> The criteria for self-employment include the possibility of building up one's own clientele, the
freedom to set one's own rates, and the freedom to set the terms and conditions for providing one's
services.
Immediately I'd seem to agree with this statement. I think of typical self-employment businesses; hairdressers, freelance developers, etc and this seems to apply. You can set your own rate and your own terms, even if those may kill your chance at being competitive.
But if you think deeper into this, then this criteria isn't always true.
Here's a scenario: I publish an ad on a handyman site asking for a new shed built for £100. People can place their interest and their proposal. The price is fixed at £100, and I may set other terms and criteria. Nobody is going to argue that the builders are employees of the exchange site. Uber isn't entirely different (it just simplifies the process). Its drivers are allowed to deny a ride, and can see the cost upfront.
Really the difference in these types of self-employment seems to be that the customer approached a set of potential suppliers, rather than vice versa, and the customer set the terms and the self-employed get to accept/deny. In the typical scenario (hairdressers, etc) they set the terms to potential customers who get to accept/deny.
I don't agree or disagree with the classification of Uber drivers as employees, I just don't agree with the criteria of the court in this case.
In your shed example, a builder could contact you and negotiate the price (perhaps the $100 price you set is completely unrealistic). That's not possible with Uber - there is no price negotiation - only declining/accepting a ride.
Similar argument for changing toppings on a cake - a caterer can negotiate changes to the cake - an Uber driver has no such flexibility.
Regardless, given corporate (human?) nature is to leverage any power differential to self-benefit, it seems reasonable that regulations be interpreted in the most protective (of the party with less power) manner possible.
I think the strongest argument against this point of view is that the drivers can opt to work for multiple car services to get a handle on their price structures. It's certainly possible for a traditional employer to allow that arrangement, but you have to admit it is an uncommon thing.
It's much more analogous to a contractor working for a general contractor -- if I'm a plumber I can take gigs from multiple general contractors, and my ability to negotiate with the customer directly is very limited; instead I'm usually left negotiating with the general contractor, often just with a take it or leave it price. The general contractor is not the employer in this case.
Target pays workers hourly wages. It would be quite something if they allowed you to work at Walmart during the hours you're being paid an hourly wage by Target.
Neither can a contractor build a gazebo for one client at the same time as they're building a gazebo for a different client. But there is a difference between getting paid for hours and getting paid for tasks.
Your analogy is not very good. General contractors take bids, they don't set the price, they take the best offer for them. And as a sub contractor or GC you can have as many jobs open as you want. I see no similarities between uber driving and sub contracting, aside from both being task based. Contractors get to set their rate, is built into the bid process drivers don't.
Rideshare drivers are paid by the task, but that task is time-bound. Building a shed isn't. You can take on two shed contracts simultaneously, not so as a rideshare driver.
Drivers aren't paid while they're waiting though, right? It seems to me like this is just holding two separate jobs of the same type (which I don't think is uncommon for the types of positions one might have at Target or Walmart), with the only difference being more flexibility of which hours to work.
If you're a contractor hired to build a shed and it takes you 8 hours, you're there all day. But if you can build it in 2 hours, you get to go home, and you still get paid the same.
If you're a Target employee brought in to do inventory and it takes most people 8 hours but you finish in 2, you're only going home if you don't want to get paid for the other 6 hours. Otherwise you're going to be stocking shelves or sweeping floors or working a register until the clock runs out.
Driving works like the first one. If you can make a 45 minute drive take 42 minutes, you get to keep the other 3 minutes. (In theory if you can make a 45 minute drive take 15 minutes you get to keep the other 30 minutes, but good luck with that.)
Worker protections exist to ensure that employers don't exploit their position of power to take advantage of their workers. Full stop. Obviously that doesn't apply to the plumber you hired to fix your toilet or the painters the company hired to paint the walls but anytime you have a continuing open ended relationship when you alone provide at least a substantial fraction of the employees total income I have to wonder how on earth the same protections don't apply.
The situations where a contractor relationship applies are plain and obvious. Any time you have to ask if someone is an employee you are probably exploiting the fine line to avoid having to follow the law. Kind of like if you have to ask if you are actually committing fraud you probably are. Depending on which side of the fine line a judge comes down on you may or may not be punished for it but you aren't a better person for it.
If people were taking home $100k driving for Uber I would accept this argument, since I wouldn't want to interrupt the good opportunity with regulations.
As it is, I see the preponderance of arguments on the side of it being regular employment without the expected benefits.
For what it's worth every Uber ride I've taken I would have taken at double the price, it's possible they could afford to pay their full time drivers benefits.
> As it is, I see the preponderance of arguments on the side of it being regular employment without the expected benefits.
Let's evaluate this for a moment.
Suppose the people driving for Uber could get a job somewhere else as an employee. In this case they willingly chose the driving job with e.g. more flexible hours over the other job with employment status, so why are we second guessing their choice and trying to take it away?
Now suppose the other job isn't available to them. Job prospects for unskilled workers are pretty bad, so it's either Uber or unemployment. Then it's the same thing -- they'd rather drive for Uber as a contractor than be unemployed, so why should we take that option away from them?
The theory behind forcing them to be employees is that it's "better" for them. If they're employees they get employee benefits. But then they can't work part time anymore, because if the company is going to pay full time benefits then they're going to want full time hours. Flexible hours go away too, because if they're forced to pay benefits they can use them to attract people who don't need flexible hours and no longer have to accommodate people who do.
Then the benefits cost money, but the company's margins are pretty thin so the only place to get the money is by making rides more expensive. That hurts all the working class people who have to pay more for rides, but it also lowers demand for rides. Lower demand, fewer drivers.
So a lot of the existing drivers, and specifically the most vulnerable of them who can't find another job or need the flexible schedule, lose their jobs.
They might be better off if we don't "help" them like this.
One of the issues here is about Uber getting away with paying the same type of taxes than other businesses, which creates an unfair situations with other companies & a race to the bottom for workers rights.
"Workers rights" are things like the right not to be refused a job because you're a woman. I don't think anybody is accusing Uber of doing this, nor would doing it give anyone any apparent competitive advantage in modern markets.
Classifying things like unemployment insurance under that banner is silly, because anybody who wants it can go buy it with money, so it makes no sense to require it rather than letting workers and companies negotiate over whether they'd rather have that or some other thing like higher pay. Every company has to convince their workers to work there and not somewhere else, so everything like that which they don't provide requires them to provide something else instead.
Imposing those requirements hurt workers by taking their options away -- somebody who knows they're only going to be a driver for four years as they work their way through college may very well be better off to have the money that would otherwise be paid to the insurance carrier than to have the unemployment insurance, which they'll not use anyway because Uber doesn't do "layoffs" of contractors and it's very unlikely demand for rides is going to disappear in the next four years.
Sounds like a bug with the tax law to me. Maybe there should be a services tax which is used to fund benefits, or something of that nature? Not a fully considered suggestion, just pointing out that this isn't obviously a fault with uber rather than the way taxes are structured.
> Suppose the people driving for Uber could get a job somewhere else as an employee. In this case they willingly chose the driving job with e.g. more flexible hours over the other job with employment status, so why are we second guessing their choice and trying to take it away?
Who's taking it away, though? There's no law that a company can't offer employees flexible hours, and nobody's arguing that there should be. If Uber decides employee drivers can't have flexible hours, then that's on them. This argument is a non-sequitor with regard to employee/contractor status.
> Now suppose the other job isn't available to them. Job prospects for unskilled workers are pretty bad, so it's either Uber or unemployment. Then it's the same thing -- they'd rather drive for Uber as a contractor than be unemployed, so why should we take that option away from them?
Is it "Uber or unemployment", though? Are unskilled workers without a car just completely screwed? No, because those aren't the only two choices. Do you know of an actual case where a person has had no other choices than Uber and unemployment? It's a red herring.
> The theory behind forcing them to be employees is that it's "better" for them.
I can't speak to France, but in the United States the difference has a lot more to do with taxes and social security than it does with any immediate, direct benefits to the employee.
> If they're employees they get employee benefits. But then they can't work part time anymore, because if the company is going to pay full time benefits then they're going to want full time hours. Flexible hours go away too, because if they're forced to pay benefits they can use them to attract people who don't need flexible hours and no longer have to accommodate people who do.
Again, I don't know about France, but in the United States "employee benefits" have almost nothing to do with employee/contractor status. No company is required to provide any benefits other than wages. If Uber decides employee drivers don't get flexible hours, that's on them, not the law.
> Then the benefits cost money, but the company's margins are pretty thin so the only place to get the money is by making rides more expensive. That hurts all the working class people who have to pay more for rides, but it also lowers demand for rides. Lower demand, fewer drivers.
In the United States, the "benefits" are things like unemployment insurance, social security, income tax, and things like that, which the drivers should already be paying for themselves. In theory this is already coming out of the driver's earnings, so having the company pay it instead shouldn't make a difference to the end user's price.
> There's no law that a company can't offer employees flexible hours, and nobody's arguing that there should be. If Uber decides employee drivers can't have flexible hours, then that's on them. This argument is a non-sequitor with regard to employee/contractor status.
The flexible hours come in exchange for contractor status. If they paid employee benefits they could attract employees who don't need flexible hours. Which means if you force them to pay employee benefits either way, they take those workers instead of the ones who need flexible hours and the ones who need flexible hours are out of work.
> Is it "Uber or unemployment", though? Are unskilled workers without a car just completely screwed? No, because those aren't the only two choices. Do you know of an actual case where a person has had no other choices than Uber and unemployment? It's a red herring.
It's one of the two possibilities. The other is that they had the option of working for someone else as an employee but willingly chose Uber, e.g. because of flexible hours. Or maybe they like driving a car better than cleaning toilets. Whatever the reason, you're taking away that option.
> I can't speak to France, but in the United States the difference has a lot more to do with taxes and social security than it does with any immediate, direct benefits to the employee.
In the US the employee and employer each pay half of social security. Contractors are "self-employed" so they pay both halves. But everybody knows this, so you have to pay a contractor that much more (or provide some other valuable consideration like flexible hours) to get them to work for you instead of somewhere they're an employee. If you make Uber drivers employees, more people want the job and by supply and demand the wages go down.
> Again, I don't know about France, but in the United States "employee benefits" have almost nothing to do with employee/contractor status.
There are a bunch of rules and incentives with respect to employer-provided health insurance, unemployment insurance etc. that apply to employees and not contractors. If there was no difference then why would anybody care about how the drivers are classified?
In general you could expect a reclassification to negatively impact everyone involved, because being an employee involves a lot more paperwork and bureaucracy but the value in any advantage from it should then get reflected in correspondingly lower compensation (or loss of employment if that level of compensation falls below minimum wage).
> The flexible hours come in exchange for contractor status.
You keep saying that, but there's nothing backing it up. Contractors typically have more flexible hours, but companies are free to allow flexible hours if they want to. If the drivers were employees, it would be Uber's choice to give them flexible hours or not.
> If they paid employee benefits they could attract employees who don't need flexible hours. Which means if you force them to pay employee benefits either way, they take those workers instead of the ones who need flexible hours and the ones who need flexible hours are out of work.
That's all speculation, though. Maybe the displaced employees will start an Uber competitor that does give flexible hours, beat out Uber, and become the next unicorns. It could be the best thing that ever happens to them...
Really, it's a wash. One group loses a specific job option because they need flexible hours and Uber (supposedly) won't allow it , and another group gains that option because they need regularity.
> There are a bunch of rules and incentives with respect to employer-provided health insurance, unemployment insurance etc. that apply to employees and not contractors. If there was no difference then why would anybody care about how the drivers are classified?
Who is paying for the driver's insurance right now, though? If each driver pays for their own then they'll collectively save a ton of money on a corporate group plan. Employees working under 30 hours a week aren't even required to get employer provided insurance, though, so there may not be a change for people taking advantage of those flexible hours...
> In general you could expect a reclassification to negatively impact everyone involved, because being an employee involves a lot more paperwork and bureaucracy but the value in any advantage from it should then get reflected in correspondingly lower compensation (or loss of employment if that level of compensation falls below minimum wage).
There's not more paperwork and bureaucracy - the existing paperwork and bureaucracy is just concentrated into Uber's HR and finance departments, instead of being done by thousands of drivers.
> You keep saying that, but there's nothing backing it up. Contractors typically have more flexible hours, but companies are free to allow flexible hours if they want to. If the drivers were employees, it would be Uber's choice to give them flexible hours or not.
The reason they give them flexible hours is in exchange for not having to do the things that come with classifying them as employees. It's what allows them to attract drivers even when they're classified as contractors. If they paid benefits then they could attract drivers without offering flexible hours -- but that doesn't help the drivers who need flexible hours and not benefits.
Not only that, they would be less able to offer flexible hours. When they're hiring contractors, they don't have to care what hours people want to work. If you're an employee, 30 hours is not an option, because if you're working enough to require benefits then they're going to want to make the most of it by having you work 40 hours. But 60 hours is out too, because as an employee you're not going to be approved for overtime. Choosing your own schedule is also out, because for contractors they'll take anyone at any time they're willing to work, but if they're paying benefits and need you to work a specific number of hours a week then they'll want to schedule those hours at times that maximize the number of rides rather than whenever is easiest for you.
Saying that they could still allow flexible hours in a theoretical sense doesn't help anybody when reclassification as employees gives them all these incentives not to.
> That's all speculation, though. Maybe the displaced employees will start an Uber competitor that does give flexible hours, beat out Uber, and become the next unicorns. It could be the best thing that ever happens to them...
Maybe they'll win the lottery five times in a row and then get elected President of the United States. That's speculation.
It's not speculation to say that if Uber pays benefits, it makes it easier for them to attract employees, which allows them to do other things that are less attractive to employees and still find workers. The thing they choose to claw back may be the flexible hours or it may be something else, but it'll be something the drivers currently have which Uber will no longer have to offer because their job would be competitive without it if they paid benefits.
> Really, it's a wash. One group loses a specific job option because they need flexible hours and Uber (supposedly) won't allow it , and another group gains that option because they need regularity.
Work with flexible hours is a lot more scarce than shift work, so making it unavailable in exchange for much more common shift work is not a wash. It's a huge problem for people who need flexible hours.
Also, regularity is a subset of flexible hours. If you want to work 9-5, a job with flexible hours allows that. So you're not adding an option, you're only taking one off the table which was hard to find to begin with.
> Who is paying for the driver's insurance right now, though? If each driver pays for their own then they'll collectively save a ton of money on a corporate group plan.
For a normal corporate group plan, maybe, but think about the context here. You have a group which is inherently at high risk of medical bills due to car accidents. Then this is a job where they accept anyone with a valid driver's license. First thing that happens to that corporate group plan is that everyone without health insurance who gets diagnosed with cancer or cardiovascular disease or diabetes signs up as a driver and uses the "new job" condition to immediately take the insurance.
That group plan would cost more than what you could get on the exchanges.
> Employees working under 30 hours a week aren't even required to get employer provided insurance, though, so there may not be a change for people taking advantage of those flexible hours...
The people taking advantage of flexible hours aren't necessarily the people working less than 30 hours. If you want to work 5 hours while your kids are at school at 2 hours after they go to bed, you'll have a hard time negotiating that schedule at Target, but it's still 35 hours a week.
The people who work under 30 hours may not see much of a difference, but "this change may have no real effect on a particular subgroup of people" is not actually an argument that it is benefiting them.
> There's not more paperwork and bureaucracy - the existing paperwork and bureaucracy is just concentrated into Uber's HR and finance departments, instead of being done by thousands of drivers.
In other words, there is more paperwork and bureaucracy. Because there are still thousands of drivers, but now there is an extraneous middle man between the drivers and their insurance carrier, making choices on their behalf that they might not prefer and processing paperwork that the insurance carrier will only have to process again.
>For what it's worth every Uber ride I've taken I would have taken at double the price
I would have taken a ride at double the price. But, for example, on the rare occasions I've used a ride-share from my house to the airport for personal travel, it's purely been because of price. Were it double the price, I'd just book a private car like I do for business travel.
> If people were taking home $100k driving for Uber I would accept this argument, since I wouldn't want to interrupt the good opportunity with regulations.
That building contractor can generally set hours, sub out the work, etc. Pricing negotiation is only one of several tests to determine whether or not a worker is an employee or contractor.
Now they will probably lock a driver to their service and then a new fight will ensue when courts try to rule that is not allowed and find a new class to these drivers in.
This might depend on jurisdiction though. I too have seen cars with all kinds of stickers at the same time in some countries, and in others they are exclusively one or the other.
Whenever I've asked why a driver is only driving for one its usually for one of two reasons.
They don't know they can do both and went with what they believed to be the most popular. These are usually uber only drivers.
They had a bad experience with too many customers on one platform. These are usually Lyft drivers that are actually using the platform for the occasional side money instead of a full on job.
Say John make a platform right now and set the rule that there's no negotiations permitted. Builders accepting the proposal must accept at the listed price. Obviously there remains a variation in the quality of the different proposals (some builders may be more polite, or use better wood). Obviously, the key difference here is that I would be able to choose what builder I want, but the customer on Uber doesn't get to decide that. So let's place one more restriction: the platform decides which builder gets the job behind the scenes.
Now, would you say that builder is employed by this website? If so, at what point did this turn from self-employment to employment?
> Similar argument for changing toppings on a cake - a caterer can negotiate changes to the cake - an Uber driver has no such flexibility.
If the customer wants a cake for wedding: vanilla with 3 layers and a cherry on top it seems a bit inappropriate to contact them saying "I can't make a vanilla cake but how about chocolate?"
It's a limitation of the platform (limitations made to improve customer experience - imagine if you had to negotiate for every taxi ride, you don't do this for local companies). I'd argue that the hypothetical platform described can set any number of limitations, as long as the builder can hop off and get his work elsewhere at any point.
Really, imo, the key here is how much control the Uber driver has to refuse tasks, and if they can seek the same work elsewhere (eg is Lyft available in the city?). You wouldn't tell your boss "eyy sorry chief, bit tired, gonna head home, give the fare to someone else, byeee!! hangs up" -- but you can on Uber.
I'd argue that in the builder-app, the builder has now been transformed into an employee, same as an Uber driver. To me, "setting prices" is more than just refusing/accepting prices set by an algorithm/app, but the ability to negotiate those independently.
In the cake example, a baker absolutely could attempt to negotiate for chocolate. They might not "win" the negotiation, but they have the option.
Edit - in the taxi driver (traditional taxi in US), I'd argue that most of them should be employees too. Sometimes they are employed directly by "Acme Cab" or whatever. But, in the case of the local airport taxi company (Washington Flyer), the company has a monopoly on airport transport, but drivers are independent contractors - this always struck me as a very lopsided and questionable arrangement. If a driver wants to pick up at Dulles, they have to contract for Wash Flyer at fixed rates, renting a company car, etc.
And I'll freely admit this all can be a bit ambiguous. And that I'm not a fan of the "gig economy" in general - I'm convinced corporations are using it to reduce wages and benefits and effectively foist the cost of those lower wages/benefits on society as a whole.
Sure, corporations are using it to reduce wages and benefits, etc. But gig economy is not really a new concept -- almost every tradecraft profession has a similar dynamic; as an electrician you are generally not paid by an employer, you instead go out and get work. This gives you the freedom to set your own hours and tune the amount of work that you take on to support your lifestyle.
I think the problem with a lot of these gig economy services is that they are often pumped by VC/PE money in an attempt to generate monopolies by over-capitalizing. If we got rid of that dynamic (which is a difficult problem) then this disappears. If there are a hundred different Ubers, operating in different cities, then gig workers are put in a better position to bargain by selecting a service to use.
The cost here is that the customer is inconvenienced; a single app with a single payment system seems like a better deal. But distributing this responsibility actually makes the overall system more robust and leads to interesting solutions throughout the stack, rather than converging on whatever terrible systems have been hard-coded by the over-capitalized market leaders.
- I'm convinced corporations are using it to reduce wages and benefits and effectively foist the cost of those lower wages/benefits on society as a whole.
The customer demand (customer being the drivers) tells a completely different story of people being more productive than legacy taxi systems by taking responsibility themselves.
I think a lean "gig economy" without the full load of bureaucracy is largely positive and really dislike how it is torn down here in Europe...
I would be more inclined to agree with you if there was clear evidence that people really understood all the “responsibility” they’re taking on when picking up gig-economy work.
Responsibilities like the value depreciation of their vehicle, or paying for sick leave and time off.
Full time employment provides strong protection against unexpected illness. The gig-economy doesn’t.
Companies like Uber seem to prey on large pools of semi-innumerate drivers who either don’t realise they’re operating a loss and too desperate to care.
The result is your productivity gains, which only exist because some of the costs simply aren’t accounted for and ignored. These aren’t real productivity gains, that’s just socialising costs and clever accounting to justify it.
- Companies like Uber seem to prey on large pools of semi-innumerate drivers who either don’t realise they’re operating a loss and too desperate to care.
Without hard data this is just a far fetched claim. You are implying that „a large part“ (how large?) people are too dumb to make this decision for themselves. Even though I do not doubt that these people exist, what is the relative threshold where all others should be restricted by rules made for that geoup? Also I would argue that there is a learning effect if someone notices he operates at a loss and can learn from others who are making a profit. This might be very valuable in fighting „learned helplessness“.
But as you might notice: I am always in favor of doing things the hard way, with short term pain than obfuscating the price signals for short term ease only compensating the symptoms.
The legacy taxi system, at least in the US, was ripe for disruption. No argument there. However, disruption doesn't necessarily require shafting "employees" out of wages and benefits. Reform to medallion systems (at least in the cities that have them) might have had similar benefits, without the negatives associated with "gig" employment.
>And I'll freely admit this all can be a bit ambiguous. And that I'm not a fan of the "gig economy" in general - I'm convinced corporations are using it to reduce wages and benefits and effectively foist the cost of those lower wages/benefits on society as a whole.
I think it's ambiguous too. Though I disagree with the criteria set by this court, I'm not entirely sure on what the right criteria is. I think Uber play a line between employment and self-employment to keep it ambiguous, and I certainly agree it's to make sure they don't have to provide full employment benefits to their drivers, but I still think the classification/distinction is tricky.
If drivers are indeed employees, as I mentioned in my other comment, I think Uber gain a lot of rights over their drivers that they don't currently have.
As a counter example I bring you the Italian taxi system
Cab drivers have to receive a public license from the city to work in that city (and can only have one)
They can't decide the price, which is fixed according to some rules and are all the same for every cab in the city
The shouldn't sell the licence even if most of them do (gray legal area)
But they are not considered employees of the city but as freelancers
How do they "negotiate" the price?
They try to follow the most rewarding route for them and, unless the customer knows which is the fastest route, they get away with it
I'm not a fan of the gig economy either, but Uber drivers look to me are willing to work at their rules, their hours and on the gigs they like, which is different from what we consider being regular employees in Italy
That's similar to the taxi system in many (European and proabably traditionally US) places. The big differences compared to Uber there are:
- The rates are rather high, so the e.g. the costs for the car are taken into account and still the driver earns a decent living
- The city does not take a significant share of every fare paid
As long as the system is somewhat balanced and no turbo capitalism exploiting drivers in a weak position nobody tries it up to the supreme court. (In the US the legal system is less balanced, so I don't think Uber drivers would make it to the supreme court, not even dreaming of getting a similar verdict.)
Home Depot sets prices for services like carpet install. They sub it out to various installers. AAA subcontracts out to local tow operators to provide nationwide coverage. Huge segments of the economy would fall apart of we made all of those kinds of people employees.
> Huge segments of the economy would fall apart of we made all of those kinds of people employees.
I don't think that's really a relevant argument to whether they should be classified as employees. Huge segments of the economy have already fallen apart, and more will fall apart in the future.
The point is this category of worker is not just made of a small fringe of poor victims. Many of these people are legitimate entrepreneurs who become millionaire small business owners. You're going to destroy an important path to wealth creation for the poor and middle class by forcing them to be mega corp drones. This is an awful idea. You will destroy their lives by pulling up the ladders blue collar workers are using to climb out of poverty because you're upset that some Uber drivers are poor.
It's not only about opportunity for gig economy workers, it's about us all paying the price of gig economy business operations. Uber's business model can be extended to virtually any job, if we lower the barrier to entry just like Uber is trying to do for the taxi business.
Their model is to be a gatekeeper to customers via their platform - if they are successful, none of those blue collar workers trying to climb out of underemployment will have a chance at running a small ride business, because only large platforms have access to customers.
If everyone suddenly becomes a freelancer, companies are free to push externalities onto society because there will be enough people willing to take the hit to their rights/benefits for any kind of employment. It's a race to the bottom that benefits only the company that has access to the customer base.
Something that keeps popping back to my mind since the late 80's is to wonder to what extend government could or even should deliver type FOO services. Coding a taxi service wont cost anywhere near as much as the damage Uber is looking to deal. We spend crazy amounts of money designing, implementing and configuring labor protection and Uber obviously wants to work around it.
I think you've created a false narrative where workers have no power to demand wages or benefits. If that were true then Google engineers would be making the legal minimum wage. When you understand why Google engineers don't make minimum wage, you'll understand the flaw in your analysis on wage pricing.
Yes, it is all true, I find poverty a fascinating puzzle. I've solved one part of it already. Opinions from people who don't share that fascination cant contribute to the answer. The situation is even worse than you can imagine. I see excessive wealth render people unproductive. Don't get me wrong, I would love to see wealth come out of equally valuable contributions to civilization. Driving a car from A to B to C, well, I'm sorry, that ain't it. That would be a task ideally fit for someone who just wants to work, pay bills, buy a house, get married, have kids, go on vacation 2 times per year etc. It would be valuable to society to do it cheaply, perhaps we should even subsidize it. If you buy a bunch of cars and hire a bunch of people, then I could see the purpose of an opportunity for wealth creation.
The primary difference is the state generally doesn't allow poor people to legally offer basic carpentry/roadside services at a rate commensurate with their skill. Things like licensing requirements create a barrier to entry unavailable to the poor, not unlike what traditional taxi companies are fighting for in their war against gig economy drivers. Such laws do help the wealthy incumbents because they have the ability to overcome those barriers, but it's at the expense of the poor.
Fields like accounting and legal services operate this way too. A friend of mine made a lot of money as a contractor during major acquisitions. I'm pretty sure he was of legal age to work in his state.
> Now, would you say that builder is employed by this website?
Probably yes. The terms are being set by the platform.
> It's a limitation of the platform (limitations made to improve customer experience - imagine if you had to negotiate for every taxi ride, you don't do this for local companies).
I've never used Uber. Does the customer get to choose the driver? On this hypothetical platform, does the customer get to choose the builder?
With Uber (or Lyft), neither party can select the other. The app dispatches drivers as rides are requested.
This is in general...
A driver can decline rides before accepting (because destination is out of their desired area or time exceeds 45 minutes), but that can impact driver rating (or at least, it used to do so). Drivers can also refuse drunk passengers, unaccompanied minors, and a few other things like that.
I'm not aware of any way for a passenger to refuse a driver, short of cancelling the ride completely (which has a fee associated if done close to actual pick-up). And, if you make another ride request, you might get the same driver again.
Another difference is that the Uber app is not an ad board. It also manages the monetary transactions. This effectively removes the ability to negotiate the price. If you in your example include that aspect it starts to resemble the Uber situation.
> That's not possible with Uber - there is no price negotiation - only declining/accepting a ride.
That is price negotiation. The market price changes all the time in response to supply and demand. If you're not willing to do it for a lower price and someone else is, you lose business to them. An hour later there is more demand and you can get some business at your price. Or you can lower your price (accept both rides) and get business both times.
Narrowing the choice to "accept or reject" isn't really removing the price negotiation, it's just simplifying it down to what it inherently always was to begin with.
> Similar argument for changing toppings on a cake - a caterer can negotiate changes to the cake - an Uber driver has no such flexibility.
They get to choose what kind of car to drive, where to buy gas, what hours to work. What would you say is the equivalent thing they don't get to choose?
> Regardless, given corporate (human?) nature is to leverage any power differential to self-benefit, it seems reasonable that regulations be interpreted in the most protective (of the party with less power) manner possible.
But what does that even mean in this case? Isn't the party with less power the one that would be out of work if reclassified as an employee, because employees have less flexibility etc. than contractors?
Kicking people off for accepting rides and then canceling them makes perfect sense because once you accept the ride, the customer is waiting and they're not looking for another driver. It also discourages drivers from looking at the destination and then refusing rides that legally they're not supposed to, like trips into black neighborhoods.
Accepting in the first place either happens or doesn't in only a few seconds, and if you don't they immediately go on to the next driver. At best they have the incentive to make you manually re-enable your availability to drive if you neither accept nor decline more than a couple of rides in a row, so they can stop routing rides to you if you're not actually there. In makes no sense to kick you off over it, so why would they do that?
Only anecdotal. I have an Uber driver friend, and other drivers have told me the same. I live in a very suburban area that's basically shut down for the winter season. There is often only one driver even active within 10 miles. It's not a problem in a city.
Getting switched offline after too much inactivity, from which you need to actively affirm intent to work by going online again, is not the same as getting kicked off the platform.
They decide it in response to supply and demand. Would you really expect them to raise prices when there is less demand and more supply and lower them when the opposite?
Which is what allows agents to set their prices. If prices are too high, some riders exit or more drivers enter which causes prices to decline. If prices are too low, some drivers exit or more riders enter which causes prices to increase. Is this not the ordinary mechanism of market pricing?
I'm not an economist or a laissez-faire capitalist, but I don't think that's the ordinary mechanism of market pricing. My understanding is that the individual actors on the market independently price their goods in competition with one another. In this case Uber is the sole authority in setting the price of rides, while in a market this would be more distributed. To quote Wikipedia on the free market:
"In a free market, the laws and forces of supply and demand are free from any intervention by a government or other authority and from all forms of economic privilege, monopolies and artificial scarcities."[1]
What Uber is in this context is basically an intermediary, like a retailer that sits between a manufacturer and a consumer, or a general contractor that sits between a subcontractor and a property owner.
What you have then isn't a transaction between the driver and the rider, it's two transactions, one between the driver and Uber and another between Uber and the rider. Each transaction is negotiated. Uber changes their offers to each party based on supply and demand, and if either party doesn't like it they can hold out for a better offer or go use Lyft. And since Uber does actually adjust pricing based on supply and demand, the better offer actually comes when enough people hold out.
The way you negotiate with them is by delaying your purchase/sale until they meet your price. It's a functioning market.
Take it or leave it isn't really negotiation, though, is it. There's no counter offer or alternative terms to work with. As I understand too many declines get drivers kicked off the platform, so their autonomy in this regard seems fairly limited.
> In your shed example, a builder could contact you and negotiate the price (perhaps the $100 price you set is completely unrealistic).
The argument presupposed that you refuse to negotiate. To say "but you can negotiate" sidesteps the whole thought experiment. You post the job at a fixed price. It's in writing on your posting, "fixed price". A builder accepts it. Or maybe they try to negotiate and you refuse and they do it anyway, or someone else accepts it. Either way someone ends up doing the job at your fixed price. Does the builder now have grounds to sue you for benefits and maybe a pension plan because you don't like haggling?
Anyway I think price negotiation is a bad criterion to use. It is neither necessary nor sufficient to prove anything.
In this shed scenario, if the first 10 builders to come across the ad think it's unrealistic and either ignore the ad or try to negotiate and get rejected, they walk away unscathed and quickly take other higher paying gigs. With Uber, I believe ignoring or rejecting customers is detrimental to your ability to continue finding higher paying customers.
... But not detrimental to your ability to find other ride-sharing apps, or non-app methods of discovering customers...
This seems like a rather different direction of argument. The analogy had a known price before you decide. Allowing you to cancel without penalty wouldn't rate as negotiating anyway. Now you are talking about having to commit to work without knowing what you'll be paid (except in general terms presumably). There are other contract gigs where that happens, as well as full-time employment where that happens.
> I publish an ad on a handyman site asking for a new shed built for £100. People can place their interest and their proposal. The price is fixed at £100, and I may set other terms and criteria.
You have satisfied all the criteria for self employment:
- The handyman can build their clientele - they are free to select whichever proposals interest them without restriction.
- The handyman can set their own rate - there is a free market of offers and proposals in which the handyman can freely make bids without restriction.
- The handyman is free to set terms and conditions - they can negotiate with a potential client to find a mutually agreeable situation.
> Uber isn't entirely different (it just simplifies the process).
It is entirely different. It "simplifies" the process by removing all of the criteria needed to be self employed:
- There is no free market of proposals. Uber sets the rate and the clients and drivers are both given the choice to take it or leave it (there is no possibility for the handyman to set their own rate). Clients are not permitted to select drivers and drivers are not permitted to select clients (there is no possibility for the handyman to build their clientele). Drivers are forced to accept rides or accept harsh penalties, like bans.
- Uber sets the terms and conditions. Both the driver and the rider are given a take it or leave it deal. Further, the driver isn't even aware of the full terms (destination, route) when they take the ride.
For Uber to be comparable to your example, it would have to allow drivers and riders to post proposals, set their own terms and prices and freely select from available offers without penalties for refused proposals.
Drivers are free to accept or decline any ride requests around them. How is that not a free market of proposals? Pretty much every driver I met used multiple applications, Uber, Lift, Juno. I don't know whether or not any Uber drivers would stop for someone just flagging a cab on the street the old fashioned way.
> Uber sets the terms and conditions
There are always terms and conditions. If your handyman needs to do something to your power circuitry, he had better be a licensed electrician. The catering that puts icing on your cake, better pass a health inspection. And your cab driver better have a driver's license. All of these are pretty much take it or leave it restrictions.
> it would have to allow drivers and riders to post proposals, set their own terms and prices and freely select from available offers
No taxi service I know of works this way. Because you want your fares to be at least somewhat predictable and your incentives are aligned very different from driver's incentives.
To cast your shed-building example in the Uber model:
* You submit a desire to build a shed to a market-making company that controls much of the market
* The market-maker sets a price you will be billed
* The market-maker alerts nearby builders of a construction project
- without the location
- without the project cost
- without the project plans
* A builder (capriciously) clicks "accept project" and travels to your building site
- upon arriving the market-maker discloses to the builder the project cost and plans
- if the builder declines to implement the project at the dictated cost, the market-maker might penalize the builder and/or exclude them from the market
I live in the hope that someday HN will apply the tiniest scrap of markdown support, and then the weird scrolling boxes will bloom as beautiful nested lists and code snippets.
Pray tell, why does the builder capriciously click "accept project", repeatedly, knowing that some projects are more worthwhile than others, other than that they are compensated adequately for the risk?
On what basis should someone presume to contradict the builder's calculus on this kind of tradeoff?
Well, those are the terms of the sometimes-lousy arrangement they have with the market-maker, which arrangement certain jurisdictions will construe as employment, due in large part to the builder/employee's lack of true contractor-like agency to consider and set a price for assignments.
That some people are willing to participate in this zany scheme doesn't mean the court necessarily ought to view them as non-employees.
Were there a bidding process with a reasonable and sufficient amount of transparency to the worker--what and where exactly is the job, what does it pay?--then the scales could tilt towards contractor-dom.
I think that's where the problem lies. A functioning market imposes certain restrictions on participants. A good regulator also adds requirements to ensure fairness, access, etc. One requirement (for instance) could be that you need to provide certain kinds of information about the work. Instead of doing this, what's the point of beating around the bush and inventing that one of the marks of employment is a "sometimes-lousy arrangement"? When did that become the defining characteristic of employment, as opposed to simply an unfavorable contract?
> what's the point of beating around the bush and inventing that one of the marks of employment is a "sometimes-lousy arrangement"?
I don't think anyone seeks to apply such a test; the lousiness of the arrangement is incidental. I had attempted to argue that the mere fact that workers knowingly take a questionable or even bad deal does not mean they are contractors. The legal status of employee vs. contractor does not hinge on that.
Your shed example is not the same as the Uber example.
As described by the court, the driver is not told in advance where the customer is going. They are told exactly how to drive there, and the rate is decided by Uber.
It would be the same as you saying "I want you to build something on my site. Bring your hammer, tools and materials. Call me to find out where. I'll pay you about $20/hr"
If so, then the "employment relationship" would last only as long as the job. When employment is specific to one job, it's a contracted job, which is a much better criterion than whatever France came up with. There is no expectation that either side will come back for more.
The French court doesn't buy your interpretation of "There is no expectation that either side will come back for more.", the mere existence of a vetting system and a rating system show Uber expected drivers to come back. The profession of driver isn't new and wasn't invented by Uber.
Uber just found a way around local labour (and tax) laws and a European government, who's getting the downside of the tech company but no fiscal or technological upside, stepped in.
Aren't ratings evidence of an expectation that the one side won't come back for more? The person who received the ride isn't recording their opinion of the driver for themselves -- they already know it. They're leaving it for some other third party.
The existence of Yelp isn't evidence that building contractors are employees, it's the opposite. Actual employers typically don't rate their employees because they're not interested in having the best ones poached by competitors.
I'm not sure what point you're debating here, the question is about "either side" expecting to come back. In this case the drivers who provide the service are expected to come back, hence the vetting and rating. It establishes a relationship that extends beyond a single trip or "job".
IF Yelp ever garners a dominant position in terms of qualified leads and monopoly on pricing to building contractors, French law could conceivably look into them.
> Actual employers typically don't rate their employees because they're not interested in having the best ones poached by competitors.
"Employee of the Month" posters around America beg to differ.
> "Employee of the Month" posters around America beg to differ.
"Employee of the Month" posters are hung inside your own offices rather than anywhere a competitor would be likely to see them.
> In this case the drivers who provide the service are expected to come back, hence the vetting and rating. It establishes a relationship that extends beyond a single trip or "job".
The relationship between the driver and the rider generally doesn't extend beyond the single trip. They'll probably never see each other again. The relationship between the driver and Uber may continue, but so does the relationship between a plumber and Yelp.
It seems like you're arguing that eBay sellers should be considered the employees of eBay if they do most of their sales through eBay.
No, I'm not comparing an open marketplace or a weak aggregator with the Uber app. The argument of the French court is pretty clear.
Uber pretends to find clients for contractors but treats them like employees due to three proven powers they hold over drivers: the power to give instructions, the power to control the execution, the power to sanction non-compliance with the instructions given.
What do you mean a weak aggregator? eBay sellers have ratings, have their ads ranked and surfaced based on rating and other algorithmic criteria determined by eBay, and sellers must comply with instructions given by eBay w.r.t. listing, selling parameters, payment, contact, delivery, diverting sales off platform, etc., or be deranked, delisted, or kicked off the platform for non-compliance. Literally the same thing, except with goods + services instead of services alone.
Yet sellers are not employees. Your hue and cry that it is different does not compute.
In fact, you see this degree of control or more over participants in every market, forum, or platform operator, Craigslist, Facebook, Google, the list goes on. Just because driving a car seems different does not make it actually different.
I don't see how I'm pivoting to an argument when I'm explaining the decision. Call out the French judges who clearly lack your insights and deeper understanding of local laws.
I'm giving the context of the French legal case, you're arguing from an American market stand point. Yelp or eBay are barely blips in France, Lyft doesn't even exist.
Maybe Uber drivers are contractors in the US, but not according to French laws and market conditions as proven by the court decision today.
The monopoly argument doesn't even work. Lyft provides meaningful and direct competition. Observe that the large majority of the fare goes to the driver and not to Uber or Lyft.
What of ratings or vetting forces someone to work more? If you sell once at a fleamarket and acquire a word-of-mouth reputation for your actions, are you forced/expected to come again?
It's irrelevant why a government would act, political or fiscal reasons are always part of it, and protectionism. This doesn't have bearing on whether it is making sense or being illogical.
Vetting and ratings are about establishing longer term relationships and not just one trip using the app.
It's only illogical in a vacuum and not based on how Uber behaved on the French market.
But people I know who are trying this gig economy part-time can pick their own "clientele": Uber, Lyft, Postmates, Door Dash, etc... they work for whichever client they want, on their own schedule. As an "employee" of Uber, I doubt they will want you working for competitors.
See, this is key. If Uber has to class them as employees, it should also be able to deny them from working on other platforms. It should also be able to set working hours. And deny drivers the ability to refuse rides if they wish to keep their job. It could provide a daily salary and not let drivers decide or see fares.
Because this is what employment typically entails.
As someone who has the ability to work 2 tech jobs if I wanted to, I could context switch every minute if I wanted to due to the technology allowing me to do so. Why should other people be unable to do this if the tech is there to support it?
No it is not and never was. Sales people - going back a very long time and include fully traveling ones - are not employees? How about traveling service technicians, not infrequently located all over the country, far from any company office? Home office - not uncommonly full time even, e.g. the company I work for does not even have an office but people employed all over this and other countries - are not employees? Please don't arbitrarily redefine "employment" to make your point.
I've seen these precluding secondary employment with competitive entities, but it seems there'd be little competition between Fred's and Alice's businesses (based on name alone).
In France, an employer can set working hours and working conditions, as long as both comply with the law. There are restrictions for safety and health reasons for example.
However, if the work is part time, employees can’t be restricted from working at another part time job, unless that job is for a direct competitor of the employer, in which case the restriction is sometimes allowed. (The idea being there could be a conflict of interest or loyalty.)
I don’t know if Uber would be permitted to do that, I just know that in some cases it’s allowed. The term used is “concurrence déloyale” or “unfair competition”. In practice, if there was a dispute, the courts would decide if a part-time employee driving for another platform constitutes an act of “concurrence déloyale”.
In any case, I read in Le Monde this morning that this recent decision by France’s highest court may mean that Uber will just stop doing business in France (although it’s too soon to know for sure).
Here’s the link to the article in Le Monde for those who read French:
Great, let Uber do all that. Set working hours, deny them from working on other platforms, deny them from being able to refuse rides.
And let the free market compete for drivers by allowing other "gig-economy" companies to not have any of those restraints and seeing which company attracts drivers and which one dies.
Except they are the clients paying the driver. Uber, Lyft, etc pay the driver, so they are the client as they are the ones paying.
The rider pays Uber directly, not the driver, so from the driver's perspective the gig companies like Lyft, Door Dash, or Uber are the clients they can choose to work with at any given time.
Uber does not let you pick your clients. Drivers get a request for a trip that they can either accept or deny, and they also penalize drivers for rejecting too many trip requests.
pretty much it is the same in consulting or any other freelancing industry, the customer always picks given the parameters ( availability, price, skill, experience etc) are acceptable. You can only choose to accept or deny as freelancer. It is always a demand driven, not supply driven.
You can choose to drive for other platforms today, you can directly engage customers ( uber drivers in my country occasionally ask you to cancel and pay directly) all of this would be illegal if they are employees.
No, lucky me. Either I'm doing mobile and don't care wether it's an actual server behind those APIs or a hamster going crazy in it's wheel. Or I'm doing backend, in which case I only do serverless.
One colleague of mine did end up using his own server to run daily data processing and numbers crunching jobs for work though. It also served the internal analytics web UI. Apparently went on for years.
I have in fact delivered pizzas as a W2 employee, and had to use my own car. While I didn't ask if they'd provide a car for me, because I've never heard of such an arrangement, I highly doubt the answer would've been yes.
I've done the same job. They pay the employee per mile, an amount that is intended to cover fuel and maintenance for a typical car. The rate they pay is presented to you before you accept the position at the company and if it is not agreeable to you then you don't have to take the job.
I've worked as a W2 employee delivering pizzas in my own car.
I was definitely an "employee", if anyone is.
Crucially, this meant that I had to work the hours specified by my boss and make whatever deliveries he specified during that time period, else risk being fired.
In my opinion this was a very sensible arrangement. It was a good job and paid my college tuition. And pizza demand varies widely from time to time. It would be silly for the company to maintain a fleet of cars large enough for peak demand and then leave them in storage most of the time.
I've also worked as a software engineer, on salary, with a contract forbidding concurrent employment elsewhere, but done all the work on my own computer.
In light of the above, I don't think ownership of equipment is necessarily a meaningful consideration.
Laws are, kinda by definition, highly legible. Reality is fuzzier.
Whether or not Uber drivers fall under current legal definitions of "employee," I think they obviously do fall into the common sense definition that should be regulated under labour laws.
Reality doesn't fall neatly into categories, which is why laws tend to have tons of details and exceptions. Some labour is day labour, piecemeal, etc. Labor laws do deal with these, they now need to deal with "uber-like" arrangements.
Do you genuinely think this is best answered with a simple, top-level "regulation does/doesn't work" argument? The question has no answer, and you gain almost no understanding of regulators by pondering it.
Anyway, even the banking circa 2008 story is not simple.
The banking "regulators" in action at the time were central basically two sets of institutions, with kinda unrelated goals. The first & primary is "central banking," which uses banking regulation and stuff to stabilise currency value (inflation targeting). The second institution is things like the SEC,"consumer" protection against fraud.
The reason the currency regulator(s) get all the attention, independent authority and such is monetary history. Currencies crashed a lot, even gold & gold standard ones.^ In recent decades, this is rare. Even during the crisis, we saw very little hyperinflation around the world.
Maybe they shouldn't have this mandate. Maybe different monetary policy would be better. But, I think it's hard to deny that the big-daddy financial regulators (central bankers) do the job they were built to do successfully... currencies are stable, even under very large debt loads.
Because almost every 1099 contractor is restricted in the ways listed.
For example, I was doing work for a Digital Marketing company as a software developer.
I could not:
1. Take their clients
2. I had to accept their rate or just decide to not work with them
3. I accepted their terms and conditions for jobs allocated to me from them
#2 and #3 seem to be more of an issue of negotiating power, rather than reflecting whether or not I am self employed.
And #1 seems to be up to interpretation of "what is a client?"
If I drive for Uber, Lyft, and whoever else wants my services, am I not building my clientele?
Couldn't I also moonlight by offering direct driving services to other clients I source on my own?
In the ride-sharing case, my clients just happen to be large publicly-traded transportation networks that I sell my services to.
In my case with that digital marketing company, I was not restricted from developing for other companies simultaneously.
This is where some laws confuse me. They seem open to the interpretation of the day. But perhaps that's the best that lawmakers can do...
Mis-classification of employees is very common in the U.S. for tech, if you work on a company laptop and work a full time schedule for 1 client, you're likely mis classified.
Similarly, many nannies and cleaners are mis classified.
> If I drive for Uber, Lyft, and whoever else wants my services, am I not building my clientele?
I seriously doubt you, as a driver for Uber or Lyft, could legally make deals to drive people you find via your work for those companies, outside being assigned with the apps for those companies.
Anyone know what the contract with Uber/Lyft says?
This seems unenforceable, I don't see how they could stop anyone from doing this if someone wanted to. And I know drivers who do exactly this - they take people to the airport outside the app because they got to know them.
I mean before we had uber your exact case was often debated for the same reasons: Should agencies not have to employ you if you are solely dependent on them?
The fact that you're suggesting a price and T&Cs on the work doesn't mean anybody has to accept them/can't negotiate (unlike "appified gig work", they can directly contact you to do so), and in your scenario the middleman is "thin", i.e. it just provides communication between labor buyers and sellers. In "appified gig work", the middleman is thick: by design it makes labor a fungible commodity, and sets prices and T&Cs that workers have no choice not to accept if they want any work at all—at most there are a handful of these middlemen in any local market, and the workers are not at all involved in setting their competitive strategies. They don't have any leverage at all unless they want to stop working altogether.
A reasonable court will see this business model as what it is: a way to dodge labor laws.
> I just don't agree with the criteria of the court in this case.
Well it isn't a personal opinion is it? The court presumably knows what the legal criteria for self-employment are. Unfortunately, the single page lay summary presented as TFA doesn't go into detail as to chapter and verse of the definition, but as it is the high court I think it's safe to assume they have it right.
The criterion of the link of subordination breaks down into three elements:
- the power to give instructions
- the power to control the execution
- the power to sanction non-compliance with the instructions given.
As for self-employment, it is characterized by the following elements: the possibility of building one's own clientele, the freedom to set prices, the freedom to set the conditions for the performance of the service.
====
By these definitions, it does seem clear that the Uber-driver relationship is one of employment.
In your shed building example the customer is setting a price. In Uber's case the customer is not. This is a very significant difference, and actually a compelling reason why Uber drivers are employees who are paid a wage rather than contractors who are charging customers for a service.
Uber limits the amount of rides you can deny, i.e. you deny 5 rides in 30min they log you off the platform after awhile you get penalized. They want high acceptance rate.
This is the key. When the drivers lack the ability to freely decline rides every time every time without consequences, they are not contractors anymore.
By the way, the take-it-or-leave-it offer with dictated pricing is a really inefficient way to reach a market price. The driver logs off because they can't decline too many times, then there are less drivers, so the rideshare app has to raise prices, but then the drivers nearby are no longer online.
The difference is that it's impractical for Uber drivers to directly solicit customers, because too few ride at predictable times and places.
Handymen, cleaners, developers, hairdressers etc can (and do) establish relationships outside the "advertising platform" and can find a meaningful number of new clients (and total $) through word of mouth.
The main differnce is that the handymem can easily look for other customers elsewhere to find an alternative job. Uber drivers don't have this choice. They can't do a counter-offer neither.
Technically, as you said, they can refuse. In practice, the power that Uber has on his drivers limits those choices a lot.
> The main difference is that the handymen can easily look for other customers elsewhere to find an alternative job. Uber drivers don't have this choice.
I'm not sure what the situation is like in France, but most Uber drivers I've seen have the Lyft app open at the same time. It seems pretty trivial to download another app and use both at the same time (easier than almost any other freelancer finding more sources for work).
Part of the justification of the high court is that Uber disables accounts of drivers who refuses courses.
Uber also hides the destination.
There's not much room for a choice.
I do not know france, but for example in India smart drivers who do that all time, use uber as lead gen tool for regular recurring customers like office going employees, senior citizens with regular hospital visits and build relationships offline and network just like any good freelancer.
But it's different than literally every other employment opportunity right? No one flips burgers at McDonalds and runs across the street to make a taco at Taco Bell and then runs back to do more burgers at McDonalds all in the same hour/shift.
The inability to negotiate is the key point. On the point about choice, there are areas where drivers can drive for Uber or Lyft though so some drivers do have choice.
Just because the process is automated doesn't mean that no negotiation is taking place. Uber drivers negotiate all the time, every time they shut down the app due to rates being too low at the moment they negotiate. So Uber is forced to set rates at levels where they have enough drivers and enough passengers. It isn't like a job where if you just stop working they will fire you, you can drop in and out of uber whenever and however you want as long as it isn't in the middle of a ride.
I mean, imagine if a McDonalds worker could just say "I don't feel like working for $10 right now, I'm going home!", and then just leave in the middle of a shift. Then the next day he sees that Burger king pays more, so he goes and work for them that day for a couple of hours, after which McDonalds increased their rates so he goes back there and work a few hours. Sounds like insanity to you? Well yeah, because it is insanity if employees could act like that!
Uber drivers are not employees, end of story. Uber doesn't have any power over them as is, normal workers have a contract which is worth a lot to them, you have no such contract with Uber as it is trivial to get the permit to drive for Uber, Uber drivers are not afraid of Uber suddenly firing them, they can go in and out of their role how much they want.
Thank you. You seem to get the itch nearly completely. However you are missing one thing where Uber and Lyft have gone overnoard to the greedy side:
At least in California, driver pay, and what the customer paid are decoupled. There is no more "surge" per say, it's just a dynamic price for the user, which might be completely different than the one the driver has.
They started out with that, but I can't think of any other reason they changed it to the current model, except greed. And AFAIK this is only how it is in some US cities, like cities in California.
In Europe they still operate at a standard of 25% cut.
The inability to negotiate is the key point. On the point about choice, there are areas where drivers can drive for Uber or Lyft though so some drivers do have choice.
Where I drove for Uber, there were five platforms. But Uber had 90%+ of the rides. In a year, I think I got one Lyft request, and nothing from any of the others.
If there were plenty of customers on all platforms your statement might be valid, but that's not the reality.
What? There is literally no cost. You download the competitors app, and youre good to go.
Prices for the ride are always changing. Uber usually has lower per mile cost, while Lyft has a bit lower minute cost. This does not affect switching costs.
If you only have a few hours to work here and there I would say having the choice to go drive for a service is a good thing, not a "frying pan". Would you prefer to take away that option for these people? I don't see your point.
My point is that the choice between driving for Uber or driving for Lyft isn't really a choice because other than the company paying you there isn't actually any meaningful difference. It's a reply to the parent's point and says nothing about taking anyone's options away.
I think choosing one gig over another is a form of negotiation. The driver thinks about what will pay more: Delivering an Amazon Prime package, driving for Uber, delivering a meal via Postmates, etc. So by choosing the one that pays best you're rejecting the others. So they have an incentive to pay more and get you to work their gig.
Except that neither the customer (the user) nor the provider (the driver) defines the price.
The middle-man (Uber) does. The middle-man decides what tools (car models) the provider may use to do it's work. The middle-man unilateraly sets the Terms & Conditions for both the customers and the providers, without any room for negotiation. The middle-man decides which providers may or may not get the gig. And the middle-man can cut anyone out of the platform at any time without giving notice or justification.
In your example, you fix the price. The provider (handyman) may use the tool of his choosing and, if things go well, the provider is allowed to give you his business card, and you to employ his services directly in the future.
The platform really is just a medium, just like the cork panel at your local supermarket, with an extra mediation capability / service.
This hypothetical, dare I say strawman, scenario doesn't work in creating an equivalence between builders and Uber drivers for the simple fact that it is in fact not how price negotiation works for construction projects. In the real world, for real independent contractors, the contractor sets the rate and it's up to the buyer to accept it or not (and of course possibly negotiate). A typical process involves soliciting bids from multiple contractors and seeing which one comes in the lowest, while attempting to take into account work quality. You see this in real IT consultants too; they have a given rate that they've set that they want, or they're not doing the job.
There's no method whatsoever in Uber for drivers to actually set their prices, which is a key difference.
What gig companies provide are not gigs, so much as a market for service goods, which necessarily requires some standardization of units of work and of information so as to be practicable. In any market we expect substitutable and comparable goods. The standardization is what drives the implied lack of freedom to negotiate rates, terms and conditions, etc. for each and every job. It gets tedious and ridiculous, not to mention overall inefficient for all parties.
The nature of whether somebody is self-employed rather than the employee of another should be very simple. It should have nothing to do with the specific items of negotiability or having or lacking information, as long as the unit of working relationship is one job with a deliverable, the taking or refusal of which is freely chosen, and there is no expectation that either side will work together again. I simply don't see how such a relationship can be considered employment in an intellectually honest way.
Now on top of that you can regulate how such marketplaces should work, like how states make Amazon and eBay collect and remit sales taxes, and have fair advertising laws, but that's a separate concern from the employment question.
The handyman arbitrates the exchange of money, grabbing 20-25% of it on the way? Does it penalize contractors for not taking a contract? Does it hide the details of the contracts from the contractors until they accept it? The devil is in the details of how exactly Uber operates their service, not in a squinting half-baked comparison to a hypothetical handyman site.
What you should be comparing this to is HomeAdvisor. I use them for handyman services and the handyman told me he must contact customers through a proxy phone number and they don't give him any ability to negotiate pay or terms. Yet somehow he is a contractor.
In Austria, another checkbox „pseudo self employment“ has to tick in order to get recognized as such, is the fact that the freelancer only has one client. So, I think, here it would be decided on a case by case basis. Which to me still seems overzealous - as a freelancer I always have to worry to take on 2-3 clients per year to not get reinterpreted as an employee after the fact.
Technically, this problem doesn’t apply to Uber in Austria because only rental car companies are allowed to provide this kind of service. The problem here rather lies with the cheap labor those rental car companies are employing (reportedly, those engagements sometimes border on modern slavery).
> as a freelancer I always have to worry to take on 2-3 clients per year to not get reinterpreted as an employee after the fact.
I had a similar situation in the US when I was a contractor many years ago; during periods when one client had me working on a large project I wanted to focus on, I had to take on a couple of token tiny projects periodically to keep my clients from getting into trouble with employment agencies.
I agree with the end goals of those rules but as a generously-paid technology consultant, I was in no danger of exploitation and it was just added hassle benefitting nobody.
Indeed. I can see your marketplace view,
But if you see 3 ads in a row that you know are a bad deal for you or are just not great in term of timing.
You could still read the ads on the handyman site.
In Uber world, you get banned of the site.
> In addition, if the driver has declined more than three rides, Uber may temporarily disconnect the
driver from its application
I think you missed the part about subordination. Yes, you could have a service like Uber where you are still your own boss. ( Curb, for instance, is the response from the traditional taxi drivers )
But in the case of Uber, I tends to agree that they get away with a lot of subordination, without giving away work contract.
The judgment is based on the combination of all these criteria.
In your scenario, you are the craftman’s direct client, a contract will be signed between you and them, not with some wrapping entity.
If you need additional work on the shed you can call that same person, renegociate a price for the additional job and continue the relationship. Same if you have claims, if you need to cancel the job for any reason for instance. And you can both agree to renegociate the contract under your own terms.
That direct relation is only a part of the whole picture, but I think it’s a significant point.
If that handyman site of yours set the price for the new shed, and also paid the workers who came to build the shed, it would be perfectly rational to call that site a "construction company".
There's some tradition to it as well. This varies a lot between countries, but in many places taxi drivers have historically been self employed all the way back to horse carriages. So there's that, too.
Should you pay your Uber driver directly, or should you negotiate the fare with them, the situation would be altogether different.
In Germany the kind of work from your example is highly regulated.
That said, if you put an ad to build a shed for £100, expect a low quality result. Of course you can put all kinds of criteria but at some point you will either get screwed over or nobody will answer the ad. I also doubt that there are many people working on such gigs in a sustainable manner, even if the criteria are proportionate to the price.
Your example handyman can negotiate on rates, serve the same client in the future (with the possibility of a re-negotiated rate), and set their own terms and conditions for providing the service.
None of that applies to drivers who can either choose to take what they're given or quit.
I can't find a reason why that the court's criteria isn't sound. Can you find one?
The classification of uber drivers as employees mostly means they have to pay more tax and less money goes to drivers and uber. People will argue employees have more rights and this is good for them, but the primary benefit of someone being an employee is to the state and the benefit is financial. If too many people become self-employed, the state can't finance itself anymore. The line between 'employee' and 'self-employed' is vague and this kind of reclassification is not limited to Uber. If you try contracting as a coder for example, you are likely to get reclassified as an employee. And then you have to prove you are not. Which you aren't going to be able to, because a self-employed working through a brokerage isn't radically different from a consultant working through a consultancy. So in that case you are going to have to pay a lot of back taxes. The point is: if too many people start working for exchange sites, they will also get sued and be classified as employees, just so the state can get its dues.
> The classification of uber drivers as employees mostly means they have to pay more tax and less money goes to drivers and uber.
You forgot to disclose the fact that they are getting many perks like properly funding their public pensions while working for Uber AND getting access to regular unemployment funds. The advantages absolutely out-weight the drawbacks in France. And they are guaranteed a minimum wage, legal contract framework which means that Uber cannot fire them on the spot and so on and so forth. The only loser here is Uber, not the driver, if Uber were to chose to continue doing business in France.
First, you say "more rights" as if that was just a detail. But paid vacations, sick/paternity/family leave, minimum wage, pensions, social security, right to strike, unemployment benefits and the like are not just a minor thing.
> If you try contracting as a coder for example, you are likely to get reclassified as an employee.
I have worked as a freelance through some brokerages/exchanges (e.g. Upwork) and there you set your own rates, your own conditions, and your own clients. I think it's a pretty different framework than Uber.
The issue is not brokerage/exchange or not, it's who controls the terms of the labour done.
It is a 'detail' not to us but from the perspective of the government.
You are still pretty likely to get pursued by the tax services for 'freelancing'. At least where I live. I hope you manage to slip through the net though :)
Employees get a lot more benefits than self-employed. Health care insurance, sick days, vacations and pensions.
I do not know about France, but in Germany, employees only pay half of their healthcare insurance fees. And only their wage is subject to the healthcare insurance "tax", while self-employed people need to pay the tax on all incomes, including investment incomes
>> If too many people become self-employed, the state can't finance itself anymore.
This is not the case in France. Self-employed people still pay personal income tax and/or a tax on company profits.
The increased taxes on employees as compared to the self-employed is mainly due to paying for the infrastructure and cost of providing extra benefits to employees, like unemployment insurance, vacation pay, better pensions, etc. The term for these taxes are “charges sociales”, meaning they’re used for providing social services. The increased taxes are not used for building roads, paying for the armed forces, or things like that. Other taxes pay for that.
If everyone in France were self-employed, a very few government services providing social services (like Pole Emploi) might cease to exist, but most government services would be entirely unaffected.
Same here. It turns out west Europe doesn't differ that much on these issues. In fact your answer only strengthens my conviction this is a major underlying reason. You think the French government would take it on the chin and just accept for example not being able to pay pensions?
From what I can gather off frenchproperty.com the 'social charges' tax rate employees pay is very very big (29% employee, 50% employer, total would be something like 65%) while self employed pay 12% to 23%.
> From what I can gather off frenchproperty.com the 'social charges' tax rate employees pay is very very big (29% employee, 50% employer, total would be something like 65%) while self employed pay 12% to 23%.
Exactly how much someone will pay in social charges is complex, because it depends on their line of work, how their business is set up if self-employed and how much they’re making.
But here’s one example:
A typical white collar salaried employee, for example a computer consultant, who’s netting 50000 euros will be costing his employer 100000 euros after social charges are taken into account. This worker will be paying into two different pension plans and is also paying for unemployment insurance.
A typical white collar self-employed contract worker who’s billing 100000 euros will have perhaps 5000 euros or so of business expenses and perhaps 30000 to 35000 euros of social charges. It varies mostly on how good their pension plan. So they’re netting 60000 to 65000 euros.
The difference between these two cases is mostly that the salaried worker (currently) has a better pension plan and also has much better unemployment insurance coverage (but which is also expensive).
If you’re not worried about finding work, being self-employed is a bit more profitable in this case, but not hugely so.
The 12% and 23% numbers that you saw is for a what’s called a “microentreprise”. In that case, the social charges are based on total income, not profits (so no deductions).
12% is for when you’re selling goods, not services, and you don’t get to deduct the cost of the goods.
23% is for when you’re selling a service, which is great, but you can’t bill more than 70000 euros (not counting sales tax) in a year and and still be a “microentreprise”.
The idea of the “microentreprise” was to allow very small businesses to get started, with lower social charges and much simple accounting procedures. It’s great for part-time or side projects or low paid work, but it’s not suitable for full-time well paid work.
I forgot to add that between the two cases that I mentioned, the salaried employee also has 5 weeks or more of paid vacation. The self-employed worker just bills for days that they works. Vacation is unpaid or more accurately needs to be factored in as a cost in order to compare apples with apples and not oranges.
No, the French government would not accept not being able to pay pensions. But the French government would still be able to pay pensions, even if everyone were self-employed. The self-employed do already pay into pensions.
Additionally, while there are currently 42 different pension plans in France, depending on your line of work, under Macron there's an evolution towards having just one government pension plan for everyone. The new system will be based on building up points which can be cashed in on retirement. It will probably start for those who retire starting in 2035. So in the future the pension plan will be the same for everyone, self-employed or employee.
Maybe I'm mistaken. I thought a pay it forward system like what we have here is pretty unique. So workers do not pay for pensioners directly then? At any rate it can't be much what they're paying because the rates are too low.
I don’t follow your reasoning, but just for information the state pension plans of both the Netherlands and France work on a “pay as you go” basis.
Throughout your career, you build up the right to a certain pension in each of the different pension plans you’ve been paying into. When you retire, those who are still working and paying into that plan pay for your pension (as you did when you were working).
I can’t vouch that it works this way for all 42 different plans, as I haven’t checked, but I’ve worked both as an employee and as a freelance consultant and it works that way for the 4 different pension plans that I’ve paid into. And, as I said, in the future there will be only one state plan for everyone (plus various private plans as well, of course).
So I see no problem with everyone in France being self-employed and France continuing to pay out pensions.
Yes. Some (mostly) very low tax places won't have this problem. But there are reasons for it. There is the underlying principle that government likes to incentivice new business creation over just taking a job someone else could have gotten. There is also the issue that dodging tax is easier for one man business than employees so if you want to tax them at all you have to be a bit lenient.
With the handyman example there would be lots of other job offers with different price offers, there might be someone else asking for a shed for $150, or a deck for $130. With Uber prices are not decided by the customer or the employee.
Does the customer set the price for an Uber trip? I thought Uber did that.
I agree with the judge that Uber drivers have far too little control over their situation to count as self-employed. They're entirely dependent on Uber.
Taxi drivers are very similar. They don’t have a say on price, just yes or no. And they were never considered employees, if they own their cars and work whenever they want.
Declining can adversely affect the driver's rating. How it does so, and the imolications of that rating, are unilaterally decided by Uber. There is no negotiation; as a driver, you either agree or you don't drive for Uber.
I am not aware of Uber manipulating ratings of cancelled rides. From my understanding of the platform only riders can rate the driver. Is there a published policy that would back up either of our assertions?
Not cancelled, declined. The rider can't rate the ride because it was never scheduled in the first place. From the user's perspective, they're still waiting for the app to find a driver. They revised it in 2017.
> Moreover, declining rides won't negatively impact drivers as much as it did before.[0]
Of course, won't impact as much still means impact.
I dont think technical distinctions really matter in this case. Uber are trying to provide a cheaper service, by simply fucking over their workers, nothing else. And that should be stopped.
Seems a fair judgement since all the restriction make the drivers effectively work as employees:
> Drivers who use the Uber application do not build up their own clientele, do not freely set their rates, and do not determine the terms and conditions of providing their transportation service. The company imposes the itinerary and the driver’s fare is adjusted if this itinerary is not followed. The destination is unknown to the driver, thereby revealing that the driver cannot freely choose the route that suits him/her...
Doesn't all of this also apply to taxis? Taxis pick up at taxi ranks or off the street. Taxis have regulations set by an organisation. Taxis (in most places) have rules that say they must take the most efficient route. In most places, taxis aren't allowed to refuse a customer based on destination.
Does that mean that a taxi driver is an employee? Of course not.
'Radio' calls and calls they've privately arranged with customers as well.
>Taxis have regulations set by an organisation.
That would be local by-law in most cases.
>Taxis (in most places) have rules that say they must take the most efficient route.
You can't intentionally ripoff customers but the fastest route and the cheapest are often different. You can take whatever route you want as long as the customer is cool with it.
>In most places, taxis aren't allowed to refuse a customer based on destination.
You absolutely can refuse a customer as long as it's not descriminatory, like most other businesses.
>Does that mean that a taxi driver is an employee?
Some drivers are employees, some are best compared to franchisees and others are totally independent.
You absolutely can refuse a customer as long as it's not descriminatory, like most other businesses.
Depends on your jurisdiction.
For example, taxi drivers in Chicago were notorious for refusing to take people on trips that were too short, or too far out of the CBD. Sometimes they'd even refuse to take people from downtown to the airport because if traffic is bad, or there was a long wait in the staging area at the airport, it would cut into their profits.
Chicago made that behavior illegal. It still happens occasionally. But if you know the law, you can do what I do and sit in the cab and refuse to get out while offering to call the police to have an officer explain the rules to the driver.
That's a fair point, they forbid you refusing short trips most places I'm familiar with. I wasn't really thinking about that in this case, mostly people asking you to take them sketchy places or belligerent customers which are the only reasons I consider it. An important distinction is it's local law that forbids that, not a company policy like with Uber.
Just a few days ago I had some drunk customers screaming at me in my cab and shaking my seat under the impression I was legally required to drive them. They earned a very long walk home to think about it.
Just a few days ago I had some drunk customers screaming at me in my cab and shaking my seat under the impression I was legally required to drive them. They earned a very long walk home to think about it.
I had a nearly identical situation when I Ubered. In spite of multiple warnings, their behavior didn't improve. When I dropped them off in the middle of nowhere they insisted that I was required by law to carry them. Nope. I'm not a public bus.
The pax make a lot of threats about reporting me to Uber and the police and whatnot, but as far as I know, nothing became of it. I never heard anything, and I never got anything deducted from my earnings, as far as I noticed.
In my experience, the first thing that happens when anyone calls Uber with a complaint is they get their fare refunded. That's usually enough to cool most people off.
> You absolutely can refuse a customer as long as it's not descriminatory, like most other businesses.
Are you sure this is the law in France?
And remember that Uber operates in several countries. When discussions about this happens we have to remember that each country have it's own rules and laws, and we cannot expect that the law in your country is the only law exists.
>we cannot expect that the law in your country is the only law exists.
I doubt federal law covers taxi regulations in any country, it's generally local by-law or equivalent. The regulations are going to be different in Paris than they are in Lyon.
In Brazil the federal law L12468 [1] regulates the taxi driver profession.
The federal law L8078 [2], known as the Consumer Protection Code, protects (as the name says) the consumer in any transaction, be it products or services.
The section 39 subsection 9 states that:
"Art. 39. É vedado ao fornecedor de produtos ou serviços, dentre outras práticas abusivas:
[...]
IX - recusar a venda de bens ou a prestação de serviços, diretamente a quem se disponha a adquiri-los mediante pronto pagamento, ressalvados os casos de intermediação regulados em leis especiais"
In a free translation:
"Art. 39. The supplier of products or services is prohibited, among other abusive practices:
[...]
IX - to refuse the sale of goods or the provision of services, directly to anyone who is willing to acquire them upon prompt payment, except in cases of intermediation regulated in special laws"
This is just an example of how the law structure can be so different between countries. Brazil as France are based on the civil law, instead of common law as in the United States.
I really don't know how is in France and I am not saying it is like Brazil. I'm just saying that with so many countries in the world doesn't make sense to expect the rest of the world to be like your home.
I find it amusing that in the course of chiding me for allegedly assuming laws are the same in all countries you assumed I'm American (I'm not).
I'm a taxi driver speaking generally about the differences in our job vs. Uber drivers. I will now step back and let the software developers argue about things they know nothing about.
I know very little about it but it seems a pretty idiotic sector with strange rules in every village. In NL they will deliver 12 euro worth of food for free 25 km away. A 500 meter taxi ride will cost at least 10 euro. 100 euro for 50 km. I read stories about other places where prices are so low they cant realistically pay for the car.
It's pretty common everywhere. Imagine waiting (potentially hours) queued in a taxi stand for a fare, only to get somebody with a $5 trip who's rude and smells like they haven't showered in a decade.
None of the people who make the taxi regulations (or the passengers who invent their own in the back seat) would accept that person if it was their own car, but taxi drivers are seen as contemptible and unworthy of basic human decency by a staggering portion of the population. I am a white driver so I get treated much better than most, but it's still mind blowing to see. I understand why taxi drivers start to give 0 f's after a while.
>Imagine waiting (potentially hours) queued in a taxi stand for a fare, only to get somebody with a $5 trip who's rude and smells like they haven't showered in a decade.
I agree, we should pay taxi drivers a living wage so that this can't happen.
>we should pay taxi drivers a living wage so that this can't happen.
The drivers this affects most are the ones who are self-employed. You could increase fare prices but riders would just go to ride-sharing platforms where the drivers have less overhead due to less regulation.
What municipalities (or whatever jurisdiction is responsible) need to do is relax taxi regulations so taxi drivers can be more competitive with ride-sharing apps (or the opposite and hold Uber/Lyft to the same standards).
Taxi drivers can pick up anyone on their own terms (with some limitations from local laws). Uber drivers on the other hand can only legally pick up rides dispatched from Uber or another ride-sharing app. That's all they're insured for and that's all local laws will allow because they don't have status as licensed taxi drivers in a licensed vehicle.
A customer can hand me cash and nobody gets a piece except the government. An Uber driver cannot accept cash or payment outside the Uber app or they will be fired.
(French) VTC may actually pick up anyone on their own terms providing the ride was booked in advance by the customer (ie. they can't pick someone in the street). The customer may order through a ride-sharing app, or through any other means, eg. by phone, email, whatever.
What Uber forbids is building up such a clientele from customers it brought through the app.
What are you talking about? Maybe you are referencing how Uber works in the some American state? This is France and that's not how the regulation works there. US-centrisism at it's finest.
Uber drivers can't pick up hailed rides anywhere. That has nothing to do with the jurisdiction, it's simply not a function of the app. If they did, they would be taxi drivers.
I think you're coming from a completely wrong view point. There are no "Uber drivers" these are taxi drivers that choose to (at times) use the Uber app to get clients.
Depending on the local jursidiction, they might be absolutely free to do street pickups.
For example in Finland someone driving for Uber could pickup someone from the street.
They may be free to do it under local law, but they would not be doing it as an Uber driver, they would be doing so as a taxi driver.
There is no ability to use the Uber platform for hailed or other ad-hoc rides, they must be ordered through the platform and all payments must go through Uber.
Uber provides the commercial insurance to drivers they need when carrying passengers, for example (pretty sure they do this in all areas they operate, but I'll wait with bated breath to be told they don't in Bulgaria). If a taxi driver who also worked for Uber picked up a hailed ride it would not cover them.
Exactly, so we agree on the point - there are no 'uber drivers' per se, they are just contractors driving a car and intermittently using services to find clientele.
Uber provides some insurance in _most_ countries they operate in, but it's quite often the case that this is not enough and that other insurance (usually specific for their classification e.g. Taxi Driver insurance, or VTC insurance) is required. So your point on insurance is quite moot.
What's actually interesting is that some of Uber's competitors do have a street-hailing functionality, where the app essentially works as a virtual card terminal for hand-hailed rides. Cool!
Yes, your point? You need different insurance if you're going to be driving 10 hours per day instead of just to work, and from work. Who would have guessed?
My apologies, I think I started off on a bit of a negative tone because I might have mistakenly analyzed your comments as a bit pompous and disrespectful as well. If that was not your intention, my bad. I should always better assume best intentions, not to mention discuss is always more productive if we stay on a positive tone.
What I wanted to establish here is that
1) Conditions for driving for a ridehailing platform differ massively by city or by country.
2) I do not know of any countries which classify "uber drivers' as any form of legal classification. There might be a distinction between taxis, and other forms of "private for hire transport services", which is again an argument for treating these as independent contractors.
I drive a taxi in a rich community 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. Trust me when I say any pompousness was beaten out of me some time ago. :)
You've made some reasonable points for sure. The universal difference between traditional taxi drivers and Uber drivers that I want to reiterate is that truly self-employed taxi drivers are paid directly by customers, whereas Uber drivers are always paid exclusively by Uber. That, I feel, is a very important distinction when comparing their employment status.
Here in Ontario rideshare drivers and taxi drivers both have different legal status. Most legislation is on the municipal level but there is provincial law as well that makes the distinction.
Taxi drivers are almost certainly mostly employees. "Contactor" is a kinda arbitrary employee status which has some theoretical usages - but most of the time it's just abused to deny employment benefits from employees.
That sounds pretty strong as an indicator they were legitimately contractors - but it's always a complex question. Specifics like: would the drivers be punished or penalized for not showing up for work?, is there an employee conduct agreement the dispatch center enforces and how does it enforce that?, how does a driver qualify for eligibility to rent - can anyone with a cab license freely rent or is there an interview beyond that?
Independent contractor status is a really finicky thing to define and, in the end, it's a status that mostly deprives employees of rights in favor of an employer so any "grey" usage of it should be highly suspect.
Traditional taxi drivers own their taxi medallions and may transfer those medallions to other drivers, which provides one key aspect of their "independent" contractor state: If the cab company mistreats them, they can take their medallion elsewhere.
Uber's model prohibits drivers from subcontracting (transferring) their rides to others, which pierces the veil of 'independent contractor': either a contractor can subcontract, or they're not a contractor.
Caveat: This is not at all a complete argument for or against taxis or gig economy, but is meant to show how a division exists between the two to permit further consideration of the ruling.
> Traditional taxi drivers own their taxi medallions
That's not really the case in a lot of places - drivers 'rent' medallions from Taxi companies, as the medallions cost many times the annual income of a driver. Although, their value is droppnig due to ridesharing apps.
Yes you can, I turn on Uber Driver every night on my commute home from work and they only give me riders heading in the same direction. You can do this up to twice a day on Uber.
You certainly can, at least in some of their markets. The vast majority of my Uber/Lyft rides are carpool rides, frequently there are 3 of us in the car with the driver.
The same system exist in France: taxi driver must own a medallion ('plaque') which they purchase from someone retiring, rent from a taxi company, or get issued by the city (this is theoretical in large cities: very few new medallions are created).
Anecdotally, the taxi company owning the medallion are not allowed to rent them: so instead they rent cars to their contractors, and lend the medallions to their renters.
> either a contractor can subcontract, or they're not a contractor.
This doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. I often work as a contractor. If I decided one morning to send a friend into a clients office to fulfil my duties, I would not even expect them to be able to gain entry to the building.
I’ve been both a contractor directly for companies, and contracted through contracting companies (being an employee for a contracting company is usually called being a consultant, which I’ve also been). In either case I would not assume that I could arbitrarily sub-contract my work out to others.
In which jurisdiction? How many tests are there? How many do you have to pass?
It’s a pretty ridiculous assertion to claim that you must be able to sub-contract to be a contractor, and I’d be surprised if there was even one jurisdiction in the world where that was true. It would mean you could never screen contractors.
Depends on jurisdiction but practically, yes, and in fact in California the EDD was systematically suing local governments to convert taxi drivers into employees (and to recapture lost taxes they would have billed had they been employees) until Uber blew that system out of the water. Source: was taxi driver in SF / CA during that time. And as a practical matter, yes these folks met all the checkboxes of being employee despite the assertion otherwise by taxi companies and cities.
Taxis are paid directly by their customers, so one of the criterions does not apply. (Note that some taxis are employees of taxi companies, but they need not be, as far as the regulation at hand is concerned.)
Whose employee? That of the taxi organisation which regulates them, but doesn't actually pay them? That of each of individual customer, who are the ones who pay them?
Does this reasoning mean that all waiters are independent contractors? They collect cash directly from the customer and reserve a portion of that before passing it on to their employer (the tip) - taxi drivers (who are members of a firm) due end up paying the firm dues for the service of having a pooled call center and possibly maintenance services.
I think trying to determine if someone is an employee based on if they receive cash from customers is a pretty arbitrary line that seems to exclude some pretty valid definitions of independent contractors like temporary workers and sales consultants.
And that is part of the reason many people also criticizes the tipping system in US/Canada. An arguably broken system from another industry doesn't make for a good comparison.
I am purely speaking from my own experience and I can't speak absolutely... but every city I've ever lived in has had a few random cabbies driving around that are far outnumbered by the cab companies - whether this is yellow cab or something random like Boston's Metro Cab[1]. If you ever need to call and schedule a cab to the airport you'll be calling into a dispatch center - rather than just arranging it with a dude. My impression is that street hires are a pretty small proportion of the taxi market.
No, you don't understand. They are customers of the dispatch company. They pay the dispatch company licensing fees and rent. Totally different, way more exploitative and way more legal arrangement.
Where, in France? Considering they are employees in the Benelux I find that implausible. Especially considering that the OP is about a French court saying that Uber was just trying to find a loophole so they wouldn't have to treat their employees like any normal taxi company.
I think that's a mis-categorization - I do agree that these exist (and a lot of them fall into the "airport taxi" class since that's a reliable place to get business) and a cab operating in such a manner sounds plausible to be an independent contractor. But organizations like Yellow Cab exist and is the way most folks hail a cab, even at hotels - when you ask the concierge to get a cab for you they'll almost certainly call a local company and ask for a cab to be sent over - someone actually needs to be monitoring that phone, and the logistics of each cabbie having a phone in the car is kinda crazy "Oh ernie is currently driving someone, bart might be available I'll call him" so there is a central dispatching center with a few employees that just help make sure that the cabs are well distributed to quickly respond to calls.
I said they never had radios in the past. These aren't radio taxes. They pick people up from the side of the road. That's most taxies in my experience.
Lots of taxi drivers are owner-operators, and many others lease medallions/vehicles but otherwise do their own thing.
As for taking the most efficient route, a driver purposely taking a longer route you didn't ask for to scam you out of your money is just that, a scam. So it's illegal on that basis alone.
They key difference with a lot of these taxi restrictions is they are set by the government to protect consumers. The government imposing uniform standards on taxi drivers through legislation is not at all the same thing as private companies doing so on drivers while weaseling out of employment requirements. The government can set lots of restrictions on how jobs are done without requiring employment contracts with those workers; private companies do not have those same powers. Hell, the government can execute people; there's no expected parity here whatsoever.
>Does that mean that a taxi driver is an employee?
In Europe? (or France in this particular case) yes absolutely. I've never been to a European country where taxi drivers are not employees of regular taxi companies receiving salaries.
no, most are independent contractors who lease the cab and the medallion from the taxi company. If you have your own medallion, you lease that to the cab company (so you are making money from it even when you are not working, which you can't do 24/7). Cabbies have always been independent contractors with very few exceptions.
The cab company leases the medallions and has some store of medallions it owns. It buys and maintains the cars and runs the dispatching service.
I am from Brazil, here taxi drivers usually own the medallion and the cab...
The medallions is suppposed to be nontransferrable and free, you would only need to pass some certification tests, but there are ridiculous levels of corruption, and a pinch of violence here and there (For example drivers in certain spots violently banning others from using the same spots, even with guns if they think is needed).
Here Taxi Mafia runs strong, but is still made of individuals, not companies.
Conceptually, a taxi is a regulated industry. The regulation created by the government sets the work conditions, and the taxi medallion is the contract between the taxi provider and the government. In a way, it's different from both the contractor and employee status which is usually between 2 private parties.
The owner/recipient of the medallion agrees to certain work conditions/obligations (non-discrimination, destination-blindness, accept credit cards, sometimes provide wheelchair amenities, etc.) and receives certain privileges (limited monopoly, right to pick up anyone on the street, right to use taxi lanes and taxi files, etc.). Whether the drivers actually meet the obligations is often a matter of lack of enforcement and what the driver can get away with, but it really is a quid-pro-quo of rights and responsibilities.
Medallions ended up being owned by taxi companies who rented them out to contractors or employees, so the relationship between the medallion owner and the driver (2 private parties) depended on how they set up the contract (and both kinds exist). And of course, private parties abuse independent contractors and employment contracts all the time, so it's really a gray area in practice. But regardless of who is paying whom, the driver should adhere to the medallion rules while driving/waiting on fares.
When looking at taxi and ride sharing, it helps to have a brief history of the industry:
- Before medallions, anyone could call themselves a driver, and pick up anyone for any price--true market competition. Of course, abuse and discrimination was rampant, riders were vulnerable, and too many drivers would drive the offered price so low only the desperate in dilapidated/dangerous vehicles would compete.
- Regulation in the form of medallions and meters came along with the idea of promoting mobility. Limit the number of drivers and set the fares so that someone working full-time can make a decent living, make sure they have safe vehicles and not criminal drivers, mandate shortest routes and non-discrimination. In the best of all worlds, there is a competent fleet of drivers, and people can get around the city and suburbs as needed.
- Because this is not the best of all worlds, taxis became sleazy and abusive, the medallion owners exploited their drivers (both employees or contractors), and regulatory capture ensured that the customer protection obligations were no longer enforced.
- Uber and others exploited the loophole of the radio-taxi: you phone in and get a taxi dispatched to your location. Except with mobile phones, that's like standing on the curb and hailing a taxi, which was the artificial monopoly given to taxi medallions. Frankly, I think ride-hailing apps should've been regulated on that alone, but because the whole industry had such a bad reputation and entrenched interests, everyone was happy to find a way around them.
- As the middle-men, the ride-hailing companies are trying to set themselves up to get the best of both worlds: set prices and make sure drivers aren't really free, but also not have any of the responsibilities of keeping ride-for-hire on the road or promoting mobility.
Another side of this whole contractor/employee debate is the destination-blindness. As a driver, you don't want to drive the unprofitable fares, either too short or too long to the suburbs without a return fare. In order to be appealing to riders, Uber et al. have to hide this from the drivers, otherwise the drivers would refuse more rides. If all drivers became true contractors free to set rates and pick-and-choose any ride, we'd be back to the original unregulated situation (race to the bottom). So the companies get why the regulations exist, but if the drivers were employees, then the companies would have to bear the cost of the unprofitable fares. So they make the drivers feel like contractors to bear that cost for them.
Most taxi drivers in the U.S. should be classified as employees. Where they drive a company managed car (under a company owned medallion), work certain hours.
>Does that mean that a taxi driver is an employee? Of course not.
Not disagreeing with the absurdity of this, but aren't taxi drivers usually employees when there's a centralized call number to hail a cab? That, or they are truly independent. So I don't see the argument here.
The (press release of the) judgement does not address a key counter argument: a large majority of drivers work for several platforms simultaneously. Even if that particular driver did not, he obviously had that possibility: the switching cost are negligible for a driver.
Source/disclaimer: used to work for a direct Uber competitor in France.
Having more than one job doesn't mean I'm necessarily self employed. I could work at a supermarket during the mornings, and a cornershop in the evenings, and still be an employee in both cases.
In the case of a driver, they get the ability to dynamically pick their rides in real time, and choose from the different apps the one that pays the most.
There's a paradox in this: Uber and its competitors would ideally like their drivers to be 100% committed; yet they also need the drivers to be able to work for several apps as a defense against requalification as an employee.
No, they simply don't allow drivers to work for competitors with a simple trick: designated routes. Working within the same day on different apps is not enough, it has to be different apps => multiple clients => one trip.
If an Uber driver were to pickup a Lyft user on a trip and to drop them off away from the main algorithmicly imposed road. Uber would warn the driver within a few days, regardless of client reviews.
I was not clear enough: indeed, they can't drive simultaneously different clients (from different apps). Instead, while they are waiting for a new client, they have several apps open, and if they get ride propositions from different apps, they pick the most lucrative one.
I don’t see why the same couldn’t apply to supermarket employees, where you can dynamically choose your shifts in real time and pick the highest of all the available work.
I mean there are even a number of worker supply firms out there that provide workers on this basis. A business needs people to clean floors, they issue a request to their supplier and they supply the nearest, cheapest available workers.
I'd say the only way to "simultaneously" work for both is to have a rider from more than one service in the car at the same time. Probably 0% chance they'd have an overlapping route, so you'd have to go off-route for one of them, and I'm sure that wouldn't go well. But for all the drivers I've seen that use more than one service to find riders, never seen this happen.
Just curious, when are you "working" for uber or lyft? I'm honestly not sure how it works. Do you collect an hourly wage when you are waiting? Or do you only collect money when you actively driving a passenger?
Having multiple jobs doesn't indicate self-employment autonomy, neither does it remove the overriding conditions the person is subject to with each employer (in this case: building own clientele, setting rates and other key terms of providing transportation service).
The driver does however set their own hours, can go online and offline at choosing, can reject or choose a ride if they wish, and can freely choose the method by which they fulfill a ride (there is no set route a driver must take).
They're not free to choose the method of fulfillment at all. They can't stop at 7-11 on the way, nor can they complete the route with a rickshaw, nor can they subcontract it. They can't pick up additional passengers except by Uber's explicit permission.
That freedom reduces to "they're free to optimize the route to get there quickly" which is a freedom you have at just about any job. I can decide how to code most efficiently, but does that really make me more contractor-like?
I don't think that allowing drivers to freely set their rates is necessarily a good thing. It "costs" money for an Uber driver to wait for a ride, so they're incentivized to undercut the competition in order to get more rides.
Most of the contract work is of this nature. The major differentiation between contract worker and employee is "work at will" i.e. there are no expectations for fixed hours indefinitely. If you can't get fired because of not showing up at work, then you are not really employed.
Now it would be interesting to see the opinion of the court on fake IT contractors (SSII), where as a developer you are a full-time employee of company X, rented for years as full-time "consultant" to company Y, on premises of company Y, just with lower salary and no profit sharing & no bonuses that staff of company Y enjoys.
(This has been a common practice of Microsoft in US in 1990s and they lost a lawsuit on that. In France, this is still an open secret and a way to milk junior developers. The markup those contractor companies make is crazy.)
Without even getting into the whole crappy world of SS2Is and "ESNs", a lot of the actual software contractor work in France could also be requalified as employement.
Most often, clients pick your hours, where you can work, assign you what would be a regular job, with very low autonomy on the tools you can use and how you can do things, along with half-year, sometimes more, renewable contracts, and a contractual interdiction to subcrontract in the work.
But most freelancers just don't seem to want to be actual employees, and prefer the higher pay and ability to leave on short notice. Perks that can only hold as long as the talent shortage.
The UK HMRC has just absolutely devastated the London contracting market due to a rule shakeup like this. Speaking as an ex-contractor and current hiring manager, the result has been disastrous.
Salaried devs in London are drastically underpaid, contractors make up the difference. Hopefully this will at least push up the salaries to a more reasonable level.
They moved responsibility for determining whether a person is acting as an employee or a vendor in the vast majority of cases to the client, who must demonstrate a bunch of factors (I'm not a tax guy), not least
- the "vendor's" right to substitute himself for a replacement they subcontract (via employment or otherwise) to, irrespective of the client's deemed suitability of the chosen replacement
- the "vendor's" right to a significant level of autonomy, such as the ability to choose their working hours and lunches, and have high level control over their workflow
- the process of determination 'employee' vs 'vendor' must be significantly documented and can be challenged in retrospect for years after completion of the contract
Falling on the wrong side of a determination could leave the client liable for mandatory national insurance and pay-as-you-earn tax deductions. Now HMRC need not prosecute individual contractors, but instead clients (who may hire hundreds of contractors), making the enforcement process much more efficient for them, and much higher risk for the clients.
Net result for companies: building big overnight temporary teams out of contractors e.g. for 6-12 month projects are vastly less likely to do so, for fear that at some future date, the tax man could claw back a year's worth of tax for e.g. 20 contractors on the same project, with non-compliance and late payment penalties lumped on top (which themselves increase with respect to how long it took HMRC to get around to investigating you). It could be the case (hypothetically) that it would only require one member of a team to report the inability to substitute, or the presence of a line manager, for an entire project team's worth of tax to get a question mark placed next to it.
Net result for contractors: anyone who understands what's going on has either pivoted into becoming a permanent employee, avoiding the whole mess, since contracting is an expensive activity to begin with, and the premium has now been removed, or has banded with a few friends and attempted to set up "micro agencies". I've already encountered these, where substitution was advertised very early in conversation.
Net result for the market: it will be all but gone by April 2020.
The bit that sucks, if you are a legitimate contractor, is that rather than clients determining on a case by case basis whether or not a contract falls under IR35, they're short circuiting the whole thing by assuming every contract falls under IR35.
However I suspect this is because _most_ of their contractors are actually just disguised employees, and I say this as a contractor myself. However the legitimate contractors are also getting hit by the backlash now that the clients are on the hook for penalties.
Personally, I'm going to keep contracting past April as I generally only work with small businesses anyway and they can see quite clearly that my contract does not fall within IR35. If however they had 100 contractors instead of say, 1-2, it's much harder to make that determination.
> Net result for companies: building big overnight temporary teams out of contractors e.g. for 6-12 month projects are vastly less likely to do so, for fear that at some future date, the tax man could claw back a year's worth of tax for e.g. 20 contractors on the same project
Why shouldn't the companies be paying the required taxes for the 6-12 months exactly? It sounds like they are doing temporary employment. In other words, this finding sounds exactly correct.
Are there no fixed-length employment contracts in the UK? For these projects, wouldn't the correct thing to do be having these people employed on a limited term contract as full employees, and have to pay all the correct employment taxes and such? This seems like a logical thing for the government to want, and I don't blame them for enforcing it.
And wouldn't the person who's doing this work benefit from it as well? They get benefits this way, and it's not like being fully employed by different companies for 6-12 month stretches is that different from not technically being employed by those employees but working exclusively for them nonetheless over 6-12 month periods.
It eliminates the sizeable premium that previously attracted skilled labour to the instability of contracting. Without premium, why bother with the risk?
FWIW, prior to the recent change, I believe the situation had been the status quo since well into the 90s. I only started contracting circa 2007
Why would it eliminate the premium? Companies would still be willing to pay extra for shorter term highly skilled workers that produce results.
And if that premium only existed because the company wasn't having to pay the employment taxes and benefits that they should, then it deserves to go away. It was tax avoidance, not an actual premium.
Well, from your feedback, the law seem to have had the required effect combining supression of disguised employment, assigning the right responsibility to parties involved and avoiding dilution of said responsibility.
You don't have to speculate, there have been several cases where the Prudhommes re-qualified contractors as full-time employees. It usually takes 1) a well-organized union in company Y to help with the legal process, round up candidates, etc. and 2) an actual desire from the contractors to be hired by company Y. (Just mentioning 2 because some contractors I know, who've been posted to the same company for a long time, wouldn't dream of working there as an FTE).
I've been (remotely) involved in such a mass (about a dozen FTE) requalification 10 years ago. Needless to say, the rules for contract duration and conditions were strongly tightened up afterwards.
Which is weird as in London low paid compared to SV. The Normal rule of thumb is 2.5 to 3x a FTE (full time employee) cost.
eg for me I would want to target £600 to £750 per day (possibly more if I was commuting to London) depending on whether its inside IR35 or not. This figure is low as I deliberately worked locally -
If the agency that pitched me the Grade 6 / 7 role in the civil service came off my day rate a contractor would be 1200 to 1400, a 7 is a full Colonel and 6 is between that and a Brigadier
I suspect the long term aim is to force the UK into the US model of a large part of the professional workforce being lower paid consultants.
I'll take the hit and say it's bad. A great purpose of nation states is to enrich and protect the lives of those who are from those respective nations, often and usually at the cost of others. A bunch of non-governmental entities undermining the nation state is undeniably untenable -- both cannot thrive.
People, especially the rich, often pretend we don't live in nation states and that the global nation is here -- but it very much isn't. I think we ought to be afraid of what happens when nation states dissolve. The ultimate result doesn't seem to be unification but disunion.
I don't think we can say it's good or bad without context. Hiring skilled immigrants at a lower price might enable a company to compete for contracts with overseas companies with cheaper labor, thereby making the company, it's shareholders, and by extension the nation, money that it would have otherwise not have gotten.
I think the "populist vs. globalist" dichotomy as is often used in our political discourse today is far too reductive and not descriptive of reality, if not for society at large then definitely for HN.
Counterpoint (from the basis of what I know from how the US, not France, classifies independent contractors):
1. Uber drivers also drive for Lyft and other services
2. They can reject a passenger when the call comes in
3. They bring their own tools to the job (their car)
4. They provide their own training and technical qualifications (they're responsible for getting a drivers license, license plate, etc.)
5. They set their own hours
6. The choose where they work
7. They're paid by the job and the price is based on the job, not necessarily just hourly wages (like paying for a deck, or a custom paint job)
8. They work with limited supervision
This sounds an awful lot to me like an independent contractor working for a small number of driving services. I do think that the fact that drivers have limited ability in a given app to set their own rates indicates employment, but very rarely does an independent contractor actually meet every single one of the criteria I listed. A house cleaner, for instance, brings their own tools, etc., but they're not paid by the job and they don't work with limited supervision. Meanwhile some construction work might mean that work can only be done during specific hours of the day using specialized equipment provided by the nuclear plant / factory / whatever.
This is as opposed to someone like Microsoft or Intel that hires employees, but gives them a different badge and excludes them from certain meetings and then goes and pretends they're contractors when they're actually just poorly paid interns.
French law only requires a "relationship of subordination" to qualify someone as an employee. The press release is very short and explains why the French court considers that an Uber’s driver is in a relationship of subordinate.
> Drivers who use the Uber application do not build up their own clientele, do not freely set their rates, and do not determine the terms and conditions of providing their transportation service. The company imposes the itinerary and the driver’s fare is adjusted if this itinerary is not followed. The destination is unknown to the driver, thereby revealing that the driver cannot freely choose the route that suits him/her.
Sure. I did try to qualify my statement saying I was basing my argument on US law. French law is whatever a French court decides it is. But I do think that riding-app drivers are, as a matter of opinion, much more like hiring someone to paint your house than a regular employee relationship.
Your analogy is off here. The person whose house is being painted is like the passenger in an Uber; this finding does not establish an employee relationship here.
Rather, the employee relationship is between that of the painters and the painting company that is paying them out to do numerous painting jobs. That is the closest analog in the Uber situation. And yes, these painters would be classified as employees under French law too, as they should be.
A general contractor can penalize/blacklist sub contractors who don't take their jobs, too. Of course, most of the time, there are reasonable humans on both sides and this can be solved, whereas the gig services operate at a scale where it feels harder to get mutual satisfaction, which might be one of the core issues.
I'm honestly not sure where this all ends up. The services certainly _feel_ exploitive when you hear about all the horror stories, but turning everyone into employees may then be fraught with new issues of employer<>employee rights and obligations (for ex defined hours, time off, etc)
Do they work with limited supervision? The
company imposes the itinerary and the driver’s fare is adjusted if this itinerary is not followed. The monitoring is automatic instead of having a boss peering over your shoulder.
Fares are not adjusted for drivers if they don't take a ride. Rides are provided to the driver because the company believes they are the best driver for the job (closest, maybe they have preferences to go in that direction)
The deteriorating relationship between what people widely consider 'employer' and 'employee' has put a lot of societal structures (businesses, democratic governments, etc.) at risk since income provides the abstraction most use (money) to provide necessities and wants.
Most all of these institutions are able to continue to exist because people accept their artificial constructs and play the roles due to wide belief that it provides a better life. In many places, quality of life or at least perception of quality of life is deteriorating for large segments of the population. This is, IMO, causing wide rejection of modern institutional roles laborers are dealing with. Many employers are breaking the social contract and people aren't happy--this is a risky game to play.
I propose much of the political unrest we're seeing in US politics is symptomatic of the population's general unrest and rejection of continued shifts against your typical laborer.
We can play legal/semantic games about how we define 'employee,' 'employer,' and 'contractor' but ultimately, if the general population disagrees, no matter how well we construct our rules and arguments, the institutions will fail if people widely perceive they're being cheated/deceived.
I'm self employed. I really strongly prefer it. I don't want to be an employee thanks. Yet my government (UK) are also trying to ban it (IR35). Why is it so hard for people to understand: I prefer cash to "secure employment", I'm old and mature enough to make that decision?
As always the govt wants to protect you from corporations by forcing you to be dependent on them for your livelihood.
A bit different situation, but relevant to the group here. In the US, software contracting started to become very big during an earlier tech bubble. This was crushed in the mid 80s by a new tax law that made a long list of requirements (12 or something) that must be satisfied to work as a contractor in tech. You practically had to operate as an independent company selling them a finished product. Otherwise they would fine both sides and make the company you contracted with pay back taxes. The law was so overreaching it had to exempt other professions like housekeeping and legal services which were "traditionally" operating via hourly billing or whatever, or those forms of operating would be completely eliminated too. The govt figured they would get more tax money with people paying through paycheck deductions, while businesses such as IBM were pushing for the law to turn the competition into employees.
So can Uber force French drivers to work certain hours?
As an American, I have poor understanding of what employment entails in the EU. If the Uber drivers are just hourly employees, what changes for them?
In the USA, you only see real employment benefits if you are a salaried employee. An hourly worker gets paid their wage and that's it (no sick days, retirement, etc).
In France, by law hourly employees get medical insurance, a certain amount of paid sick leave, unemployment insurance and also contribute to a pension plan. These benefits are partially paid for by the worker and partially paid for by the employer. Hourly workers must also be paid at least a minimum net wage (after deductions for benefits), currently 7.82 euros per hour.
Contract workers pay for their benefits themselves. They’re legally required to pay into the national health insurance plan and to make payments into a pension plan, but the rest is optional. There is no required minimum wage.
Whether it’s better to work as an hourly worker or as a contract worker essentially depends on how much you’re making in each case.
In France, there are 3 conditions that make you an employee:
- pay
- work
- subordination
The first two are relatively straightforward: you get paid to do work. They are important in order to distinguish between volunteers and employees. Obviously, Uber drivers are working for money, it matches.
The last part is the most important. It means that the employer has power over the employee, as in: give orders, and punishment if the orders are not followed. If the employer can make decisions unilaterally and at any time, there is subordination, even if there are no fixed work hours and no constant supervision.
It is a very commonly broken law in France, at least in spirit.
Subordination is extremely weird, because one could argue this is also the basis of a customer / supplyer relationship. « Customer is the king » as they say. Once you’ve agreed in a deal, then your customer will give you « orders » ( in compliance with your contract, of course), and make decision to stop the deal if the contract allows him to, and he’s not satisfied.
The difference is that in a normal customer/supplier relationship, both parties decide on the price and what will be delivered beforehand. Then the supplier does his job anyway he wants, and in the end, hopefully, the customer will leave with a product matching what they agreed upon, and the supplier with the money. The customer doesn't stick his nose in the supplier's business or decide how the job has to be done.
Of course, the line can be blurred a bit. You may expect the supplier to follow a certain process, provision for changes, etc... But if you start messing with your supplier's business a little too much, it becomes what is called in french "délit de marchandage", which means you are treating your supplier like an employee, and it is illegal.
In France, contracts are much more constrained than in the US. In some cases, like when you rent a house, the contract you signed means almost nothing: most of what is not already a legal obligation is unenforceable.
I don't know if that's true. Our hourlies get benefits like health insurance, vacation, etc. Maybe not as good as salaried but it's not as clear cut as "hourly pay only."
What does paid time off even look like if you don't have a set schedule, though? Will Uber drivers just get n hours of wage added to their paycheck every month?
Where I live the company has to set aside 12.5% of the salary paid for next years "vacation money". You can chose yourself when to withdraw this money in the following year.
For a full time job you are required to take 25 days (or 5 weeks) off work outside of public holidays which is about 10% of the total working time so you usually have a bit more to spend in this period even if the vacation itself is unpaid :)
I find the idea of legislating how businesses operate based on the idea that people aren't expected to have personal responsibility highly distasteful.
I think the only country in the world where the general citizen have enough self control to manage this sort of stuff is Switzerland.
It might be distasteful to you but it is how people operate in real life and it would be sad if legislators ignored the real world in favour of how they wished the world to be.
I'm not following. You get your regular paychecks while you're on vacation. It's only once you've exceeded your allotted vacation days and go on leave without pay that you don't get paid. This is how things work here in the US too.
I don't think we have requirements about how exactly companies should fund this paid vacation in advance like France does (maybe we should?), but we do very much get paid while on vacation.
You do get paychecks issued regularly every two weeks (or whatever), it's just that the amount per paycheck is variable based on hours worked over the preceding 2 week period. This is common for much more than just Uber drivers (e.g. retail workers), and it still works out. The paid vacation amount is the average amount that employee earns.
That might create a pressure from employers where employees are expected to stay in their seats the whole year. The key is that employees are required to take the time off. That requirement means it's never possible to question it.
That's probably part of the equation too, i.e. that a majority of workers want a full time employment with a schedule so that they can take a few weeks off.
In Ontario (at least pre-Ford) you can get full-time benefits as an hourly worker, as long as you work 40h a week or more (or maybe 35?). It's been awhile though so I'm not super confident on the details here.
Yeah, this is why, like so many other things involving regulation, there should be a gradual proportional phase-out, not a hard line in the sand. So rather than paying two people to do 20 hours each and pay for no benefits, if you did that, you'd be paying for half benefits for each, at which point you may as well just have one person doing 40 hours a week who's fully employed and getting full benefits like you should've been doing all along.
The same is true (at least in my experience) in America. Over 40 hrs/week means the employer has to pay out extra benefits. This is also why employers do not want you to work over 39 hours if you're not salaried.
In the US, over 40 hours simply means 1.5x your regular payrate after the 40th hour, if you're "non exempt", i.e. hourly. Some employers might offer something more.
In America very few of those (except health insurance) are actually mandated by the government. Sadly in the US most employment benefits are only exchanged at the grace of the employer.
They cannot force French drivers to work certain hours (under their current contracts), but this is not relevant to their work status:
> The fact that the driver is not obliged to connect to the platform and that this absence of connection,
irrespective of its duration, does not expose the driver to any penalty, are not taken into consideration
when characterising the relationship of subordination.
> The criteria for self-employment include the possibility of building up one's own clientele, the
freedom to set one's own rates, and the freedom to set the terms and conditions for providing one's
services.
Now that subordination has been established, using the criteria you list, what's stopping Uber from forcing the drivers to work regular shifts? The drivers are legally subordinate to Uber now, after all.
If you’re an employee you benefit healthcare, retirement etc. As I understand it, the basic week of work is 35h. You do do less if part-time. Employers also use "cadre" (white collar) contract for more qualified workers they want to milk more than the legal 35h.
Hourly in US can also get benefits depending on company's discretion and some mandatory laws. For example, state of NJ has a sick day law that was passed in late 2018 where it made mandatory for employers to provide accrued sick leave to any employee (salaried or hourly) as long as they are on W-2.
Legally, wether you’re an employee or independent contractor matters for everything from the Americans With Disabilities Act through Workers Compensation, not to mention, taxes.
Wether the company offers benefits to hourly employees is largely an internal decision.
I am not sure I understand why this is a win for Uber drivers(genuine question). Is it considered a win because now they are treated as employees, so they will have benefits like sick pay, vacation days etc? What was the policy when they were not employees? Would they be penalized(financially) if they took a sick day? France already mandates some of these for contractors, so not a huge benefit, I think.
I doubt it'll mean more earnings, since employees are generally paid lower than contractors. This being in France, universal health care already covers everyone, so don't think that drivers are going to get a better healthcare coverage.
Maybe now the drivers will have to be compensated for wear and tear of their vehicle, which I can see is a win.
Are you implying that French courts change their rulings to benefit the government policies (hurting foreign companies in this case) rather than simply basing them on the law?
> This being in France, universal health care already covers everyone, so don't think that drivers are going to get a better healthcare coverage.
A common misconception. Health insurance is not mandatory but highly recommended in France. Example: a dental implant will cost between 500 and 800 euros, depending on the materials used and the local market rates. Social security will pay about 200e of that. The rest is up to your private insurance. If you don’t have any, get used to having a hole in your smile
For employee, universal public healthcare is mandatory and paid to the state. Part is paid directly by your company (you don't see it on your wage slip) and part is paid by the company on your behalf (appears on your wage slip). The same goes for retirement.
Also taken from your salary, a complementary private healthcare plan chosen by your employer. I just literally learnt yesterday the mandatory part on the company private complementary plan. You can not reject the company plan if it does not suit you. But you can take another complementary plan on your own. BUT only one is eligible for reimbursement. So you basically loose part of your salary if you choose a better complementary health plan as recipient of your health bills.
Now, if you are a freelancer, well, you also have to pay all of that, all by yourself this time. The affiliation is different (RSI) but you still have to pay universal public healthcare. Then you are free to have a complementary private healthcare plan or not.
All critical health issue are covered by universal public healthcare. Less critical stuff like dental implants or ultra-thin glasses are not. You don't get a hole if you don't have complementary health insurance, you get a cheap dental plate.
A significant part of health care expenses are covered by _mutuelles_, (now mandatory) employer-provided, non-profit health insurance 'companies'. According to wikipedia [0], about 75% of health spending goes through the government[1], 15% through mutuelles and 10% paid directly by households. So being reclassified as an employee means:
- your employer will pay a large part of your public health contributions ; unless your gross wage is much lower as an employee than your income as an independent worker, this results in higher after-tax after-social-contributions income.
- you have access to a mutuelle, and the employer must pay at least 50% of its cost by law
In the end, the difference in health coverage between being an employee vs an independent worker is not life-or-death like in the US, but it's quite stark still.
[1] Technically, the "social security", which include pensions, healthcare, work injuries, most family and child benefits, is not part of the government and has its own budget.
because now there is a minimal pay per worked hour.
And a worked hour is an hour where you're on call (this is very well settled), not just the driving with a client in the back. And overtime after 35h/w.
> "...the French law regulates much more heavily all the aspects of employment conditions than the United States: Only a few forms of employment contracts exist in the French legal system, whereas the American law allows the two parties – the employer and the employee- to agree on almost every aspect of the contract freely, as soon as the contract is respecting the same principles and regulations set by the American law for contracts.
> The French legal system also regulates more strictly the aspects related to the execution of an employment contract, the work duration, the remuneration and the contract termination.
> The social tendency of the French legal system to protect the employees is in clear contrast here with the American employment, contracting and competing freedom principles."
Uber is seen as an attempt to escape the relatively fixed labor agreement.
I used to work at a gig economy startup (uber for dog walking...) and we spent considerable resources lobbying local and national governments to expand the kinds of restrictions we put onto our independent contractors while still not labeling them as employees.
We also had an entire team dedicated to preventing our contractors from going "off platform".
Probably one of the more exploitative jobs I've had.
In all likelihood, moving drivers from contractor to employee status will result in lower pay for drivers. Uber won't foot the larger employment tax bill. They'll just lower driver wages and increase customer prices.
More likely they will enforce the hours that the employee can work. If you are idling around at 4 AM in the burbs, they aren't going to pay you full rate, they will just kick you out and set working hours. If you don't like the hours, you get fired.
Less flexibility for drivers is probably a guaranteed outcome
Excellent judgement, not only because I happen to agree with it but also because of how it was explained that they arrived at this conclusion. Uber drivers ended up with all of the downsides of being an employee but none of the upsides.
Currently Lyft (haven't used uber in ages but I assume they do the same) gives an exact price as you're selecting a destination before you're assigned a driver, to allow driver price negotiation you can't give an accurate price before a driver accepts. At best you could give the driver more of the company cut but Uber is already lighting mountains of cash on fire as it is to increase driver income.
Can anyone explain why we need separate laws for self employed people and employees? To me it seems like they should have the same criteria. So for example, if a self employed person don't bring in enough money to pay minimum wage and all benefits then he is no longer allowed to work and must file for unemployment and look for another job immediately so that he can get a better paying job. Then Uber would no longer be able to get any riders unless they paid better which would fix the problem. What is the problem with this model?
It seems to me like contractor rules were invented for a very different kind of person, i.e. a professional who voluntarily gives up certain protections in exchange for higher pay. As an engineer I can choose whether I want to enter an employeer-employee relationship or a business-to-business relationship. In the second, I take on a greater share of the risk and I am accordingly paid more. The freedom to choose either option is valuable to me.
The rule was not intended as a way for large corporations to hire workers for less than minimum wage, although so far we've had a hard time making laws that cleanly differentiate the two cases.
The ruling makes sense to me, but the criteria do not. At least in this case. It almost seems like there needs to be a new category for the gig economy employees. They are somewhere in-between.
Really silly. There are loads of people who don't want to work as permanent employees. In Europe people often travel to work seasonally in different countries as suits them.
It classified that Uber driver as an employee. This does not change anything for others who still need to go to court in order to have their status changed (or not, they may loose. We do not have a legal system where precedents can be used in other cases)
I don't understand why this is so complicated. If someone works for you, they are an employee. If someone works with you, they are a contractor. I think the French definition of subordination is a great defining characteristic. However, my understanding is that US law doesn't make this distinction thus introducing a gray area.
Uber drivers can also drive for Lyft, and independently, thereby building up their own clientele. Uber connects drivers to clients and takes a cut off the top. Drivers can (and have) passed out their cards to me with direct lines. They can also get dispatches from Lyft.. WHILE entertaining offers from Uber and direct calls.
Uber drivers set their own rate by taking the job or not. The best analogy is a contractor and a GC. The GC needs work done at a certain rate, the contractor takes it or leaves it.
Drivers avail themselves to take rides or not on their own schedule, which is them setting the terms and conditions for providing their services. They aren't obligated to offer rides on the Uber platform, and can concurrently entertain offers from other platforms (Lyft, independent, etc).
We all know the intent of Uber was/is to connect people who want to ride-share in their spare time to people who need rides. It makes it easy for both parties and it's an improvement over taxis for all involved except taxi license holders. We shouldn't penalize progress because some Neanderthals want to make it their sole source of income (or eradicate ride sharing).
This is people peeing in the Napster pool all over again.
The real question is should Uber drivers get the same rights and protection as employees, and the company contracting them be held to the same responsabilities. My answer to that is yes, of course.
Wether they are or are not 'employee' according to some last century definition is an uninteresting question.
A solution to uber exploiting those with little other choice, might actually be to have more platforms like uber, that'd force them to compete, not only for customers, but for workers.
I like the french version better though. If uber wants to be a taxi company, then do it on fair terms.
Wasn't it so that in France Ryanair pilots are not allowed to be self-employed subcontractors either? (A model that Ryanair prefers.) Both makes sense to me, neighter of them can really set their own prices, schedules or work-conditions.
This ruling should apply only to a company that has a revenue over say 10 million. That way it will provide competition to the market at the same time taking care of drivers not being exploited. win win scenario.
Labor market regulation is tricky. All of Uber's drivers join as contractors under their own free will. No one is legally obligated to work for Uber. No one is threatening to do harm to anyone if they don't drive for Uber. If they don't like the terms of their employment, they can just stop driving for Uber.
Now of course, that libertarian approach has some practical consequences. Humans are a little bit mushier than the "economic man". We get sick, and old, come of age under different environmental conditions, have certain family obligations, happen upon unexpected circumstances, etc.
We can all appreciate that some people don't really have the option to just quit the job that's just barely keeping them afloat. But if a society decides that it values things like economic and human rights, then the burden of guaranteeing those rights for everyone should be spread across society as a whole, not just on the few whose business model depends on employing those at the bottom.
A company might find that its much more efficient when employees work 45h weeks or don't have holidays too. But peoplel decided that 40h work weeks and holidays every year are Nice To Have™ so laws were made to ensure those things.
The responsibility to follow that democratic decision is placed on all companies, not just on those few companies that need 45h employees in order to be profitable - although it's only a significant burden for those companies of course.
Companies that aren't sustainable under existing regulations need to disappear and make place for companies that are.
"No one is legally obligated to work for Uber. No one is threatening to do harm to anyone if they don't drive for Uber. If they don't like the terms of their employment, they can just stop driving for Uber."
This is an interesting position. On the surface it even seems reasonable.
Just like "no one is FORCING you to eat that particular food, if you don't like it, just don't eat it".
Well, hunger might force one to eat a particular food, even if one does not like it, even if one does not tolerate it well. It might well be, that that particular food is that one available to you, and you might not be in a position to select another food.
Can you opt not to eat it, it it's what seems available to you?
I think we tend to forget that not everyone has the kind of choice we have.
People who disagree with having the fruits of their labor stolen and given to others (welfare), or prevented from laboring (employment restrictions like the ones for Uber), are well aware that people have different possessions, capabilities, and opportunities. They just don’t think two wrongs make a right or that the ends justify the means. They think the purpose of government should be to secure rights instead of violating them to benefit someone else.
With Uber want to work? Press a button. Want to take a break? Press a button. Want to work again? Press a button. Take as long a break as you want. Work as long as you want. No timecards. No obnoxious coworkers. No intrusive questions. No douchebag bosses making your life a living hell. In what other job do you have this sort of freedom without the instability of traditional selfemployment? What more could you ask for? Now it'll all be ruined for everybody because of the greed and entitlement of a few.
Its side hustle money for bored college kids with some free time. They NEVER promised anything more. They're not forcing you to work for them. If you're a a single mother raising 5 kids on Uber alone you're doing it wrong.
> Its side hustle money for bored college kids with some free time.
Except it isn’t. If it was then Uber wouldn’t be trying to setup vehicle leasing schemes for their drivers.
If it was true then I would actually meet some college kid drivers, rather that 30 year old migrants.
If you’re a single mother raising 5 kids on Uber, then you probably have no choice. Telling them they’re “doing it wrong” won’t feed their kids. It’s just a callus relegation of someone you find undesirable and have no wish to help.
Fact is that every time you create a new way to earn money some people will do it full time no matter the feasibility. So basically you argue that we should have the current wage-slave economy forever instead of giving workers more choice. The only reason Uber is even a hint of a problem today is that we only have a single occupation following this model, but if it was more widespread and you could pick between a plethora of different things to earn money by as easily as Uber then suddenly the problems with Uber today would disappear instantly.
I understand that the current wage-slave model is better for employers, workers can't go home early if they feel tired that day for less pay since it would get them fired. Instead they have to tough out their hours every day. Similarly if a part time worker wanted a bit of extra money they could just choose to work more a few times, but that is also impossible in the current model. It assumes that workers are like machines who reliably work XX hours per week with no deviations. And even hourly jobs requires you to pick shifts beforehand and often you can't even get as many hours as you want or need, and you can still get fired for picking too few shifts etc.
So I feel that Uber is a much more humane way to handle labor than current employment contracts.
Don’t assume that US wage slave practices are universal.
Most of the developed world has very strong worker protections and a recognition that mental health and flexible working is important.
We can provide jobs with good benefits, flexible hours, accommodations for parents etc without resorting to the employment model Uber trumpets. The EU proves this is possible (it’s far from perfect, but empirically better than the US), and the fact that it’s one of the worlds largest trading blocks shows it can be done without sacrificing economic progress.
I agree lets look at this empirically. Or as close to it as we casually can. Lets take the top 3 results for Googling "productivity nation" (without quotes) where we can easily get a list to avoid cherrypicking.
US is 3rd ahead of most European countries. (I think this is a slightly more trustworthy number because its simpler and less prone to monkeybusiness like adding 'worklife' balance into the equation like other figures do.
So yes the empirical evidence seems to indicate that the US model is ahead of the EU in general. Its not the best but then again I never said that employment models is the be all end all of everything productivity.
Let's look at mobility, when I say upward mobility. I don't mean simply making do or even living adequately. I mean being ambitious and actually breaking out and being very successful and maintaining it. One straightforward way is to look at USD millionaires per capita.
" But the success of US tech companies is certainly notable."
One of the funniest statements ever following an assertion of empiricism.
The left's idea of "leading" is always amusing. The left in the socialist paradises in Europe will keep depending on US technology and posting on sites created by US innovation. At least until they depend maybe on China and then they won't even have the choice to practice evading their own country's speech laws.
The leftists in the US will just keep abusing the privileges they are afforded by those who keep them in luxury because that's just what they do. The system is good to them that way.
I'll now go "wage slave" so I can afford to travel to places that produce old buildings you visit.
Full-time driving jobs have existed for a century. There's nothing stopping people from driving FT if they want to, but they usually want the freedom and flexibility of working when and where they can that Uber is specifically designed for.
You can always come up with some scenario where it doesn't work while ignoring millions of drivers who are doing just fine. Would that mother in your example be better off without Uber? What if she can't work steady shifts every day and needs the flexibility?
People are perfectly capable of choosing what's best for themselves, they don't need the government to tell them what to do.
If people want to work for Uber so badly then whats Uber's place not to accommodate them? If single mothers need help so badly then thats not Uber's problem, they're out to run a business not save the world. The government should do something useful for them instead of effectively putting them out of work.
Yes the main effect of this is the company will have to restrict its standards and probably less of these people we're supposedly so concerned about will be able to work anymore due to qualifications or being able to cope. And those left now get to enjoy more regulations, supervisors, time cards, and workplace surveillance and the daily grind just like the rest of us drones. Heck Uber is barely scraping by as is. This might be the killing blow and now everybody is out of work. Good job.
> the main effect of this is the company will have to restrict its standards and probably less of these people we're supposedly so concerned about will be able to work anymore due to qualifications or being able to cope.
This kind of whining and fear mongering is done in response to absolutely every kind of employment regulation or workers rights improvement. Somehow it never seems to come true.
There are plenty of Uber competitors out there. There model of employment isn’t the only one possible. We can do better, and we should try.
On the basis of your arguments business should make no attempt to care for any of their workers, and all worker protections should be abolished.
That model only works if you buy into the fantasy that employees have any real negotiating power, they don’t. The only negotiating power they have is collective actions taken by governments. France is nice strong democracy, it’s not unreasonable to say this is the French people’s rejection of Uber’s exploitive employment practices.
You're not protecting the worker. You're taking away their freedom and choice and turning them into a different kind of worker.
Perhaps if you speak to some drivers, you'll find the overwhelming response that shows they want flexibility, not another full-time job.
These kind of laws do not take a majority to pass, and France had violent protests and riots by taxi drivers against ride-sharing with plenty of political infighting. The only votes that matter are Uber drivers, and you would find a very different conclusion if you only asked them.
There is nothing that prevents Uber from providing flexibility. The court has not ruled that Uber contracts were illegal, but that they were employment contracts (obviously, with the flexible hours Uber is known for) rather than (Uber) company to (the driver's) company business contracts.
> With Uber want to work? Press a button. Want to take a break? Press a button. Want to work again? Press a button. Take as long a break as you want. Work as long as you want. No timecards. No obnoxious coworkers. No intrusive questions. No douchebag bosses making your life a living hell. In what other job do you have this sort of freedom without the instability of traditional selfemployment? What more could you ask for? Now it'll all be ruined for everybody because of the greed and entitlement of a few.
Interesting that you forgot to mention the below-minimum-wage rates here
What below minimum wage rates? In most of Uber's markets the price is based on supple and demand, and the drivers get a portion of that price. It's a market driven scheme where you agree to driving at that price. If you don't agree, then just change platforms, or don't drive!
If college kids on Uber are hurting families who rely on the income of a taxi/cab/whatever driver, why wouldn’t we step in? There’s no golden rule that says we can’t intervene in the market to ensure people can have a decent life.
Desperate people will always try to make a living on any money source. Say I live in an area with lots of litter. If I made a program that paid 5 cents per piece of litter picked up from the streets, some desperate person would try to do it full time to support their family, fail, sue me for not paying a living wage and providing full health benefits and a pension, etc.
College kids should very well be allowed to offer a lower price for a service that someone else does at a higher price point - the problem is a multi-billion-USD-valued company trying to weasel around laws to profit off of both of them.
I think he means you can't (or it's not feasible) to do both an Uber ride AND a Lyft ride at the same time. Unless they magically align, you will be punished for going off itinerary for both.
Uber doesn't stop people having their own clients. Quite the opposite, it's a great place to swap numbers with a driver you like. Uber even has a favourites button so you have a higher chance of getting the same driver/passenger.
Also, your plumber doesn't set his rates, you do. He quotes and you accept (or not). That's exactly the same as the Uber driver.
It seems pretty obvious to me that Uber drivers organise their own work. They start and stop when they want, pick the journeys they want, set their own hours etc. But maybe I've misunderstood you?
The driver does not quote anything, Uber does and both the driver and the customer accept or not.
They have a very limited way to choose the ride they take: they have to make the decision in a couple of seconds, they may not know the destination and they are punished for declining too many rides by Uber. Does not scream free choice of what ride to take.
It is possible to bypass Uber and exchange numbers, yes. But the Uber platform itself does not let you build your own clientele, such as letting you look for the clients you want or the other way around. The question is not whether drivers can build their clientele outside of Uber but inside of Uber.
They do indeed have flexible hours, something that is apparently - reading the comments of this thread - impossible as an employee in the US and thus a feature of being an independent worker, but in France you can be an employee and have flexible hours, so that does not make Uber drivers independent.
I beleive France is a very socialist country. There was a story when France Telecom got private as Orange and new bosses put enormous pressure on employees to get them quit and not lay them off, because laying-off people is very expensive in France. It caused 35 (!!) suicides, and three bosses was jailed for that last December [1]
I wonder, will Uber escape signing backdated contracts with all their drivers in France (and what if some of them are illegal migrants?) or will it have to properly lay them all off, with compensations etc?
I also wonder what would be an economy of Uber in France with all their drivers being employees. Will it be 2x or 3x price? Even then it is somehow better than shameless official Paris taxi drivers.
I was under the impression that the only way the Uber/Lyft business model is even remotely viable (without continuous VC subsidy) is classifying drivers as contractors, meaning they don't have to pay them minimum wage or benefits, which lets them undercut taxis.
People (especially California) would like you to believe that. Uber drivers are rational beings, they know exactly how much money they are making, and they are aware of their taxes.
If Uber paid their Social Security and Medicare taxes, then Uber would just lower their base pay, and the net would stay the same. Or in other words the pay is higher because the driver has to pay those taxes.
I don't know one way or the other, but I have heard the argument that if you actually do all the math, particular with the reductions in pay more recently, it doesn't all net out.
Generally people do not act as fully rational economic actors, so we can't assume that this is not true based on the fact that people still choose to do it.
Which isn't to say they shouldn't have that option.
> 1) Uber is a public company now, it has not been VC funded for a long time
They also typically lose around $1 billion per quarter. Unless they figure out how to be profitable, they will eventually run out of money. So really, they are still burning cash on the roughly $20 billion of VC capital they raised, plus the money they raised during IPO.
And it has been losing tons of money for even longer. Without VCs to bail them out several times a year, how will they justify operating at a huge loss in France without a viable path to profitability?
I think a certain regularity of work is not a necessity for an employer-worker relationship to be exactly that.
And at a second thought, AFAIK Uber does even expect drivers to perform "regular" work - not "regular" as in "we write 9-to-5 every day into the contract", but "regular" as in "of course you can work as much as you like, BUT if we see you driving too little time for Uber, below a certain threshold that we set at our discretion, don't tell anyone and change as often as we want, our magic algorithm will start disadvantaging you when it comes to handing out rides, oh and actually we aren't acknowledging that this mechanism exists at all, so let's just say this sentence really ended at 'as much as you like'".
I'd only call that "fair" if they assume the position of an actual employer at the same time, offering all the usual benefits of an employment to their employee drivers, especially including a minimum income. If they did, they were free to distribute work as they like, by any crude criteria imaginable, because it's not at all illegal to fully pay an employee for essentially doing nothing. But that's exactly what they don't want to do.
We have what is called "ekstravakt" job positions in Norway which could be called "call in only" positions. You get sick leave based on when you would normally work and you get pension, vacation money etc based on how much you earn.
It's not a problem to implement at all, I was the manager for many youths hired as such in a company I worked for 20 years ago.
The hourly wage for the 16-18 year old crowd was about $12-13 before tax and benefits (+12ish% employer tax that the worker never see).
> Is there such a thing as an employee with random hours?
As any junior employee in retail or the service industry will tell you, yes.
Their hours are random, unpredictable, up to the caprice of their manager and are assigned with very little notice. They also rarely add up to 40h/week.
During a labour shortage, this goes the other way, where managers end up scrambling to staff their store/restaurant, because their less-reliable employees decided to not show up to work, with very little notice.
Not for a lot of minimum wage and service industry jobs. Millions of adults in the western economic world work these kinds of jobs, and shifts can be moved around, shortened, lengthened, or disappeared altogether (via being given to someone else, or because business is expected to be slower). This isn't at all OK, but it's the reality for lots of people.
Sure, how about people who work for Amazon warehouses? They don't have regular shifts or hours... They have to answer a notification on an app in order to secure a shift for the following day.
All of this is a legal system that has a square hole and a circular hole not knowing what to do with a triangular peg. Governments job is to realize that this is a new category of work and create laws specifically to address it.
If people voluntarily choose those jobs then doesn't that mean those jobs are better than the alternatives they have? It also provides a pretty nice service.
I reckon you are happy that you didn't work in the mines when you were 9 years of age? Or am I completely wrong? Oh wait, naturally you would have been able to decide for your own best.
This was about regulations. I never commented on the uber drivers. Tbh, I have not enough insight to know if they should be protected.
I am merely pointing out, that is is easy to forget what regulations do for you. And yes, 9 year old have worked in mines before working age was regulated.
This regulation is specifically about Uber, and it's also easy to forget what regulations can harm and the unintended consequences they create. Balance is key, and that seems to be have been entirely missed here.
> 9 year old have worked in mines before working age was regulated.
I know. They weren't forced to work, they were hired because it was legal and families back then depended on their income. Children still work often in agriculture and it remains the families choice to do so.
Regardless, there's a big difference between child labor and adults choosing how they want to drive for work.
Oh come on, of course those kids were forced to work in those mines. They weren't allowed to refuse. They had to do whatever their parents told them to. The alternative was being a homeless street urchin.
I believe the alternative to driving Uber is serving at McDonald's, not becoming a homeless street urchin, so vivid imagery of this strawman notwithstanding, the argument for regulation isn't nearly as convincing.
More like: "If people voluntarily choose those jobs then doesn't that mean that any alternatives that aren't even worse have been replaced with ones that are even worse, because the government allows such replacement?", actually.
Where do you draw the line on that argument? Was the Victorian child labour cool too because they were willing to do it? Were the labour unions employees bad for everyone involved? If not, why not?
Children used to work because they had to in order to survive. The choices were work or starve to death. Taking away the option to work obviously makes them worse off. This plays out today when western countries force labor laws in countries like Bangladesh. When the children can no longer work in factories they often have to resort to prostitution.
The question of labor unions is a different issue. Labor unions do benefit their members who do get raises because of their actions. They do not benefit the people who will no longer get hired because the cost of labor is now higher. They do not benefit workers in other industries because the prices they will pay will be higher and displaced workers will enter their industry lowering their wages. Labor unions harm society at large in order to benefit their memebers.
These aren't jobs, all jobs I know require a lengthy job application and thorough screening so you probably wont even get it. The fact that it is possible to earn money without all of that is a good thing, and governments trying to outlaw such work is horrible imo.
And no, Ubers model wont work with employees due to the minimum hourly wage. Currently people need to do a good job to earn money, but if each worker is guaranteed a certain amount per hour then uber will be forced to start screening and firing applicants manually like everyone else instead of the current automated process.
What's the new category? Currently in France there is:
- employment where you trade liberty (i.e. subordination) against protection (can't be fired at will, minimum wage, guaranteed income set in the contract...) from a company
- being an independent worker where you keep your liberty and do not get protection
If there is a third category like what Uber is currently doing, you trade your liberty (subordination) against no protection. It is not a new category, it is lowering the protection of employment. Which may or may not be a good thing, that's not my point, but I fail to see where's the new category of work.
The new category is that Uber is as controlling as an employer in some ways (manner of work) but not in others (time and place of work). There should be a legal framework to handle these hybrid scenarios.
How unfortunate. The vast majority of drivers don't want this. If they wanted full-time driving jobs, they would get one, yet they choose Uber for the flexibility.
This is going to hurt most drivers than help. We can already see the results of this here in California because of AB5 and I doubt most proponents of this law have ever driven for Uber in the first place.
Nobody is stopping them from being independent drivers with their own customers. For example, I do this for with regular drivers for airport rides that I originally met on the app.
Uber is a matchmaking service that comes with certain rules and objectives so the marketplace works better for everyone, and flexibility to work when and where you want is usually most important.
Perhaps we need a 3rd category to account for this kind of work.
Examining this case from a "similarity to employee" perspective neglects a crucial factor: the expectations between the parties at the time of contract.
It's patently obvious no Uber driver expected to be treated as an employee, as no employment contract was signed, and the Uber model is known and clear.
The court merely implements "social justice", which is nor social nither justice, destroying basic trust in society. Progressivism is cancer.
Labour law (in France at least, I do not know about the US) is based on - for the lack of a better expression - reals over feelz: what matters is the actual relationship between the driver and Uber, not whether either party felt surprise at some point.
The court merely implements "French labour laws", as it should.
A contract isn't law. I can write a piece of paper saying that you agree to work for me for $1 per hour and even if you sign it, you are still able to take legal action against me because this contract is illegal. Preventing megacorps from exploiting those with few options is obviously a net benefit.
This has nothing to do with my point. Law exists to establish peace and consensus.
Contacts are the most basic construct enabling modern life in a crowded society.
Reinterpreting contracts in a liberal, unreasonable manner destroys peace and introduces chaos.
It prevents members of society from ever trusting one another, and makes all agreements tentative, subjective to the retroactive whims of politicians and court.
It serves the court, positioning it as an ultimate dictator, not the society.
Law exists to ensure the best possibly outcome for society. Companies finding creative ways to redefine work so they get all the benefit while offloading any of the costs is not helpful for society.
I might be inclined to agree with you on contracts if it wasn't for the huge imbalance of power here. An individual who works for these taxi companies has basically no negotiating power against uber so they will never be able to come to a fair contract. Employment protections exist to solve this and they have been rightfully applied to uber like they are to every other company. Laws should adapt to changing reality rather than let companies work around them.
While it is possible to argue against it on a philosophical ground, in French law contracts are not the most basic construct, and they have to comply with higher legal norms such as law or the constitution. Hence a contact must be "reinterpreted" (i.e. is void) if it does not follow the law.
> On ne peut déroger, par des conventions particulières, aux lois qui intéressent l'ordre public et les bonnes moeurs.
> Le contrat ne peut déroger à l'ordre public ni par ses stipulations, ni par son but, que ce dernier ait été connu ou non par toutes les parties.
> Chacun est libre de contracter ou de ne pas contracter, de choisir son cocontractant et de déterminer le contenu et la forme du contrat dans les limites fixées par la loi.
Most employment law isn't about protecting people from being surprised by an employer it's about setting limits to what an employer can require of an employee. Both parties expecting at signing that you'll only get paid for half the hours you work or that you'll be paid below the required minimums doesn't make it any more legal for the business to do that.
1) People asserting that the court was right or wrong followed by some "argument". The court simply ruled. Anything beyond that is the same as people who use statistics to provide "evidence" about their preconceived notions.
2) Examples that mean one thing to someone and something else to another but both sides claim right or wrong. See 1. For fun, I'll do an example but not claim it proves something. Most well known professional wrestlers work for a tyrant. Until very recently when another billionare entered the game they didn't have a lot of choices. Just like uber drivers they are mostly told what to do and even have sold their real names. They can also be seriously injured and die just like uber drivers. They also are "independent" contractors. Despite those odds, some did leave and became well known outside of that tyrant's world and are now getting richer than ever before...Would any of the events above including the new billionare deciding they could compete by picking up those independent minded wrestlers ever have happened if they were employees all along?
3)Portrayal of evil corps and the downtrodden who are forced to serve them as stereotypical "underclass" victims. If you are in Redmond soon and you take an Uber don't be surprised if you are being driven around by a PM who is getting out of the house or trying to get an extra edge against the high cost of living there.
My personal feeling here is I do not care either way. What I care about is from the consumer standpoint that Uber is accountable. My primary dislike of Uber, Airbnb, Vroom or similar enterprises is that they all claim to be of one stripe when things are going well but when things go wrong the company claims "Oh that's not us it is this entity we represented as part of the process but who we disclaim any responsibility for". As others have pointed out all the major tech companies use contractors. I don't know of any that would get away with the "oh that's not really us" defense.
Immediately I'd seem to agree with this statement. I think of typical self-employment businesses; hairdressers, freelance developers, etc and this seems to apply. You can set your own rate and your own terms, even if those may kill your chance at being competitive.
But if you think deeper into this, then this criteria isn't always true.
Here's a scenario: I publish an ad on a handyman site asking for a new shed built for £100. People can place their interest and their proposal. The price is fixed at £100, and I may set other terms and criteria. Nobody is going to argue that the builders are employees of the exchange site. Uber isn't entirely different (it just simplifies the process). Its drivers are allowed to deny a ride, and can see the cost upfront.
Really the difference in these types of self-employment seems to be that the customer approached a set of potential suppliers, rather than vice versa, and the customer set the terms and the self-employed get to accept/deny. In the typical scenario (hairdressers, etc) they set the terms to potential customers who get to accept/deny.
I don't agree or disagree with the classification of Uber drivers as employees, I just don't agree with the criteria of the court in this case.