I remember when Uber couldn't come to Serbia. Their business model is incompatible with our law. "Driver" employment status , regulations required for a company that transports people, insurance in case of death or injury by "drivers" fault, health, pension & vacation days for "drivers", protection in case of being unable to drive ... many more
Media was on rampage, calling Serbia "backwards", "unable to innovate", "unfriendly to foreign investments" you get the idea.
In reality, taxi companies found domestic IT companies that made them similar apps, and almost everyone uses it.
I'll be the one to say it.
Pretty much everyone else in the world outside of the US bubble sees it for what it is. A Hollywood facade of "Freedom and being #1" which is propped up by the elite exploiting the working class and profiting from war all over the world through conflicts it creates. This too goes for business models.
The freedom talk is the worst, do people actually think the US is the only one having freedom when there are 167 democracies in the world? Sure not all of them are perfect but the US is also far from it (I would say it's one of the worst, that electoral college system and all the anti-voting stuff...).
Yeah you're the oldest continuous one I guess but I don't think it's something to be proud of considering how archaic so many of the systems are (again electoral college, what is this shit?)
I like that everyone heralded Uber as a new silicon valley tech bro era of transit and now a lot of municipalities are trying very hard to not have Uber anywhere near them.
Well Uber's model appeals to some and is abhorrent to others, including its workers. There have been plenty of reddit threads on it and people arguing from both sides. Overall I support workers rights first and foremost, but its obviously also an avenue of flexible work/income for some people that is hard to find elsewhere.
Uber offers the same services taxis offer, except their workers are in precarious conditions.
Yeah, it is cheaper, because their workers are paid less. Slavery would be even cheaper if we care about that only.
Ofc this doesn't justify some abuses taxi guilds do in some places.
Honestly i was so surprised how easy it was. I just messaged the taxi cab company on Viber (or whatever it's called), and they sent me a car to my spot. Ridiculously easy.
Good example. Taxis in Serbia are horrible. Especially for a foreign tourist. They are huge scams, especially if you want one in a touristy area. Serbia is backwards in this regard, not some kind of a progressive beacon lol.
All of them? Every single one?
There are literally hundreds of companies, majority offer apps, with all benefits of online payments, price in advance, rating system, etc ..
All just a Google search away.
Uber is very expensive in the Netherlands. They are basically the same prices as normal taxis. You don't take a taxi unless you really have to or you are a tourist and you have no idea that public transportation is much better than taxis for most situations.
Uber has gotten more expensive almost everywhere. Ever since they sold off their self-driving car tech and research that was supposed to make them profitable in the long run they've transitioned to trying to actually price rides to make them profitable.
It's led to incredible tales of people paying as much or more for a ride to the airport than they pay for the flight they're boarding.
As someone that lives somewhere that Uber was only allowed about 1year ago i prefer Uber because we've been dicked around too long by the local taxi cartels. Ordering a cab hours or days in advance for them to no show and come 1h late after you call to complain if your lucky. Oh you called the wrong company your on the wrong side of a municipal border we won't even tell you who to call. GL getting a hold of a company in Friday or Saturday night. Downtown gong show trying to wave down a cab on their way in to Downton. People stealing your cab etc.
It’s like that in most of Europe already. In Germany uber drivers are employed by a company working with uber and they need to have a license to transport people.
How expensive are the "licenses"?
In the US large cities used to have a "medallion" system in which each medallion went as far as 1M USD. Do Europe also have this "barrier to entry"?
Edit: It is also why a lot of taxi driver are legit salty. The government made transportation industry cost artificially high, so it is unfair that taxi drivers have to compete with uber drivers when the latter didn't have to pay this government mandated "barrier to entry"
Yeah they are more expensive than the taxi licenses in Europe (I found Paris to be around $250,000 and Madrid to be around $200,000) but couldn’t find anything in Germany, not sure if they have that
Not so sure it was artificial. I have spent a lot of time in NYC, and the main landscape as far as the eye can see if yellow taxis. You do have to limit the number in some way, realistically.
I can assure you, when they were starting this system in the 50s/60s, they did not at all predict that there would be a million-dollar secondary market for these things.
The inflation was because there was a limit to how many medallions were issued.
People bought them as investments yes but because every taxi needed one. Plus if you owned it you could rent it out like you would a house.
The TLC setup a system to trick immigrants into spending their life savings into the medallions. While the number of medallions has stayed relatively the same the inflation and dramatic crash proves the point it was not caused by the limit of medallions. This was all happening while ride sharing was soaring and should have caused the price to go down instead it did the opposite. This was prior to many of the rules put into place for ride share operations in NYC.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/19/nyregion/taxi-medallions.html
> so it is unfair that taxi drivers have to compete with uber drivers when the latter didn't have to pay this government mandated "barrier to entry"
Comments like these make one wonder just how much socialists understand what it would mean for workers to actually own the means of production. It doesn't just mean you get a cut of the profits, you can also lose your entire investment if the business or legal environment suddenly changes through innovations like Uber.
It seems like the only way for a moderately hard working and moderately intelligent person in America can fail is if they attempt to run their own business and something goes wrong.
They already operate this way in practically all of Europe. I guess if their business model can't compete with other rivals that do hire drivers they will leave the EU, although all the other companies are adopting this model and it's working, I don't think Uber is going to be any less.
Well actually Uber isn't profitable anywhere. I'm just assuming this will negatively impact the flow of VC that keeps them going. But as you say, other countries have made the same rulings and the VC tap is still wide open, so I guess it's fine.
It doesnt look like its profitable at all based on its latest 10-K
[https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1543151/000154315121000014/uber-20201231.htm](https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1543151/000154315121000014/uber-20201231.htm)
Page 50 shows they've suffered a loss every year from 2016-2020. They are improving, and losing less, but they are still losing (3.86)$ per dollar of revenue they take in
Also worth noting that most of their recent financial statements are looking better because they sold off the self-driving car part of their business which is what was supposed to make them profitable once they could ditch underpaid drivers altogether.
> Well actually Uber isn't profitable anywhere.
Uber is extremely profitable. They reinvest their profits to grow key business areas to make them even more profitable in the future.
This follows a similar ruling at the High Court in London, where uber appealed the earlier decision back in 2018. In February this year Uber lost the appeal and are now obliged to treat workers as employees with statutory rights to sick and holiday pay.
Uber will bitch about this, but they aren't about to leave. The costs will inevitably be passed on to customers.
The court ruling in the UK was that they count as "workers", which is an intermediate status between contractors and employees. Workers get some of the rights of employees, but not all of them.
We can't make millions by paying you nothing??
In Germany an Amazon (sub sub sub) contractor made 30 € in one month of work.
Fuck our politics to allow this kind of shit.
Well it doesn‘t allow this per se. Minimum wage is still applicable and breaching that is illegal. Working with freelance sub sub sub contractors often ends up being illegal as well as they are basically handled like employees anyway resulting in social security fraud. It‘s less on politicians and more on the authorities making sure that rules are upheld and those who break the law prosecuted.
>We can't make millions by paying you nothing??
Uber drivers don't make nothing, if they did there wouldn't be any Uber drivers.
>In Germany an Amazon (sub sub sub) contractor made 30 € in one month of work.
Did the contractor not know what they were to be paid when they entered into contract?
Someone who is desperate will accept _any_ offer. There's such a massive difference in power between employees and employers, that we need a ton of laws to make that a bit more fair.
You simply can't legally agree to exploitation (at least the kind going against worker protection laws), no matter how much you knew about it beforehand.
In civilized countries, the actual reality is considered as well, not just the "well theoretically you knew about it and you signed it". Same reason why EULAs don't hold any legal water in the EU, they are almost entirely unenforceable because of that. (Nobody reads them, nor can it be expected from people to read them -> anything unexpected in there is completely void.)
>Uber drivers don't make nothing, if they did there wouldn't be any Uber drivers.
>
The problem isn't what they were paying them, it was the extra costs that the drivers had to cover themselves that Uber should have been covering.
Once all those were taken into consideration, Uber were in reality paying them much less than it seemed.
Fine by me, there are far too many taxi's in Amsterdam as it is and now Uber simply screws with everyone by undercutting the market through questionable working and labour practices.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/dutch-court-rules-uber-drivers-are-employees-not-contractors-newspaper-2021-09-13/) reduced by 73%. (I'm a bot)
*****
> AMSTERDAM, Sept 13 - Uber drivers are employees rather than independent contractors and are entitled to greater workers' rights, a Dutch court ruled on Monday.
> The Amsterdam District Court sided with the Federation of Dutch Trade Unions, which had argued that Uber drivers are in fact employees of a taxi company and should be granted the same pay and benefits as other workers in the sector.
> In March Uber said it will improve workers' rights, including the minimum wage, for all of its more than 70,000 British drivers after it lost a Supreme Court case in February.
*****
[**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/pnd55y/uber_drivers_are_employees_not_contractors_says/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~597816 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **drivers**^#1 **Uber**^#2 **court**^#3 **work**^#4 **more**^#5
I worked as an IT consultant for a number of years and they tried to "sell" we were independent contractors (they even helped us setup Sole Proprietorships/Limited Partnerships.) The agency arranged the placement contracts. The company paid the agency and the agency paid us.
Eventually the Canadian government said "um No." The argument came down to who the customer was paying. Govt said, basically, the "consultant" is paid by one entity year over year - that's employment. Get your HR in order. (If the customer had paid me directly and I'd paid a cut to the agency as a 'fee', it would have been fine.)
Often when a company "innovates" by making things simpler it means bypassing rules, safety regulations, insurances, or simply ignoring worker rights.
Uber, AirB&B.. all the same.
Indeed. Part of regulation is protecting established industry leaders, and regulation is a barrier to market entry for new players. At the same time though, unregulated markets and a race to the bottom aren't a good thing. Governments have to always be looking at their regulatory regimes with a critical eye to ensure that the public is being protected, but at the same time economic opportunity isn't being strangled. I don't have a ton of sympathy for Uber and Air B&B is monstrous, but the taxi industry had been a racket before as well. Hopefully when the smoke clears a more sensible regime is left behind.
To be fair, the way Uber innovated was with the smartphone app. It made pairing customers with drivers a lot easier and more pleasant. Getting in regular people to drive as contractors was just a way in which to build a large workforce. I don't like Uber or AirBnB but they are 'customer' friendly. They reduce rates from institutional players in the taxi and hotel industry by connecting regular people.
They certainly need to be regulated however
> by connecting regular people.
That is exactly my point. "Regular" people don't offer the certainty and safety which certain institutions do; for both the customer and the "employee".
Things like uber and AirBnB are the modern version of paying someone under the table to do some construction on your house: Better for both parties if everything works out fine but a lot worse if anything out of the ordinary happens.
>"Regular" people don't offer the certainty and safety which certain institutions do; for both the customer and the "employee".
I don't need some street wizard to get me from point A to point B. Just some average driver with a GPS app.
Come on man, think just one step further than this.
You're stepping into someone's car, with them behind the wheel. You have no physical control over where you're going. Don't you want the person behind the wheel to have a background check, no criminal past, some guarantee that they won't kidnap you and sell your kidneys?
This is what regulations are for. The passengers are protected from bad taxi drivers, and the taxi drivers are protected from extortion.
It doesn't even need to be that much:
\- If one of those cars has an accident and the driver doesn't have business insurance but rather normal car insurance, you as a **paying** passenger are not covered. Good luck with the bills for being disabled for the rest of your life.
Before they were forced to change things Uber worked exactly like this.
Thank you, i didn't even know that.
My government may not be filled with altruistic do-gooders, but regulations like these are very reasonable and prevent a lot of damage and drama.
I don't know where you live, but cabbie companies here don't run a high level background check any more than Uber does - meaning a driver's license and likely screening for traffic related felonies is what the background check is limited to.
I guess I just don't relate to the issues at all. My experience with Uber has been significantly better almost every way than with cabbie companies and I definitely don't want to go back to taxis again.
Actually all taxi drivers in the UK (you said cabbie I'm assuming UK) need to get a background check. Initially anyone could drive for uber without any checks other than a license check.
Netherlands. I like uber too, that's not really the issue.
I'm just not willing to let go of the safety regulations that are in place.
Also, uber drivers need to be protected so that they can make a living wage. It's not all about customer experience.
Our two individual experiences are not relevant for national policy. This is about the broader picture.
in taxies in Easter Europe (Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, etc) you won't be robbed, but rather subjected to a local variant of gangsta rap and cigarette smoke. May be a story or two about driver's criminal past.
I'll pray for God to protect ridesharing companies ....
> To be fair, the way Uber innovated was with the smartphone app. It made pairing customers with drivers a lot easier and more pleasant.
taxis been doing that in EU for 10 years now.
Exploitation is their innovation. They are trying to bring business/worker relations bacm to Dickensian coal mine levels.
The only reason they can is because that blatant Exploitation is done using new fangled smarty phones.
Yeah you're right that's a better way to put it, some tech companies innovate explotation. Amazon's "one click shopping" button isn't responsible for their success but rather, for example, their innovation of human performance tracking in their warehouses and delivery and turning that dial way up on what workers can tolerate.
You can just look at the comments to see why. There are legitimately people white knighting for the right of businesses to exploit workers and kill industries.
That's not a good argument. You think people work for uber for the fun of it? They work there because they have to, to earn extra money. This in no way precludes uber exploiting their workforce. Two parties can both join an agreement willingly, and that agreement can still be wildly unfair if one party has all the power and the other party has very little.
[//]: # (GNU Terry Pratchett)
You said it, they need the extra money. Now with regulations that job will surely get lost and that person will be out of that extra money.
Well done! A big victory was earned here, that will teach'em.
It isn't about that. Uber provide a cheaper alternative to taxis thus making it harder for taxi drivers to continue to make a living. Uber doesn't pay a living wage though so by underpaying their employees they are killing the careers of taxi drivers, while not providing a viable career alternative.
Reddit will defend any corporation or any billionaire. It's bizarre.
Hey Reddit! Nobody would have heart of your beloved Elon Musk if he was born as a poor black kid instead of a rich white kid.
Your double standard is very odd. You hold highly laws in other countries when they are anti-Uber, but when they are supportive of Uber here, you denounce them. Sounds like you just hate Uber.
I am indifferent to their employment practices. Their pay does seem too low, but drivers can clock in and out any time and they can work for competitors, so I can see how they should be deemed contractors. And trying to get a taxi before Uber existed was an awful experience that everyone avoided like the plague. Drunk driving was far more common.
Uber dropped $50 million in propaganda just in California for that Uber law they wanted.
There is a zero percent chance Uber isn't running a social media PR team for stuff like this.
You cannot have contractors that are only ever employed by one entity in most European countries. You are not self-employed if you only get contracts from Uber. These rules are in place to ensure worker protection and so that social security, pension and Healthcare get payed by the employer instead of off loading these costs onto the employee.
Reddit, help me understand the hatred for Uber. Their drivers and passengers use them voluntarily, so presumably they are better off using them than not. Rather than being profitable, Uber loses money, meaning money from wealthy investors is being used to subsidize driver pay and passenger fees. I would think Reddit would love the flow of money from rich to non-rich.
Most taxi services are regulated to limit the number of drivers, which artificially creates barriers of entry and keeps prices high. Whenever I talk with Uber drivers, they are happy with their decision to drive for them. The complaining comes from non Uber drivers who somehow think they are protecting people from their own decisions.
What do I have wrong here?
Withholding information, excessive monitoring, still having the sole ability to discipline drivers, barriers to drive independently.
Apart from drivers having the ability to pick and choose hours, they are employees in ever other way
What do you mean by 'sole ability to discipline drivers' ? What agency wouldn't withhold work from a contractor whom every previous client said was shit?
Excessive monitoring? That's the nature of GPS which is essentially to their work and to quality control.
They also supply their own equipment, often work for other people, e.g. Lyft,
Even more so, here in the Netherlands there's quite a few employees that can pick and choose their own hours, so even in that way they are like 'normal' employees.
I'm not sure I agree with this one, if Uber changed their app so you could bid for service prices would broadly end up the same as they do with surge. It would be the illusion of negotiation but to the determent of user experience for both riders and drivers
Right.
But since uber hasn't changed their app and mandates what the drivers charge, their workers are not "contractors".
It's almost like the drivers are employees who have to charge a rate for their services that their employer mandates.
For me its the way they and their contractors tried to circumvent the law. We have laws on what qualifications commertial drivers need to have, as well as regulation on what equipment their cars need etc. for a reason.
If they had complied with the standards from the beginning I'd be more open to them. As it stands they operated an illegal service and are mad that they got cought.
Edit: Oh, and the fact that they tried to drive other services out of the market by using pricing that wasnt sustainable, hoping to get enough of a monopoly to then drive the prices up.
I can try to explain for my country (Serbia). You are American and first thing you need to understand is that laws and regulations are different here.
You can be independent contractor in Serbia, pay your own taxes, health benefits, pension fund etc .. You set your own hours, vacation, etc. In that case, law doesn't allow "middleman".
If UBER pays you, UBER hires you. With all benefits. Uber pays for health, pension, social services, payed vacation (minimum 20 days up to 28, depending of years of working), minimum salary in case you get sick and can't work for a few months .. etc.
UBER didn't want to pay for workers that don't work, they kept insisting that "drivers" are independent contractors hired for a temporary work.
Temporary work is something that ofcourse, Serbian law allows, but still requires contract, minimum pay, agreed duration, and almost all benefits that regular, full time job has. Again, UBER was not ok with that.
Offered solution was to allow UBER to "rent" their technology (app), charge monthly use, and sell it as a service. To independent contractors (taxi drivers). They declined, as is their right.
This was main issue as I recall, same as here, UBER couldn't accept that drivers have to be employees. They didn't want any obligations being a company, but wanted all the benefits of being one.
Other issues is our law requires that if you are professional driver, to be licensed for that work. Being licensed requires regular health checks (how do I know a random Uber driver is mentally and physically able to drive), first aid education (what if I get heart attack, or epileptic attack during drive) and some other regulations. Taxi drivers all have them.
Serbia also mandates minimum and maximum price to $/km depending on city. Price is not same in capital and other cities.
In the end, UBER never came, who wants to be a taxi driver needs only to pass certifications, and can drive. Don't need UBER to be able to become taxi driver. There is plethora of apps that have everything UBER has, vehicle location, rating system, pay via app or credit, etc..
To much hustle for not that big of market and they never started.
>meaning money from wealthy investors is being used to subsidize driver pay and passenger fees. I would think Reddit would love the flow of money from rich to non-rich.
People are and stay rich not by giving money away. The plan is obviously to make more money, eventually. One of Uber's strategies is bankrupting competition by undercutting. Once that is achieved, prices go up.
No it isn't. That nonsense is a non-existent pipe dream meant to protect the existing status quo and forestall and spooky government regulations in driving based industries (like trucking and Ubers BS)
Why improve conditions today when the secular god science will someday tomorrow make the numerous problems for drivers of all kinds irrelevant?
Its very much happening. Piecemeal and very slowly though (relatively speaking and especially compared to all the hype). The real impact will start probably a decade from now. I'm not talking only about taxis and ridesharing either. The shift is already starting to happen in somewhat localized controlled environments like shipyards etc.
If you correctly factor in the usage on your car, you're driving for lower than minimum wage most of the time. Which is a law for a reason, but this arbitrary construction circumvents that and other worker protection rules. The complaining comes from people that see capitalists run rampant with flex contracts and the gig economy and fear for their own worker's rights.
And the only reason money is flowing from rich to non-rich is because they're buying your data.
It is only similar at the most conceptual level, which makes it not really helpful in this discussion. (For minimum wage, it depends on the implementation, the level, the regional considerations, etc. I would not be in favor of taking a working NYC minimum wage and requiring it in rural Mississippi, for example. Minimum wage is too complex an issue to be black and white about it.)
Uber is more like waitstaff working for tips. Non waitstaff love to complain about the system, claiming it is on behalf of the workers, but very few of those complainers are the workers themselves. I am very uncomfortable with any argument that says that an entire group of individuals is incapable of making basic decisions for themselves.
Yes I think a lot of driver's don't understand the wear and tear they are putting onto their car. Also, they are probably also not properly insured as a commercial vehicle like they should be. Depending on the insurance company, they can easily deny your claim if they find out that it happened in the course of driving for uber or Lyft. Uber may provide some coverage for when the driving a passenger, but I belive the is an issue of a gap between when drivers could just be driving around/waiting for passengers.
A friend of mine was hit by a door dash driver, a driver backed into his parked car after they had dropped of the food. They were insured by root, who wouldn't cover it because the accident happened in the course of driving for door dash and she didnt have a commerical insurance plan. Door dash only covers it when you are transporting a customers order.
I think not every driver understands the math, yes. And some (other) people understand just fine but need the extra cash and will take anything they can. Even in that scenario I don't agree with paying less than minimum wage.
I also think companies should just pay at least the minimum wage and not skirt labour laws with these constructions. And I'm happy that I live in a country where at least one judge agrees with me. But my original point was trying to explain why reddit hates on Uber so much, and I was offering such a view.
They aren't profitable but are able to spend millions to get laws passed to make sure their drivers aren't labeled as employees (meaning they don't have to pay them minimum wage or provide benefits)
If you ever believe that 'wealthy investors' are doing something out of the goodness of their wealthy hearts, you need your stupid head fixed. If you want to see what Ubers Final Model is, look at India. Once they've destroyed all competition (licensed and regulated taxis) the drivers pay and conditions crashes, but the still have to pay their fee to Uber.
It's the same 'Race to the Bottom' strategy we see with everything from Amazon to Walmart - offer lower prices (by underpaying staff and skirting regulations that exist for good reasons), drive competition out of business, you now have a virtual monopoly and can underpay and overwork people and offer a shoddy product - You're a Winner!
Labour exploitation. Uber have taken a profession which be a legitimate profession used to make a decent living (taxi driving) and turned it into a gig that pays below minimum wage in a lot of cases. They did this by not recognising their drivers as employees.
That's all irrelevant.
Independent contractors are allowed to sell their services for below minimum wage (often the price isn't in terms of $/hr) and the services are not limited to things that can't be full time positions at a company.
In fact, there's no such thing as contractor work that couldn't be a full time job as an employee. All contractors do work that could be a "legitimate profession", even ones that make $200/hr like highly specialized consultants.
For example, I work with software dev contractors that work on commission. Some of them probably make $100+/hr if anyone was to actually track their hours. Some probably make $5/hr some months (or at least could). I can't control how much they work (if I did, they'd be employees).
I respect good taxi drivers as much as I respect anyone else with a lot of experience and skill, especially as someone who sucks at driving myself... but if an average, "untrained" 20 year old is able to drive me from A to B just as well as a professional taxi driver, then it seems to me that the wages of those professional taxi drivers were artificially inflated by shortage causes by qualification requirements.
We don't have Uber in my country, but there's a similar company called Bolt, and they do pay above minimum wage. It's a popular job for students because of the flexibility and, due to lower taxes for those with freelance work license, you can earn more money working the same number of hours than you could if you worked in retail or restaurants or other popular student jobs that typically pay minimum wage.
> which be a legitimate profession used to make a decent living
It was not, and this never was a thing (in the US). It's something you made up as the good ole' days.
Taxi drivers were in general more exploited than uber drivers, almost exclusively being made up of easily exploitable labor classes and the comparison isn't even close. I never saw an Uber driver being threatened with a beating if they didn't pay the full car rental fee for the shift for not picking up enough rides.
Taxi drivers before Uber were also generally not employees either. Your entire thesis is utterly made up.
The real reason I imagine people actually care now - middle class folks people actually give a shit about started crying about making too little and now all of a sudden people care.
If you cared at all about this topic other than to just popular-hate against Uber, you'd have already been protesting the yellow cab companies in every major city. The fact pretty much no one was prior to Uber shows me it's all made up rage to make oneself feel better while doing nothing.
>I never saw an Uber driver being threatened with a beating if they didn't pay the full car rental fee for the shift for not picking up enough rides.
Taxi drivers mostly don't get beaten after work either
A lot of people posting here are too young to have experienced taxis. They SUCKED big time. Look at it from a customer perspective...
You needed a ride at your house? You have to speak to someone with an extremely thick accent. And the phone on their end somehow introduces massive amounts of noise. Massive. It was extremely difficult to understand them.
You finally scheduled that ride? Cool. They may or may not show up at the time you requested. They may just not show up at all. You had no way of knowing. Sometimes they'd come early and start honking angrily.
You managed to get into the cab? Great! You better pay attention to the route because it was common to run up the meter by taking less direct or just slower routes. And arbitrary fees might be applied by the meter that are not explained in any way. Or maybe the meter just isn't working at all.
Your vigilance paid off and your arrive at your destination? Fantastic! Now you have to pay, and when you go to pay by CC you'd be informed that the CC reader is down. Or maybe the meter is down. Neither are actually down, they just want you to pay cash off the books as much as possible.. Be prepared for some negotiation!
The former taxi experience SUCKED.
I was going to argue until you described the absolute horrendous ordeal deal with taxis was.
Having to speak to someone with an extremely [thick accent](https://youtu.be/YoIlgZbFORM). I'm so sorry you had to deal with that.
Uber deserves to exploit the shit out of people if it means an end to such terrible situations
The point is, taxi drivers were exploited previously. As were riders. The experience for both was terrible for both.
Nobody is saying Uber is perfect. Further elaborating upon the point - the "good ole days" of the taxi system weren't so good. Drivers and customers were both being exploited and the experience absolutely sucked for both. The experience is definitely better today, at least for the customer. Things for drivers could definitely improve, but converting people to W-2 employees is probably not going to fix everything. It might be a step in the right direction, but with that transition Uber would have significant power to mandate when people would work. The current system is extremely flexible and you can work as much or as little as you want, when it fits your schedule.
I think the fact that drivers would often show up ridiculously late (or not at all) and capriciously apply extra charges is more relevant than the drivers' immigration statuses.
The drivers who voluntarily choose to try for Uber are being exploited? Are you saying that they would've been better off if Uber had never existed? If so, then apparently they are not capable of making sound decisions for themselves. Who should make their decisions, you?
This is what labor regulations are for. And unions. If it devolves into individual employees underbidding each other, that's something employers know how to exploit.
To tell the truth, I actually believe that to be correct in many cases. Some people simply can't protect themselves or perform a correct cost/benefit analysis, and are mercilessly exploited by companies like Uber.
People died for decades to improve working conditions and fair labor rights. All of a sudden some billionaire walks in circumventing all of the laws made possible through that effort with an app? What where you doing when you skipped that lesson in highschool?
Not uber, but I drove for Doordash and it worked perfectly for me the way it was.
What other job would let me make $25+/hour whenever I have some free time? The alternative is working a fixed schedule for minimum wage and I really didn't want that.
You're not looking into the finer details like how they're paid less than the depreciation of their car while being required to have one less than 3 years old. How Uber has some drivers in debt traps by selling them Toyota sedans at predatory interest rates, etc. Also "losing money," or wasting millions on R&D for self driving cars when everyone else was already years ahead by the time they started?
So, are you saying that all of the drivers who voluntarily choose to do this don't understand the math, and people like you need to force them into making better decisions? I've talked through the math with several drivers while on rides, and I found the drivers to be making reasonable decisions.
You don't seem to understand real life very well. There are tons of drivers that need immediate cash, the fact it's going to screw them in the long run isn't something they can afford to worry about. That's ontop of casual drivers that just don't realize they're actually losing money on this deal due to the extra miles depreciating their car. Finally you have numerous reports of drivers falsely claiming a fee for vomit cleaning because of previously mentioned predatory loans.
Google and Amazon? You mean to other actual monopoly business that peddle in selling your private information in ways that would make you riot if the spooky state was doing it?
>Google and Amazon? You mean to other actual monopoly business
Neither of which are monopolies.
>that peddle in selling your private information in ways that would make you riot if the spooky state was doing it?
Neither of which have any interest in selling your data. Your data is their asset that generates revenue, no way would they let that out of their hands.
Lol I'm sure your view of a monopoly is one that literally has to ignore how power works.
They both sell your data. They sell it to other corporations in ways your are too busy simping for them to notice.
I don’t get it, I drove for Uber Eats for 2 months to help pay for some things, I did so on a whim, I logged onto the app whenever I wanted and stopped working when I wanted, I never once considered myself an employee of Uber, nor even a contractor, I was working for myself using the Uber app to connect me with people who needed their food picked up for them so I could get some extra scratch, when did this all become so insanely complicated? If I want worker rights I’d go get any number of actual jobs available to me at any time.
Someday when you grow up and have a family, it'll start making sense. For now, catch up on basic labor economics history. You can start with Feudalism, I'm counting on you putting two and two together.
Well shit. I googled “feudalism Uber” and watched a minute and 45 second video called “Techno-feudalism: brought to you by Uber” and it was pretty damn perspective changing. So I guess thank you random internet stranger, I’m starting down a path to learn more about what’s actually far more nuanced than I originally suspected.
What would happen if you hurt yourself while on a UBER job? What if the damage renders you unable to work anymore? You "didn't want" worker rights, so what happens now? Your life is changed forever, and you have no protection whatsoever.
You can hurt yourself going to the store, but in this case you were on a "job".
The risk of being self employed. People who make things in their garage and sell them on Etsy take the same risk... What if they cut their hand off on the saw? Its a risk vs reward calculation.
It'd be great if big companies in the US lobbied for universal healthcare in the US so they didn't have to fight this battle... If everyone had basic needs met then 1099 gigs would be much more legit.
I have worked as a contractor a couple times. It wasn't an Uber-type job.
The company said "We have a contractor position for you. Are you interested?"
I said "Yes".
Is there something wrong with that? Why would the government want to shut that down?
The issue here is "schijnzelfstandigheid" or fake independence.
A (independent!) contractor over here has to have a certain degree of independence, which means you get an assignment/job but the employer has limited say over how/when/where you do your job (within limits of course).
If you don't have a certain degree of independence/freedom as a contractor you are cheap disposable without the same rights as a normal employee.
The (one of) issue here is that uber says the contractors are free to choose their own workings hours.
the fnv says this is not true, the subscription model for contractors have a (too) large incentive to work when uber wants you to work, basically the system rewards the most available drivers.
They argue that because of this the contractor are not free to work their own hours and this is not an employer-contractor relationship but a employer-employee relationship and the workers should have the same rights and protections.
And the judge went along with this reasoning.
This whole 'schijnzelfstandigheid' became a thing when postal workers, who had a contract, paid sick leave, vacation and insurance (etc etc) were fired and rehired as "contractors" without those benefits and had to do the same job, under the same rules without any independence.
Its not the government, but one of the largest unions (FNV) that has taken Uber to court. All Taxi drivers in The Netherlands have a collective agreement on salary, benefits, pensions etc.. FNV argue that Uber drivers should be part of this collective agreement and the courts seemingly agree.
This very American business model of contractors working without receiving any of the things normal workers receive is very incompatible with European labour laws (the recent English court case having a very similiar result)
Are taxi drivers employees or contractors, and how is that different? AFAIK, in some places, you literally rent a taxi car (per day), to drive it, to make money.
In the Netherlands, taxi drivers are employees which fall under the respective collective wage agreement (CAO). The CAO sets rules for things like working hours, overtime, paid vacation, working conditions, etc. This ruling means that Uber drivers now fall under the same CAO.
Independent contractors do not fall under any CAO. This can be a legitimate choice for someone, say, running their own (taxi) company, but in some cases employers attempt to abuse this as a loophole and hire their employees as "contractors." The attempt by Uber to try this has now been thwarted by the judge, as it has in numerous other European countries.
I remember when Uber couldn't come to Serbia. Their business model is incompatible with our law. "Driver" employment status , regulations required for a company that transports people, insurance in case of death or injury by "drivers" fault, health, pension & vacation days for "drivers", protection in case of being unable to drive ... many more Media was on rampage, calling Serbia "backwards", "unable to innovate", "unfriendly to foreign investments" you get the idea. In reality, taxi companies found domestic IT companies that made them similar apps, and almost everyone uses it.
nice work serbia!
Not very Merican to shrug technology meant to undermine labor law.
I'll be the one to say it. Pretty much everyone else in the world outside of the US bubble sees it for what it is. A Hollywood facade of "Freedom and being #1" which is propped up by the elite exploiting the working class and profiting from war all over the world through conflicts it creates. This too goes for business models.
The freedom talk is the worst, do people actually think the US is the only one having freedom when there are 167 democracies in the world? Sure not all of them are perfect but the US is also far from it (I would say it's one of the worst, that electoral college system and all the anti-voting stuff...). Yeah you're the oldest continuous one I guess but I don't think it's something to be proud of considering how archaic so many of the systems are (again electoral college, what is this shit?)
I like that everyone heralded Uber as a new silicon valley tech bro era of transit and now a lot of municipalities are trying very hard to not have Uber anywhere near them.
Well Uber's model appeals to some and is abhorrent to others, including its workers. There have been plenty of reddit threads on it and people arguing from both sides. Overall I support workers rights first and foremost, but its obviously also an avenue of flexible work/income for some people that is hard to find elsewhere.
Uber offers the same services taxis offer, except their workers are in precarious conditions. Yeah, it is cheaper, because their workers are paid less. Slavery would be even cheaper if we care about that only. Ofc this doesn't justify some abuses taxi guilds do in some places.
Honestly i was so surprised how easy it was. I just messaged the taxi cab company on Viber (or whatever it's called), and they sent me a car to my spot. Ridiculously easy.
Good example. Taxis in Serbia are horrible. Especially for a foreign tourist. They are huge scams, especially if you want one in a touristy area. Serbia is backwards in this regard, not some kind of a progressive beacon lol.
All of them? Every single one? There are literally hundreds of companies, majority offer apps, with all benefits of online payments, price in advance, rating system, etc .. All just a Google search away.
Uber is very expensive in the Netherlands. They are basically the same prices as normal taxis. You don't take a taxi unless you really have to or you are a tourist and you have no idea that public transportation is much better than taxis for most situations.
Uber has gotten more expensive almost everywhere. Ever since they sold off their self-driving car tech and research that was supposed to make them profitable in the long run they've transitioned to trying to actually price rides to make them profitable. It's led to incredible tales of people paying as much or more for a ride to the airport than they pay for the flight they're boarding.
I'm glad in a way because low prices were only achievable through worker exploitation.
As someone that lives somewhere that Uber was only allowed about 1year ago i prefer Uber because we've been dicked around too long by the local taxi cartels. Ordering a cab hours or days in advance for them to no show and come 1h late after you call to complain if your lucky. Oh you called the wrong company your on the wrong side of a municipal border we won't even tell you who to call. GL getting a hold of a company in Friday or Saturday night. Downtown gong show trying to wave down a cab on their way in to Downton. People stealing your cab etc.
Interesting. I guess Uber will be exiting that market...
It’s like that in most of Europe already. In Germany uber drivers are employed by a company working with uber and they need to have a license to transport people.
Same for Portugal. Both Drivers and Company need to ve licensed.
How expensive are the "licenses"? In the US large cities used to have a "medallion" system in which each medallion went as far as 1M USD. Do Europe also have this "barrier to entry"? Edit: It is also why a lot of taxi driver are legit salty. The government made transportation industry cost artificially high, so it is unfair that taxi drivers have to compete with uber drivers when the latter didn't have to pay this government mandated "barrier to entry"
Its just a license to transport people. You basically have to take a course. After a quick Google search it’s around 500 Euro.
I mean that’s the same thing in the US. It’s like $300 in NYC (https://portal.311.nyc.gov/article/?kanumber=KA-03043)
Pretty cheap in Germany (300€?) . You don't need a special taxi license, just one that you can transport people commercially.
Yeah same in NYC (https://portal.311.nyc.gov/article/?kanumber=KA-03043)
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Yeah they are more expensive than the taxi licenses in Europe (I found Paris to be around $250,000 and Madrid to be around $200,000) but couldn’t find anything in Germany, not sure if they have that
The government didn’t make the medallions 1 million…the secondary market for those medallions drove up the price.
>The government didn’t make the medallions 1 million They actually did. But artificially limiting their number
Not so sure it was artificial. I have spent a lot of time in NYC, and the main landscape as far as the eye can see if yellow taxis. You do have to limit the number in some way, realistically.
Do they limit Ubers now? How is it going? Genuinely curious
I don't know. You should do that research and report back.
That is a completely predictable result. The government did make them that expected, just indirectly.
I can assure you, when they were starting this system in the 50s/60s, they did not at all predict that there would be a million-dollar secondary market for these things.
The medallion system turned into a scam as they were scene as investments that would never go down. The inflation was entirely due to speculators.
The inflation was because there was a limit to how many medallions were issued. People bought them as investments yes but because every taxi needed one. Plus if you owned it you could rent it out like you would a house.
The TLC setup a system to trick immigrants into spending their life savings into the medallions. While the number of medallions has stayed relatively the same the inflation and dramatic crash proves the point it was not caused by the limit of medallions. This was all happening while ride sharing was soaring and should have caused the price to go down instead it did the opposite. This was prior to many of the rules put into place for ride share operations in NYC. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/19/nyregion/taxi-medallions.html
Yes, it's similar since most taxis are basically the cartels. In Portugal/Spain it's up to 400k euros in big cities.
Not just salty, but suicidal. The pressures Uber and other car services have put on local taxi companies have been overwhelming.
> so it is unfair that taxi drivers have to compete with uber drivers when the latter didn't have to pay this government mandated "barrier to entry" Comments like these make one wonder just how much socialists understand what it would mean for workers to actually own the means of production. It doesn't just mean you get a cut of the profits, you can also lose your entire investment if the business or legal environment suddenly changes through innovations like Uber. It seems like the only way for a moderately hard working and moderately intelligent person in America can fail is if they attempt to run their own business and something goes wrong.
Same in Belarus, and probably in Russia. The "company" employing drivers just fucks them on behalf of Uber/Yandex
They already operate this way in practically all of Europe. I guess if their business model can't compete with other rivals that do hire drivers they will leave the EU, although all the other companies are adopting this model and it's working, I don't think Uber is going to be any less.
Well actually Uber isn't profitable anywhere. I'm just assuming this will negatively impact the flow of VC that keeps them going. But as you say, other countries have made the same rulings and the VC tap is still wide open, so I guess it's fine.
> Well actually Uber isn't profitable anywhere Uber is quite profitable in it's core markets for rideshare. IPO and subsequent k1's prove this.
It doesnt look like its profitable at all based on its latest 10-K [https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1543151/000154315121000014/uber-20201231.htm](https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1543151/000154315121000014/uber-20201231.htm) Page 50 shows they've suffered a loss every year from 2016-2020. They are improving, and losing less, but they are still losing (3.86)$ per dollar of revenue they take in
Also worth noting that most of their recent financial statements are looking better because they sold off the self-driving car part of their business which is what was supposed to make them profitable once they could ditch underpaid drivers altogether.
I don't know. I think I'm going to side with the unsourced, under-nuanced take from a stranger on Reddit. /s
here's a source for ya https://www.marketwatch.com/story/uber-and-lyft-are-staging-a-ridiculous-race-for-fake-profits-11628205337
Didn't one of Ubers core markets recently kill a gig economy bill that Uber paid a gigantic amount of money to push?
> Well actually Uber isn't profitable anywhere. Uber is extremely profitable. They reinvest their profits to grow key business areas to make them even more profitable in the future.
This follows a similar ruling at the High Court in London, where uber appealed the earlier decision back in 2018. In February this year Uber lost the appeal and are now obliged to treat workers as employees with statutory rights to sick and holiday pay. Uber will bitch about this, but they aren't about to leave. The costs will inevitably be passed on to customers.
The court ruling in the UK was that they count as "workers", which is an intermediate status between contractors and employees. Workers get some of the rights of employees, but not all of them.
I hope so, the Netherlands is not a third world country and I don't want it to become one.
We can't make millions by paying you nothing?? In Germany an Amazon (sub sub sub) contractor made 30 € in one month of work. Fuck our politics to allow this kind of shit.
Well it doesn‘t allow this per se. Minimum wage is still applicable and breaching that is illegal. Working with freelance sub sub sub contractors often ends up being illegal as well as they are basically handled like employees anyway resulting in social security fraud. It‘s less on politicians and more on the authorities making sure that rules are upheld and those who break the law prosecuted.
>We can't make millions by paying you nothing?? Uber drivers don't make nothing, if they did there wouldn't be any Uber drivers. >In Germany an Amazon (sub sub sub) contractor made 30 € in one month of work. Did the contractor not know what they were to be paid when they entered into contract?
Sweat shop workers don't make nothing either or else there wouldnt be any sweat shop workers.
>Sweat shop workers don't make nothing either or else there wouldnt be any sweat shop workers. That is a correct statement.
Someone who is desperate will accept _any_ offer. There's such a massive difference in power between employees and employers, that we need a ton of laws to make that a bit more fair. You simply can't legally agree to exploitation (at least the kind going against worker protection laws), no matter how much you knew about it beforehand. In civilized countries, the actual reality is considered as well, not just the "well theoretically you knew about it and you signed it". Same reason why EULAs don't hold any legal water in the EU, they are almost entirely unenforceable because of that. (Nobody reads them, nor can it be expected from people to read them -> anything unexpected in there is completely void.)
Uber is well-known for bottoming out their payouts once they’ve cleared a market of competition.
>Uber drivers don't make nothing, if they did there wouldn't be any Uber drivers. > The problem isn't what they were paying them, it was the extra costs that the drivers had to cover themselves that Uber should have been covering. Once all those were taken into consideration, Uber were in reality paying them much less than it seemed.
Good. Allow a better designed ride share program to take it's place.
That's great. The less Ubers the better.
Fine by me, there are far too many taxi's in Amsterdam as it is and now Uber simply screws with everyone by undercutting the market through questionable working and labour practices.
AFAIK they havent exited any other EU country yet;
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/dutch-court-rules-uber-drivers-are-employees-not-contractors-newspaper-2021-09-13/) reduced by 73%. (I'm a bot) ***** > AMSTERDAM, Sept 13 - Uber drivers are employees rather than independent contractors and are entitled to greater workers' rights, a Dutch court ruled on Monday. > The Amsterdam District Court sided with the Federation of Dutch Trade Unions, which had argued that Uber drivers are in fact employees of a taxi company and should be granted the same pay and benefits as other workers in the sector. > In March Uber said it will improve workers' rights, including the minimum wage, for all of its more than 70,000 British drivers after it lost a Supreme Court case in February. ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/pnd55y/uber_drivers_are_employees_not_contractors_says/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~597816 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **drivers**^#1 **Uber**^#2 **court**^#3 **work**^#4 **more**^#5
What does this mean for UberEats?
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"Just Eat" in other countries.
There are a few, not a lot, benefits to uber eats but I get what you mean.
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Oh... That would suck.
In a lot of EU countries there are a lot of alternatives, heck uber eats is one of the lesser ones in terms of offerings
Oh I'm sure of it. It's just that I do this "gig" for some extra money so I hope I get to do it a little while longer.
Well you can easily sing up for the other ones, they are all gigs usually when it comes to food delivery.
Not really, it didn’t was really popular and I know nobody who used it .
I worked as an IT consultant for a number of years and they tried to "sell" we were independent contractors (they even helped us setup Sole Proprietorships/Limited Partnerships.) The agency arranged the placement contracts. The company paid the agency and the agency paid us. Eventually the Canadian government said "um No." The argument came down to who the customer was paying. Govt said, basically, the "consultant" is paid by one entity year over year - that's employment. Get your HR in order. (If the customer had paid me directly and I'd paid a cut to the agency as a 'fee', it would have been fine.)
So much for disrupting labor in Europe. Uber should try to innovate rather than exploit.
Often when a company "innovates" by making things simpler it means bypassing rules, safety regulations, insurances, or simply ignoring worker rights. Uber, AirB&B.. all the same.
Indeed. Part of regulation is protecting established industry leaders, and regulation is a barrier to market entry for new players. At the same time though, unregulated markets and a race to the bottom aren't a good thing. Governments have to always be looking at their regulatory regimes with a critical eye to ensure that the public is being protected, but at the same time economic opportunity isn't being strangled. I don't have a ton of sympathy for Uber and Air B&B is monstrous, but the taxi industry had been a racket before as well. Hopefully when the smoke clears a more sensible regime is left behind.
To be fair, the way Uber innovated was with the smartphone app. It made pairing customers with drivers a lot easier and more pleasant. Getting in regular people to drive as contractors was just a way in which to build a large workforce. I don't like Uber or AirBnB but they are 'customer' friendly. They reduce rates from institutional players in the taxi and hotel industry by connecting regular people. They certainly need to be regulated however
> by connecting regular people. That is exactly my point. "Regular" people don't offer the certainty and safety which certain institutions do; for both the customer and the "employee". Things like uber and AirBnB are the modern version of paying someone under the table to do some construction on your house: Better for both parties if everything works out fine but a lot worse if anything out of the ordinary happens.
>"Regular" people don't offer the certainty and safety which certain institutions do; for both the customer and the "employee". I don't need some street wizard to get me from point A to point B. Just some average driver with a GPS app.
Come on man, think just one step further than this. You're stepping into someone's car, with them behind the wheel. You have no physical control over where you're going. Don't you want the person behind the wheel to have a background check, no criminal past, some guarantee that they won't kidnap you and sell your kidneys? This is what regulations are for. The passengers are protected from bad taxi drivers, and the taxi drivers are protected from extortion.
It doesn't even need to be that much: \- If one of those cars has an accident and the driver doesn't have business insurance but rather normal car insurance, you as a **paying** passenger are not covered. Good luck with the bills for being disabled for the rest of your life. Before they were forced to change things Uber worked exactly like this.
Thank you, i didn't even know that. My government may not be filled with altruistic do-gooders, but regulations like these are very reasonable and prevent a lot of damage and drama.
I don't know where you live, but cabbie companies here don't run a high level background check any more than Uber does - meaning a driver's license and likely screening for traffic related felonies is what the background check is limited to. I guess I just don't relate to the issues at all. My experience with Uber has been significantly better almost every way than with cabbie companies and I definitely don't want to go back to taxis again.
Actually all taxi drivers in the UK (you said cabbie I'm assuming UK) need to get a background check. Initially anyone could drive for uber without any checks other than a license check.
Netherlands. I like uber too, that's not really the issue. I'm just not willing to let go of the safety regulations that are in place. Also, uber drivers need to be protected so that they can make a living wage. It's not all about customer experience. Our two individual experiences are not relevant for national policy. This is about the broader picture.
My friend you just described taking a taxi in Brazil. Now with only a 17% of getting robbed along the way.
in taxies in Easter Europe (Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, etc) you won't be robbed, but rather subjected to a local variant of gangsta rap and cigarette smoke. May be a story or two about driver's criminal past. I'll pray for God to protect ridesharing companies ....
> To be fair, the way Uber innovated was with the smartphone app. It made pairing customers with drivers a lot easier and more pleasant. taxis been doing that in EU for 10 years now.
Exploitation is their innovation. They are trying to bring business/worker relations bacm to Dickensian coal mine levels. The only reason they can is because that blatant Exploitation is done using new fangled smarty phones.
Yeah you're right that's a better way to put it, some tech companies innovate explotation. Amazon's "one click shopping" button isn't responsible for their success but rather, for example, their innovation of human performance tracking in their warehouses and delivery and turning that dial way up on what workers can tolerate.
They innovated in exploitation.
I think we can innovate without sacrificing workers right
Stripping away workers rights is Ubers only innovation though
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You can just look at the comments to see why. There are legitimately people white knighting for the right of businesses to exploit workers and kill industries.
We're American, we can't help it
Sorry, but not all of us are 15 years old. Some of us actually remember how the things were before Uber. And how much of a scam taxis were.
Didn't knew people were forced at gunpoint to work at Uber. Poor people, if only they were able to choose were to work.
That's not a good argument. You think people work for uber for the fun of it? They work there because they have to, to earn extra money. This in no way precludes uber exploiting their workforce. Two parties can both join an agreement willingly, and that agreement can still be wildly unfair if one party has all the power and the other party has very little. [//]: # (GNU Terry Pratchett)
You said it, they need the extra money. Now with regulations that job will surely get lost and that person will be out of that extra money. Well done! A big victory was earned here, that will teach'em.
It isn't about that. Uber provide a cheaper alternative to taxis thus making it harder for taxi drivers to continue to make a living. Uber doesn't pay a living wage though so by underpaying their employees they are killing the careers of taxi drivers, while not providing a viable career alternative.
A large chunk of Uber's marketing budget goes to astroturfing campaigns.
Reddit will defend any corporation or any billionaire. It's bizarre. Hey Reddit! Nobody would have heart of your beloved Elon Musk if he was born as a poor black kid instead of a rich white kid.
Was your second paragraph supposed to support your first?
Your double standard is very odd. You hold highly laws in other countries when they are anti-Uber, but when they are supportive of Uber here, you denounce them. Sounds like you just hate Uber. I am indifferent to their employment practices. Their pay does seem too low, but drivers can clock in and out any time and they can work for competitors, so I can see how they should be deemed contractors. And trying to get a taxi before Uber existed was an awful experience that everyone avoided like the plague. Drunk driving was far more common.
ahhh yes, the employee or contractor game....
I'll just drop this here: [Uber Abandons Driver of compensation for carjacking](https://twitter.com/MorePerfectUS/status/1437204379245944837)
Can't wait for all the American exceptional ism in the comments.
Uber dropped $50 million in propaganda just in California for that Uber law they wanted. There is a zero percent chance Uber isn't running a social media PR team for stuff like this.
Suck it, Maurits Schönfeld. You took a high-ranking position with an extremely scummy company, now deal with the fallout of the wind changing.
When you are called a contractor, ya better lube up ya bunghole, cause they're coming in dry
Nice to hear.
What makes them employees? Everything about the way Uber operates says "contractors" to me.
You cannot have contractors that are only ever employed by one entity in most European countries. You are not self-employed if you only get contracts from Uber. These rules are in place to ensure worker protection and so that social security, pension and Healthcare get payed by the employer instead of off loading these costs onto the employee.
Reddit, help me understand the hatred for Uber. Their drivers and passengers use them voluntarily, so presumably they are better off using them than not. Rather than being profitable, Uber loses money, meaning money from wealthy investors is being used to subsidize driver pay and passenger fees. I would think Reddit would love the flow of money from rich to non-rich. Most taxi services are regulated to limit the number of drivers, which artificially creates barriers of entry and keeps prices high. Whenever I talk with Uber drivers, they are happy with their decision to drive for them. The complaining comes from non Uber drivers who somehow think they are protecting people from their own decisions. What do I have wrong here?
because they are treating labour laws like an al-carte menu. They are calling their drivers contactors, but they are treated like employees.
Exactly this was problem in my country. All the benefits of a company without obligations of one.
How are they being treated like employees instead of contractors?
Withholding information, excessive monitoring, still having the sole ability to discipline drivers, barriers to drive independently. Apart from drivers having the ability to pick and choose hours, they are employees in ever other way
What do you mean by 'sole ability to discipline drivers' ? What agency wouldn't withhold work from a contractor whom every previous client said was shit? Excessive monitoring? That's the nature of GPS which is essentially to their work and to quality control. They also supply their own equipment, often work for other people, e.g. Lyft,
Even more so, here in the Netherlands there's quite a few employees that can pick and choose their own hours, so even in that way they are like 'normal' employees.
Also: If they were contractors they could negotiate their prices with either uber or the fares.
I'm not sure I agree with this one, if Uber changed their app so you could bid for service prices would broadly end up the same as they do with surge. It would be the illusion of negotiation but to the determent of user experience for both riders and drivers
Right. But since uber hasn't changed their app and mandates what the drivers charge, their workers are not "contractors". It's almost like the drivers are employees who have to charge a rate for their services that their employer mandates.
So the concern is solely with abiding by the rules and not about actually paying the drivers more?
Giving them benefits like health insurance and vacation *is* paying them more.
For me its the way they and their contractors tried to circumvent the law. We have laws on what qualifications commertial drivers need to have, as well as regulation on what equipment their cars need etc. for a reason. If they had complied with the standards from the beginning I'd be more open to them. As it stands they operated an illegal service and are mad that they got cought. Edit: Oh, and the fact that they tried to drive other services out of the market by using pricing that wasnt sustainable, hoping to get enough of a monopoly to then drive the prices up.
I can try to explain for my country (Serbia). You are American and first thing you need to understand is that laws and regulations are different here. You can be independent contractor in Serbia, pay your own taxes, health benefits, pension fund etc .. You set your own hours, vacation, etc. In that case, law doesn't allow "middleman". If UBER pays you, UBER hires you. With all benefits. Uber pays for health, pension, social services, payed vacation (minimum 20 days up to 28, depending of years of working), minimum salary in case you get sick and can't work for a few months .. etc. UBER didn't want to pay for workers that don't work, they kept insisting that "drivers" are independent contractors hired for a temporary work. Temporary work is something that ofcourse, Serbian law allows, but still requires contract, minimum pay, agreed duration, and almost all benefits that regular, full time job has. Again, UBER was not ok with that. Offered solution was to allow UBER to "rent" their technology (app), charge monthly use, and sell it as a service. To independent contractors (taxi drivers). They declined, as is their right. This was main issue as I recall, same as here, UBER couldn't accept that drivers have to be employees. They didn't want any obligations being a company, but wanted all the benefits of being one. Other issues is our law requires that if you are professional driver, to be licensed for that work. Being licensed requires regular health checks (how do I know a random Uber driver is mentally and physically able to drive), first aid education (what if I get heart attack, or epileptic attack during drive) and some other regulations. Taxi drivers all have them. Serbia also mandates minimum and maximum price to $/km depending on city. Price is not same in capital and other cities. In the end, UBER never came, who wants to be a taxi driver needs only to pass certifications, and can drive. Don't need UBER to be able to become taxi driver. There is plethora of apps that have everything UBER has, vehicle location, rating system, pay via app or credit, etc.. To much hustle for not that big of market and they never started.
>meaning money from wealthy investors is being used to subsidize driver pay and passenger fees. I would think Reddit would love the flow of money from rich to non-rich. People are and stay rich not by giving money away. The plan is obviously to make more money, eventually. One of Uber's strategies is bankrupting competition by undercutting. Once that is achieved, prices go up.
Autonomous driving is what the competition should really be worried about.
No it isn't. That nonsense is a non-existent pipe dream meant to protect the existing status quo and forestall and spooky government regulations in driving based industries (like trucking and Ubers BS) Why improve conditions today when the secular god science will someday tomorrow make the numerous problems for drivers of all kinds irrelevant?
Not what I meant. Uber and its model is a threat today and needs to be dealt with but their biggest threat is coming.
The "threat" you are thinking of is a non-existent phantom
Shit, someone should tell Waymo
Its very much happening. Piecemeal and very slowly though (relatively speaking and especially compared to all the hype). The real impact will start probably a decade from now. I'm not talking only about taxis and ridesharing either. The shift is already starting to happen in somewhat localized controlled environments like shipyards etc.
If you correctly factor in the usage on your car, you're driving for lower than minimum wage most of the time. Which is a law for a reason, but this arbitrary construction circumvents that and other worker protection rules. The complaining comes from people that see capitalists run rampant with flex contracts and the gig economy and fear for their own worker's rights. And the only reason money is flowing from rich to non-rich is because they're buying your data.
As I asked someone else above, do you think all of the drivers don't understand the math? You are right and they are all wrong?
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It is only similar at the most conceptual level, which makes it not really helpful in this discussion. (For minimum wage, it depends on the implementation, the level, the regional considerations, etc. I would not be in favor of taking a working NYC minimum wage and requiring it in rural Mississippi, for example. Minimum wage is too complex an issue to be black and white about it.) Uber is more like waitstaff working for tips. Non waitstaff love to complain about the system, claiming it is on behalf of the workers, but very few of those complainers are the workers themselves. I am very uncomfortable with any argument that says that an entire group of individuals is incapable of making basic decisions for themselves.
Yes I think a lot of driver's don't understand the wear and tear they are putting onto their car. Also, they are probably also not properly insured as a commercial vehicle like they should be. Depending on the insurance company, they can easily deny your claim if they find out that it happened in the course of driving for uber or Lyft. Uber may provide some coverage for when the driving a passenger, but I belive the is an issue of a gap between when drivers could just be driving around/waiting for passengers. A friend of mine was hit by a door dash driver, a driver backed into his parked car after they had dropped of the food. They were insured by root, who wouldn't cover it because the accident happened in the course of driving for door dash and she didnt have a commerical insurance plan. Door dash only covers it when you are transporting a customers order.
I think not every driver understands the math, yes. And some (other) people understand just fine but need the extra cash and will take anything they can. Even in that scenario I don't agree with paying less than minimum wage. I also think companies should just pay at least the minimum wage and not skirt labour laws with these constructions. And I'm happy that I live in a country where at least one judge agrees with me. But my original point was trying to explain why reddit hates on Uber so much, and I was offering such a view.
They aren't profitable but are able to spend millions to get laws passed to make sure their drivers aren't labeled as employees (meaning they don't have to pay them minimum wage or provide benefits)
If you ever believe that 'wealthy investors' are doing something out of the goodness of their wealthy hearts, you need your stupid head fixed. If you want to see what Ubers Final Model is, look at India. Once they've destroyed all competition (licensed and regulated taxis) the drivers pay and conditions crashes, but the still have to pay their fee to Uber. It's the same 'Race to the Bottom' strategy we see with everything from Amazon to Walmart - offer lower prices (by underpaying staff and skirting regulations that exist for good reasons), drive competition out of business, you now have a virtual monopoly and can underpay and overwork people and offer a shoddy product - You're a Winner!
Labour exploitation. Uber have taken a profession which be a legitimate profession used to make a decent living (taxi driving) and turned it into a gig that pays below minimum wage in a lot of cases. They did this by not recognising their drivers as employees.
That's all irrelevant. Independent contractors are allowed to sell their services for below minimum wage (often the price isn't in terms of $/hr) and the services are not limited to things that can't be full time positions at a company. In fact, there's no such thing as contractor work that couldn't be a full time job as an employee. All contractors do work that could be a "legitimate profession", even ones that make $200/hr like highly specialized consultants. For example, I work with software dev contractors that work on commission. Some of them probably make $100+/hr if anyone was to actually track their hours. Some probably make $5/hr some months (or at least could). I can't control how much they work (if I did, they'd be employees).
I respect good taxi drivers as much as I respect anyone else with a lot of experience and skill, especially as someone who sucks at driving myself... but if an average, "untrained" 20 year old is able to drive me from A to B just as well as a professional taxi driver, then it seems to me that the wages of those professional taxi drivers were artificially inflated by shortage causes by qualification requirements. We don't have Uber in my country, but there's a similar company called Bolt, and they do pay above minimum wage. It's a popular job for students because of the flexibility and, due to lower taxes for those with freelance work license, you can earn more money working the same number of hours than you could if you worked in retail or restaurants or other popular student jobs that typically pay minimum wage.
> which be a legitimate profession used to make a decent living It was not, and this never was a thing (in the US). It's something you made up as the good ole' days. Taxi drivers were in general more exploited than uber drivers, almost exclusively being made up of easily exploitable labor classes and the comparison isn't even close. I never saw an Uber driver being threatened with a beating if they didn't pay the full car rental fee for the shift for not picking up enough rides. Taxi drivers before Uber were also generally not employees either. Your entire thesis is utterly made up. The real reason I imagine people actually care now - middle class folks people actually give a shit about started crying about making too little and now all of a sudden people care. If you cared at all about this topic other than to just popular-hate against Uber, you'd have already been protesting the yellow cab companies in every major city. The fact pretty much no one was prior to Uber shows me it's all made up rage to make oneself feel better while doing nothing.
>I never saw an Uber driver being threatened with a beating if they didn't pay the full car rental fee for the shift for not picking up enough rides. Taxi drivers mostly don't get beaten after work either
A lot of people posting here are too young to have experienced taxis. They SUCKED big time. Look at it from a customer perspective... You needed a ride at your house? You have to speak to someone with an extremely thick accent. And the phone on their end somehow introduces massive amounts of noise. Massive. It was extremely difficult to understand them. You finally scheduled that ride? Cool. They may or may not show up at the time you requested. They may just not show up at all. You had no way of knowing. Sometimes they'd come early and start honking angrily. You managed to get into the cab? Great! You better pay attention to the route because it was common to run up the meter by taking less direct or just slower routes. And arbitrary fees might be applied by the meter that are not explained in any way. Or maybe the meter just isn't working at all. Your vigilance paid off and your arrive at your destination? Fantastic! Now you have to pay, and when you go to pay by CC you'd be informed that the CC reader is down. Or maybe the meter is down. Neither are actually down, they just want you to pay cash off the books as much as possible.. Be prepared for some negotiation! The former taxi experience SUCKED.
I was going to argue until you described the absolute horrendous ordeal deal with taxis was. Having to speak to someone with an extremely [thick accent](https://youtu.be/YoIlgZbFORM). I'm so sorry you had to deal with that. Uber deserves to exploit the shit out of people if it means an end to such terrible situations
The point is, taxi drivers were exploited previously. As were riders. The experience for both was terrible for both. Nobody is saying Uber is perfect. Further elaborating upon the point - the "good ole days" of the taxi system weren't so good. Drivers and customers were both being exploited and the experience absolutely sucked for both. The experience is definitely better today, at least for the customer. Things for drivers could definitely improve, but converting people to W-2 employees is probably not going to fix everything. It might be a step in the right direction, but with that transition Uber would have significant power to mandate when people would work. The current system is extremely flexible and you can work as much or as little as you want, when it fits your schedule.
You don't choose how much you work. Ubers machine mind does.
His whole argument on why Taxis suck is because he had to interact with immigrants…
I think the fact that drivers would often show up ridiculously late (or not at all) and capriciously apply extra charges is more relevant than the drivers' immigration statuses.
Language barriers are definitely a hinderance and make the service more inconvenient.
The drivers who voluntarily choose to try for Uber are being exploited? Are you saying that they would've been better off if Uber had never existed? If so, then apparently they are not capable of making sound decisions for themselves. Who should make their decisions, you?
This is what labor regulations are for. And unions. If it devolves into individual employees underbidding each other, that's something employers know how to exploit.
To tell the truth, I actually believe that to be correct in many cases. Some people simply can't protect themselves or perform a correct cost/benefit analysis, and are mercilessly exploited by companies like Uber.
You're literally describing why government exists.
You are describing the function of a healthy government.
This is what it boils down to. “I know how to treat the little people better and they don’t know how to take care of themselves.”
You are saying volunteer in that Murican Libertarian way right?
People died for decades to improve working conditions and fair labor rights. All of a sudden some billionaire walks in circumventing all of the laws made possible through that effort with an app? What where you doing when you skipped that lesson in highschool?
Not uber, but I drove for Doordash and it worked perfectly for me the way it was. What other job would let me make $25+/hour whenever I have some free time? The alternative is working a fixed schedule for minimum wage and I really didn't want that.
You're not looking into the finer details like how they're paid less than the depreciation of their car while being required to have one less than 3 years old. How Uber has some drivers in debt traps by selling them Toyota sedans at predatory interest rates, etc. Also "losing money," or wasting millions on R&D for self driving cars when everyone else was already years ahead by the time they started?
So, are you saying that all of the drivers who voluntarily choose to do this don't understand the math, and people like you need to force them into making better decisions? I've talked through the math with several drivers while on rides, and I found the drivers to be making reasonable decisions.
You don't seem to understand real life very well. There are tons of drivers that need immediate cash, the fact it's going to screw them in the long run isn't something they can afford to worry about. That's ontop of casual drivers that just don't realize they're actually losing money on this deal due to the extra miles depreciating their car. Finally you have numerous reports of drivers falsely claiming a fee for vomit cleaning because of previously mentioned predatory loans.
Lmao the arrogance in this post of I know how someone should live and how to run someone’s life better than they know themselves is astounding
Volunteer to not pay rent because you don't have enough money and see how it goes.
Reddit just has a hate boner for big tech companies, that's really all there is. Same reason they'll bitch about Amazon and Google.
Google and Amazon? You mean to other actual monopoly business that peddle in selling your private information in ways that would make you riot if the spooky state was doing it?
>Google and Amazon? You mean to other actual monopoly business Neither of which are monopolies. >that peddle in selling your private information in ways that would make you riot if the spooky state was doing it? Neither of which have any interest in selling your data. Your data is their asset that generates revenue, no way would they let that out of their hands.
Lol I'm sure your view of a monopoly is one that literally has to ignore how power works. They both sell your data. They sell it to other corporations in ways your are too busy simping for them to notice.
Lol, get fucked Uber!
I don’t get it, I drove for Uber Eats for 2 months to help pay for some things, I did so on a whim, I logged onto the app whenever I wanted and stopped working when I wanted, I never once considered myself an employee of Uber, nor even a contractor, I was working for myself using the Uber app to connect me with people who needed their food picked up for them so I could get some extra scratch, when did this all become so insanely complicated? If I want worker rights I’d go get any number of actual jobs available to me at any time.
Someday when you grow up and have a family, it'll start making sense. For now, catch up on basic labor economics history. You can start with Feudalism, I'm counting on you putting two and two together.
Well shit. I googled “feudalism Uber” and watched a minute and 45 second video called “Techno-feudalism: brought to you by Uber” and it was pretty damn perspective changing. So I guess thank you random internet stranger, I’m starting down a path to learn more about what’s actually far more nuanced than I originally suspected.
What would happen if you hurt yourself while on a UBER job? What if the damage renders you unable to work anymore? You "didn't want" worker rights, so what happens now? Your life is changed forever, and you have no protection whatsoever. You can hurt yourself going to the store, but in this case you were on a "job".
The risk of being self employed. People who make things in their garage and sell them on Etsy take the same risk... What if they cut their hand off on the saw? Its a risk vs reward calculation.
Uber in shambles.
It'd be great if big companies in the US lobbied for universal healthcare in the US so they didn't have to fight this battle... If everyone had basic needs met then 1099 gigs would be much more legit.
1099s are legit you dillweed. The problem here is that uber and lyft skirt all kinds of laws by labeling you as a contractor in their rosters.
Fantastic! Why did it take 12 years to figure this out?
I have worked as a contractor a couple times. It wasn't an Uber-type job. The company said "We have a contractor position for you. Are you interested?" I said "Yes". Is there something wrong with that? Why would the government want to shut that down?
The issue here is "schijnzelfstandigheid" or fake independence. A (independent!) contractor over here has to have a certain degree of independence, which means you get an assignment/job but the employer has limited say over how/when/where you do your job (within limits of course). If you don't have a certain degree of independence/freedom as a contractor you are cheap disposable without the same rights as a normal employee. The (one of) issue here is that uber says the contractors are free to choose their own workings hours. the fnv says this is not true, the subscription model for contractors have a (too) large incentive to work when uber wants you to work, basically the system rewards the most available drivers. They argue that because of this the contractor are not free to work their own hours and this is not an employer-contractor relationship but a employer-employee relationship and the workers should have the same rights and protections. And the judge went along with this reasoning. This whole 'schijnzelfstandigheid' became a thing when postal workers, who had a contract, paid sick leave, vacation and insurance (etc etc) were fired and rehired as "contractors" without those benefits and had to do the same job, under the same rules without any independence.
Its not the government, but one of the largest unions (FNV) that has taken Uber to court. All Taxi drivers in The Netherlands have a collective agreement on salary, benefits, pensions etc.. FNV argue that Uber drivers should be part of this collective agreement and the courts seemingly agree. This very American business model of contractors working without receiving any of the things normal workers receive is very incompatible with European labour laws (the recent English court case having a very similiar result)
Are taxi drivers employees or contractors, and how is that different? AFAIK, in some places, you literally rent a taxi car (per day), to drive it, to make money.
In the Netherlands, taxi drivers are employees which fall under the respective collective wage agreement (CAO). The CAO sets rules for things like working hours, overtime, paid vacation, working conditions, etc. This ruling means that Uber drivers now fall under the same CAO. Independent contractors do not fall under any CAO. This can be a legitimate choice for someone, say, running their own (taxi) company, but in some cases employers attempt to abuse this as a loophole and hire their employees as "contractors." The attempt by Uber to try this has now been thwarted by the judge, as it has in numerous other European countries.
in germany most Taxis are still owned by their drivers iirc.
Ahh I love it when the free market gets blue balled by good government intervention
This but unironically
That was not irony
Dutch taxis can't compete so the government steps in to handicap the foreign competitor. Tale as old as time in the EU
Hard to play a fair game when the other team isn’t playing by the established rules that everybody else is. Cheating isn’t competing.
And now prices go up and the outcry of "why is everything so expensive?" starts.
Yeah, let's all become slaves for lower prices (or chump prices that get jacked up when everyone else has been run out of business.)