Uber, Lyft Drivers In Massachusetts Form First US Ride-Share Union (usnews.com) 42
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Ride-share drivers for app-based companies such as Uber and Lyft have unionized in Massachusetts, forming what state officials and labor leaders said was the first officially recognized organization in the U.S. to represent such gig workers. The newly formed App Drivers Union received certification from the Massachusetts Department of Labor Relations on Friday to represent nearly 70,000 ride-share drivers operating as independent contractors in the state.
"It changes the game for ride-share workers across this country," Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey, a Democrat, said at a rally with drivers and labor activists in Boston on Tuesday. The certification occurred after voters in November 2024 approved a ballot measure that created a novel framework to allow drivers for companies like Uber and Lyft to organize and bargain collectively over pay and benefits. That vote followed a years-long, nationwide battle over whether ride-share drivers should be considered independent contractors or employees entitled to benefits and wage protections.
"It changes the game for ride-share workers across this country," Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey, a Democrat, said at a rally with drivers and labor activists in Boston on Tuesday. The certification occurred after voters in November 2024 approved a ballot measure that created a novel framework to allow drivers for companies like Uber and Lyft to organize and bargain collectively over pay and benefits. That vote followed a years-long, nationwide battle over whether ride-share drivers should be considered independent contractors or employees entitled to benefits and wage protections.
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Hey, ya idiot... there's not an Epstein class (very small class... and, considering he's dead, I doubt that there's many knocking on his door)
I always laugh when rsilvergun's alter-egos post.
For @rsilvergun... maybe don't post stuff from your AC alter-ego (just so you can avoid getting modded down) constantly. A big plus would be if you started posting stuff without ever mentioning your AC or trying to force the story about your kid on people.
To everyone else: If the post has fark.com in it somewhere, it'
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I like "Epstein class" as a term.
I have a modest ambitions, I don't understand the ambitions of the super wealthy, why do they want that much money and still more besides? I assume it's so they can do anything they like, including fcking kids.
I cant imagine what its like to have that much wealth when there are so many people that need help and some literally starving whilst helping break the planet in the process. I guess they are monsters of indifference, sociopaths and psychopaths. Certainly not anyone I
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Yes, actually. https://koreajoongangdaily.joi... [joins.com]
Re: Yay! I'm sure this will lead to higher pay and (Score:3)
I don't see the similarity here. Does this mean you have to join (and presumably get accepted into) the union and pay dues before you're allowed to use the app as a driver? Or do you sign up on the app and then get permission from the union to drive, and they get a commission on top of it? Or do you have to go to a union hall and they decide who gets to drive that day based on seniority, with the same commission?
Also, unlike Uber, Samsung is actually profitable.
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...absolutely no downsides for anyone anywhere!
Yes, downsides to ride-sharing companies and their profits, which can impact their executives.
Not saying "wont someone please think of the..." but you are factually incorrect.
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Yes, downsides to ride-sharing companies and their profits, which can impact their executives.
Not saying "wont someone please think of the..." but you are factually incorrect.
I confidently predict the biggest losers will be customers.
If the union negotiates higher pay, that's going to cause some combination of reduced profits, increased automation, and higher prices. From what we're seeing with tariffs, the bulk will be increased prices. There's also a bunch of empirical research showing that increasing labor costs doesn't lead to lower profit margins. Unions may be great for workers who keep their jobs but they're entirely anti-consumer.
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Yes, downsides to ride-sharing companies and their profits, which can impact their executives.
Not saying "wont someone please think of the..." but you are factually incorrect.
I confidently predict the biggest losers will be customers.
Good. Cab driver used to a job you could make a living at. Then ride share companies came along and "disrupted" it into a gig job. Of course once cabs were marginalized or driven out of business they started jacking their prices back up, so now everything is worse except for the Uber and Lyft shareholders.
Prices need to come up to something the workers can make a living at. If that makes things too expensive because an extractive mega corp needs to make a profit, then maybe municipalities will do someth
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Then ride share companies came along and "disrupted" it into a gig job....then maybe municipalities...bring in more competition.
Wait, I'm lost on your reasoning. Taxis had a effective monopoly on transportation services. Ride sharing came along, out-competed them, and that was...bad? But to rein them in we want to bring in more competition?
I don't understand whether you favor competition or not.
Here's the thing. I have no idea what the right price for a driver's time is, nor the price for a ride. Maybe they're high enough to support someone at a reasonable living. Maybe it's only valuable enough to be a side gig which supplements a
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The union is fighting a losing game. They should use the momentum to launch their own employee-owned ride-sharing app.
In other words (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a taxi union.
Congratulations.
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The novelty isn't in what it really is, but how to deal with companies dressing up employees as contractors to dodge standard labor practices and bargaining.
Just like prediction markets say that it isn't "betting" because they dress it up as "hedging".
When do costs become problematic? (Score:3)
Much like with the food delivery services, when costs rise, usage tends to decrease, which in itself is a kind of dislocation, i.e. increased costs, results in decreased demand, which results in need for less supply -- so fewer will make more while supply (number of workers) is decreased inline with demand. Folks should be free to decide their own business arrangements, but as with everything else, that freedom applies to both sellers AND buyers and there will be no "free lunch" where more (or even the same number) workers will get paid more money, but rather, the iron laws of supply and demand will have their say.
It just means people drop out (Score:2)
Meanwhile pay was getting so bad you couldn't get drivers. Uber punishes you for refusing unprofitable rides
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Agreed. Freedom all around I say. Although I will also say that my usage of food delivery services has taken a nose dive (paying $30+ for 15$ worth of food is just a very poor use of funds, especially when I can jump in the car and get it for myself in less time). To each his own, although I suspect gig work will likely price itself out of some of the market -- which as you note, was probably an unproductive expenditure of everyone's time and money anyways.
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That balance goes both ways. If there's not enough work people won't do it and supply will drop.
I read an article yesterday. I don't remember where or the specifics. The gist was when the minimum wage for delivery drivers went up, demand dropped, supply rose, and tips dropped. Net net, drivers wound up making exactly the same amount as they did before the raise.
Hopefully this sorts itself out. You'd hope drivers in MA compare their unionized workload and pay against drivers in Rhode Island or Connecticut. We can speculate all we want, let's find out for sure.
Why is public transit so abysmal? (Score:2, Funny)
I don't understand the obsession with overpaying for a ride on a hipster app controlled by a seedy corporation that mistreats its gig workers.
In my day we walked home from a bar at 2am. If it was across town we caught the all night Friday/Saturday night bus service.
Re:Why is public transit so abysmal? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that public transit is full of the public. And people with money don't want to be around them.
Here you're quite likely to end up sitting next to a meth-head who's been riding the bus all day because it's warm and the drivers let them on even when they won't pay the fare.
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bars are full o public also, that's why all drinking should be done home alone
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No, bars will throw out scumbags. Public transit, at least around here, will not.
Re:Why is public transit so abysmal? (Score:5, Insightful)
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> Europe has plenty of meth-heads too, yet public transportation there does not suck
Then maybe they keep the meth-heads off the buses. But in America that's raxist or something.
There is never going to be a case where it's better to walk to where you have to wait for a bus which takes you to somewhere you have to walk home from than to just get in your car and drive there, which is why European governments concentrate on making travel worse for drivers.
Re:Why is public transit so abysmal? (Score:5, Funny)
Your perspective from thousands of miles away must be spot on!
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You overestimate the time on US bus routes. Only routes with low demand will have long times. Which leads to the second issue, the lower cost of mass transit needs to be greater than the lost convenience. So this make sense in high density regions without highway infrastructure or parking.
My suburb subsidizes a bus line into the city with very regular routes. That's still a 10 minute walk to the stop, usually a 10 minute wait, a 20 minute ride (when it's the express with limited stops), and then 5 minute wa
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In my day we walked home from a bar at 2am. If it was across town we caught the all night Friday/Saturday night bus service.
This is meaningless without stating *where* you did this. Many, if not most American cities are pretty much car dependent with scant public transportation and worse, they just were not designed for it or have molded their city layout for the past decades around highways and cars and not busses or god forbid trains.
NYC is really the only American city with a truly robust public transit system. DC, Chicago and maybe a couple others have decent systems but the rest? Especially a city that was really built up
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I remember walking 5-6 miles home at 2AM in college a couple times. 2-3 Miles was more common, but was staying at a friend's place. Wouldn't want to do it today, but I have almost had to walk home 5 miles from dinner at a restaurant last year when there was some odd service interruption for the busses. Fortunately an Uber eventually came, as there is no sidewalk, little light, and in some spots just a very narrow shoulder before a cliff.
Good luck to them! (Score:2)
Uber and Lyft drivers - a 2020s thing (Score:4, Interesting)
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I don't foresee that there will be any Uber and Lyft drivers by 2030, except a small and diminishing subset to serve the niche of people who won't get in a self-driving taxi.
It seems likely to take longer than 4 years (I would think somewhere between 10 to 15, but your market will vary), but self-driving taxis are appealing to Uber and Lyft themselves because they lower the overheads (i.e. paying the drivers), which means higher profits. Depending on the drivers location, they may be able to continue driving for Uber/Lyft for quite some time, but some have started to think about what their next job will be. It should probably be noted that right now a self driving taxi tends
Re:Uber and Lyft drivers - a 2020s thing (Score:5, Interesting)
Lyft and Uber have been planning the "driverless" car since at least 2013. I was a drive back at the start of these and it was on the books then. They both spent their early days throwing money at drivers and offering riders low fares, both subsidized by VC. When they started to have real shareholders and had to make them a profit, the move to driverless ramped up again but still went no where. The subsidized rides started to become less subsidized, so they started to trim the pay of drivers while modestly raising rates.
Knowing what I know and having experienced what I experienced as a driver, I am not surprised by and I fully support this action by drivers.
Re: Uber and Lyft drivers - a 2020s thing (Score:1)
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If Uber manages to replace its drivers (who bring and maintain their own cars) with robot vehicles, then they will simply raise their prices to cover the cost of buying and maintaining the robots.
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Except the part where Uber and Lyft drivers are the ones taking on the vehicle risk and fleet costs. The reduction in cost of human labor will have to outweigh the increased liability and actually owning the cost of vehicle maintenance. Already fleet ownership problems are ending up with robotaxis driving empty loops through residential neighborhoods because they don't have places to park.
That's been the real trick in Uber is getting the average joe to pony up on the hidden costs and still getting the full
clueless (Score:3)
A lot of trolls.
1. Union: will give them the power to fight Uber and Lyft. Sone "nerds" you are - you don't know that the algorithm is that someone takes a break, they get fewer and worse rates. If you're sick, ditto. (And before you open your yap, it's a lie: union dues average 1%-2% of your income. There are no "union bosses living high on the hog. There are NOBODY in a union making millions a year.)
2. So, we've been hearing about self-driving cars for years. And they're how common? (Gee, public transit means I don't drive...)