I strongly agree with Fred Wilson that Hillary Clinton's remarks were spot-on (or close enough), and that we should welcome this discussion in the political arena rather than bristling at it. The gig economy offers some very tangible and valuable benefits to both consumers and "employees", but there are a lot of unanswered questions regarding what this means for worker rights and quality of life. If we just handwave it away, we could wind up with decades or more of bad policy that keeps people poor and victimized, rather than better off and empowered.
I was very glad that Hillary Clinton took a sophisticated view of the situation and didn't just bash on a fashionable subject. I hope other candidates follow her lead and we have an actual interesting discussion.
Those of us who "bristle" think that it's absolute nonsense that free adults should be prevented from engaging in a mutually beneficial transaction because the government is concerned with protecting one of them. Treating Uber drivers or AirBnB property owners as if they are the characters in an Upton Sinclair novel is a tough sell. Let me rephrase the argument from the left: "we mandated all of these great things for employees, but it increased the cost of employment, and workers and employers started voluntarily opting out. This is a problem because it threatens our original premise, that everyone will be better off if we regulate employment." Finally, Hillary's hedged, "sophisticated" view is basically that she wants credit for protecting workers but none of the blame when the citizens of progressive-leaning cities get Uber taken away. Even if you're a likely supporter, you shouldn't let her get away with it until she tells us what sort of proposals she imagines would avoid the trade-off and magically allow these markets to flourish while also "protecting workers."
"workers and employers started voluntarily opting out"
Erm, many workers drive for Uber because they lost their jobs, don't have other choices or are between jobs etc.
Many of these people are NOT opting out of full time jobs, they would take a full time job with benefits if it were offered to them.
Employers opt out of regulation whenever they can (see: the environment). The claim that employers opting out of regulation undercuts the original premise is completely false. They are doing so to cut costs which is entirely to the benefit of their shareholders who are a much smaller slice of society than workers.
In summary: Workers aren't necessarily entering the gig economy voluntarily and employers opting out of regulation doesn't threaten the original premise.
In my view though, the gig economy is just not sustainable. Look at sites like 99 Designs... You have an incredibly large workforce with an incredibly large spread of skills doing a lot of work for marginal payout. As these populous-run services become more common, it will only dilute the value pool for those in it... If you have thousands of people saying they can do something for a fair or cheap price, it only reduces the ability of the next worker to charge more, despite the fact they might have better skills. Price wins over quality 99% of the time, in my experience.
It's crazy because the competition is pretty much 100% internal and at some point, internal competition of anything will lead to systemic destruction of something critical if there is no authority figure demanding internal combat needs to stop.
And let's face it, a company like Uber or Airbnb will never tell its participants that they can't drive more often or share more rooms because that will limit their product offering. Also, the government won't, can't, and shouldn't interfere either.
It will solely rely for the workers of these sites to form unions agreeing upon their own quality standards and reflective pricing and will act as a group against the interests of the corporation they are inherently the product for... But pardon me for my cynicism, we're not at the point yet were self-preservation supersedes the desire for just a fractionally larger income.
I don't think it can be generalized to the entire gig economy. In particular, things that require physical interaction (like Uber and AirBnB) do well, compared to remote-computer jobs like 99 Designs where everyone is competing with third world contractors who have much lower cost of living.
I think we'll see some follow the Uber model as it evolves - subject to some reasonable regulation in the long run but still basically wiping out previous industries. And as much as I like Uber the product, I sure as hell do not want Uber the business setting labor standards that will govern the lives of millions in the 21st century. The business is great, the management is borderline evil. Which is better than the taxi industry where the business is awful and the management is totally evil but local only...
Ok, but then Uber will have to bear the full purchase, financing, depreciation, maintenance, garaging, inventory, theft, and insurance cost for potentially millions of vehicles.
If it's not Uber, someone else offering a similar service will eventually allow people to submit their own self-driving car to a driving pool when they're not personally using it.
Or people will buy a car and submit it to Uber's pool for some return, as an investment. Minimises Uber's costs which will mean they can expand aggressively.
No because the cars will be the electrical storage for most of the non baseline load in a city. So cars will be part private property and part public transport - fleets of mini vans driving around and nipping off to the charging station at peak demand times.
The gig economy will only die when humans price-gouge each other so immensely that robots are the only viable option - even though they can carry a higher entry cost.
That seems unlikely considering Uber's entire business model is based around offloading as much of the liability and risk as possible onto their "contractors".
It's the degree of market saturation, so we're both right... 99 Designs is on the extreme saturation end whereas physical ones like Uber are not. But ideologically, the problems they share stem from "more providers = dilution of profits".
And it's terrible because they only way to compete as a business against Uber, is by "forcing" the participants to offer more services at an equal or slightly higher price, or do the same services for cheaper. And that is inherently not good for either a business or it's product (which happens to be us humans, in this argument) - and that is why you don't see identical services popping up.
Price only wins over quality when there's zero relationship with the customer (as with 99 design).
You don't have to win solely on the innovation/creative front; clients want to feel safe in hiring you, they want to feel heard. You can project authority by blogging, speaking at conferences, open source work. Sometimes you can win a gig simply because you project the attitude that you can get shit done.
There are so many other ways to win besides quality of work (with much larger payouts!) and it always starts with building relationships.
As a bit of an aside, not everyone is convinced that there is an ongoing transition to a gig economy. Uber is just replacing one kind of freelancer with another one, so isn't a great example of a net shift. And the macroeconomic statistics if anything are trending away from self-employment towards full-time employment: https://www.economy.com/dismal/analysis/datapoints/255258/We...
I think the questions the post raises are good ones, though.
You're right that these companies could lose steam and this shift could never come. On the other hand, the macroeconomic stats could change incredibly quickly since these companies are growing exponentially. E.g. if a company is doubling every year, then by the end of 2017 they'll have 8x more freelance workers than they did at the end of 2014, 16x more in 2018, and so on.
Based on how big of a change this could be it seems worth at least starting the discussion now rather than after the shift has already happened and there are millions of people without the protections they need.
Also, with the Uber example in particular, they have their sights set on disrupting car ownership, not just the taxi industry. So there's a chance it will be a huge net shift.
There is no need for suspecting "...that as years go by the salaries will go lower as the gig-economy becomes standard." There is empirical evidence today anywhere you care to analyze freelancing results. I'm loathe to admit this as I used to think the "free agent economy" was the way to go, but I have to face the cumulative evidence over the past several decades.
Mainstreaming the freelance economy will be disastrous for median incomes, and further concentrate power because the majority of freelancers have little to no leverage. That is because by definition, the majority of freelancers fall somewhere close to some average metric (whatever objective/subjective measure is chosen by the buyer). That average is commoditized through many different means (the primary channel of delivering that commoditization being the purchasing/procurement department), and then the individual members of the average are pitted against each other. Everyone wants to think they are the special snowflake that will beat the averages, but by definition only a top 10-40% (depending upon a variety of factors) can beat the numbers.
My personal rule of thumb to staying a free agent for over the past ten years is assiduously put in the deliberate practice for 10K+ hours on a running 5-year basis constantly learning and applying new fields/skills/concepts, and successfully sell that (the key part many fall down upon). This is alongside the work you do to put bread on the table. My other rule of thumb is the moment you are negotiating a proposed gig's technical deliverables through the purchasing/procurement bureaucracy instead of the business unit that will realize the benefits of the gig, you are losing large chunks of your agency to their buying process that acts as a highly lossy compression algorithm, if you haven't lost it all already by that point.
It took almost five thousand years to stop openly owning other human beings (and people still do it with different names today, but at least we don't condone it anymore).
Basic income is inevitable in any society that maintains a capitalist market economy post-scarcity. If the US wants to destroy itself by being backwards (cough, healthcare, measurement units, date format, DST, national holidays, PTO, regressive welfare, etc) it cannot hold the rest of the world back forever.
>It took almost five thousand years to stop openly owning other human beings (and people still do it with different names today, but at least we don't condone it anymore).
In the US it never stopped. It merely became only the right of corporations and the state via prisons. Maybe it stopped in other countries, but how is that different than saying it stopped at the first civilization that banned slavery?
It would happen as soon as enough people were affected such that producers of goods as well as unemployed consumers demand it from the congress and the rest of society. What that tipping point will be I dont know, but it's almost inevitable, if the current trend continues unabated.
Better late than never. It did eventually happen, if late. I'm not saying basic income is on the horizon, but if trends continue into the future, we will see something resembling it.
Nixon and team considered negative income taxes back in the seventies when it looked like we were in a downward spiral. Nixon might have been a thief and a liar but above all else he was practical.
Nope. The Tea Party will scream and yell that the government wants to give welfare queens Cadillacs, and that's all anyone will hear.
I want Basic Income to happen. But I also know that there are a lot of people who benefit from it not happening, mostly cheap-ass crappy bosses who don't want workers to have any alternative, and so are stuck there.
Flexibility of choosing the type & the time of work seems like a win, in the gig (freelance) economy. However commoditization of such jobs could force the income down for many. This may result in the increase in the number of hours people work and that could result in health issues. With no health insurance & other benefits, overall quality of life could decrease for many. However Gig economy is here to stay.
In these conditions how can workers, government & businesses collaborate to provide better working conditions for those involved?
Commoditization certainly will force incomes down. This has already happened in the arts, where most work is inherently project-based. The more accessible technology has become, the more people have been asked to work for free, because there's a perception that computers have made it all so easy, and more to the point, the ubiquity of computers means that specialist skills no longer seem exotic because they don't require the same sort of specialist equipment that they used to.
The freedom and flexibility is nice, but gigging as a lifestyle can often feel like even more of a rat race because there's no concept of job security, and also because there's a flattening effect so that you have a small number of managers, a larger number of technicians, and a lot of workers. That means promotion and career advancement become heavily tiered. So if you drive for a ride-sharing service and want to get ahead in life, your choices are to drive every waking hour to get money or study programming or management in hopes of getting an entry level job in the company that operates the ride-sharing platform, where your time and dedication as a drive will be considered worthless, if not an active barrier to hiring. I predict that that while we will see flatter hierarchies than in the stereotypical 20th century organization, there'll be a re-emergence of Victorian-style class divisions, because management will be in no hurry to admit the most skilled servants to their ranks.
> In these conditions how can workers, government & businesses collaborate to provide better working conditions for those involved?
Solid safety net. Universal/single payer healthcare. A living minimum wage. Social support when you're unable to assemble enough income to survive (its been proven that its cheaper to give the homeless housing than to pay for the resulting issues of not providing housing).
I'm a big fan of a basic income as a replacement to our existing welfare system, but this:
>its been proven that its cheaper to give the homeless housing than to pay for the resulting issues of not providing housing
is misleading and inaccurate. First, you could never prove something like this as the comparison is highly dependent upon the larger institutional framework a particular society is operating under. Second, even if it were demonstrably true in a given community at a particular point in time, there is no guarantee those same conditions would persist over time. That's not to say there aren't good arguments for providing housing or other forms of welfare, but we don't need to engage in overly sweeping or simplistic arguments to make that case.
Your claim is sweeping because you're taking the results from one particular case study and extrapolating it out into a generic claim. It's overly simplistic because you're not acknowedging the reality that these conditions could change or may not be applicable in other situations (assuming there were no flaws in the underlying case study analysis to begin with).
Edit: this comment was made in response to toomuchtodo's comment prior to editing stating their claim was neither sweeping nor overly simplistic
But isn't that how evidence in support of these these programs should be generated?
If not, how else can these programs be accurately evaluated prior to implementing on a more generic scale?
The idea is to find better solutions than we have now. The counterarguments you are raising sound to me like they could equally be applicable to any proposed solution. If we can't seriously consider something until we know it works in exactly the same conditions, I feel like nothing would ever change.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with pointing to empirical evidence to support a claim (in fact, that is an excellent thing to do!). The issue I have with the original claim is that it isn't proven that giving away housing is a cheaper long-term solution than other forms of welfare. I certainly don't think we need to wait until something is proven to have an opinion or move forward in trying to make the world a better place (if we did, we would never take action in most cases), but we shouldn't present research in a way that disingenuously overstates our knowledge.
This is usually a fair point to make, but you're pointing at neither the flaws in the underlying case study nor the weakness in generalizing Utah to a wider area. That's not really fair, especially since parent comment is providing data.
The parent comment is now significantly different from when I replied to it.
The articles were originally cited, but my response was in reference to their claim that their prior statement:
>its been proven that its cheaper to give the homeless housing than to pay for the resulting issues of not providing housing
...was neither sweeping nor overly-simplistic. The merits of the referenced case study--which may be an excellent case study--provide no grounds for refuting my claim that their prior statement was sweeping and overly-simplistic. Also, when making an argument based on extrapolated data, the burden for justifying extrapolation lies on the person making that argument.
Regardless, my only real point here is that the original claim (that giving people housing is cheaper than other forms of welfare has been "proven") is simply too powerful of a claim. It might be a good policy and it may in fact be cheaper, but it's incorrect to say any position on this topic has been "proven".
I did indeed edit my comment, removing my assertion that my claim was not sweeping and overly-simplistic (I wish HN would keep an edit history that was visible).
With that said, I still disagree with you. If an experiment takes place, and data is apparent, that data stands on its own merit; if that data can then be used to make a statement, its proof, not "sweeping and overly-simplistic".
You can disagree with me, that's fine. I believe, based on the data, that we should be giving housing to the homeless. If you don't agree, I encourage you to engage politically; I do, and I'm passionate about positive social change. I appreciate you engaging in discourse with me in a civil manner; it happens much less than I wish it would (in general).
A community in Alberta, Canada has, in effect, ended homelessness [0]. The mayor claims[1] the cost of providing housing to someone is around CAD20,000, but the cost of a homeless person can be up to CAD100,000 - meaning that it's financially prudent for the municipality to proactively house people.
Both links are to press reports and don't provide any further information to back up the claims, but given that Medicine Hat and several other municipalities have taken up objectives of ending homelessness, I suspect it wasn't just for the warm fuzzies of giving people roofs over their heads. A lot of people (including the Mayor himself!) would have the same knee-jerk "they didn't earn it" response.
I'm fairly new to HN, but I've found people here tend to be much more civil than most places on the web, which I think is great.
>if that data can then be used to make a statement, its proof
I'm not trying to be overly semantic, but I think "evidence" would be more appropriate than "proof" in this case. My claim was never that there isn't evidence that housing the homeless costs less than other welfare programs (or that I think it's something we shouldn't do), I just think you are being too forceful in your claim.
There is a big moral hazard issue here as well. When you are working for minimum wage to rent the cheapest apartment in town why not become 'homeless' and get a house for free. I have no doubt that if you could eliminate the frauds from the system it would be cheaper, but I don't think you could.
Reconsider preconceptions of what cities and society can do for humanity.
Basic needs like clean water, sanitation, and streets could be extended to public housing and food. Public housing might be a bare minimum room in a crowded building on cheap land around urban areas with public transit connecting the community into the city.
1: Correct, though since the majority of jobs, infrastructure, and population gravitates around urban areas, building further infrastructure near populated areas would be reasonable.
2: Why do societies agree to build and maintain public infrastructure projects like sanitation, water, roads, schools, etc?
There will always be the economy of WANTs, buy a house wherever you want!
Consider the excessive amount of tax money going into the Prison Industrial Complex economy, it seems a much better option to build low cost / public housing infrastructure and job training rather than prisons.
1: So, basically people who live in rural areas will subsidize the people who live in cities? Or will they just pay much lower taxes?
2: Sanitation? I have my own septic system.
Water? Well.
Roads? You mean the gravel thing that has tons of pot holes? It would not be feasible for me to do that alone. (private property and all)
Schools? Tell me how much a high school degree gets you in today's economy? I just don't see much ROI there.
I agree about the prison system, it should only have violent criminals and thieves but the savings should go to lower taxes for the poor and middle class.
I'm sure logic like that works well on the playground and at the grateful dead concert, what about all the people who invested in property? What about the value of homes in general? Where would you even house all these people? It isn't always so simple.
If homes lose value, so be it. And where would we house all of these people? ~500K people in the US are homeless [1], providing housing for 1/600th of the US population is not difficult.
Meh. The idea that "people should be able to earn a living wage" is fine but does not always imply that it should be illegal to work for less, and structuring the economy such that this is the case can have ill effects too: it can eliminate entry-level positions and worsen unemployment, which seriously damages one's ability to improve his career later. It also impacts youths and retirees, neither of whom are working as their primary means of support, and community organizations/nonprofits who might benefit from time to time from a little more manpower than a pure volunteer solution might be able to provide.
Economic growth, and the employment opportunities it affords, are a far better way to improve economic opportunities than legislation is.
http://www.pkarchive.org/cranks/LivingWage.html
> This theoretical prediction has, however, been hard to confirm with actual data. Indeed, much-cited studies by two well-regarded labor economists, David Card and Alan Krueger, find that where there have been more or less controlled experiments, for example when New Jersey raised minimum wages but Pennsylvania did not, the effects of the increase on employment have been negligible or even positive. Exactly what to make of this result is a source of great dispute. Card and Krueger offered some complex theoretical rationales, but most of their colleagues are unconvinced; the centrist view is probably that minimum wages "do," in fact, reduce employment, but that the effects are small and swamped by other forces.
> It can eliminate entry-level positions and worsen unemployment, which seriously damages one's ability to improve his career later.
> It also impacts youths and retirees, neither of whom are working as their primary means of support
These are old canards.
The law already has adequate provision for limiting laws to the 21-65 age bracket, for probationary periods of employment, and for discounting wages based on value provided by the employer (example: students pay tuition for education, of which a large component is actually labor).
> Yes that's what the robber barons keep repeating,
Screw the robber barons - and, while you're at it, screw the progressive politicians and labor unions too. This is what the goddamn labor economists keep repeating.
True, but what happens if $15 is the break even point between having a robot do the job vs a human? Did we just help the minimum wage works by dumping all of their jobs and replacing with a fleet of robots and 1 high paid robot fixer?
I am all for the end goal of let the robots do the work, give everyone goods, ala Star Trek.. but not sure on the way to get there. Something has to fundamentally change. Is it the 40 hour workweek? Is it living wage?
Maybe a combination? I wonder if the privatisation of utilities might come back to bite countries (further) in that it removes an angle to solving these problems.
Perhaps the risk of a living wage (influx of freeloaders for one thing) is reduced if the provision is more in terms of basic rights like power for heating, cooling and cooking, water for drinking, washing and cleaning, and communication (base-level internet/wi-fi). Ideally extend it to basic food rights.
I would like to see far more done to reduce costs of sourcing/cooking healthy food as a base-level option for people. Might be achieved through density (compactus-style growing sleeves), layering (underground growing), robotics, automated transport (self-driving trucks), etc.
Structure to economic systems — segment basic needs (food, housing, education, transportation) as provided with "basic income credit", separate from the normal cash economy of WANTs and luxuries.
Yeah, and in those towns, rent is insanely high for the area as well. Is that because fast food workers are being paid $11+/hour?
Or is it possibly that the managers know that the oil people have crazy amounts of money, and they're trying to squeeze as much of it out of the oil people as they can?
I'm sorry, but I don't buy any of that for a second. Further, youth employment should not be considered more important than the employment of people who DO need to support themselves.
Stop tying health insurance to employment. One way or another, the tax loophole for health insurance needs to go away. This benefits both the salaried worker (easier to switch jobs and get a raise) and the freelance worker (doesn't have to unfairly pay higher rates).
Considering Instacart now offers its couriers an option to sign up as employees, I'd be curious to see how many take them up on that offer.
A part-time employee status (vs contractor) generally comes with loss of control over one's working hours, 30-hour weekly caps (to avoid the ACA penalty), and compensation setup that involves some kind of (likely minimum) wage + bonus instead of straight-up 1099 income.
Most of the gig economy (Uber, TaskRabbit, PostMates) is built around flexibility of hours, and freedom to not only accept a gig, but to refuse one (which you lose if you're in an employer-employee relationship and the boss is simply assigning it to you).
Doesn't Uber ban you if you don't accept almost all fares?
The problem with this models is that you're not really an independent contractor - you're simply on-demand casual labour.
The Internet element makes it unnecessary to stand outside the factory gates every morning, which is certainly a benefit.
But all the obligations remain one way. You have to accept the work, but if you decide to take time out you can be "fired" from the system without notice, at will, at random, and with zero come-back against the "employer."
In my completely unscientific survey of asking my Uber drivers how they like their job, I've never had a single one complain about their employment arrangement. Most of them talk about how much they like the flexibility to work the hours they want. This is across a diverse group of drivers from young college kids, new immigrants, and semi-retirees. Is my sample set an anomaly or have others heard similar stories?
If the workers in the "gig economy" really are generally happy and their employers are happy and their customers are happy, I'm not sure I see a good reason to toss new regulations into the mix.
I think you underestimate how powerful the rating system is on the behavior of the people who serve you on a day to day basis is.
It's quite possible that Uber drivers do not want to give you any reason to give a negative rating, including being open about their actual feelings about the economic arrangements that govern their relationship to you.
And let's not forget pride, and denial. I have had many lousy jobs in my life. When I get the second universal question, "Do you like your job?". I always respond, "It's o.k.--it's just temporary anyway!" (The first universal question I get is "What do you do?".)
I really don't like those questions. I know they are necessary questions in some settings, but overused questions by the "I define myself by what present occupation I currently have people."
As to this rating system; I'm sorry people, companies are overusing it. I'm kind of sick of it. I couldn't imagine buying a four door, 2008 or newer vehicle(until recently), Uber approved vechicle, and have to worry about customer ratings. These ratings should be private, and if the employee is a bad apple; fire him!
I have a friend I met completely outside of Uber who is a full-time Uber driver. He says he loves driving, meeting all sorts of people, and choosing his own hours. It's obviously just one anecdote, but I'm pretty sure he's not lying.
Recently he was annoyed that they were taking longer than he'd like to process the paperwork for his newly purchased car. Other than that I don't recall any specifics.
I was on the verge of giving an Uber driver a bad rating once because he wouldn't stop yapping about how great Uber is for him (I had not asked, and I generally prefer my rides to be quiet).
Right. That's a grain of salt I take when I talk to Uber drivers. That said, I've had several drivers who were former taxi drivers, and much prefer working for Uber.
Here in Minneapolis, the taxi driver business is dominated by our large (30k+) Somali community. I'm starting to see Somalis and Kenyans more as drivers now, when just a year ago they tended to be caucasian. This tells me Uber is making a real dent in the taxi driver employee base.
did it cross your mind that they may not bitch about their job to a person who can fire them (you)? If their rating falls below 4, they are essentially canned by uber.
Also, there's plenty of room for regulation even if customers and employees are happy. Uber is a giant negative externality, and we should force them to internalize it.
Yet, if you don't log in during off-peak hours enough, you end up getting pushed down the list, essentially being punished for not working certain hours.
The driver explicitly made himself available in the system, but the choice of hours and choice of location to idle by is still up to the driver. With employee relationship, Uber can mandate the driver be by the football arena at 6 pm.
But if you want to work at hours convenient to you, then you probably won't make much money.
Most people aren't out driving people to the airport at 5am for the fun of it. For people who drive Uber as a primary source of income, sure there's some notional freedom. But in practical terms, there are times that you can productively work at and times that you can't.
So in other words, the flexibility of those hours stays roughly equal. If someone is relying on Uber for their primary source of income, the 30-hour cap might be a definite turn-off.
Now, it's not a given that Uber will institute that, but I think the way the laws are worded in this country every single part-time employer has that policy just to avoid future liabilities.
Except, as has been shown time and again, people who take advantage of that flexibility end up being punished, making the flexibility not really flexible. Uber, for instance, will stop offering you gigs if you turn too many down, or don't drive often enough during peak hours.
The idea that "gigs" mean working when one wants and being off when one doesn't is a fantasy. Bars don't hire bands on weekdays while the kids are in school and they run open-mike on Tuesday nights and karaoke on Wednesdays.
Cavete cooperatorem.
Seriously, if any of the current crop of gig companies becomes too evil (and Uber has definitely proven themselves in that camp on a frequent basis) you are always able to use a competitor, work for one, or found one. Until the regulations happen that will inevitably prevent you from competing (which is basically every established industry today which is why the sharing economy is necessary to survive for so many) there is a critical threshold airbnb / uber / etsy cannot cross where their workers will jump ship at the opportunity cost of losing these companies huge viewships / audiences because the alternative becomes better, period. Yes, it means that the more popular the platform is the more the company can screw over its employees and customers because of mindshare. That happens in every industry, though.
Think about the political clout that the Public School Teachers union carries (with ~2.7m members) (1)
The largest international employer stands as WalMart with 2.2 million employees (2).
Uber just a few days back announced a plan to hire 1,000,000 WOMEN drivers over the next 5 years (3)
Now posturing or not, assuming that somehow Uber pulled that off and they'll be the world's largest employer in less than a decade.
It's amazing that politicians seem so slow on the up-take here and the opportunity to address the people that are caught in the machinery of the sharing economy.
"assuming that somehow Uber pulled that off and they'll be the world's largest employer in less than a decade"
LOL, I thought Uber was trying NOT to be classified as an employer with respect to their drivers.
Even if they hired close to that many women, the announcement seems to be more of a stunt for positive publicity than anything, their drivers lack all of the basic protections and benefits that many public school teachers receive.
In reality, the political clout of the "Public School Teachers" is much less than the total 2.7m members since they're made up of many different unions. As opposed to Walmart, which is a single company that has much more power over their control of the workplace and employees. Right now it seems that Uber has even more clout over their drivers than Walmart has over their employees.
As an aside for the subject of women drivers... last fall, I had a Muslim woman as my Uber driver for a ride. She said that she makes a point of picking up female passengers with less than five-star ratings. She thinks a lot of male Uber drivers will downrate female passengers in unfair ways, and a lot of Uber drivers in general won't give rides to passengers who have had bad ratings.
As a woman who uses Lyft often, I can confirm that I've been treated like shit by a number of drivers in ways that I can't imagine a man would be treated. Stuff like how they would park a block away from me and make me walk the whole way to their cars (invariably, the people who do this are men who come from countries where women's rights are unheard of).
I'm at the point where I'm seriously upset that Lyft doesn't allow women to specifically request a female driver. Hell, I'd be willing to pay extra to guarantee that my driver be a woman.
"It's amazing that politicians seem so slow on the up-take here and the opportunity to address the people that are caught in the machinery of the sharing economy."
Yea, I think this sharing economy caught some of my
politicians off guard. After 2008, they just wanted any job creation. I don't think most of them realized how technology works, or it is just a fad?
I'm a fan of this sharing economy, but I am not a fan of exploiting naive/desperate people. I am for protections on this sharing economy. I was very happy when Uber was called out by their cute claim of Independent Contractors status.
I think most politicians, who care, recall a America where people had good jobs? Those days are probably gone? I think politicians, who care about the poor, and middle class, know the party is over? They see how divided the world has become, and at least here--want to soften the blow? Meaning they want to regulate(minimum wage, working conditions, etc.) companies that exploit desperate/naive workers.
I am glad Wallmart finally raised wages in some localities though.
"We should not be afraid of this discussion. We should embrace it and have it."
That's true, but that's not what happens when a politician, and especially one as highly profiled as Hillary Clinton, delivers a speech. Politicians never raise "hard questions" when then don't have the exact answer already worked out.
This was not Hilary starting a discussion. This was Hilary pledging allegiance to the unions.
Yesterday, I read a few articles that blatantly accused Hillary of being against Uber... yet if what was quoted was actually said... I can't believe people are making such outrageous claims about her. I just lose some respect for some publications that did this.
meanwhile in Canada, our politicians will do everything to make sure Uber doesn't hurt the prestigous monopoly of overpriced and shitty taxi industry or anything.
The Gig Economy happened before. In the 1930s, itinerant workers called "hobos" traveled the country looking for work and food. Despite the negative reputation of the word today, hobos were actually considered to be some of the hardest workers. They had to be; they were barely surviving.
The difference now is that corporate executives, flush with VC money, are able to monetize the emerging desperation economy (oh, I'm sorry-- I forgot about HN's anti-"negativity" policy-- sharing economy) more effectively than ever before.
The transition started with FMC (Former Middle Class) driving for Uber and subletting their apartments for extra cash, but it does seem to be spreading. For the record, I'm not especially against its existence. I would rather see our legislators interested in fighting the meltdown of the middle class itself than being focused on something that is, at worst, one of the symptoms.
Small companies are more reluctant to hire for fear of having to pay employee insurance if they have over 50 employees, under the employer mandate.
Other factors include the inexorable trend towards more efficiency and productivity. These are forces beyond anyone's control.
Then you have huge competition for for even low-level service jobs, leaving many job seekers with no option but to choose 'gig' jobs. But you also have instances of people making more money with gig jobs than they would have in a regular job. Some people also hold gig jobs and regular jobs.
The "major reason" is if you can just ignore various labor laws it's cheaper to operate but for some reason everyone jumps to "well then we should just make what Uber and co. are already doing legal!" instead of considering enforcement.
If that were true only the most desperate would choose uber/airbnb/oDesk etc. I believe that's not true, even though low-value work is cheap, the good/popular ones can sell themselves at the price of their choosing. Isn't that plain free market with the flexibility of working whenever you choose, and a more productive/economic allocation of resources?
Work history is an issue, but i cannot see why it cannot be easily solved with a law that gives these workers the rights to their work history. Will these companies object to that?
Which is why Uber drivers are employees. Uber should just accept that. They're being shut down, country by country and state by state, because of their resistance to labor law. Just since the beginning of this month, Uber has been shut down in France and two cities in Florida.
Uber (and other 1099 companies) don't want to do that, because their businesses are based on moving risk from the company (employing employees that they might not need) to their labor force (you can work whenever, but the amount you get paid is solely dependent on the demand that we may or may not generate for you).
I was very glad that Hillary Clinton took a sophisticated view of the situation and didn't just bash on a fashionable subject. I hope other candidates follow her lead and we have an actual interesting discussion.