The Uber Economy Needs a New Category of Worker 273
An anonymous reader writes: Uber headlines a new group of companies building out the so-called "sharing economy," in which people can easily hop in and out of employment modes. Somebody can suddenly start hiring out his driving services to others, taking breaks and setting hours as he prefers, and then just as quickly stop participating forever. An article at NY Magazine says we need to define a new class of worker to fit Uber drivers and similar at-will employees. "According to American employment law, though, our driver must be one or the other, a 1099 contractor or a W2 employee. And the gulf between the two in terms of mandated government protections and benefits is as wide as the line between them is blurry. As such, thousands of on-demand-economy employees and scads of lawyers are at war in court to determine what camp our average driver should fall into. ... It might be time for a new standard that splits the difference between the two — a 'dependent contractor,' as some labor experts call it — that would be better for businesses, consumers, and all those workers themselves."
No, these companies need to follow the law (Score:5, Insightful)
Look, I get that these guys are trying to do something new. And for that I applaud them and their efforts. However until there are new laws supporting the sort of things they're trying to do they need to follow the current laws especially regarding employment.
Just because you came up with a new way to run things doesn't mean that the rest of it like it or agree that's the way the world should work. Especially when it seems like all you're doing is trying to dodge current legal frameworks without any good reason for doing so.
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Just because you came up with a new way to run things doesn't mean that the rest of it like it or agree that's the way the world should work.
Yes, but you can fuck off, anyway. The employees like it, the customers like it, and nobody who didn't voluntarily put themselves in this situation is affected by it, save for the raw dynamics of business (i.e. some other company is capturing your market better than you, so you're losing business and they're gaining business; this is why the RIAA wants rights-enforcement jurisdiction over RIAA-independent artists, not just those who sign with one of the RIAA labels). Complaining that you don't agree with
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Re:No, these companies need to follow the law (Score:4, Insightful)
"The employees like it, the customers like it" By that reasoning, it should be legal to sell narcotics on the street.
Yes, it probably should be... and I don't like that either, but our current war on drugs is stupid, expensive, and isn't remotely preventing it anyway...
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Perhaps it should! What matter of reasoning is it that you don't like a behavior, and so others shouldn't be allowed to engage in said behavior? Before you know it, we'll live in homes we buy outright, but our neighbors will tell us what color to paint the door and what type of mailbox to install!
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Otherwise you're just another dull keyboard warrior who doesn't understand the concepts of rule of law and of public property, i.e. property in which Government Inc. (one citizen, one share) has a legitimate ownership interest.
This sort of attitude is one reason I favor strongly reducing the existence and extent of public property - because it removes an excuse for you to meddle.
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Look, I get that these guys are trying to do something new. And for that I applaud them and their efforts. However until there are new laws supporting the sort of things they're trying to do they need to follow the current laws especially regarding employment.
Like say threats?
"An Uber driver left a woman a voicemail message threatening to "cut [her] neck" if she cancelled a taxi with him again."
http://www.independent.co.uk/n... [independent.co.uk]
They have been suspended, whatever that means in Uber world.
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True. Taxi drivers would never engage in such behavior! Never! It must be Uber!!!
Taxi drivers have invested a lot more into their occupation than Uber drivers. They have a lot more to lose.
In the past this has been working under the table (Score:5, Insightful)
People who do small side jobs (including myself occasionally) often aim for cash payment to avoid government reporting (especially so-called "self-employment" taxes); it's been called "working under the table" forever. Or if you do regular contract work (which I also do), you get an LLC, go the 1099 route and bury as many expenses you can against the LLC to avoid reporting much of a profit (because profit=taxes). Both routes are common and well-accepted.
>> dependent contractor
Please [diety], no. We just got done with this fight. If you define the terms of success and let me pick how it's done within certain standards of quality, I'm a contractor, and I'll take cash. If you ALSO want me to behave like an employee, controlling my hours, sitting through useless HR presentations, and acting like an agent of a corporation, then I'm an employee and I want the full benefit package. It's pretty black-and-white and has never really been an issue in the dozens of contracts I've been involved in.
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I would say working under the table is a little different class; it might be the same ends, getting some extra cash, but working under the table is more like "doing odd jobs." (Tax law already accommodates this; you don't need to give a W2 or 1099 to someone you pay less than $500/year.) On the "employee" side, you just have more flexibility in reporting your income; not reporting is still a violation.
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If you ALSO want me to behave like an employee, controlling my hours, sitting through useless HR presentations, and acting like an agent of a corporation, then I'm an employee and I want the full benefit package
Funny, that's exactly what contractors do. I was a contractor for 4 years at a desk where I had to show up in exact hours, attend OIG presentations about sexual harassment and child pornography on business systems, and of course was not allowed to post on Facebook where I work.
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Then more likely you weren't a contractor. You were an employee treated as a contractor.
It's why tax agencies are scrutinizing employment contracts because there are a bunch of differences between a contractor and an employee. And si
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Then more likely you weren't a contractor. You were an employee treated as a contractor.
It's why tax agencies are scrutinizing employment contracts because there are a bunch of differences between a contractor and an employee.
Well maybe the IRS should scrutinize itself, because guess who hires contractors who must come in between 6am-6pm, span 8 hours, take a half-hour lunch (and it MUST be taken--if you work straight with no lunch, you must stay 8.5 hours and file a 30 minute lunch, and it can't be taken within an hour of arriving or leaving), track your time using only the Deltek software, use their specific tools and software systems, attend sexual harassment training required by HR, attend yearly presentations by the agency
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Not necessarily, this is almost exactly how it works on Federal Contracts. You work in the federal building on their networks, etc. You have
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Funny, that's exactly what contractors do. I was a contractor for 4 years at a desk where I had to show up in exact hours, attend OIG presentations about sexual harassment and child pornography on business systems, and of course was not allowed to post on Facebook where I work.
You weren't a contractor, you were an employee.
If you did that for 4 years, it may be worth your time to open a complaint with the IRS, the company owes you SS contributions and tax payments. You might be shocked how much money it ends up being.
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The IRS hires contractors this way. The IRS also defines, in IRS publications, what a contractor is. Do you not know what OIG is? It's the Office of Inspector General, the law enforcement branch of any government agency. Social Security has OIG, the IRS has its own OIG, your state unemployment agency has its own OIG. These are the people who show up at your house with guns when you lie on your forms and get money that doesn't belong to you.
The IRS, the agency which defines what a contractor is, hires
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Glad that works for you, but you do realize that there are an awful lot of contractors who sign contracts stipulating that they'll be available certain hours, work in a certain place, and
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>> So which party is going to commit political suicide by removing it?
I'll bite. I'll bet it's the Democrats, who start to shift more retirement benefits into services (particularly health services, food stamps and housing assistance for the elderly; all such programs currently exist) and away from cash payouts (which will be how they get some Republicans to go along). Long story short, the government will claim that your total benefit continues to increase while your cash payments drop.
(Many corpor
independent contractor (Score:2)
No! (Score:2, Informative)
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" ...we need to define a new class..." (Score:2)
Man-in-the-street translation (Score:2)
"We need workers that have as much rights as machines, make us money, but are never in the way, and require no maintenance"
Well, you can't have both. Either you are a non-profit organisation that facilitates people doing something for each other, or you are a for-profit employer with employees. Uber seems to think that the term "sharing economy" means that everybody "shares" their money towards Uber itself.
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Asking the Fed to print money to fund anything will by definition create inflation. It might take it a while to hit prices, but it would, and has. Since the Fed's inception, the purchasing power of the dollar has fallen 98%. Prior to that, it's purchasing po
Uber as the Agent (Score:3)
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And there's definitely no cliché of the starving actor at all.
Casual or irregular worker (Score:2)
In the UK this would be classed as a "Casual or Irregular Worker" under the following criteria:
Disposable Workers (Score:2)
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What, exactly, is your malfunction? Uber requires that you take one trip once every 180 days to stay active. Not exactly suffering from a lack of flexibility there.
Now they do get to arbitrarily set rates, which I don't like. Which is why I don't drive for them.
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We've had periods where McDonald's employees were directed to clock out if there were no customers in the restaurant, because they "weren't working", so it's almost literally true.
In and Out (Score:2)
News for nerds? (Score:2)
Stuff that matter? This is an article about some academic excercise in employment law?
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Did you forget who owns Slashdot now?
Not really getting it. (Score:2)
I'm fairly certain contingent work [wikipedia.org] existed before Uber.
Why do we need to reinvent this, unless we're simply looking for a new way to reclassify full time employees as contractors?
Turking it out (Score:2)
In recent scifi I think this is classed as "turk" work, a unfortunate term based on the scam of the Mechanical Turk, which Amazon also adopted for one of their service offerings.
This term is used in at least the Metatropolis story anthologies by multiple authors (John Scalzi editing) and there's development on the theme in the plot of some stories (Detroit) so I don't want to give too many details.
http://www.goodreads.com/book/... [goodreads.com]
There's some parallel with "runners" from various cyberpunk scifi and gaming,
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Yeah, I was thinking that too! The stories from Metatropolis were sort of the polar opposite of the world of Snow Crash, where the only workers left worked on big government projects to unwittingly destroy humanity as we know it (or well, at least just the CS nerds)
I do kinda think this is the way of the future, though, whether we like it or not. Used to be that you got a job with one employer for life, and a 30-year mortgage to tie you down and help maintain "stability" in the economy.
But to some extent
A new category of worker (Score:2)
NOOOOOO!!!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
What do think caused all of the stock market crashes: volatility. When you have people with no stability, like say working for a few days, then trying to find another job, they spend most of their time trying to find a job rather than actually working and doing something productive. Worse yet, with this kind of stability, people can not even begin to image of buying a house, a car, and I doubt working day to day, you can even get an apartment.
This form of volatile, "at-will" employment is just INSANE.
By all means (Score:2)
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McDonald's have experimented with this - people forced to clock out when the restaurant was empty because "they weren't working".
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When I was working at BK, there were times I'd have rather done that than do the cleaning, but I don't recall a time when neither was needed except during some severe weather where we wound up just closing early for safety reasons (blackouts and hot grease do not go well together).
We already have this class of worker (Score:2)
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We already have this class of worker. It's called a "day laborer" [wikipedia.org].
In a population of day laborers, who has the steady income required to get a mortgage? Nobody, that's who. Who's putting away money to give their children a better future? Nobody! What a great system!
Conservation of Ambiguity (Score:2)
For the people who complain about the gray line between the two existing categories - creating a third will not solve that problem. Then you just get two gray lines between three categories. This is sometimes referred to as the conservation of ambiguity.
A category already exists (Score:2)
We all know what this is really about. (Score:3, Insightful)
We all know what this is really about.
Revenue collection.
It's about the IRS and the state governments not liking that there are 162,037 independent contractors they have to go after for taxes, rather than going after a single choke-point for those same taxes. Thus they would prefer that Uber drivers be employees, rather than contractors.
The answer for Uber is obvious: The cheapest S-corp incorporation runs $39. So to get those 162,037 incorporated as contracting agencies with a single employee would cost $6,319,443.
I'm sure Uber would be happy to pay that out of petty cash. Now the IRS has 162,037 contracting agencies to deal with, all under the total number of employees thresholds that would subject them to most of the government regulations that Uber would be subject to, were they Uber employees.
So they are back in the same regulatory boat they started in, without the ambiguity that regulators are trying to exploit to get their hands on the money, and leaving with exactly the same enforcement issues they wanted to avoid.
They could probably also spin off an "Uber Business Services Division" that charges a flat fee for:
Business license
Business name and/or DBA registration
Account for taxes
Sales tax account
Federal and State Tax ID
Business checking credit accounts
Merchant account (to process credit cards) (or used the new "Uber Payment Provider Gateway" instead)
Insurance (business, liability, property, if applicable)
Accounting software (or use the new "Uber Books" online accounting system)
Or they could just create a damn franchising company, and make them all franchisees, with Uber's take coming as franchise fees.
P.S.: I suggested a similar approach to AirB&B to incorporate them all as actual B&B's...
Re:dependent contractors (Score:5, Informative)
I agree...why a 3rd category??
They are clearly doing contracting work, plain and simple...and a model of work I prefer!!!
I would, however, encourage them to incorporate themselves, which has a number of benefits.
If incorporated the relationship is clearly corp-to-corp which keeps the govt from fscking up the relationship trying to insist you should be a W2 employee.
Also, if you don't mind a little extra paperwork, make yourself a S-corp. This way, you only have to pay SS and medicare (the employment taxes) on a portion of your billing. For example, if you bill $100K. You pay yourself a W2 salary from your company that is reasonable, say maybe $30K. Now, you only have to pay SS/Medicare (employee and employer parts) on that $30K. the remaining $70K you only have to pay normal federal (and state if you live in a state tax state) after you write off all your expenses.
This savings can really add up.
Also, most of the insurance policies out today after obamacare came out, will qualify for high deductible policies, which will allow you to open a HSA (Health Savings Account) into which you can sock up to about $3K pre-tax for your normal routine medical expenses (co-pays, meds, etc). And, you get to write off a LOT of expenses.
Sure it is a bit more paperwork, and you have to be an adult and learn how to manage money, save for tax payments, etc. But I find it is a MUCH better way to do things than the usual W2 set up...where you have to "earn vacation hours" (God I hated this), you work when you want to and are off when you want to....and if you do things right, you can not only have this independence, but you can also save a bit more of your hard earned money from Uncle Sam.
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I don't see this as all that different. Either way you get punished for taking vacation time. If you're a W-2 employee and earn vacation time, your employer will punish you for using it. If you're an independent contractor, you don't get paid for the time you take off.
Re:dependent contractors (Score:4)
If you're getting punished for using your contractually guaranteed benefits, then you need to find a better employer and/or a lawyer.
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"If you're an independent contractor, you don't get paid for the time you take off"
As a 1099 I billed for every hour I worked so that I could afford to give myself a vacation. Any employee working extra hours without extra pay is a sucker.
The only reason I stopped freelancing is I needed insurance. Though now with insurance exchanges it might make sense for me to become an entrepreneur again.
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Not at all. With contracting, you just build the sick and vacation time into the bill rate to account for how much you want to take it off all year.
The thing I was hating about W2 working..is that you early like X hours per paycheck..and can
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I was with you until your last sentence. Now you just look like an asshole.
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And a lawyer and an accountant and an accounts manager and a salesperson and a...
The reason I'm an employee is so that I can do what I enjoy doing and let some other suit deal with giving people handjobs under the table or swing at each other's balls. Yeah, I know I'm not "in charge of my destiny" or whatever, but I can focus on developing the abilities that actually make me useful for something other than brown-nosing.
extra paperwork AND extra money (Score:2)
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Incorporate in a state with lower taxes and fees. Delaware comes to mind as a popular location. Or the Cayman Islands.
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Delaware is still effective $400/yr. + contracting out a Delaware mailing address ($75/yr?). Texas (I think) does not require any taxes if your corporation's income is below $1000 but their corporation protection laws are not (nearly) as strong as Delaware or Nevada's.
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But you have to weigh that against opportunity. CA is the 7th largest economy in the world.
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BTW, the $800 has to be paid in advance. i.e. before the tax year starts.
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That seems strange...as that S-Corp is a federal filing, not the state.
You incorporate in your state (LLC or regular corp usually), then you file Subchapter S corp with the Feds, which sets you up for the savings in employment taxes like I described above.
Is this $800 minimum in CA for any corporation or specifically aimed at the state companies that file subchapter S status with the feds for some reason?
Re: dependent contractors (Score:2, Insightful)
In California it was ruled that uber drivers are employees not contractor so their trying to find a way to not pay employee benefits
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Ummm, no. Employers started offering health insurance in large numbers during WW II.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_insurance_in_the_United_States#The_rise_of_employer-sponsored_coverage/ [wikipedia.org]
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Because a W2 employee involves a lot more overhead for the employer than a 1099; but in this case, we have people who arguably don't qualify as 1099s, but don't have the "stickiness" of a W2 employee that would normally make it worth the extra trouble to classify them as such.
A 3rd category could get around this by reducing the friction to hiring a W2 - For example, one of the big hassles comes from withholding and payroll taxes; if an employer could just "pay" these direc
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The flip side of that is CONTROL. Employers want CONTROL but not the responsibility that comes with it. As a 1099 I could be flexible and tell companies to take a hike even if they really needed me (There are some contracts not worth the hassle of extending. They can call me when they get serious about the project). AN employee has to do the job regardless. Employers want to force people to do things their way without giving them the flexibility of picking projects and tasks and doing things their own way.
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There is absolutely no requirement to provide any benefits to employees in America.
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Nonsense. Whether or not the worker is incorporated makes no change to employee / contractor relationship.
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"Wait a minute. Back the truck up. If it was clear, there wouldn't be all the lawsuits about it"
Unless one party had a fancy pants lawyer who convinced them they could pull a fast one.
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Or unless a third party was stirring the poop to ensure their own established business model remains unchallenged.
Have you seen what it costs to get a taxi driver's license in NYC? I can't think of any reason they might want to prevent others from driving people around with a much smaller upfront investment.
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> Don't use Uber,Lyft,AirBnB, etc. if you don't agree with their methods, don't work for them if you don't agree. simple. only those that agree on both sides of the transaction will be involved. No one is being required to take Uber instead of a taxi. I have never used them, I will probably never use them, but just let people decide on their own.
I love these American-style arguments of individualism as they are always based on the availability of choice.
Choice never lasts which is why regulations are nee
Re:dependent contractors (Score:5, Insightful)
Because usually these people only have one person that they sell their services to, and that makes them employees, not contractors. Uber doesn't like treating them as employees, so it wants another box to put them in, and deny them the benefits of being an employee.
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Because usually these people only have one person that they sell their services to, and that makes them employees, not contractors.
Don't some uber drivers also work for lyft as well?
My gf was driven by a driver who told her she also worked for lyft.
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http://money.cnn.com/2014/08/04/technology/uber-lyft/
Control (Score:5, Interesting)
1099 Contractors can't be controlled like a regular employee. You can't train them and you can't direct their behavior (such as work hours, etc) while working. Companies don't like this, as in some of these internet companies are pulling their 1099 employees in as W2 employees so they can control them better. What these finance guys want is a new category where they can control you like a W2 employee but don't have to give you benefits like a 1099. The employer gets the best of both worlds and the employee gets bent over and taken.
I'm sure the people suggesting this would like to see the minimum wage dropped to zero as well so they can make more cash exploiting people.
Re:Control (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm sure the people suggesting this would like to see the minimum wage dropped to zero as well so they can make more cash exploiting people.
Which would be a great idea if we coupled it with a guaranteed basic income. Lose the threat of starvation and homelessness and you put the labor negotiation back on fair footing.
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Why is a third category of worker needed? What are the benefits and down sides? Is this going to be exploited by walmart the way they give their workers 34 hours per week to avoid giving them benefits?
Of course corporations will exploit any new worker category. Just like how they exploited the role of "associate" into a meaningless mockery so they can claim a justification for unpaid overtime. It's time people started to accept that corporations are not designed to be benevolent overlords but exploitative con-artists.
I would bet serious money this "article" is part of some astroturf campaign by Uber or the Koch brothers to put yet another chink in the laws and protections that protect us from outright
Re:No, We Don't... (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. A "dependent contractor" is by definition an employee. We have several people that have moonlighted for us over the years. We generally considered them 1099s as they did not generally work in our office, use our supplies, or have responsibilities other than delivering a specific product, which would place them firmly in that category.
Reality is that more people need to be considered W2 employees because that is the easiest way to prevent abuses.
The "gotcha" with Uber is what happens when a driver is simultaneously driving for Lyft, Uber, and the Pizza Company? Has he achieved a nexus where he is independent?
My bias is really over the issue of exempt/non-exempt employees though. Labor laws for non-exempt employees are really hard for small businesses when you get beyond restaurant/retail and into the professional realm. (Would you like a coding session when you are in the zone broken up by a mandatory 15-minute break?)
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Agreed. A "dependent contractor" is by definition an employee
No, it's not, really. It's a bullshit term made up by morons. You have C2C contractors--an employee of CockSux Corp farmed out to a desk at MonSuckto Inc--and you have independent contractors. If you hire on directly, you have an employee. CockSux Corp may supply an independent contractor or an employee to fulfill their C2C contract obligation.
The term "Dependent Contractor" stems from some drooling suit banging his head into his desk while looking for his chinstrap, and immediately deciding an indep
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Your clearly wrong.
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"The "gotcha" with Uber is what happens when a driver is simultaneously driving for Lyft, Uber, and the Pizza Company? Has he achieved a nexus where he is independent?"
Why would that be any kind of a nexus? That's simply holding down more than one job.
With current wages being as low as they are [and have been for quite some time] lots of people have to hold down multiple jobs just to make ends meet. I can't see why that would magically convert them from W2 employees to 1099 independent contractors.
Oh hell no! (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no reason why Uber can't have work rules for employee drivers that fit the current Uber business model. They just don't want to pay for benefits and offer employment protection like unemployment compensation and minimum wage. Uber wants to take the profits while transferring all the risk to the driver.
There is no question that the current taxi system is a relic of another time and should be dismantled. But that can be done without dis-empowering the workers. The current trend in the courts is to classify drivers as employees rather than contractors since it is Uber that decides (via their app) when and where the work can be done. A contractor is free to decide when and where the work is done. So Uber does not fit the contractor model.
Re:Oh hell no! (Score:5, Informative)
And before anyone disagrees with this, I should note in duckintheface's favor that Uber penalizes drivers who decline too many fares, especially drivers of upscale services such as UberBlack who turn down too many UberX fares. Ergo, drivers cannot reasonably decide which work to take, reinforcing duckintheface's point.
A cab doesn't have this problem.
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What you say is true gcnaddict. But at an even more fundamental level, the app which is used by the driver is controlled by Uber. The customer may use an app to submit their request to Uber but it is Uber that passes that to the driver. There is no direct connection between customer and driver. If there were, Uber could be cut out of the revenue stream. If Uber takes the money, Uber must take responsibility for the work assignment. And if Uber is responsible for the work assignment (time and place), t
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I'm not sure Uber as a middle man disqualifies the contractor status completely. (Other things might, though.)
Compare to a sub-contractor in a web design gig. UberConsultCorp contracts with the client, takes their money. They call me to do some WordPress plugin work and pay me for it, of course retaining a cut for themselves. No question I'm a 1099 contractor, but I may not have had contact with the real "customer" nor could I have done the work without UCC farming it out to me.
The time & place situ
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Aaden42: "The time & place situation muddies the contractor status, but that's not unheard of in 1099. "I need this done by 5pm!" is still a valid 1099 gig. (You can bet you're getting my "you pissed me off and I don't like you" rate, but...) That's the time covered. Say I'm contracting to do hardware maintenance for a company, then it's, "We need you here by 5pm!" Time & place, but still clearly contractor status."
If the employer tells you every day that you need to be there at 5 PM, then you are
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There's nothing about my example nor about Uber that's "every day that you need to be there at 5 PM." In both cases, the time & place are agreed upon between contractor & client on a per-instance basis. The client's willingness to continue doing business with a particular contractor is based upon said contractor's past reliability at meeting the agreed upon conditions, but that's the essence of any business arrangement.
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If a driver accepts a particular piece of work (i.e. drive a particular customer), that work must be done at a time and place which is defined by Uber. A contractor would be able to do the work at the time and place of the contractors choosing. That's why car rides don't fit the contractor model.
The illusion that the assignment is coming from the customer is part of the confusion. The assignment comes from Uber via the app. Yes, a driver can accept for reject a particular piece of work, but the time
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Most contractors work within strict location and time restrictions set by the clients.
I would love to be a contractor working on your kitchen upgrade; I'll get it done when I damn well feel like it and if I get bored at 2am, don't be surprised if I head over the your house to start work on the marble countertops.
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And, PLEASE, I don't want my employer to pay for MY unemployment protection. YMMV, but I generally am much more efficient than the government.
I'm glad you think your more efficient, but I can almost guarantee you are not. Your just lucky enough to be in a good situation.
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"Honey, we just got an overdue notice for the mortgage, and the baby's sick and we don't have any insurance!"
"Yeah, but in the Uber economy, I get to set my own hours!"
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When coders are replaced by software, then we have reached the Singularity, and we can all sit back and relax or do whatever we want to do with the near infinite amount of resources ma
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Those who are lose the work can and will find something else
This has been true in the past, but now automation is improving faster than people can retrain and the economy can expand.
The most common job in the USA at present? Truck driver. (well, maybe not [marketwatch.com], but still, 2.8M truck drivers - 1.5% of the entire working age population in the USA, earning an average of $51,000 apiece)
Imagine how that one's going to go down when automated trucks are viable. Haulage firms will push HARD to get them approved to run on the road - they're already running them on private land (l
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"Unlicensed"
- taxi (ride sharing)
- plumber (flow sharing)
- electrician (connection sharing)
- fireman (Jerry, you really have to stop making those 'wee-ooh wee-ooh' sounds while you drive)
oh, we have (unlicensed) AC gold here!
Unlicensed fireman (Score:2)
>> fireman (Jerry, you really have to stop making those 'wee-ooh wee-ooh' sounds while you drive)
Where I live we call them "volunteer firefighters" and everyone knows to get their kids away from the streets when the town whistle sounds because a couple of pick-ups with flashing lights on their dashboards will be flying through your residential neighborhood at 3x the speed limit anytime now.
Re: (Score:2)
Where I live we call them "volunteer firefighters" and everyone knows to get their kids away from the streets when the town whistle sounds because a couple of pick-ups with flashing lights on their dashboards will be flying through your residential neighborhood at 3x the speed limit anytime now.
these are the poor souls who end up getting vaporized in industrial accidents
nobody even knows what's going on in that big factory, do they?
they are "volunteer" on purpose, it's better to vaporize those without income.
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"Fairtax" is regressive. The rich love it, because it's a sales-only tax, and they spend less as a proportion of their income than anyone else. Who spends more? The poor.
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which is why it's usually linked to a basic income.