California's Uber and Lyft Drivers Get Union Rights (apnews.com) 62
"More than 800,000 drivers for ride-hailing companies in California will soon be able to join a union," reports the Associated Press, "and bargain collectively for better wages and benefits under a measure signed Friday by Gov. Gavin Newsom."
Supporters said the new law will open a path for the largest expansion of private sector collective bargaining rights in the state's history. The legislation is a significant compromise in the yearslong battle between labor unions and tech companies.
California is the second state where Uber and Lyft drivers can unionize as independent contractors. Massachusetts voters passed a ballot referendum in November allowing unionization, while drivers in Illinois and Minnesota are pushing for similar rights...
The collective bargaining measure now allows rideshare workers in California to join a union while still being classified as independent contractors and requires gig companies to bargain in good faith.
"The new law doesn't apply to drivers for delivery apps like DoorDash."
California is the second state where Uber and Lyft drivers can unionize as independent contractors. Massachusetts voters passed a ballot referendum in November allowing unionization, while drivers in Illinois and Minnesota are pushing for similar rights...
The collective bargaining measure now allows rideshare workers in California to join a union while still being classified as independent contractors and requires gig companies to bargain in good faith.
"The new law doesn't apply to drivers for delivery apps like DoorDash."
Re:Join a union (Score:5, Informative)
They lost 50% of their pay when Uber took over.
Before the 'ride share' apps, taxi cab drivers was a highly paid position. The badge that let you drive a cab in NYC sold for $1 million dollars. You would drive it yourself 1/3 the day, then hand the cab off to employees. You would make enough in 10 years to buy another badge, then in 5 years get a third, etc etc. Your employees would save up for 15 years to buy their first badge and start the process over again.
Now, those same taxi badges sell for as low as $200,000. Lot of people lost their life savings on them.
The apps charge you money which you think goes to the driver. Nope, most of it goes to the company. They pay the driver barely enough for the gasoline, car payment, and insurance. They expect the driver to make a profit from their 'tip', treating them as a waiter, rather than the owner of the equipment that makes the business possible.
Uber etc are scumbags that basically double the cost to ride. Should they get SOMETHING for the app? Yes. Definitely. But their profit should be tiny, not large.
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Re:Join a union (Score:4, Informative)
Before the 'ride share' apps, taxi cab drivers was a highly paid position.
Taxi drivers were a highly paid position because of a supply constraint. There were only so many medallions the government was willing to give, effectively creating a cartel. Driving too and fro is not a high skill or relatively dangerous profession, so its high pay was a result of government coercion.
The badge that let you drive a cab in NYC sold for $1 million dollars. You would drive it yourself 1/3 the day, then hand the cab off to employees. You would make enough in 10 years to buy another badge, then in 5 years get a third, etc etc. Your employees would save up for 15 years to buy their first badge and start the process over again. Now, those same taxi badges sell for as low as $200,000. Lot of people lost their life savings on them.
Imagine having the intellectual fortitude to believe that a random license create purely by government should be considered an asset.
The apps charge you money which you think goes to the driver. Nope, most of it goes to the company. They pay the driver barely enough for the gasoline, car payment, and insurance. They expect the driver to make a profit from their 'tip', treating them as a waiter, rather than the owner of the equipment that makes the business possible.
Uber's operating margin is 13.7% and its net profit is 10.71%. There is cost to make apps work, paying developers, and having the business model to handle when things eventually go wrong, like car crashes, insurance lapses, etc. Uber take on a lot of liability operating the way it does, which is why the 25% it keeps mostly goes to commercial insurance, etc. As a sole driver, with your own QR codes and customers, could not possibly afford the commercial insurance you would need from one bad ride causing you to lose your home and go bankrupt.
Seriously, there are some truly bad businesses out there who take much and give society nothing. Uber has improved mobility for millions, allowed other millions to earn money while driving, broken government monopolies on "Taxi Medallions" which itself was a sham, and basically cemented the whole gig economy. If you aren't a fan of it, there are other services out there like Lyft, or hell, dont participate at all. But to think they are somehow inherently "evil"? Why? Because they profit 10% for their efforts? Nah, fuck you.
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You 1) Misunderstood what I was saying and 2) are wrong about the rest.
I am not calling out Uber alone, I am calling out ALL ride sharing apps. Uber, Lyft and the other ride share apps do not earn what they take.
Let me explain.
There used to be cab companies that did everything Uber did EXCEPT for the internet app that lets you summon a car to you. They used old, out dated technology - i.e. phones - to summon cars. The business was ripe for disruption. Uber created new technology that was valuable and w
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The Holy Taxi Company didn't do a lot of things Uber does.
For example, it didn't just allow anyone to drive their own car to ensure that demand is fully met. Instead they carefully selected only a handful of nephews to be drivers, since quality of work was irrelevant in constrained supply unconstrained demand scenario. There's an artificial limit on supply of "medallions" after all, and that means quality of service is basically irrelevant. As long as you get to your destination, it's not like you can just
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That moment when AC redditor doesn't understand sarcasm.
Just another day on the internet.
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I am not calling out Uber alone, I am calling out ALL ride sharing apps. Uber, Lyft and the other ride share apps do not earn what they take.
As has been discussed many times here, what does it mean to "earn" something? The only vaguely objective way to determine that is through market processes. Everything else is one subjective opinion versus another. Apparently, developing the business model (see below), developing the technology (which the cab companies have copied), and taking the risk to disrupt the market are highly valued by customers. Apparently the nuts and bolts of bringing the vehicle and time to the party are lower on the supply/dema
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Imagine having the intellectual fortitude to believe that a random license create purely by government should be considered an asset.
Have you read up on the Federal Reserve Bank? :)
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Almost every business has startup costs. At least a driver could get in on part of a medallion and work their way up. How does an Uber driver work their way up?
They install an app and start driving around in a car they already owned? The barrier to entry is trivially small.
There's not much room for advancement (other than driving more) but (a) most drivers are doing this for beer money, not to pay a mortgage and (b) I don't think there was much advancement in terms of income for driving a cab either.
I suppose you could buy a few cars and rent them out to drivers for a cut of their fares. I've never heard of anyone doing that so the numbers probably don't work. It'
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The barrier to being a wage slave is trivially small.. that's great.
It's not slavery if you can enter and leave any time you choose. Let's not diminish the horror of actual slavery.
That said, if your most productive skill is something any 17yo can do, perhaps the problem isn't the job itself.
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So you can enter and feed yourself or leave and starve. Unless you know where else an Uber driver would go find a better job, assuming they only have the work experience to be an Uber driver.
You're making an assumption, that this is literally the drivers' only option. It's driving or unemployment.
From the data, this is not generally true. The vast majority of drivers have a day job and driving for Lyft/Uber is a way to supplement that income.
Also from the data, the US at least is near full employment. That means there are a number of jobs available at any given time. I don't know, off the top of my head, what sorts of jobs those are and what the qualifications are. As I mentioned in the previou
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One of the Mario Party minigames, maybe?
GOOD (Score:1)
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Before the 'ride share' apps, taxi cab drivers was a highly paid position.
And that doesn't sound strange to you?
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A relatively dangerous job with terrible hours... it sounds like a job that deserves decent compensation.
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"Relatively" does all of the heavy lifting in that sentence. No, it's not a dangerous job by any reasonable measure.
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"Cab drivers are 30 times likelier to be murdered than other professionals"
https://carsurance.net/insight... [carsurance.net]
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"Other professionals" does all the heavy lifting in that one. Especially once you read most of that page, and why that specific phrasing was used becomes clear.
Because it doesn't count the fact that most people in US drive very long distances to work and back, and THAT ISN'T COUNTED. So "driving is dangerous" becomes "only taxi drivers drive professionally, therefore..."
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A cabbie/rideshare driver gets paid far less than cops do, and is way more likely to be killed or injured on the job, and both spend much of their day driving around. Yet police office is held up as a dangerous job requiring bravery.
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I recommend watching some police bodycam videos if you are hell bent on misinterpreting reality in such an insane way. Youtube is choke full of them.
This will quickly dispel your delusions about police work, as biggest danger there isn't "car accident". It's "actually not using massive amounts of force against yet another criminal scumbag whom you must treat with silk gloves as he/she continues to shit on society, normal people and you".
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"Some" does all the heavy lifting in this one. Because tens to hundreds of thousands is not "some" by any reasonable measure, and internet is choke full of them now that bodycams have become ubiquitous, and youtubers know how to request them.
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"Look at data (which I choose to call "facts" because I'm very smart). Don't look at context".
I award you "redditor on slashdot" award.
Re:Join a union (Score:5, Interesting)
The whole Uber thing has been quite amusing to watch.
It was pitched originally as "share someone elses journey for less money than a taxi" for the end user, and "make money when you want to" for the driver.
It allowed people who had zero chance of breaking into the taxi business of acting like a taxi - which is why there is a long history of Uber fighting regulation as a taxi company, they didnt want to be regulated like the thing they are competing against. At the same time, drivers didnt want to be regulated as drivers, because they were getting away with only running the trips they wanted, and avoiding pesky things like business insurance on their cars...
The benefit of "work when you like" for Uber was that the driver was not an employee - they could pick up work here and there without commitment, and there was no benefits associated.
The benefit of "work when you like" for drivers was that they could pick up work when they were free, and also work for multiple ride share companies at the same time - just accept or reject work from each app.
Now, Uber is a taxi service - everyone agrees with that. And drivers are taxi drivers, with all the associated extra liabilities that entails. Which means that drivers are also employees now, again with all the associated positives and negatives that entails. And Uber is an employer, again with all the associated positives and negatives...
Over the years, the acceptance of what the situation is has changed from one where the drivers thought they had all the power to one where they realised they needed more power.
And so we are back to the original situation of taxi company and employees.
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Your romanticizing of "the government only allows so many yellow cabs so the artificial scarcity leads to medallion costs spiraling ever upward" is fucking bizarre.
Before the 'ride share' apps, taxi cab drivers was a highly paid position.
That's horseshit. People who owned the medallions made money leasing them to people who would work their fingers to the bone to cover the costs of their leases and support their families. You also ignore that most taxi companies weren't running medallion taxies with the right to pick up a hail, but rather "private cars" that had to be dispatche
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Dear brainwashed libertarian ignorant idiot. Normal union dues are 1%-2% of your paycheck.
Meanwhile, how much does your CEO earn an hour, and why is he worth that?
Weird thing about the gig economy... (Score:4, Insightful)
When the pay per gig increases, that leads to more people signing up to get gigs, which leads to fewer gigs per hour for individual gig workers. Ultimately, the hourly pay doesn't change much. The benefits just get spread more thinly across a larger number of people.
The real problem is that the traditional job market is so weak that there's a large group of people competing in a race-to-the-bottom for gig jobs that barely cover their expenses.
Unionizing is worth a shot, but I don't think it's going to help.
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When the pay per gig increases, that leads to...
I'm sure most Econ 101 classes must spend at least one lecture on this. From what I understand from S&D analysis, I don't think that's how the math works. As supply and demand change, there's a market clearing price where S == D. As demand goes up, prices have to rise to attract more drivers. I'm not an expert but I don't see how that can lead to any given driver making fewer actual dollars.
The real problem is that the traditional job market is so weak that there's a large group of people competing in a race-to-the-bottom for gig jobs that barely cover their expenses.
We're near full employment right now. The job market is not weak, not yet, but is showing worrying signs of very s
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My Econ 101 class was before the gig economy was invented, so I dunno what they're teaching these days.
> As demand goes up, prices have to rise to attract more drivers. I'm not an expert but I don't see how that can lead to any given driver making fewer actual dollars.
Unionizing doesn't sound to me like a tactic for increasing demand, so I'm not sure where you're going with that.
> You have to remember, the vast majority of gig drivers drive a few hours a week to supplement their main income. Thing is,
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As demand goes up, prices have to rise to attract more drivers. I'm not an expert but I don't see how that can lead to any given driver making fewer actual dollars.
Unionizing doesn't sound to me like a tactic for increasing demand, so I'm not sure where you're going with that.
Oh, it has nothing to do with unionization. I was responding to the speculation that as prices go up, individual driver income would go down.
I agree that gig work is largely part-time. But that's another way of saying that these are people whose vehicles are investments that they made independently of the gig-work P&L calculations. In other words, sunk costs. Gig work doesn't need to be all-in profitable, it just needs to be more profitable than not doing gig work.
Yes, exactly right. One can assert this isn't just or right but the fact is, there is a ton of capital assets sitting idle and "sharing" economy companies are a way to make those assets productive.
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Just to be clear, I didn't say pay would go down, I said "Ultimately, the hourly pay doesn't change much."
And we're not talking about demand going up - unless maybe you meant demand for drivers, as measured in dollars available. On that side, the increased does lead to an increased supply of drivers, because it becomes more profitable on a per-drive basis. But increasing the supply of drivers does not benefit any single driver - it means that more drivers are competing for the same number of drives, so each
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Is Uber just going to accept every sign up though? Because if they have to e.g. pay minimum wage or offer health insurance, they are incentivized to have the right number of staff to meet demand.
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I agree. If the union succeeds in getting Uber to guarantee a minimum $/hour rate, then Uber will respond by hiring fewer drivers.
Which effectively turns it into something like a licensing or guild system, propping up their income by keeping competitors out.
Waymo smiles... (Score:2, Insightful)
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Exactly. Driverless cars will force Uber and Lyft to make huge changes or it will put them out of business.
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Exactly. Driverless cars will force Uber and Lyft to make huge changes or it will put them out of business.
I know Lyft and Uber are hedging their bets and thinking about how to roll out their own driverless fleets.
Problem is, the ride sharing company's business models are based on them not owning the vehicles. I don't see how that works if they have to buy a fleet of self-driving cars. Of course, neither Lyft nor Uber are hugely profitable right now so maybe it's premature to talk about what they'll do with their own self-driving fleet.
Anyone know the details? (Score:2)
I'm a little lost what we actually passed.
Surely, I could have joined a union at any time. The First Amendment protects my right to associate (or not) with whoever I want.
I suspect the real meat is the collective bargaining part. What exactly does that entail? Are the hailing companies required to reach an agreement with the union? Or can they say "we tried to negotiate an agreement but failed." Will drivers who do not wish to join a union still be able to work?
If Uber/Lyft can continue to hire non-union dr
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That's not how things work. I don't know the exact rules and regulations under which unions act in the US, but I'm pretty sure that no job (or gig) applicant will advertise their union membership (or were obliged to truthfully give such information).
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I don't know the exact rules and regulations under which unions act in the US, but I'm pretty sure that no job (or gig) applicant will advertise their union membership (or were obliged to truthfully give such information).
I don't know the laws either and I live in California. People got to law school for years to learn this stuff, it's not simple and just because you know how it work in one state or country doesn't necessarily mean you know the details in another.
Here's the thing. If the companies and the unions negotiate a contract and every driver in California gets those terms, then yeah, there's no need to disclose if you're a member or not. Of course, this typically comes with the next requirement, every driver must joi
"Union Rights", What about the Taxi Drivers? (Score:1)