Uber CEO On the Flight In California: 'We Can't Go Out and Hire 50,000 People Overnight' (theverge.com) 191
In a podcast interview Wednesday, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi rejected the notion his company is capable of employing all of its drivers in California, as a state judge has ordered it to do so [and comply with AB5, the state law that makes it more difficult for companies to use independent contractors]. The Verge reports: "We can't go out and hire 50,000 people overnight," Khosrowshahi said on the Pivot School podcast hosted by Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway. "Everything that we have built is based on this platform that... brings people who want transportation or delivery together. You can't flip that overnight." [T]he companies claim they would need to shut down operations in California completely in order to retool their businesses to comply with the law. Khosrowshahi said the shutdown likely wouldn't be permanent. "It'll take time but we're going to figure out a way to be in California," he said. "We want to be in California."
Khosrowshahi confirmed reports that Uber was looking into other models, like a franchise-style system in which the company would license its brand to fleet operators in California. "There's a black car service that we have that's based on fleets," he said. "And we are trying to figure out exactly what we do going forward." Regardless, Khosrowshahi said that Uber's response would be to limit the number of drivers allowed on its platform and to raise prices for customers after it eventually relaunches in the state. He predicted that upwards of 80 percent of those drivers who only log onto the app for 5-10 a week would no longer be able to earn on the platform. Trip prices in dense urban centers like San Francisco will go up around 20 percent, he said, while rates would be even higher in smaller, less dense cities.
Uber's critics note that there is nothing stopping Uber from continuing to provide drivers with the flexibility to set their own schedules under AB5. But the company rejects this notion, arguing that no company in California or elsewhere lets employees set their own hours. Uber has proposed a "third way" through the ballot measure it's supporting in California called Proposition 22. The measure would allow the company to sidestep AB5 and go on classifying drivers as independent contractors, while also providing some added benefits like a minimum wage and access to health insurance. Along with Lyft and DoorDash, it has committed to spend over $100 million, while union-backed driver groups only have around $866,000 to lobby against it.
Khosrowshahi confirmed reports that Uber was looking into other models, like a franchise-style system in which the company would license its brand to fleet operators in California. "There's a black car service that we have that's based on fleets," he said. "And we are trying to figure out exactly what we do going forward." Regardless, Khosrowshahi said that Uber's response would be to limit the number of drivers allowed on its platform and to raise prices for customers after it eventually relaunches in the state. He predicted that upwards of 80 percent of those drivers who only log onto the app for 5-10 a week would no longer be able to earn on the platform. Trip prices in dense urban centers like San Francisco will go up around 20 percent, he said, while rates would be even higher in smaller, less dense cities.
Uber's critics note that there is nothing stopping Uber from continuing to provide drivers with the flexibility to set their own schedules under AB5. But the company rejects this notion, arguing that no company in California or elsewhere lets employees set their own hours. Uber has proposed a "third way" through the ballot measure it's supporting in California called Proposition 22. The measure would allow the company to sidestep AB5 and go on classifying drivers as independent contractors, while also providing some added benefits like a minimum wage and access to health insurance. Along with Lyft and DoorDash, it has committed to spend over $100 million, while union-backed driver groups only have around $866,000 to lobby against it.
Sure you can (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously though, you've already done the background checks. You've got employee ratings. Hire some consultants to set up an HR firm and get to it. You've known this was coming for months, it's on you if you didn't make plans. Personal Responsibility and all that rot.
Re:Sure you can (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sure you can (Score:5, Interesting)
The so-called "gig economy" is just a way to take advantage of people when you don't have a UBI, national health, etc. If Uber were really about ride-sharing like they claim then they would be collecting a small percentage of a fare that would probably be even less than the amount Uber is losing money on now... because the goal would be to get some gas money back, not to make a living.
Uber should be replaced in California by two services, optionally connected to one app. One would be actual ride sharing like I just talked about, and the other would be a proper taxi service that cost whatever it actually costs to provide the service, owned by the state or the counties. I prefer the state, because every county has different rules and in the interests of people live in places where two counties meet like Yuba-Sutter, or who live in places where commutes or even just errands regularly take them through multiple counties like the Bay Area.)
I really want a real ride-sharing service. Not so much right now, but once this Covid thing is finally over.
Re:Sure you can (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Freedom! Horrible, horrible freedom! We need our overlords to control our lives!
That's a mocking way to say the government protects its own, like any mafia does. How dare free people insinuate themselves!
Re: (Score:2)
By paying less than a living wage, Uber is less than not enslaving people.
Lobbying against laws that protect workers and then taking advantage of those workers isn't just shrewd business sense, it's also a race to the bottom that ultimately hurts everyone.
Letting Uber operate in a way that ultimately harms everyone is inherently harmful to the citizenry.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, a state run bureaucracy. It will lose money, the state will ask the federal government for more funding, and the public worker unions will siphon off millions. No, thanks.
Better to do it the "free market" way, where the state and city legislators fall all over themselves trying to attract your business using tax breaks and other incentives. That way, the state is still paying through the nose and gets none of the profits. That's the American way!
Re: (Score:2)
No different than a 24/7 fast food joint (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
now uniforms?
now sexual harassment training?
now rules for lunch brea
Re:why don't they just move fast and break stuff? (Score:5, Insightful)
This regulation is burdensome to the gig economy, ..... and didn't understand that its not really profitable, and can't just absorb a cost for healthcare and paid time off for all of its drivers.
So, when a company has a terrible business plan, it is the job of lawmakers and courts to change things to support that business plan?
If Uber can't be profitable when they ignore every law they can get away with (and some they can't), then I really have no sympathy for them. We'll let someone with a working business model replace them.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Obeying the law is time-consuming, complicated and prevents us from making as much money. If your state doesn't provide us with a loophole, we'll just break laws in other loophole-friendly states.
Re: (Score:3)
Uber didn't ignore every law. They were working within the law. California changed the law to make their business illegal, along with destroying the livelihood of over four million contract workers who had nothing to do with Uber or Lyft.
AB5 is a bad law that needs to be rescinded.
Re:why don't they just move fast and break stuff? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If I recall, it's the law that you have to take your lunch break, and that willingly working through it is illegal. One of the rare laws that affect one's personal freedom for their own protection.
Re: (Score:2)
And just say "assholes" will ya?
Re: (Score:3)
They are just paper work, those systems can be set up in a day.
You are joking right? If they converted all 50,000 California drives to employees,
Re: (Score:2)
They already have a HR firm - one who manages the perks for all the employees that Uber consider to be important enough to employ, the programmers and managers.
Re: (Score:2)
Seriously though, you've already done the background checks. You've got employee ratings. Hire some consultants to set up an HR firm and get to it. You've known this was coming for months, it's on you if you didn't make plans. Personal Responsibility and all that rot.
1. Most of their plans will probably include ways to circumvent the ruling. The summary mentions a franchise-style system probably being considered for this reason.
2. They would like to find some way for voters to feel the pain before voting on Proposition 22. Complete loss of service is even worse than a 20% average rate hike, so it works in their favor.
3. There is probably more work than just doing the paperwork. There are likely a slew of new concerns such as liability for drivers which need to be worked
The business model just doesn't work. Get over it. (Score:5, Informative)
Drivers are collectively taking a loss here. The only people who do this job are desperate and only doing so to lose money slower while simply biting the value loss on their own vehicle. It's a problem that needs a solution, but Uber isn't it.
Re: (Score:2)
Uber, you had ONE YEAR to make the change. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
they didn't foresee the possibility of the court loss
Apparently it came to them as a complete Uber-raschung.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You're assuming they wanted to make the change. Instead they have decided that the loss of potential profits from the time required to change the business model is much less than the cost of converting all their freelancers to employees. I don't know who was surprised with this.
Now the freelancers are screwed, Uber is screwed and the customer is screwed. Good job California. Maybe now these people will learn that economics is a game...legislating a dynamic system according to your ideals can put it into a e
Re: (Score:2)
You're assuming they wanted to make the change. Instead they have decided that the loss of potential profits from the time required to change the business model is much less than the cost of converting all their freelancers to employees. I don't know who was surprised with this.
Now the freelancers are screwed, Uber is screwed and the customer is screwed. Good job California. Maybe now these people will learn that economics is a game...legislating a dynamic system according to your ideals can put it into a everyone loses situation just as easily as it can to an 'everyone wins' situation. John Nash figured this out decades ago [wikipedia.org] and even won the fucking Nobel prize for it in 1994.
Right, instead of just the freelancers being exploited.
A business model that screws one section of society over others should not exist.
Re: (Score:2)
Just more reason for people to flee the state. But if you do, don't vote for the same kind of idiots who set up that which you fled.
Only by removing the business power propping up the plague affecting them will it change.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Uber, you had ONE YEAR to make the change. (Score:4, Informative)
Fired for not producing profits? LOL! Uber has existed for over ten years and AFAIK has never made a yearly profit. Uber has had the same CEO for virtually it's entire existence. There's no sign Kalanick has ever been close to getting fired for not making a profit.
Re: (Score:2)
Fired for not producing profits? LOL! Uber has existed for over ten years and AFAIK has never made a yearly profit.
So why do the haters keep accusing Uber of profiteering, taking bread out of the mouths of the starving Yellow Cab drivers?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Uber is playing the long game, driving everyone else out of business by losing money until they are gone. They are essentially dumping and they should be eliminated for that alone. They're doing it solely to capture first mover advantage, with the theory that when autonomous taxis show up they can finally be profitable. But there's no sign that level 5 autonomy will get here any time soon. How many years of this shit do we have to put up with?
Re: (Score:2)
Or better yet, make the stock grow.
Uber's stock is down 30% since its debut on the NYSE in May of last year.
Re: (Score:2)
A company that makes no profit is a company that is only some time away from being bankrupt.
You don't have to make much profit, but if you don't make enough to cover costs then you are a hobby, not a business.
Re:Uber, you had ONE YEAR to make the change. (Score:4, Interesting)
The CEO would need to have his head very deep up his ass to hope this judgment wouldn't come to pass. It wasn't "speculative" it was them grasping at progressively flimsier straws to delay it. It wasn't a question if it would happen or not, only how long could they drag it out before it happened.
Moreover, they could have started it, set good policies that make *some* of the drivers (say, these who drive more than 30 hours per week) their employees while leaving the rest as contractors and it would have given them a vastly stronger position in court, where they could argue they have both employees (regular work) and contractors (ad-hoc, sporadic services), and could fight in court about where to draw the line between the two. Instead, all they did was protesting, opposing and stonewalling every motion, trying to delay the inevitable. And now they just lost the paddle in the shit creek of their own making.
True, but... (Score:2)
True, but Uber didn't hire 50k people overnight. They just pretended that they were not employees.
Maybe they will be better prepared for the other 49 states.
Just plain greed (Score:5, Insightful)
"Along with Lyft and DoorDash, it has committed to spend over $100 million, while union-backed driver groups only have around $866,000 to lobby against it."
Basically, they'd rather spend their cash on lobbying for their rule rather than just choose to treat the people who make that money for them better.
Re: (Score:3)
Of course. Lobbying is a one-time expense that pays off over the life of the business if successful. Changing every driver into an employee would burn that $100M in a year or two, and then they're still at the same burn rate for every year after that.
Yes, Uber are assholes. I don't know why you would expect an assholic company that has screwed their drivers at every other decision point to all of a sudden go "aww shucks, I guess we should start handing out 401(k) plans and dental insurance and shit becau
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Uber needs to convince the rubes at places like Softbank to keep pouring Saudi oil money in until the self driving cars are ready.
In a perfect world Uber would use up all the Saudi royal family's cash, then go belly up.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
$100 million is chump change (Score:3)
That'll effect us all, by the way. Those people living in poverty and desperation won't take this lying down. They'll start gunning for your jobs and what you have. That'll mean more supply for tech workers as they struggle to find jobs they can support themselves on. Sure, most will wash out, but a lot won't.
It's a class
Re: (Score:3)
Or you could just not work for Uber if they don't provide the benefits you want.
Re: (Score:2)
Can they? They have to work for someone because we live in a society that claims to value work over all. In actuality the idea is just to keep people dependent on the current system, of course. We don't pay the hardest workers the most, we don't pay the workers in the most dangerous jobs the most... we do not value hard work. We just pay it lip service to keep down the plebes.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Silicon Valley Eats Itself (Score:2, Insightful)
Silicon Valley progressive types are eating their own. They don't even know they are doing it, or even worse, don't care.
The people hardest hit by this are the people driving for Uber who now don't have anything. What did you actually think would happen? Because this is exactly what I thought would happen.
Re: (Score:3)
The people hardest hit by this are the people driving for Uber who now don't have anything.
We were told from the beginning that this was a side job, something to make a bit of extra money on the side doing taxi work. Now you're admitting people are working full time for Uber but not being paid as such. Good to know.
Re:Silicon Valley Eats Itself (Score:5, Interesting)
Have you ever lost a side hustle? I have, it sucks. Sure, it wasn't my primary means of paying the bills, but you don't take an extra job unless you *really* need the money. Now there are 50k people in California that were happy with their arrangement with Uber that have got to find some other, probably far less appealing, way to make up that economic shortfall. Plus, they get to do it in the middle of a pandemic.
Don't get me wrong. I wouldn't work for Uber under any circumstances. Their management is basically criminal, and their culture is (apparently) the worst on the planet. Uber's entire scheme has been to run their business at a loss using investor money until all of the traditional taxi companies went out of business, and then dramatically raise prices. Uber could do this because they didn't have to worry about benefits, and they could also rely on individual drivers to carry the cost of actually purchasing the required vehicles. Even without those expenses Uber somehow managed to lose nearly $2billion last quarter. I can't hardly imagine how a company that just produces an app manages to lose so much money.
None of this, however, changes the fact that the people working for Uber thought it was a good deal for them. The State of California just kicked those people in the teeth.
Re: (Score:3)
Uber's entire scheme has been to run their business at a loss using investor money ... they could also rely on individual drivers to carry the cost of actually purchasing the required vehicles.
I am ok with the first part but not ok with the second part.
None of this, however, changes the fact that the people working for Uber thought it was a good deal for them.
The problem is that most people don't understand expected values. There is lots of indication that people thought it was a good deal because they don't properly account for accumulation of non-immediate costs (repair and maintenance).
Also, insurance is a total mess. Uber has insurance now, but quick check of their webpage shows that "Available or waiting for a ride request" insurance is absolutely minimal and only "En route to pick up riders and d
Re: (Score:2)
None of this, however, changes the fact that the people working for Uber thought it was a good deal for them
No, they thought it was better than no deal. That doesn't mean they thought it was a good one. And Uber lobbies for laws to make it possible for them to abuse people, meaning they're deliberately helping to perpetuate the situation where people are so fucked financially that they're willing to drive for Uber.
The State of California just kicked those people in the teeth.
The State of California has to balance the needs of all of the people against the needs of some of the people. They decided that permitting Uber to pay less than a living wage is harmful to society. Thi
Re: (Score:3)
"the people working for Uber thought it was a good deal for them."
It could be argued that people taking money from loan sharks or payday lenders think it's a good deal for them. Most of the time its not, but the people don't know it or understand the deal. That why there are govt regulations. People taking quack medical treatments often think they are good, but they are often wrong and don't realize it until the are close to death. Protecting people from their own bad judgement isn't always a nanny state.
Re: (Score:2)
In case you haven't noticed, a pandemic has taken away a hell of a lot of jobs. This resulted in that side job becoming the primary job, hopefully temporarily. Except the California government in its infinite wisdom thinks that no job is better than a shitty job. There is simply no way Uber could convert all those people to full time employment. The business model was never designed for that. They would have to become a taxi company. Except that won't happen because the taxi business is tightly contro
Re: (Score:3)
The whole of the US is ripe for a change to how work is classified and remunerated. I don't have the answer but its clear that the exempt vs. hourly + overtime model is overdue for change. Too much abuse on both sides, and coupled with the insanity that is healthcare & benefits tied to full time employment, is misery for many Americans
California had the opportunity to lead this, similar to how they shown leadership for many environmental efforts in the past. But instead they came up with AB-5 which i
No they're not (Score:2)
That said the working class has been at each other's throats for way too long. Whether it's because of the Southern Strategy, wedge issues like Guns & Abortion or just plain hate them damn dirty hippies the ruling class has used every trick in the book to keep us divided. In India they use Castes, America it's race & even Japan gets in on the fun with the Burakumin.
You'd think we'd freakin
Re: (Score:2)
there is a simpler explanation
the working class used to be much broader but the more intelligent part of it got an education and became middle class, leaving the less educated ultraconservative people behind
Right-wing myth that CEO's are left (Score:2)
It's a right-wing myth that "big tech CEO's" are lefties. In practice they are socially left-leaning, but economically right leaning. Thus, centrists.
Re: (Score:2)
The FLIGHT in California. (Score:2)
Good work as always, "Editors". You must be so proud.
Re: (Score:3)
Freudian slip. There will be a flight from California if the state legislature keeps punishing businesses and doing things like threatening a wealth tax. I don't think politicians here know how precarious the economy is since remote work has been realized and partially institutionalized.
Does Uber HQ need to be in San Francisco, CA anymore? Covid says 'nope', and the legislature added an exclamation point. The optics aren't such that they will bolt immediately but I will bet a decent wager they move HQ
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Ebay not Amazon (Score:5, Interesting)
We need a way to solve the taxi mafia issue without having people work for below minimum wage as Uber and Lyft do.
Maybe lift the limit on medallions - if you can pass a background check and hold insurance you can drive a taxi. Let every driver incorporate. Let the app be limited to a dispatcher and hold no legal libility for the driver.
Basically an eBay model rather than an Amazon model .
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps these things are incompatible? (Score:3)
We need a way to solve the taxi mafia issue without having people work for below minimum wage as Uber and Lyft do.
Perhaps it's not possible to have an on-demand army of chauffeurs with decent cars, being paid reasonable wages, which is affordable to hire for the average person and highly available. It might be one of those "pick any two" situations: Maybe you can only do it with shitty cars having a low capital cost, or for a price higher than most people want to pay, or with shitty wages paid to the drivers, or with hardly any drivers available. Just because we think we need it doesn't mean that it's possible for th
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe taxis are not meant to be a high paying job. The issue currently is Uber presents its drivers as part of the Uber brand hence it imposes various controls and standards on them to reduce the reputational risk to Uber if someone has a crappy car or misbehaves. A pure dispatcher app which only charges a commission but does not set any standards or prices will not be taking a reputational risk. There is value in people who ahve some free time and a car being able to pick up rides on a dispatcher platform.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm waiting for someone to explain that you'd be taking advantage of the drivers in some way with this system. 'cause surely that's coming.
But I like it.
Re: (Score:2)
If the app inserts itself into the transaction chain for each ride (in your proposal, charges a commission) then Uber will still be on hook for drivers as employees. You just know Cali will find a way to twist it that way. They should make the app itself cost money, perhaps as a monthly subscription, so both customers and drivers pay a fee which is not linked to any specific activity. They could also make money on in-app ads. Either way, if you eliminate background checks and driver management, then all you
Price, availability aren't yes/no questions (Score:2)
It seems to me, you don't have to choose between two choices for price, either high or low. Prices can be just a little higher, or a little lower.
Same with driver availability, which translates to waiting time. It's not a yes/no where you have to choose. If driving paid $500/mile, everyone would do it and you'd have Uber cars waiting outside your house 24/7. At 1 cent per mile they would be none, and there are 50,000 gradient values in-between.
The more you are willing you pay (the more drivers make), the
Re: (Score:2)
You make good points about the continuity of prices and waiting times. However, I'll add that in a market where substitutes are available - in this case everything from buying your own car to riding a bike to taking public transit to calling a traditional taxi company to asking friends for a ride to travelling less - there can be price points where the demand curve for a specific product drops off steeply when large numbers of people realize that they can switch to a different product for a better price.
Therefore a lot of people WILL do it for $10-20/hour and be quite happy with that! Because people want to do it for $12/hour, the only way to increase the earnings significantly is to artificially reduce the supply by telling people who want to drive that they aren't allowed to.
Th
Re: (Score:2)
Everything about taxis involves a race to the bottom, absent meaningful and enforced legislation to make it work some other way. The taxi service itself has degraded over time. Cars are no longer designed to be maintained; they are disposable. Sure, they last longer before their first major maintenance than did cars of old, but then they are so difficult to work on and so expensive to get parts for that they generally just don't get it. You used to be able to just drive up on a curb and slide under a car an
how can he breath with so much BS dribbling out (Score:2)
But the company rejects this notion, arguing that no company in California or elsewhere lets employees set their own hours.
Uber the company that doesn't want to conform to other companies or laws in the way they operate, now want to use the excuse we couldn't possibly do it that way as other companies don't do it that way.
"No company lets employees set their own hours" (Score:2, Interesting)
But the company rejects this notion, arguing that no company in California or elsewhere lets employees set their own hours.
Wrong. Uber is lying here.
Uber does exist in Germany but does not enter into contracts with drivers directly. Instead, they cooperate with car rental companies who employ the drivers. Although these drivers are employees, they usually can work when they like. So yes, Uber's partners in Germany let employees set their own hours, and this is well-known by Uber.
(And BTW, flexible time arrangements are quite common for office jobs in Germany. So there's also that.)
Re: (Score:2)
But the company rejects this notion, arguing that no company in California or elsewhere lets employees set their own hours.
Wrong. Uber is lying here.
Uber does exist in Germany but does not enter into contracts with drivers directly. Instead, they cooperate with car rental companies who employ the drivers. Although these drivers are employees, they usually can work when they like. So yes, Uber's partners in Germany let employees set their own hours, and this is well-known by Uber.
(And BTW, flexible time arrangements are quite common for office jobs in Germany. So there's also that.)
Yeah, it was all I could do to not laugh out loud when I read that. In all my years working at tech companies in California, I have never worked for a company that did not allow its employees to set their own hours to at least some degree. The companies that didn't suck to work for were, of course, more flexible than the ones that did.
It makes me glad I never seriously considered applying for any sort of software engineering job at that company. Uber must be absolutely horrible to work for.
Re: (Score:2)
Plus, if they really want their contractors to be contractors, a simple change in the app to let drivers bid on the ride request and set their own price is all it would take.
But they seem to prefer throwing a hissy fit.
Re: (Score:2)
In all my years working at tech companies in California, I have never worked for a company that did not allow its employees to set their own hours to at least some degree.
So, you are saying you could, with no warning or request, not show up for work for a week with no explanation and no one would say a thing, yes? And, you could, without permission or warning, just go home after three hours? And, you could work another job during the day and show up to your tech job for 2 hours in the afternoon whenever you needed a little extra cash or just felt like it?
You are comparing apples and bowling balls.
and that minimum wage needs to cover wait time ret (Score:2)
and that minimum wage needs to cover wait time, return time, minimum wage after car costs.
Re: (Score:2)
Uber is a criminal scheme (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the story they like to tell, because it underpins the fiction that their drivers are all people who just happen to be going somewhere that one of their passengers wants to go, and wouldn't it be great if that driver could just swing by and pick up this person who is going to the same place. This is carpooling, and if what Uber were really about was carpooling, then I'd certainly be against the drivers being classified as employees.
But Uber isn't really about carpooling, it's a taxi service. They use their app to try to construct a legal pretense that they aren't running a taxi service, they're just poor little app makers. And they treat their drivers as contractors because doing so allows them to skirt labor laws, occupational safety laws, licensing and permitting laws, tax laws, and probably a slew of others. They're crooks, taking advantage of desperate workers and a weak regulatory system to build a taxi company that doesn't have to follow any of the rules of existing taxi companies so they can squeeze out the competition and pay workers subsistence compensation (or worse).
Re: (Score:2)
And they treat their drivers as contractors because doing so allows them to skirt labor laws, occupational safety laws, licensing and permitting laws, tax laws, and probably a slew of others.
And why shouldn't they ? In the words of Richard Feynman, "You don't like it ? Go somewhere else, where the laws are simpler, psychologically more pleasing, philosophically more easy."
Uber doesn't force people to work for them as drivers. Drivers sign up. Sure, it works because of the shitty economy, but that isn't Ubers fault and it doesn't make them crooks. It makes them clever.
Re: (Score:2)
Uber doesn't force people to work for them as drivers. Drivers sign up. Sure, it works because of the shitty economy, but that isn't Ubers fault and it doesn't make them crooks. It makes them clever.
Taking advantage of people in obvious ways doesn't make them clever. It makes them shitheels. Defending them doesn't make you clever, it just makes you another shitheel.
Uber is right (in a way) (Score:2, Informative)
They are right, in a way, they cannot find 50,000 people that could pass full criminal background checks in CA, and have a commercial drivers license, and commercial vehicle insurance (like any other taxi service). Which is, in itself, telling. They have chosen to put riders lives at risk to make a profit.
On the other hand, their HR system can handle over 20,000 employees, so selecting the top 7,500 and employing them should be not problem, if they were not focused on trying to misrepresent their exploita
It's really simple, here... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Or just make their app a subscription service and stop taking a part of their fares & tips.
Re: (Score:2)
If Uber wants its drivers to be considered independent contractors, then allow them to set their own rates over and above Uber's commission structure
Then, the drivers aren't independent contractors. They are contracted to Uber to drive under Uber's rules and rates in exchange for using Uber's booking feature.
resent that rate to the rider who can optionally refuse the ride if it they feel it is too much, at which point another driver whose rates are lower is hailed
Do you understand are describing a situation where it is a race to the bottom, in this case Uber's rate and commission structure? The cheapest price will ALWAYS be Uber's base rate and people who aren't time pressed will always take the cheapest option.
Also, you are inverting the role of the app. Now, drivers choose the rider. Under your system, t
As my mom used to say.... (Score:2)
...when I did something stupid and had to pay for it. They probably should have thought a bit before they did this.
Re: (Score:2)
It would be like you started playing a game and half way through the game, the other players changed the rules that made your winning strategy against the rules.
Fail (Score:2)
"arguing that no company in California or elsewhere lets employees set their own hours"
ahem. False.
Re: (Score:2)
This sounds like a great idea! (Score:2)
Uber could seriously make th
Re: (Score:2)
As employees, Uber can control the drivers in a much more i
Employees is the key word (Score:2)
And that right there says exactly what Uber and Lyft are trying to do. No, no company lets employees set their own hours. For independent contractors, though, part of the definition is that they do set their own hours, and working conditions, and everything else, all the company is supposed to expect from them is that they deliver the contracted work on schedule. Uber and Lyft don't wan
No company elsewhere (Score:2)
But the company rejects this notion, arguing that no company in California or elsewhere lets employees set their own hours.
No company in California offered an app that let's people arrange "ride sharing" either. Since no company did it we should reject everything new and just shut down the Uber scam.
It never ceases to amaze me what humans are incapable of when they have a desire not to achieve something.
Empolyees need insurance (Score:2)
If the drivers were employees then the Uber would be responsible for insurance. This is California, so I'd imagine third party liability cover costs are going to be sky high.
I suspect that most of the drivers working for Uber are not insured for carrying fare paying passengers. So if there's an accident the passengers get screwed because the driver doesn't have enough assets to cover the legal costs of going to court, much less medical costs and compensation. If you had that kind of money you wouldn't be
Simple bidding process (Score:2)
Uber could go the independent contractor model with a simple bidding process, and it could start with the PASSENGERS! Here's an example: My partner and I have just left a concert/play/ballet/etc. Before that, we had drinks with appetizers, split a bottle of wine over some dry-aged steaks, and had a dessert wine with a . . . dessert. We just dropped a few hundred bucks on the dinner alone and had orchestra seats. We're now TIRED, and maybe "in the mood." How much would I bid to drive the 8 blocks to my hote
Re: (Score:2)
8 blocks? That's a warm-up. Walking will help settle your dinner so that you don't get urpy when you fuck. Stretch your goddamn legs, you lazy bastard.
The solution is simple. (Score:2)
Dishonest (Score:2)