get some extra benefits. Gap corporate just changed the job to avoid that law. As a result, that job got worse, and nobody got more benefits. Just unintended consequences.
This line of thinking can be used against almost any form of labor protections. People don't work in sweatshops because they love the job, they do it because they are desperate. That desperation allows their employer to take advantage of them. The government therefore needs to step in to protect the workers from being taken advantage of. In an ideal world that regulation would also come with some type of social safety net to protect the workers in event of any of these negative repercussions. That safety net is much more difficult to get support for politically (because it costs money) so it is usually an afterthought.
I hear this argument a lot, and I wonder, would anyone who has gone through an extended period of poverty agree with it? I went through this myself, and all the worker "protection" laws just made it that much harder to get back on my feet because they limited how much I could work. Or forced me to allocate some of my pay to benefits I didn't need rather than the expensive treatment I desperately needed to stay alive in the short-term.
I drove for Uber and it was seriously the only job I could get and it saved my life. I know of many other drivers who are battling disabling conditions who drive for Uber as well. Jobs that are as flexible as Uber are non-existent.
I find it really disappointing how many people debate this issue without ever actually listening to the people in poverty. That means talking to real people doing the job. Not just the protestors in the streets. And frankly, if you have time to protest, you're probably not that poor. The poorest of the poor work whenever they can and do not spend time on things that don't earn them money.
> if you have time to protest, you're probably not that poor
i dont know what protests you've been attending but the one's ive helped at for laundry and warehouse workers were filled with people that were not only supporting families on minimum wage but also contained people who were here on visas.
in america you're always taking a risk by protesting an employer.
Minimum wage is not, on its own, enough to afford average rent anywhere in America. If you're making minimum wage and have no other access to support: you're poor.
This is, ultimately the major reason why the status quo never changes here: people dont want to acknowledge their class.
I'm not a fan of the whole "late-stage capitalism" meme, but I think that perfectly describes your complaint here.
The ideal approach is two pronged, you raise the standard which benefits society as a whole and increase the social safety net to take care of those few lost in transition.
The same principle applies to a wide variety of economic changes from increased labor regulations, to housing, to free trade, to automation. Your complaint here is mainly that we haven't followed through on protecting those caught in transition. We shouldn't fall into the trap of mistaking that for a valid criticism against raising the societal standard.
My point is that it's impossible for us to keep up and fix everyone's problem for them. We need to empower people to make their own choices. That's the best way to help.
And my point is that many times a decision made out of desperation is not really a decision at all. We should empower people so that they truly have a choice on some of these issues.
There has to be a line somewhere, though, right? We don’t want people to be able sign away their labor for the next X years and accidentally reinvent indentured servitude, for example.
Yes, definitely. I would view that as restricting choice.
I think the best way to increase wages is more and more jobs so that workers have bargaining power. I've used Uber as a fall-back and it dramatically increases my bargaining power.
I know at least in some situations it goes like this:
A group of people have been living off the land for centuries. At some point a government comes in and takes the land from them to sell to a factory owner so the government can profit. With no land to farm, working at that factory becomes their best option. But the workers get abused. Women get raped. Their pay is stolen. Still they don’t have a better option. They try to unionize. The government police come in and kill the union leaders. The people keep working there because they have no better option. That does not mean the situation isn’t horrible.
It’s not enough to say they chose this job freely. A lot of coercion goes on. How prevalent is this stuff? I’m not sure. But don’t assume most sweatshop workers just decided this was best with no coercion. People like you and me aren’t paying much attention and a lot of bad stuff happens when we’re not looking. It doesn’t help that corporations benefit greatly from reduced labor prices and so the media and advertisers don’t want to talk about these issues.
There's truth to that story, but it doesn't paint the whole picture.
Rural life is dull, you have a limited social circle and limited access to culture. And you have few opportunities. People today still crowd into overpriced cities with poor living conditions, because they dream of 'making it', and they can't bear the thought of toiling away at agriculture (or at a lesser job).
In China, an entire generation has been uplifted out of poverty by voluntarily relocating off of farms and into manufacturing jobs, and it's been so successful that it's cited as a reason for the popularity of current authoritarian leadership.
I don't get the comparison with China. They still have an incredibly significant agricultural workforce (like 30% of workers are in agriculture) compared to 2% in the US. The US already moved people off farms to factories before WWII and we're in a different stage of economic development.
We're not talking about subsistence farming vs driving for Uber here.
That's a tragic story but I don't see how it's relevant to Uber. There's absolutely no coercion going on. People are free to join and leave as they wish. I still believe that having the ability to drive for Uber is always better than not having that opportunity.
I largely agree with that, but with a couple of possible exceptions where it is relevant. 1) Some people bought cars or quit other jobs because Uber offered a much larger pay and bonuses two years ago. 2) Uber also killed the taxi industry, which offered better working conditions to drivers.
I would be curious to hear you expand on your point here. It is in the format of a correction that is refuting my comment, but I honestly see those two statements as nearly identical. People are desperate because they don't have any other better alternatives.
I'm not the poster you replied to, but I can weigh in with my experience. I think the two statements, while similar, are usually employed by those with opposing socioeconomic views.
>People don't work in sweatshops because they love the job, they do it because they are desperate
>People don't work in sweatshops because they love the job, they do it because its better than any of their alternatives
The first statement is often part of a moral argument against exploitation and expressed in conjunction with a an desire or indifference to eliminating the job. The second is usually used in an argument which frames the worker as a rational actor and lacks the moral judgement.
A common, if inflammatory, example is sex work. On one hand, sex workers can be seen a desperate, vulnerable, and forced by circumstances into an inherently exploitative relationship. Those that hold this position often believe that sex work should be made or kept illegal to protect the individuals from this exploitation.
The alternative framing is that sex workers choose the job because it is the least bad of the available options. Removing the option will only push workers into a less preferable occupation.
Not the OC, but I’ve heard that comment line often:
- what appears like sweatshops are actually significantly preferable working conditions for the local population; workshops are hot and crowded sure, but it’s sheltered and beats back-breaking farming, where pests can eat your yearly revenue overnight; (that point you agree with, as far as I can tell)
- so much that, in some conditions “sweatshops” are a positive thing and local people are excited over it: they show up early, some singing, in their best clothes; (I have no evidence of this handy right now, you might disagree but if you read the first point, it shouldn’t be a surprise); example of that is the young rural Chinese workers who were happy to be hosted on bunk beds at Foxconn and others because that meant they could save more money, talking about it like Facebook grads talk about free food; that effect might not last, doesn’t appear to have for Foxconn (or Facebook);
- in the early conditions, “sweatshops” are great and external political forces trying to ban them, or more often regulate them out of profitability i.e. existence, comes off as horribly misguided attempts; an extreme version of “better is the enemy of good” difficult to parse for a population without many options;
- adding expensive controls works against workers’ expressed interests that could be either a. legitimate but conditional (they need the money and the local standards are low, working fast is a tiring but reasonable way to achieve their goal) or b. the capitalist version of Stockholm syndrome. In my experience, it’s nowhere easy to sort the two edge-cases apart. If that’s the case, a market-liberal option is to let bad employers loose their workers by making sure there’s low employment overall, the places with real opportunities can poach them away. Also essential: personal growth needs to happen; I wasn’t super hopeful that “the market” would deliver until Lambda school.
That line of reasoning has been the first criticism of trade and workers’ unions since the XIXth century and the vertiginous growth of the Industrial revolution: they defend current tradesmen and employees against newcomers. I think trade unions can do amazing things to help spread the wealth but I would be wary about that edge.
There are newer arguments in favour of Uber in that sense:
- how easy it is to get a job, fast even: a massive upside of Uber is that you can enrol under a day and get paid within seconds of dropping your passenger; people with stranger schedules, deaf people, with non-violent criminal background have testified in that sense; anyone familiar with “Growth”, especially on a platform would recognise the approach;
- at this point, “unintended” consequences are widely documented; public servants should expect rules like that would back-fire, and adapt their rulings; Uber’s margins or lack thereof are public; other similar companies have left markets, leaving their workers in the dust; it’s easy to confuse the valuation of an IPO with free cash, to mistake Growth for Profit (God knows every reporter covering tech makes that mistake) but I doubt that Uber can afford to raise compensation by a lot;
- there are now many alternatives in the gig-economy: bad employers cannot retain workers; e.g. Amazon’s warehouse would not retain anyone if they were that bad. I’m less familiar with Amazon and convinced by that one, but if you go on money-making/saving forums, you’ll notice how so many contributors have tried and compared dozens of gig-platforms. The common thread? Everyone there started by being excluded from the standard employment market by personal circumstances, unintended consequences of regulation, prejudice or sometimes just being a terrible human begin. But that’s the starting point.
I really don’t think that the gig economy is the solution: banning 29-hour limits, having incentives to accommodate for handicap, family life, etc. for any business that can shift hours also need to be in place. Few people want a series of gigs; for the few who do, what many of those companies have done isn’t worse than the alternative. For the many who want a stable, predictable job, I don’t think the solution is to regulate industries where tasks are, say, very time-specific.
Disclaimer: I’ve worked for Deliveroo (the non-US equivalent to Doordash) and dealt with those questions a lot. I’m overall proud of the work there, from many personal contacts with riders; I also have a litany of complaints handy, mainly because it was my job to prioritise them all (and there were a lot and many were really bad but not as bad as unemployment/dealing drugs/failing to make it as a Grime singer).
I would have a more critical take against Uber Taxi, mainly around how they abused the financial illiteracy of their workers. That’s one aspect I would certainly want to see regulated.
>This line of thinking can be used against almost any form of labor protections
If the government really care about worker well being then the government should directly help them, instead of using company as middleman. For example by providing universal health care or universal basic income.
You seem to be implying a false choice here. Specifically that we (the government is comprised of individuals) can not engage both in labor protections at the same time as we attempt to create a universal health care system.
Right, but you're questioning a position that doesn't really exist. Pretty much everyone that is a strong advocate for labour protections would also like universal healthcare, it's just much more likely we can achieve labour protection in the short term than universal healthcare.
Sure, but if that is your position you should go out and advocate for this better thing instead of bemoaning the efforts other people are making as misplaced.
This shows up anytime people try to make some sort of progressive improvement to society, people come out of the woodwork to complain that it's not the right solution, without doing anything (other than complaining I guess) to motivate a better solution.
While I agree with you that the unintended consequences of this bill will be a net negative, I take particular issue with this statement, "Uber isn't operating at a profit, so they don't have extra margin to pass on in the form of extra driver pay or employee benefits."
That's not how it works. Uber isn't operating at a profit because their current-investor-subsidized-rates are below the cost of their service. But there is a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem there: there rates are low because they want to gain marketshare, which is only enabled by the flood of VC/IPO money.
Eventually, all of the rideshare companies will need to raise their rates to cover the cost of service, and that cost should include reasonable remuneration for their workers. If it turns out the market isn't viable at those costs (i.e. if people just stop taking rideshares altogether because it's too expensive), then it never should have existed in the first place.
I don't think it will be a binary black or white, but rather a reduction. Which means a reduction in pay and a reduction of hours. Subsidy via VC money is an independent modifier.
If it turns out the market isn't viable at those costs (i.e. if people just stop taking rideshares altogether because it's too expensive), then it never should have existed in the first place.
I think we basically agree. The dangerous outcome is that Uber becomes more expensive for end users in California, Uber drivers become employees, but they make exactly minimum wage because that's the minimum Uber can pay them, and Uber's profits in California go to zero. (I doubt the Uber business will cease to exist because taxis are so bad in comparison.) Uber's market shrinks because they became more expensive, so they can hire fewer people.
Is that better for anyone? It sounds worse for both Uber drivers and for Uber users than the status quo. Unless you think that a minimum wage job is superior to the current job of Uber driver, and we really need more minimum wage jobs.
Things that can't go on forever don't go on forever. Uber's business model is unsustainable at its current prices. At some point, the investor money will run out, and it will have to either raise prices or cut costs. It's very hard to see where it can cut costs.
Which means it is inevitable that Uber will become more expensive, or it will fail. It's just a matter of time.
If Uber shuts down transportation won't disappear. People will have to switch to modes of transportation that may be a little more expensive but actually allow the workers to make a real living without taking on all the risk.
I don't think we can be certain that displaced drivers won't find other opportunities. I imagine most of the appeal is the low friction to entering rideshare driving vs. traditional employment (fast food chains, etc). The talking point that people are somehow skilled enough for rideshare driving, yet not other low-skill work, seems to me like a talking point to have discouraged AB5 from happening. I question the factuality of the statement.
This seems like a weird statement. The people driving for Uber presumably looked at their options and decided to drive instead of apply to fast food chains. If they wanted to work in fast food, they could have?
Maybe I misunderstand, but what you're saying sounds vaguely like "I know what's better for you".
What I am saying is, misplaced workers (if Uber does indeed become subject to AB5 and they must be employees) is these folks will find other work. The related point is these people are fully capable of that work.
Finding new work can be painful, but the damages are over-stated because there's low friction to entering work that doesn't demand specialized skills. Do you have two hands and can walk? Great, you can work the french fry fryer at McD's.
It was a single example of a low-skilled job. The generalized point is that you can go to any employer looking for low-skilled labor. There's high transferability between these sort of jobs.
My point was that there's not an unlimited supply of low-skilled jobs. The fact that if you're qualified for one, you're qualified for another isn't really relevant when they can be very hard to find in some areas.
There's been a bifurcation in employment: high-skilled and low-skilled employees are most in demand. The service industry is hurting for people. Hotels, restaurants, fast food places, etc. In fact, the NYTimes recent wrote about the hotel industry:
Whether or not it's profitable for Uber or any business to hire you, is that business' decision. It's not yours to make. And there is no evidence that ridesharing companies cannot afford to pay drivers more. What if prices go up 20-30% and the level of service stays exactly the same? Then it was a silly concern with no basis in reality. I don't think evidence shows that Uber will immediately fire all drivers if they must be classified as employees.
Do you genuinely believe that this change will have no effect on the market? That the number of people driving will be the same? That everyone will just be able to continue to drive for Uber/Lyft, on the same schedule that they currently do, but make 20-30% more?
I know that the answer is "no" since you've already said "they can just go work a fast food fryer". But that's hard to reconcile with this last statement of yours.
This is an interesting read about the hotel industry. I don't think it disproves the idea though that there are people who want to low-skilled jobs who can't find them. For instance, from that article:
"The popular Mackinac Island in northern Michigan has only 500 year-round residents but approximately 3,000 jobs in the summer months. Delays on the approval for seasonal worker visas this year forced one resort to temporarily close its restaurant."
When it's their "season", they're probably hurting for staff, but when it's not, all those thousands of people are out of work and need to try to find a new job...
I have fully employed friends who have driven uber during moments when they needed more cash, who would not have gone through hoops to work a second formal job.
How will the law change anything for Uber or it's drivers? As I understand it, this law just codifies existing legal precents under which Uber has already successfully withstood legal challenges. It doesn't really change the nature of the ongoing legal challenges that Uber will continue to face.
IMHO, the whole point of this law is just to weaken the existing precedent by giving exemptions to the Lawmakers' buddies and donors.
Isn't the law sort of protecting people from themselves? My understanding is the majority of Uber drivers don't even make money, they just convert equity from their car into cash. Making them employees might mean forcing it to be an actual viable job, and it might mean that job no longer exists. But these people are probably better off selling their cars (and buying economical ones) than working for Uber anyway.
Interesting that this comment is getting poor reception when this has shown, historically, to be a very effective way of dealing with oligarchs. Especially ones that, as you've correctly stated, have a long history of breaking laws and abusing workers and customers.
I challenge anyone reading this thread to really criticize why they believe their own personal interests are aligned in any way with the people who have a controlling share in uber.
> their own personal interests are aligned in any way with the people who have a controlling share in CorpX
Is that really the bar we should be using? My interests don't align with the corner store small business owner who sells bread in a small rural town, should I be okay with terminating her business too?
It reminds me of before my software engineering career, when I was working at The Gap. The job wasn't great, but a lot of people really needed more hours. Unfortunately, there was a rule that nobody could work more than 29 hours a week. Everyone hated it. Employees hated it the most because if they needed extra money they couldn't take an extra shift. The managers hated it too because it was just more rules for them to deal with.
Apparently, this rule existed because there was a law saying that past 30 hours a week, employees had to get some extra benefits. Gap corporate just changed the job to avoid that law. As a result, that job got worse, and nobody got more benefits. Just unintended consequences.