Interestingly all drivers are covered, but not all drivers will be voting members.
> only to drivers who have been with a company for the past 90 days and who have made at least 52 trips to or from Seattle during any three-month period in the past 12 months.
Lyft and Uber fought against this, under the logic that more part-time drivers are less likely to support unionization.
Meanwhile:
> Teamsters Local 117 and other drivers have pushed for stricter criteria
Not a huge surprise that unions would push for fewer drivers to be voting members - one tried and true union tactic is to negotiate with an employer to take money from non-powerful-union-members and give it to union members. That's how you end up with pay by seniority rather than performance, layoffs where the union decides who gets laid off, and pension deals that are unavailable to new workers.
That's how you end up with pay by seniority rather than performance
Frankly this is the fault of the employer not the union.
Yes the union is the one _forcing_ the employer to enact such policies but _why_ does the union exist? Because the employer treated their employees unfairly.
Unions are a bandage on a gaping wound, yes you can say the bandage isn't doing the best job. But why do you have the gaping wound to start with?
Whatever the historical reasons for power structures, once enacted they tend to serve their own ends. That they're disenfranchising some of their own members should be a big red flag.
On the other hand, a union that's run by people depending on uber as a full time source of income has a significant interest in reducing the number of people driving for a "fling" or part time - more surge pricing, more guarantee minimum income from uber, less risk of low ratings leading to punitive action, since uber can't just replace them easily.
My point is that while unions benefit some workers, they don't benefit all workers. It's not a black and white situation.
> And it's also how you end up with weekends, benefits, worker protection, full-time employment and reasonable wages.
This will only apply to the top 10% of Union workers. The workers who came late (or the majority of Uber drivers) will receive less pay, have less power, work longer hours, and fewer benefits than the "senior" drivers. Do you really think unions will help everyone? They, just like everything else in this world, are designed to benefit the top.
Contrary to mistaken public opinion, union members are paid commensurate with their skills and seniority. It's foolish to require a company to pay all employees the same regardless of ability and unions make allowances for that in negotiations.
Can you give some examples of this? I'm most familiar with California's public employee unions, which are admittedly an extreme sample, but nearly every attempt to do performance measurement is fought tooth and nail.
> unions...push for fewer drivers to be voting members
Leaders are incentivised to minimise the number of key supporters they need to stay in power [1]. Having a large pool of potential supporters is a plus.
My understanding is that non-union employees are required to pay union dues since they still benefit from collective bargaining. Some states & contracts have an opt-out.
That's the theory, yes. But there are plenty of examples of unions throwing some of their members (typically part-time employees or those without seniority) under a bus in order to get benefits for the rest; if the members being thrown under a bus don't even get to vote, they're even more screwed.
I am wondering how a practice of an employer requiring non-union members to pay union dues would be legal. Doesn't this constitute a tax?
Edit: it looks like this practice is not legal in right-to-work states in the US. This article seems to explain "Union security agreements" pretty well if anyone is interested:
"we conducted meta-analyses on the relationships of job tenure with four types of job performance: core task performance, citizenship behavior, creativity and innovative behavior, and counterproductive work behavior"
Paywalled.
However, the abstract ("citizenship behavior" / "creativity"... meaning what exactly?) hints that the measures are largely subjective and somewhat bullshitty.
"Results indicate that for all levels of job experience and for both low- and high-complexity jobs, the correlation between job experience and job performance is positive. "
These are people who know less about what it's like to work at Uber or don't have very much skin in the game. In any voting system, if you let people vote who don't know very much about the environment they are voting in or don't have much at stake, it makes fair representation difficult (unless you have fractional votes). To take an extreme example: people who visit Louisiana or have family there are certainly affected by state laws but that does not necessarily mean it is fair for them to vote on the same footing as Louisiana residents.
From a certain point of view you can see these as people who don't have much skin in the game -- so they are willing to sell their votes.
A more insidious way for this to work is that Uber could slightly favor candidates who are likely to vote their way during the on-boarding process -- varying their strategy on a month by month basis, depending on what issues are coming up for vote. You don't need a crushing margin -- and maybe don't want one -- just a good solid 3-4%.
Its more then that. People who drive for Uber rarely or are new to it don't want to pay union dues and are likely going to vote against the union.
The city didn't want a bunch of part-time or brand new drivers killing a union for the larger "full-time" group over union dues. Its a smart and relatively fair play by the authors of the law. The reason Uber/Lyft want these folks to vote is that they're likely to opt out just because of the dues.
I get that union dues can be a contentious issue for members. However, does organizing necessitate membership fees? It feels like jumping the gun to assume right away that an uber-drivers'-union would both have dues and they would be expensive enough to put off new members.
However, does organizing necessitate membership fees?
The union is going to hire an attorney to represent them in negotiations right?
And yes dues are a huge issue for new unions where members don't know what the benefits are yet - particularly for part-timers. My wife who's a management side labor attorney actually raised this point and said it was significant - and the law was written smartly to address this.
I don't know for certain with this law in particular, but typically the answer is that the description is a lie: they are not being granted permission from the council to organize. The council is banning Uber from hiring anyone not represented by the union (should they vote for it, but the fix is in, as noted by the carefully gerrymandered voting rules.)
Anyone can organize at any time, and the employer is free to tell you to pound sand and hire someone else. Seattle's trying to change that. Expect rates to go up and availability to go down.
Anyone can organize at any time, and the employer is free to tell you to pound sand and hire someone else
This is not correct. Independent Contractors can organize but they have no right's covered by the National Labor Relations Act - which means they have little power or protections of a traditional union including collective bargaining rights. Organizing groups (who are covered by the NLRA) can not be fired by the employers for organizing.
> Independent Contractors can organize but they have no right's covered by the National Labor Relations Act - which means they have little power or protections of a traditional union including collective bargaining rights.
Well, they don't have the normal protections that employees have, either, because they're independent contractors and not employees. That has nothing to do with the NLRA or collective bargaining rights.
Part of the point of independent contracting is that the relationship isn't an employment relationship, so the same rights aren't relevant. If you're saying that this is something that should be protected for Uber drivers, the real answer is that they should be classified as employees, not to blur the responsibilities of an independent contracting relationship.
> Anyone can organize at any time, and the employer is free to tell you to pound sand and hire someone else.
The reason why governments have historically enacted laws that regulate unions and their interaction with employees - and this is not the first such law by a long shot - is because, even with collective bargaining, unions are often simply not powerful enough to meaningfully negotiate, and so the power imbalance remains.
Independent contractors (the drivers) can join or create a "union" but they don't have the same privileges as a traditional (Full-Time employee) bargaining unit - most importantly a union of ICs have no collective bargaining rights.
For example striking independent contractors are not protected under the National Labor Relations Act. My understanding is that this law is meant to bridge some of the gaps in the labor laws by the drivers being independent contractors.
I wonder if Uber will just leave, like they did in Austin. Its hard to imagine the impact this would have, uber has a huge presence in seattle. I would imagine this would be political suicide for the council, certainly the impact it would have on my life would turn me into a full time shill for whoever opposes it politically
:-) In my experience with local politics, Uber driver-status has little weight in elections. Now on the other hand, favoring of building a highrise apartment building next to "my" house -- that can lead to an election loss.
(where "my" is some very effective local resident)
One interesting thing is, they do not seem to need to "ignore" them. The law is just about allowing communication for drivers to band together. Uber could easily cooperate with this law, but not cooperate with demands of a future driver's union.
Because, the brilliance (terrible?) part about Uber is that its so easy for them to get new drivers. The barriers to entry are soo very low. Almost every American that is able to work, is trained to drive, the large majority of them have cars, a decently large set of those people would like extra money, and they have the spare time.
If there was a strike, 1. Surge pricing would kick in, tempting a lot of people to forgo the strike. 2. Within days/weeks there will be a new set of drivers willing to work at the current price.
This whole notion of a "strike" only works if you get 100% of the able bodied men/women to cooperate. The larger the working pool of people, the lower the chances of a successful strike.
They would lose most of their public support if they did that. This isn't like France, where the majority of people are wiling to put up with hardship to support strikers. Block the roads in the US, or prevent transit from working, and people won't like you anymore.
I wonder if you'd feel the same way if I hoped someone would sustain a DDoS against their API endpoints due to their egregious violations of laws around the world; because I'd be fine with that.
Or is it only okay when Uber is disrupting the law and labor rights?
Uber didn't disrupt any labor laws or rights, they followed the existing model for taxi drivers, which were already considered contractors and not covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act.
There are exemptions from the FLSA, including taxi cab drivers. But taxi cab companies and drivers agree to an alternate regulatory paradigm. Uber has been disruptive to law and rights because it claims its drivers are exempt from FLSA and neither uber nor contractor is not a taxi cab business.
If there's an agreement, why are taxi drivers suing their companies, as in Chicago? Which are those rights granted in this agreement, and why aren't those even mentioned in pre-Uber stories describing the crappy situation of cab drivers, such as [1], which describe drivers having to pay to be allowed to work?
Does Uber break labour laws in European countries? Which ones?
I live in an European country myself, and there was a large campaign by the taxi associations against Uber (though unsuccessful), yet I've never seen that accusation, only regarding other kinds of laws.
Not going to go looking for the specific law now, but you can't use self employed people, or limited time employees for jobs that are usually done by full time employees (with indefinite contract) just because you want to keep costs down.
It may count as breaking the law, but not as a disruption of existing practices; minicab drivers were already considered self-employed, despite having much less control than Uber provides: https://web.archive.org/web/20101114091503/http://blogs.mirr...
A denial of service is the opposit of providing a service. You really can't tell the difference? Thats probably why you're moralizing legal code and forgetting that people voluntarily make uber successful.
People also "voluntarily" made mining companies hugely successful in the 19th century. But that doesn't mean the workers, that worked there "voluntarily" didn't suffer greatly from their work.
They worked there voluntarily in every practical sense of the word. There was no threat of violence on behalf of any of the parties entering into contract. Which part of this equation do you feel entitled to intervene in?
If these miners chose to become farmers instead, would you still say that they were "voluntarily" farmers? Or that mother nature was oppressing them by forcing them into hard labor..
I'm absolutely sure people enjoy terrible working conditions and meagre wages just because they want to make their millionaire boss a multi millionaire boss... not because they alternative is to be homeless/be hungry/die of cold.
I'm also absolutely sure you can be whatever you want to be. I.E. an immigrant arriving in the shores of the USA in the 19th century could just build his own cattle ranch. Boy if he accepted to work 18h a day 400m bellow the surface of the Earth, receive a ridiculously small wage for the job and die in his 30's from it, I'm absolutely sure it was because that was actually the miner's life long dream.
Damn unions, destroying those nice miner's dreams of having a miserable life since the 1900's...
Yes but one side has significantly more leverage, bargaining power and resources to skew the contract in their favor than the other.
We don't think a large multinational and a 1-person shop have the same bargain power and access to markets, nor do we generally consider the US and Lichtenstein to have equal powers. Yet when it comes to employment, it's bizarre than some consider an individual with maybe $10,000 in the bank is somehow on equal footing with a company with over $10,000,000,000 in the bank.
> Yet when it comes to employment, it's bizarre than some consider an individual with maybe $10,000 in the bank is somehow on equal footing with a company with over $10,000,000,000 in the bank.
I didn't see anyone here say that.
Furthermore, the existence of a power imbalance does not mean that the particular set of regulations imposed on Uber by Seattle are a good idea. It is entirely possible in these kinds of situations that the power imbalance is bad but the proposed solutions are worse.
I think it's worth trying in Seattle. A few years from now Seattle can be compared to other cities and we can try to figure out what the effects of the regulations are. If nothing good comes from it, rewrite the rules and try again.
> If nothing good comes from it, rewrite the rules and try again.
The problem is, that's not the way it works. Bad regulations are rarely replaced in our political system. Bad regulations often get votes or legalize rent-seeking by interest groups, such as unions, who have political clout. It is much harder to reverse bad regulations than to avoid them in the first place, and that's why it is so important to oppose them in their early stages.
> it is so important to oppose them in their early stages
Meh. This is one city and not a particularly conservative one. If a change needs to be made in five or ten years, they will make it. There's a decent chance the regulations will have a net positive effect so run the experiment and lets see what happens.
So will the union rules only apply to large multinationals? Or will they also be applied to smaller startups with significantly less power than the new union will have?
> Labor rights were an important fight... In the 19th century. The era of digital technology and communication ought to have a new approach to Labor laws.
By "new approach" you mean quasi slavery? no. workers will always have to fight for their rights.
I'm discussing the underlying problem why the union formed you are still attacking the fundamental existence of unions.
As I stated
Unions are a bandage on a gaping wound,
yes you can say the bandage isn't doing the best job.
But why do you have the gaping wound to start with?
You say
That they're disenfranchising some of their own members should be a big red flag.
Okay but that doesn't disagree with my core point.
Unions aren't a solution to the underlying problem. I agree with you.
Why are you still attacking a temporary solution to a much larger problem? Do you just hate unions that much?
:.:.:
Whatever the historical reasons for power structures,
once enacted they tend to serve their own ends.
Power Structures are a spook! - Avar and Max Stirner
That they're disenfranchising some of their own members
should be a big red flag.
Enforcement of a power structure is disenfranchisement?
Every single organization in modern society experiences this. Either you truly are on some next level Max Strirner individualism or you don't really realize what you insinuating (which is every single human organization is a fundamental oppression again humanity, this is what Strirner wrote about).
You've repeatedly become uncivil in comments here. That breaks the HN guidelines. Please (re-)read the following and post civilly and substantively, or not at all:
> you are still attacking the fundamental
> existence of unions.
Still? I think you've got me confused with someone else. I can hardly be said to "still" be maintaining some position when my one contribution to this thread as of writing this is a one paragraph comment.
I don't see how any reading of my one comment here could indicate that I'm attacking the fundamental existence of unions, which to clarify, I have nothing against.
> Why are you still attacking a temporary
> solution to a much larger problem?
My one paragraph comment was simply pointing out, something you failed to address in the grandparent's comment, that power structures once enacted tend to stick, and they tend to serve their own ends.
Which is not to say that unions can't be a net positive for workers employed as part of the union, that obviously depends.
But if you're being made part of a union's purview and they've structured their rules in such a way that you can't vote, then it should be fairly obvious that they're structurally not interested in representing you, and will in fact represent the interests of voting members at your expense.
My one paragraph comment was simply pointing out,
something you failed to address in the grandparent's
comment, that power structures once enacted tend to stick
I don't know what point you are trying to make. I really don't think you do either. Yes power structures attempt to keep themselves in place (which is indeed towards their own ends).
But this isn't just true of a union.
It is true of any government, company, VC firm, bank, school, sports team, etc. This isn't an attack on a unions. It is a condemnation of the entire system of organization the human race uses. Which I point out by relating this to the work of Max Strirner as he does levy this full criticism in a logically consistent fashion.
I am addressing the point the parent-N poster is making. Their point is moot.
Either they're stating there is a fundamental issue with all human organizations. Or they're just being biased towards unions making a No True Scotsman logical fallacy to support their argument. As are you as well.
:.:.:
they've structured their rules in such a way that you can't vote, then
it should be fairly obvious that they're structurally not interested in
representing you
This criticism is out of scope. And logically inconsistent.
It can be applied to any representational democracy where the majority of members do not vote (USA for example).
This is the exact same logic the DNC uses to explain why the RNC is racist (it suppresses the voting rights of minorities, QED it is not structurally interested in representing them).
I literally addressed this issue in my unions are flawed statement. Yes I admit they aren't prefect. They aren't always interested in representing all of their members. But the company is interested in far less.
You are also refusing to qualify all members.
The main restriction is to prevent part time uber drivers (those who Uber driving isn't their sole source of income). And very new Uber drivers (if Uber paid people to manipulate union voting).
This makes complete sense. Why would a full time person who depends on Uber be interested in helping a guy who only drives 2-3 hours a month?
So what other solution is there? Choice implies options. What are the other options?
Also you are attacking democratic rule by a minority of voters... Except that is the very legal system we have here in America. There are far more non-voters then voters. What right do their laws have to apply to us? This is your logic.
You seem to be reading everybody here very harshly and with no principle of charity, to the point that it's not ever clear to me you're actually reading them.
To be entirely clear, I am not making any claims about the desirability or lack thereof of unionization whatsoever. I'm just saying the thing I just said.
> only to drivers who have been with a company for the past 90 days and who have made at least 52 trips to or from Seattle during any three-month period in the past 12 months.
Lyft and Uber fought against this, under the logic that more part-time drivers are less likely to support unionization.
Meanwhile:
> Teamsters Local 117 and other drivers have pushed for stricter criteria
[1] http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/city-unvei...