[HN Gopher] U.S. Labor Secretary throws support behind classifyi...
___________________________________________________________________
U.S. Labor Secretary throws support behind classifying gig workers
as employees
Author : alexrustic
Score : 394 points
Date : 2021-04-29 17:37 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| superbatfish wrote:
| Here's a great podcast on this question (regarding Uber and Lyft
| drivers specifically), from Julia Galef:
|
| http://rationallyspeakingpodcast.org/show/episode-255-are-ub...
|
| She interviews three experts on the subject. Here's the
| description of the episode:
|
| >How much do Uber and Lyft drivers really earn, after expenses?
| Are they getting a raw deal by being classified as 'independent
| contractors' instead of employees? I explore the debate over
| these questions with three guests: Louis Hyman (Cornell), Veena
| Dubal (UC Hastings College of the Law), and Harry Campbell (The
| Rideshare Guy).
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| Has anyone asked the gig workers how they feel about this? Do
| they _want_ to be W2 employees?
|
| Perhaps the real problem is that the IRS makes it such a massive
| PITA to be a contractor. You need to withhold your own taxes, pay
| nearly 30% of your money to the government, etc. Nobody likes
| that, and unsurprisingly, a lot of contractors fail to meet the
| requirements.
|
| You know who _really_ doesn 't like it? The IRS. When most of the
| population is on W2 employment, the IRS has a constant revenue
| stream of payroll taxes and automatically withheld income taxes
| coming into its coffers every pay cycle. But with contractors,
| the IRS only gets that money once a year, and often times they're
| missing a piece of it.
|
| Also - just putting this out there - a population of contractors
| would have much more power in a hypothetical "tax boycott" than a
| population of employees. I could imagine some social movement
| convincing all the contractors in the country to boycott the IRS
| and skip paying taxes one year. I doubt "the government" is
| anywhere near competent enough to conspire against this
| possibility, but the existential risk is there. Surely they would
| prefer that the peasants don't realize the power of collective
| tax resistance.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I had never considered this angle before. This effort suddenly
| makes a lot more sense.
| balefrost wrote:
| _But with contractors, the IRS only gets that money once a
| year, and often times they 're missing a piece of it._
|
| I don't know the entirety of the tax law, but I _believe_ that
| you 're supposed to make estimated tax payments quarterly.
|
| https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employe...
| [deleted]
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| I'd like to see a poll of how many ICs actually do that. I
| bet it's < 50%.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| The ones that don't want to pay penalties, which is
| probably significantly higher.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| nrmitchi wrote:
| > But with contractors, the IRS only gets that money once a
| year,
|
| IIRC this isn't true. Non-W2 earners are supposed to do
| quarterly taxes.
|
| > and often times they're missing a piece of it.
|
| This is kind of a bigger problem, no? If it gets to the end of
| the year, and so many 1099 contractors don't have enough to pay
| their taxes that it is actually an issue for the IRS, it
| _strongly_ implies that those contractors didn 't understand
| how much money they were actually making after tax (and thus,
| didn't put enough aside). Contractors not understanding how
| much money they are actually making (in relation to the W2
| option) is not a good thing.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| > IIRC this isn't true. Non-W2 earners are supposed to do
| quarterly taxes.
|
| Maybe in theory, but I would bet, certainly not in practice
| for the vast majority of contractors earning an average
| income. You have to be the most honest, organized goody-two-
| shoes to actually pay those quarterly taxes.
|
| It's also worth noting that many contractors live paycheck-
| to-paycheck, and even though they know they _should_ be
| withholding 30% for tax, in practice they have bills to pay
| first. So when tax time comes (whether quarterly or yearly),
| they might simply not have the money.
| pasttense01 wrote:
| There are penalties if you don't pay your quarterly
| estimates.
| slongfield wrote:
| There are (potentially non-trivial) tax penalties for not
| paying quarterly taxes, it's not just something that people
| do for fun.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| This is such a wonderfully naive view. Nobody is doing it
| for fun. They're doing it because they don't have the
| money nor the time to pay the IRS and an accountant every
| 3 months.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Nope, you have reached the limit of your knowledge.
| Estimated taxes must be paid at a minimum _every quarter_
| with few exceptions. You 'd face large penalties for not
| complying over a period of time.
|
| https://directpay.irs.gov/directpay/payment
|
| That doesn't mean _filing_ , it means _estimating and
| paying._
|
| The rest of your post was pretty good, so it's
| disappointing to see you double-down on its one major
| flaw.
| nrmitchi wrote:
| > It's also worth noting that many contractors live
| paycheck-to-paycheck, and even though they know they should
| be withholding 30% for tax, in practice they have bills to
| pay first.
|
| I find it kind of dishonest to call this "living paycheck-
| to-paycheck" while ignoring tax with-holding. That is not
| "paycheck-to-paycheck" as much as "not being paid enough to
| live".
| anchpop wrote:
| Uber drivers are not paid very well, so it wouldn't
| surprise me if the money Uber is willing to pay you to
| drive for them isn't enough to survive. However it would
| be a mistake to assume everyone who lives paycheck to
| paycheck is doing so because they're being paid a sub-
| living wage. I'm in college and I know students who got
| into thousand of dollars of credit card debt so they
| could buy weed and designer clothes. If you give people
| money and say "by the way, we're going to need some of
| this back eventually" (which is the tax situation with
| independent contractors), many people are just not
| capable of not spending all of it. (again, not saying
| this is the case for uber drivers. Although in the case
| of the uber drivers, keep in mind that there are two
| factors that determine their wage, what uber is willing
| to pay and the rate of taxation. Every uber driver could
| get something like a 30% raise if the government didn't
| find it necessary to tax on third of the income of people
| who, in your words, don't even make enough money to
| survive. I find it strange that blame only ever seems to
| go to uber in this situation)
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| Totally agree, it's not an ideal situation for the
| contractor or the government. The question is more
| whether the government (or your employer as a proxy)
| should play a protectionist role and handle the
| withholding for you, or if that should be your
| responsibility as a contractor.
|
| Speaking from personal experience, it's much easier said
| than done. When your rent is due this month, taxes are
| due next year, and you've only got enough for rent... you
| aren't gonna withhold 30%. It's not because you don't
| want to, but because _you just don't have the money._
| Call it poor financial management or whatever you want,
| but the reality is that lots of people get into this
| situation. Yet I doubt many of them would blame their
| clients (or Uber) for the problems. Most would say the
| government demands too much tax, or they can't find
| enough work.
|
| Personally I would be in favor of a $30k annual basic
| income and eliminating all taxes on up to $100k in
| earnings. It will never happen, but it would be one of
| the best things to happen to society in a long time.
| gher-shyu3i wrote:
| > Has anyone asked the gig workers how they feel about this? Do
| they want to be W2 employees?
|
| They don't. They had a survey and that's why Prop 22 passed.
| vegetablepotpie wrote:
| > These companies are making profits and revenue
|
| Are they though? Uber said in its 2019 SEC filing that they may
| not make a profit [1], and while the company says profitability
| is around the corner, they have not yet turned that corner.
|
| Not saying that Uber or any "gig economy" companies should
| continue to classify their workers as contractors, but if your
| business model does not generate a profit despite not providing
| benefits to your workers, one has to ask how viable that business
| model is.
|
| While I understand the long game is to use self driving cars,
| this is not a proven technology. It's a problem that may be
| solved in the next few years, but there's no guarantee. Imagine
| investing in fusion energy, which has been just a few decades
| away for the last fifty or so years.
|
| While sometimes the long play does work out, such as with Amazon,
| where you end up with a behemoth that dominates its market, you
| have to wait a long time to start seeing returns.
|
| I wonder if these long term, risky investment opportunities are a
| sign that the exponential growth in the economy that we've become
| accustomed to is slowing down and becoming more S shaped. I can
| imagine this being a world where wealth does not come from
| growing and generating more wealth, but from political and
| bureaucratic maneuvering (like worker classification) to give
| workers less benefits and distribute the wealth higher up the
| class hierarchy.
|
| [1] https://investorplace.com/2019/04/seriously-uber-never-
| turn-...
| paulpauper wrote:
| The stock price is sure acting otherwise. I think uber's
| businesis cash flow positive, simialr to Amazon and Tesla, but
| that cap-ex and other non-recurring expenses are erroding
| profitability.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| The long term play isn't to use self driving vehicles anymore.
| Uber sold off ATG and Lyft just got rid of Level 5. They're
| dependent on others delivering commercial SDCs for them and
| anyone with the technical chops to do that isn't going to find
| the infrastructure of a ride-share service very difficult. As
| Uber and Lyft have both demonstrated, it's also straightforward
| to sell VC dollars for pennies to build up transport market
| share. The dominant theme of leading AV companies seems to be
| massive capitalizations, so it's hard to imagine the ride-share
| incumbents being highly competitive there either. It's hard to
| imagine a situation where their most profitable markets don't
| get immediately disrupted, leaving Uber and Lyft to figure out
| profitability with only the long tail low margin areas SDCs
| won't be deployed to for years afterwards.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| > Not saying that Uber or any "gig economy" companies should
| continue to classify their workers as contractors, but if your
| business model does not generate a profit despite not providing
| benefits to your workers, one has to ask how viable that
| business model is.
|
| Yes exactly.
|
| > I wonder if these long term, risky investment opportunities
| are a sign that the exponential growth in the economy that
| we've become accustomed to is slowing down and becoming more S
| shaped.
|
| We do have a demand and growth problem, but let's step back a
| bit.
|
| - Gig companies growing and paying net sub minimum wage will
| make growth worse: we live in a consumer economy and less
| purchasing power for the people will sap the rest of the
| economy.
|
| - carshare/taxis are inefficient in strictly material terms:
| cars take up too much space, one driver per person is
| ridiculous overhead. Bikeshare and buses and trains both
| _immensely_ improve on both of those. Fundamentally Uber is the
| low productivity result of our terrible urban planning: a tax
| we now all pay.
|
| Maybe there is some deep societal reason we cannot prop up
| aggregate demand, but I don't think so: let the helicopter
| money begin! But Uber is worse than no stimulus because it low
| productive and wage deflating. The only good thing is in it's
| subsidization phase a bunch of Saudi money was dispersed to
| regular people, but once that ends the legacy is further eroded
| labor norms.
| duxup wrote:
| I remember when 'gig economy' first was talked about, it was
| about professional type digital nomad type stuff .... but when I
| think of it now it's just a bunch of folks delivering food and
| driving people around.
| pram wrote:
| I think it's because early adopters had success (same with
| things funded via Patreon) and then the resulting bandwagon and
| influx of labor competition made it a race to the bottom.
| steven_bishop wrote:
| How would working for competing apps work ? Would drivers be
| considered employees of both Uber and Lyft ? Do they have to log
| a certain amount of miles driven in order to qualify as an
| employee ? I'm interested in seeing how this all works out.
| novok wrote:
| I think the major issue with classifying gig workers as employees
| is how the company cannot practically deduct the cost of the gig
| worker's equipment that they bring to the job.
|
| In the USA there is a lot of idle car stock that is leveraged to
| make something like doordash and uber work, and with this
| employment change if the workers could also deduct their vehicle
| costs as part of doing the job, I would foresee a lot less
| resistance from the industry.
|
| I also don't think the 'employees' are going to get benefits
| either way, if this passed then their hours would be limited to
| the benefits threshold time like a lot of other low income jobs
| do now today, and they would be forced to work for 2 of the gig
| companies, who now will put strict scheduling on them making it a
| huge pain the ass.
|
| In the end, nobody will be happy with the outcome and everyone
| would be worse off, except the government with some more tax
| revenue, or less because gig companies buying equipment will
| probably deduct more in total.
| gkop wrote:
| Cue the comments from highly-skilled white collar professionals,
| grieving that W-2 employment is oppressive.
| Animats wrote:
| It's not a "shift in policy". It's what US labor law says. It
| just hasn't been enforced properly.
| [deleted]
| volandovengo wrote:
| I happen to have co-founded a company (Wrapbook) that makes it
| easy to work with gig-based workers as employees. The
| entertainment space long ago settled this fight and classifies
| everyone as employees, not as contractors, even when they work a
| single day.
|
| This fight has nothing to do with independence and only has to do
| with employers trying to save some 15% of an employee's wage in
| taxes & keep themselves off the hook if people get injured on the
| job.
|
| The savings are real - somebody making $1000 a day - classified
| as an employee, costs an additional estimated $150.
|
| You can pay short term workers as employees pretty easily (we
| facilitate it).
| splatcollision wrote:
| "If a business can't pay a living wage, should it be a business?"
| - https://annehelen.substack.com/p/the-capitalism-is-broken-ec...
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| Absolutely it 100% it should be I don't even see the argument
| that it shouldn't. The idea that you would be blocked for
| working a job because it doesn't meet some government idea of
| enough pay is crazy.
| minimuffins wrote:
| A business that pays poverty wages is insufficiently socially
| useful imo. We do too much for it; it does too little for us.
|
| > some government idea of enough pay
|
| Misleading. There is an objective amount of pay that is or is
| not enough to live on in a given place. The government tries
| to guess at this sometimes, for the purpose of setting min
| wage, but that value is objective and exists independently.
| It's not some arbitrary bureaucratic thing.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Not everyone who works does it for the goal of "living on"
| that one job. Some people work for supplemental income.
| Some people (teens) work for spending money and to gain
| experience. Some people (retirees) work for something to do
| other than sit at home.
|
| If all jobs had to pay enough to "live on" then most of the
| people above would be able to work at all, because the jobs
| simply would not exist.
| minimuffins wrote:
| You are setting up a scenario where we have to choose
| between:
|
| A) teens and retirees having access to low paying scut
| work jobs
|
| B) eradicating wage slavery for non-teen, non-retirees by
| making it illegal for employers to pay poverty wages
|
| I don't know if it's really such a simple binary
| opposition, but if it is, B for me.
| underseacables wrote:
| What about giving them the option: they can be employees or
| independent contractors?
| gnopgnip wrote:
| Should people be able to agree to work for less than minimum
| wage? Who is impacted by this, who ultimately bears the cost?
| jandrese wrote:
| I'm waiting for the inevitable backlash when Uber starts cutting
| drivers off after 39 hours in a week to avoid having them
| classified as full time.
|
| I'm expecting this to increase fares, but currently there is a
| lot of room between Uber's fares and traditional taxi fares so
| even if they went up 20 or 30% they would still be a fair bit
| cheaper.
| chronicsunshine wrote:
| The cut off would likely be at 29 hours. Health benefits are
| mandatory at 30 hours+.
| josu wrote:
| It's also going to be pretty bad when an employee-driver ends
| her shift 1 hour away from home and she has to drive back
| without the ability to make any extra money.
| lupire wrote:
| They can end their shift before that last ride, or drive for
| another company.
| kube-system wrote:
| Maybe it's a good time to make a new rideshare startup that
| _actually_ treats drivers like independent contractors.
| mandelbrotwurst wrote:
| It might increase fares, although I'm wondering if that effect
| might be mitigated somewhat as drivers simply move hours worked
| whatever the cap is to some competing platform like Lyft.
|
| My hope is that we'll eventually get to the point where we'll
| be able stand up a decentralized alternative that will allow us
| to cut out the Uber middleman.
| miketery wrote:
| It'd be interesting to look at pricing by city. I bet they
| implement predatory pricing, i.e. undercut in small markets to
| crush competition, then raise prices.
|
| Regardless in NYC Ubers tend to be about the same or more
| expensive during normal hours. And significantly more expensive
| during peak times. How much of the surge pricing goes towards
| the drivers pay? I'd wager margins are excellent for Uber
| during surge pricing.
|
| There will come a day when each city will operate it's own
| system to facilitate app based taxis (will be on some standard
| protocol), and Uber a central entity out of SF won't be
| competitive or will be taxed out. Why let an entity extract X%
| of each ride out of its economy? Not worth it.
| sethhochberg wrote:
| In NYC, your Uber driver is professionally licensed as a
| taxi/limousine driver and driving a vehicle that is
| registered as a for-hire vehicle. I'd bet this alone helps
| close the cost gap between rideshare and taxi, since there's
| nothing "rideshare" about it really - you're still paying for
| a professional driver with licensing costs, vehicle
| registration costs, extra insurances, sometimes even vehicle
| modifications, etc.
|
| These debates about Uber/Lyft/etc employment status always
| seem to omit that there are two very distinct classes of
| people finding work with these services - one group is doing
| it part time in their personal vehicles, and the other group
| is doing it full-time in commercial vehicles. The interests
| of those two groups don't necessarily align.
| intothev01d wrote:
| Thought for Uber. License the software they already have
| (maybe at a certain rate and/or percentage of revenue) to the
| businesses and/or governments and let them handle the
| employee side of things
| heavyset_go wrote:
| There are a dozen or so of such platforms like this that
| already exist.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _I 'm expecting this to increase fares, but currently there
| is a lot of room between Uber's fares and traditional taxi
| fares so even if they went up 20 or 30% they would still be a
| fair bit cheaper._
|
| In almost every place I've been to in the US in the last few
| years, Uber has not had competitive prices at all. They did
| back in ~2014, but their rates have been higher than yellow
| cabs and taxi services for a while now.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| FWIW, this is not my experience at all. As just one example,
| I was late to a wedding event in Phoenix shortly before the
| pandemic, was about to call an Uber ($35), and decided to
| take the taxi that had just pulled up to the hotel to save a
| minute. My total metered cost was something like $80.
|
| The only place I've been where this is true is NYC, which
| have piled regulations onto Uber (specifically and
| professionally licensed drivers, registered vehicles, etc) to
| the point that it seems to have closed the cost gap with
| taxis (who of course are also subject to these regulations).
| That is to say, Uber the company operates in New York, but it
| doesn't operate "Uber the ridesharing service", from an
| economic perspective.
|
| OTOH, I don't have a ton of data points, since even at price
| parity taxis offer worse service, less accountability, less
| traceability (eg for lost items), worse incentives, less
| price transparency, etc etc
| jandrese wrote:
| I live in an area where the cab service was especially
| expensive, so it probably helps Uber. In the old days it was
| $25 to travel the 4 miles between my house and the airport.
| Lyft is closer to half of that last time I used it.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| We used to suffer (and yes I mean suffer) with Super
| Shuttle to the airport and back. Rideshare was cheaper,
| direct, and faster. I used the savings to tip the driver an
| extra $10 I was so pleased about not being driven all over
| the county before coming home.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| Uber is such a better experience that I'm willing to pay a
| slight premium just to never sit in a taxi again.
| swozey wrote:
| In my experience nowadays Uber drivers are just Taxi drivers
| who started Ubering in their own cars. I was thinking the
| other day how I used to get mints and water bottles and maybe
| a conversation. I get that about 5-10% of the time nowadays.
| I started using Black more often because I've taken dates in
| some Ubers that were practically falling apart, I'm worried
| about our lives in some of them along with some crazy
| driving.
|
| Also nowhere near the rudeness of cabbies but they HATE only
| having to drive a 5-20 blocks to take you between
| neighborhoods. Always hoping for that 30 mile ride.
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| I mean the issue there is compensation. You won't pay more
| than $X for that super short ride, but for the driver, they
| just went 5 minutes out to pick you up, and now only get
| paid for 5 minutes of driving. That ride costs $Y but you
| would complain about paying that...
|
| Just can't seem to please every customer...
| flerchin wrote:
| Look I really don't care what their arrangements are. Can I get
| someone to drive me to the airport from an app? Great, I'll pay
| what it charges. If the law says they have to do X and Y for
| those workers, I expect those costs to be passed along to me, and
| I'll gladly pay them.
| ajkjk wrote:
| Would love to see the whole concept of 'employees' blasted away
| and replaced with something more flexible.
| minimuffins wrote:
| Since I'm in the employee class and not the employing class, I
| would like to see the opposite.
| ajkjk wrote:
| I mean, me too, but it's insane that it's a binary where you
| either "are a contractor" or "are an employee". if you took
| this framework away and replaced it with a more flexible one
| (ideally decoupled from healthcare..) people would invent all
| kinds of other mutually beneficial relations.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Everyone knows that they are workers, right? Not just random
| workers that do something else every day, workers on their own
| devices but workers for a company and they works the way that
| company says.
|
| Why not start from here and work on the employment laws to allow
| for the flexibility or whatever works for that kind of
| employment?
|
| Why pretend that an Uber driver is a businessmen that may
| actually expend his/her business or go through other company
| stages? Obviously that's not happening, therefore they should
| have the rights and obligations of a worker, not a business.
| briandear wrote:
| > Obviously that's not happening
|
| Do we know that to be true?
| mrtksn wrote:
| Yes, for all the gig jobs that I'm aware of.
|
| If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a
| duck, then it probably is a duck.
|
| Last time I checked, Uber wouldn't let you simply fulfil your
| duties of transporting people the way you find fit, for
| example. It's really not a B2B relationship in any meaningful
| way.
|
| For those who do, sure. They are not gig workers, they are
| contractors.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| The issue is the exact same thing applies to your plumber. So
| either you owe him decades of back pay and healthcare or it is
| OK to hire people for a job and not keep them permanently...
| mrtksn wrote:
| My plumber can fix my pipes however he wants. He is a sole
| trader, I will pay him for his service.
|
| If I sign a contract with him to go around other houses and
| make him fix the pipes the way I see fit, for example, using
| only black tape and stamp my logo on it, I receive the
| payments from the customers and pay him, he is my employee.
| People are not hiring him, they hire me and I employ him to
| do the job.
|
| It's not even a marketplace, it's just me who finds the
| customers and the plumbers.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| So, I actually think the directions you give the plumber
| are MORE specific. I won't accept sewage in my drinking
| water. I don't care if my Uber driver takes third street or
| 4th avenue.
|
| But that's not really the point here.
|
| The point here is that there used to be a pretty well
| defined line between the self employed and employees.
| That's not the case anymore.
|
| So we either spend decades making ever more complex
| unenforceable rules, and pretending taxi drivers deserve
| more/less from their jobs than (say) plumbers. Or we man up
| and stop pretending this makes sense and use a different
| system.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Not at all, giving that kind instructions to the plumber
| is like telling the Uber driver not to hit and run women
| and children. You don't give instructions on the core job
| competences, if you do, you are a teacher not a client or
| employer.
| mattm wrote:
| I think really what is needed is a new employment
| classification to deal with gig workers. It's clear that
| they're somewhere in the middle between an employee and
| contractor/freelancer.
| junar wrote:
| This actually exists: it's called "statutory employee". But
| according to current regulations, only a few specific types
| of workers can be classified this way.
|
| https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-
| employe...
| topkai22 wrote:
| Definitely, although the legislative slog that would present
| makes me believe it'll be tough to get there.
|
| Part of the Uber/Lyft "ickiness" factor is that you have a
| giant company that has defined a "contracting" relationship
| with 100s of thousands of individuals. That is big power and
| capcity differential. Its not unreasonable to expect that the
| gig service companies be required to provide more services
| for their drivers than, say, local independent window washer
| who contracts individually with many businesses. Automatic
| tax payments, minimum wage for callouts and depreciation
| payments for self provided equipment are not unreasonble past
| a certain scale point.
|
| That being said, the people I've known personally who have
| drove for Uber/Lyft (around 4, so a small number admitadly)
| really were doing it just for a bit of extra cash on the side
| and would not have wanted or been able to be an employee of
| Uber/Lyft.
| randomsearch wrote:
| Why should the gig economy even be a thing? It seems really
| great for the companies (make huge amounts of money), pretty
| great for users (cheap taxis, cheap accommodation), and
| absolutely terrible for most others - whether that's the
| drivers (I'm sure some are happy, but the fact is the pay
| absolutely stinks, which is how the companies want it) or
| people suffering from increased traffic (Uber) or the
| disturbance of community (Airbnb).
|
| It's just an incredible feat of mental acrobatics that hacker
| news convinces itself that the gig economy must be a good
| thing and must exist and it's the government that's behind,
| rather than the more obvious conclusion that _we have worker
| protections for a reason_ and these companies are not
| "disrupting" anything other than employment laws that protect
| the exploitation of workers, and other laws that protect
| wider society.
|
| Just because some says it is "tech" doesn't meant it's good
| or we have to support it. Just feels like massive groupthink
| or lack of experience of the reality on the ground for most
| people.
| noarchy wrote:
| Though not quite the same scene as gig work, the matter of
| classification has long been an issue in the tech scene, at least
| where I am in Canada. That said, I think some clamping-down has
| occurred of late. Recruiters used to openly solicit
| 'incorporated' developers, despite the actual working conditions
| being almost entirely equivalent to that of an employee: hours
| set by the employer, requirements to be on-site, often sitting
| beside full time employees, etc.
| jeremynixon wrote:
| Instead of ensuring that health care benefits are independent of
| corporate attachments, Marty Walsh continues to destroy useful
| distinctions in a system that congress refuses to appropriately
| reform. Sad.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Interesting how pre-Uber, nobody in the (medallion) taxi business
| was an employee either.
|
| But going against it would have probably upset some local
| donators. Now that it's "evil big tech" it's fashionable to bash
| on it.
| JJMcJ wrote:
| That switch (cabbies leasing cabs rather than working for cab
| companies) happened in 80s. Before that they were employees,
| and in big cities often unionized.
| jrsj wrote:
| And we all know tech companies & their investors don't give
| money to politicians
|
| /s
| wutbrodo wrote:
| From the parent comment:
|
| > But going against it would have probably upset some *local*
| donators
|
| In what way is it sensible to classify big tech as a _local_
| donor? Hell, the very term itself implies very wide reach.
| jrsj wrote:
| The implication seemed to be that it was somehow
| unreasonable to either see big tech as evil (which imo it
| often is) and suggested that they were somehow less
| politically influential or protected than local taxi
| businesses.
|
| In my opinion the opposite is true. Uber (and big tech
| generally) is often worse than what it's replacing, and a
| hell of a lot more powerful politically. They don't just
| take advantage of laws or have laws that favor them, they
| blatantly ignore laws with little to no consequence. There
| _was_ some negative attention to taxis before Uber even
| existed, but because the problem was on a much smaller
| scale not much attention was paid to it.
| Retric wrote:
| It's not that simple, many Taxi drivers are classified as
| employees. https://www.edd.ca.gov/pdf_pub_ctr/de231tc.pdf
|
| Uber is very much treating drivers like employees in ways Taxi
| companies don't. For example, all trips are through Uber as
| drivers don't advertise their services. Dismissing people based
| on User feedback is another.
|
| It's clearly somewhat debatable where Uber falls on the line,
| but if you're basing it on the Taxi industry Uber drivers are
| on the employee side of the spectrum.
| JJMcJ wrote:
| Example: at least a few years ago Uber forbade drivers to
| make trips that returned to the original location. Not sure
| why, but there are certainly legitimate scenarios. For
| instance, drive to grandma's senior residence, pick her up,
| back to your apartment for a family event.
| pram wrote:
| I mean there were plenty of stories about how predatory the
| medallion system was too, before Uber. Drivers were essentially
| debt serfs.
| ericbarrett wrote:
| The medallion system in e.g. NYC is a state-run franchise, and
| until Uber the medallions were an investment unto themselves.
| Many of the drivers were formal employees of the medallion
| owners (not to say that labor abuse and political shenanigans
| didn't exist, of course).
| marcinzm wrote:
| To me a medallion taxi driver is a lot more of an independent
| contractor than an uber driver. They both drive a car but the
| former has a lot more control over their day to day activities.
| Assuming they owned the medallion rather than working for
| someone else who did.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >Assuming they owned the medallion rather than working for
| someone else who did.
|
| That assumption would be wrong 99.9% of the time in NYC pre-
| Uber/Lyft.
| eplanit wrote:
| Biden wants to expand labor unions, so this isn't a surprise.
| llboston wrote:
| Not surprised. Marty Walsh is a former Union boss.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marty_Walsh_(politician)
| MR4D wrote:
| I think there should be an immediate opt-out of this - if you own
| your own LLC, S-Corp, etc, then it should be explicit under the
| law that any work you do using that entity is a contractor to any
| other entity.
| mjevans wrote:
| A progressive labor department and policy would at least require
| a proportion of benefits based on a proportion of a full time
| job. An even more progressive policy would be to make all non-
| wage benefits provided by the government, so that the contract
| between employee and employer could be simplified and the jobs
| field level with lower resistance for taking new opportunity.
| briandear wrote:
| That shifts the costs on to me, the taxpayer, but not
| necessarily an Uber customer, for non-wage benefits. Why should
| I, the non-Ubering taxpayer have to pay benefits for an Uber
| driver? That isn't "progressive," that's shifting a cost from
| the two people engaged in a contractual transaction to everyone
| who doesn't necessarily have any interest in the transaction.
|
| If an Uber driver needs health insurance, that cost would be
| part of the calculus of deciding to drive for Uber. If the
| government provided it, the taxes required would also become
| part of that calculus. The deadweight loss from taxation can't
| be ignored. Not to mention it isn't my job to provide non-wage
| benefits to support Uber or a driver. That's between them.
| Literally not my problem. If the Uber driver isn't taxed
| proportional to their consumption of benefits, then I the
| taxpayer am forced to subsidize the profit of both Uber and the
| driver. If the driver has to pay for his own non-wage benefits,
| than that would be part of their determination of accepting the
| offered wage or not.
| alistairSH wrote:
| The problem in the current scenario is the drivers needs
| health insurance, but Uber isn't supplying it (nor are they
| paying a high enough wage to buy insurance on the open
| market), so tax-payers are stuck footing the bill anyways.
| mjevans wrote:
| This is also what's happening with //part time// workers,
| and anyone else who isn't getting a 'full job'. As another
| reply mentioned, cliffs (cutoffs) incentivize gaming the
| cutoff.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Yup. The 30-hour (I think that's the value) cliff for
| insurance wasn't a brilliant idea.
|
| I don't know the best (most efficient for society)
| solution, but I'm pretty sure phasing out the tax write-
| off for employer-provided health insurance is a good
| start.
| bumby wrote:
| > _Why should I, the non-Ubering taxpayer have to pay
| benefits for an Uber driver?_
|
| I think the argument is that there are certain public goods
| that should be included in the social contract and funded by
| taxes rather than via employers as part of the social
| contract. We can maybe disagree on what those specific public
| goods should be, but it doesn't absolve one from helping to
| pay for them if one wants to be a member of that society.
|
| For example, public schools has been decided to be a public
| good paid for, in large part, by property taxes in the U.S.
| My sister does not get to opt out of that portion of taxes
| despite not having children. While it would be nice to be
| able to unilaterally choose each and every tax payment that
| we want to contribute to, I don't think that is feasible in a
| complex society. I would, however, like to see a simple chart
| on everybody's tax return that shows what portion of money
| they pay to each program at filing time in the hopes that it
| would lead to more informed decisions at the ballot box.
| clairity wrote:
| yes, discontinuities (benefits cutoffs) lead to gaming. i'm
| heavily in favor of removing discontinuities like this, where
| entities are incentivized to essentially cheat others (i.e.,
| promotes greed). for instance, every tax policy (rates,
| credits, deductions, etc.) should be continuous functions
| rather than a set of cliffs.
| jameslk wrote:
| Self-employed workers are offered several huge tax benefits by
| being self-employed:
|
| 1. Writing off business expenses (gas, vehicle wear and tear,
| etc)
|
| 2. The Qualified Business Income deduction of 20%
|
| 3. Larger contributions to tax-favorable retirement funds
|
| Employment eliminates this in addition to adding several
| additional taxes (workers comp, unemployment, etc). These
| expenses are passed down to the employee in the form of
| reductions in wages.
|
| So the implications of making large populations of self employed
| workers actually employed has great tax benefits for the
| government, at the expense of the worker.
| gher-shyu3i wrote:
| Shhh, don't spoil the socialist utopia with reality.
| burlesona wrote:
| This is just such a weird fight. As someone who freelanced for
| long stretches of time, I think there are a lot of positives
| about freelance / gig work, and I also think that the majority of
| people who take these jobs understand the position they're in and
| are happy with it. They chose to freelance and drive for Uber for
| reasons.
|
| The legit concern is whether Uber or any other freelance company
| misleads its gig workers on their earnings, and to me the best
| solution to that is not to force reclassify them as employees or
| prohibit gig work, but to regulate transparency in compensation.
| For example, require freelance employers to include expense
| tracking and calculate workers earnings after expenses. That by
| itself would fix most of the problems for the percentage of gig
| workers who don't realize they're extracting depreciation from
| their car more so than getting paid by Uber.
|
| The other issues of healthcare, etc., the US needs to solve at a
| societal level, not an employer level. I think humans have a
| right to health care. But I don't think people have a right to a
| _particular_ job, nor an entitlement for that employer to provide
| a _particular_ mix of benefits.
|
| This idea that we need to provide our social contract / safety
| net exclusively via employers is so strange to me, compared to
| simply owning that if we want these to be rights of our citizens
| then the government should be providing them as tax-paid
| services.
| [deleted]
| bpodgursky wrote:
| It makes sense if you realize that the current US Labor
| Secretary is a product of union politics (he was as union
| leader, and most of the political goal of classifying gig
| workers as employees is to make it easier for the AFL/CIO and
| Teamsters to unionize them.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Good.
| pempem wrote:
| Sure that may be true, but to what end? To allow workers to
| ask for better rights rather than being at the whim of a
| microeconomy created by a company like Uber or others with
| their own control over "surges" and "down times"?
|
| (new account, long time reader, victim of poorly self-managed
| passwords)
| jacobolus wrote:
| The previous secretary of labor (the late Justice Scalia's
| son) was an anti-worker ideologue who did everything possible
| to undermine/block the department's mission, including
| helping firms to not provide health benefits, steal workers'
| overtime pay, discriminate against women and minorities,
| avoid occupational safety rules, unlawfully block union
| organizing, etc.
|
| It is a _good thing_ for the leader of a government
| department to have ideological goals broadly aligned with the
| mission of the institution.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| This is also true, it but does not change the original
| thesis.
| minimuffins wrote:
| > US Labor Secretary is a product of union politics
|
| The man heading state labor policy is a "product" of the
| labor movement. Is that supposed to be a scandal?
|
| > easier for the AFL/CIO and Teamsters to unionize them
|
| Good.
| svieira wrote:
| It's not an unmitigated good - unions are just as capable
| of becoming "another boss" as any other human institution.
| Simply supporting "unions" without asking "what kinds of
| unions" is opting people into being harmed coming and
| going.
| minimuffins wrote:
| Unions are good inasmuch they allow labor to bargain with
| capital by underwriting demands for better pay and
| conditions with the threat of work stoppage.
|
| If unions aren't doing that because they are compromised
| or sclerotic or whatever, then they aren't much use. Who
| would argue.
| briandear wrote:
| > For example, require freelance employers to include expense
| tracking and calculate workers earnings after expenses.
|
| Should that be up to the freelancer? Ever Uber driver I've ever
| known knows their costs down to the cent. That's what
| freelancing is all about.
|
| What would be more valuable is required financial literacy
| courses as a condition of high school graduation. And
| restricting predatory student loans. But the Big University
| lobby would stomp that effort out quickly. Education has had
| higher inflation than even health costs -- due almost entirely
| to the funny money from essentially unlimited student loan
| availability.
| nerdponx wrote:
| _This idea that we need to provide our social contract / safety
| net exclusively via employers is so strange to me, compared to
| simply owning that if we want these to be rights of our
| citizens then the government should be providing them as tax-
| paid services._
|
| This is the big problem that no policymaker wants to address,
| because there is a huge amount of money being made off of the
| status quo. And decades of bad-faith "big government" rhetoric
| plus "starve the beast" policy have soured the public on it.
| acdha wrote:
| > This is the big problem that no policymaker wants to
| address, because there is a huge amount of money being made
| off of the status quo.
|
| The people trying to pass things like Medicare for all would
| disagree with the "no policymaker" part. Not a majority but
| they exist and are generally vocal about mentioning this
| exact point.
| jimmygrapes wrote:
| In general this is a result of the mindset which says "I know
| better than you how your earnings should be allocated" combined
| with the idea that employers are much easier to regulate top
| down (through regulations, fines, licensure, etc.) than
| individual employees are. Taxation/governmental revenue boards
| or organizations struggle as is to keep individuals honest, and
| adding the burdens and complexities of business income/expense
| reporting to individuals is just begging for more
| (unintentional) disconnect between what they expect to receive
| vs what an individual expects to pay. Not sure either direction
| (employee vs contractor) is a good solution here. More likely a
| simplification of the system is needed.
| agogdog wrote:
| This isn't about outlawing freelancing, it's outlawing the
| practice of freelancing as a method to reduce benefits for
| people who would otherwise be considered full-time workers.
|
| I agree that there are bigger problems at a societal level, but
| it does make sense to go after employers that are intentionally
| abusing the system. It's starting to get to a scale where it
| impacts entire sectors of the economy right now... if universal
| healthcare were passed tomorrow it would still take quite
| amount of time for it to exist. They're related problems, but
| there's no reason to not solve one while we're figuring out the
| other.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Thing is most of the regulatory infrastructure you describe
| already exists in employment law. The broad societal proposals
| you describe would necessitate a radical reappraisal of
| contract law and a lot of other things. To use the popular
| 'ship of state' metaphor, it would be sort of like dramatically
| reconfiguring an aircraft carrier while it's at sea.
| grok22 wrote:
| I guess that is what is happening here...fixing any problems
| using the existing model instead of trying to figure out new
| ways of fixing the problems to fix the new model of
| employment in some industries.
| jjk166 wrote:
| We elect lawmakers, not lawkeepers. It is their job to update
| the laws to keep pace with society, not restrict society so
| existing laws remain useful. In the 'ship of state' metaphor,
| we're never going to be closer to a drydock and we need a
| hospital ship not an aircraft carrier.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I heartily agree, but the 2 and 4 year timeframes and
| existing imbalances in the current electoral system
| (gerrymandering, wildly varying senatorial electorates
| etc), make that terribly difficult to achieve in practice.
| dragontamer wrote:
| Coming out of high school, one of my first jobs (during my
| college years) was selling knives as a gig. Since we weren't
| employees, they couldn't necessarily say "come in on these
| hours", but there were meetings scheduled at the beginning of
| the day (where we'd get the next list of customers to call
| and/or sell knives to), among other stuff.
|
| -------
|
| There are also lots of Barbers who have to basically come in at
| certain hours to keep the barbershop open. Barbers however, are
| largely "gig" work by technicality. You're technically an
| independent contractor.
|
| Etc. etc.
|
| These sorts of positions are only "gig" because the companies
| are exploiting those workers. You really can't choose your
| hours in sales and/or barbershops. You gotta come in when the
| customers come in. You gotta close up shop and/or open up in
| the morning, (kinda like open / close employees / managers).
|
| But they're "gig" because the companies want to avoid paying
| social security taxes, among other taxes associated with proper
| employment.
|
| ----------
|
| Freelancing probably is a "proper gig". That's not the segment
| of the economy that people are talking about. There are true
| gig workers. And then there's the huge number of "non-employee
| / gig-work" where its just a collection of companies avoiding
| social security taxes.
| abunuwas wrote:
| That's a good point. One suspects tho that governments are
| more interested in getting the "proper freelancers" to be
| treated as employees, since they usually have higher earnings
| and therefore offer higher revenue possibilities. The UK is
| going through a similar reform process right now and lots of
| people are being classed as employees and therefore taking
| massive pay cuts. End the end, you end up with temporary
| workers who're taxed as employees but have almost none of the
| benefits of permanent employees (in the UK at least).
| dragontamer wrote:
| In the USA: the government gets its cut no matter what.
|
| Employees are taxed 6.2% by the government, and 6.2% to the
| Employer.
|
| Gig workers are taxed 12.4% by the government ("self
| employed" tax). So in US-law, the government gets its money
| either way.
|
| That's why a "gig-worker in name only" is such an advantage
| to companies in the USA. It allows companies to cut out
| 6.2% of its taxes and shove it to the gig-worker instead.
| google234123 wrote:
| I wouldn't mind changing this.
| adolph wrote:
| The total cost of an employee isn't different to the
| employer in either case. For any X which is the cost of
| an employee .124X goes to govt. When .062 is sent to govt
| directly from the employer the govt is effectively hiding
| .5 of tax liability from the employee.
|
| Gig worker sees the whole .124, which is probably why
| govt wants more classed as employee.
|
| TANSTAAFL
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > There are true gig workers. And then there's the huge
| number of "non-employee / gig-work" where its just a
| collection of companies avoiding social security taxes.
|
| That doesn't make a lot of sense when the employee still has
| to pay the tax. Nobody is avoiding it. The claim that
| employers pay half is just a feel-good claim with no economic
| basis.
|
| There is no real difference between paying $10.62 to a
| contractor who has to pay $0.62 more in social security tax
| and paying $10 to an employee and $0.62 to the social
| security administration. And the employee would (all else
| equal) choose a job paying $10 as an employee over a job
| paying <$10.62 as a contractor, so the companies hiring
| contractors have to pay that much more or offer some other
| countervailing benefit to be competitive.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > There is no real difference between paying $10.62 to a
| contractor who has to pay $0.62 more in social security tax
| and paying $10 to an employee and $0.62 to the social
| security administration. And the employee would (all else
| equal) choose a job paying $10 as an employee over a job
| paying <$10.62 as a contractor, so the contractors have to
| pay more or offer some other countervailing benefit to be
| competitive.
|
| Except the ads posted in your local bulletin board /
| signposts are "Want a job for $10/hr?!??"
|
| So what happens in practice, is that the gig-worker is paid
| $10 (costing the company $10), vs the employee who'd be
| paid $10 (costing the company $10.62 + other bits, like
| health care and various insurances)
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Which lasts until you send them the documents showing the
| real numbers and they figure it out.
|
| Give people some credit. The education system isn't
| perfect but people can do basic arithmetic. Or if they
| can't then maybe solve that instead of this.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > Or if they can't then maybe solve that instead of this.
|
| Why not both? If a problem is identified with our
| culture, its not exactly a strong argument to say "Well,
| here's another problem I'm more concerned about".
|
| All I'll say is: lets solve both problems simultaneously.
| There's many problems in the world, and we should work on
| solving as many of them as possible.
|
| I've got friends (who were with me in that knife salesman
| gig work) who didn't understand the difference at all, no
| matter how many times I explained it to them. People's
| brains just don't work the way you say. Sure, I
| understood the difference and how to do my own taxes, but
| not everyone has that capability unfortunately.
| coredog64 wrote:
| > The claim that employers pay half is just a feel-good
| claim with no economic basis.
|
| Can you expand on this? Is it that employers don't really
| contribute an equal amount to the employee withholding? Or
| is it an acknowledgment that absent this withholding, one
| would expect the money to show up in the regular paycheck?
| conductr wrote:
| Wanted to chime in with my $0.02 regarding barbershops. My
| family owned a salon growing up. I'm sure you're right and
| abuses exist. But in my experience, the shop is a landlord.
| The independent contractor rents a chair. They can come/go at
| will. Having a schedule is useful so not everyone is there
| the same time fighting over walk in traffic. People regularly
| no show and that's ok too.
| sbarzowski wrote:
| I agree.
|
| Just wanted to note that there are systems which are not tax-
| paid and still avoid the problems that you have in the US.
|
| E.g. in Switzerland health insurance is private, but the
| variables that can be used to determine the price are
| regulated. The employers cannot directly provide health
| insurance as a benefit (some provide a cash supplement, but
| that's effectively a higher salary). This way big companies
| don't get preferential treatment. You can be a freelancer and
| have the exact same health insurance as people in big tech.
| matsemann wrote:
| Freelancing or being a contractor cannot be compared to being a
| gig worker. All discussion based on "I prefer being a
| contractor instead of employed" and then extrapolating that to
| gig workers is meaningless. For instance, a gig worker can't
| set their own rates, choose clients, no upwards mobility, often
| in an exploitable position etc.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| Ok, but the legislation in CA that was aimed at uber already
| negatively impacts me and my work as a freelancer consultant
| in a variety of ways and ironically uber is now exempt.
|
| In my small shop of guys, we ended up having to all
| independently form our own corporations just so that we can
| share work amongst eachother to better serve the various
| clients we each bring in without having to do stupid things
| like write 3 separate contracts with the client. We don't
| meet the new ABC test because we all perform a similar scope,
| so whereas before, it was trivial to just write a 1099 for
| eachother at the end of the year, now we have to have all the
| corporate infrastructure which is a huge PITA.
|
| It's not unlike the gun laws in CA... People that don't like
| guns and know nothing about them write meaningless and often
| incredibly arbitrary legislation that doesn't address the
| problem they are really meaning to address but makes things a
| pain for everyone else.
|
| So, I don't really buy the argument that these types of
| complaints should just be dismissed. The reality is it's
| really hard to target "gig" work very specifically without
| roping in a BUNCH of other contractors that aren't really of
| interest but will have to comply with the law anyway.
| IX-103 wrote:
| I think there's a factor that people are missing when they
| try to define these gig workers: marketability -- who
| directly benefits from the reputation from customers if a
| worker does a good job?
|
| If the worker does a good job does that impact their
| marketability -- enable repeat customers and advertising
| for them specifically (such as via word of mouth) or does
| it reflect more on the company they are "contracted" to?
|
| In the case of Uber and Lift and Instacart, the platform
| practically prohibits customers from preferring certain
| providers that have provided good service in the past, so
| all of the reputation goes to the platform provider. Things
| would be a lot fuzzier if these platforms provided matching
| services and would depend on how competitive these markets
| effectively are. The market for transportation from point A
| to point B with pickup in the next 10 minutes is inherently
| limited by providers that can be at point A in the next 10
| minutes, so this market may not be competitive for all
| sources and destinations.
|
| In general, contractors should not be interacting with
| their hiring company's customers on the company's behalf.
| Only employees should represent the company, since the
| benefits of those interactions reflect on the company and
| not on the worker performing the interaction.
| awillen wrote:
| Couldn't agree more. If it were up to me, we'd get rid of the
| minimum wage, let employers pay whatever they want, and then
| provide UBI to make sure people have their basic needs
| fulfilled.
|
| We came up with this agreement as a society that people should
| be able to survive and have their basic needs met, and then we
| forced businesses to actually make it happen through minimum
| wage (and to a lesser degree insurance, pre-Obamacare). If we
| came up with it as a society, our society (as represented by
| our elected government) should be the one actually charged with
| making that agreement a reality.
| lutorm wrote:
| No one's saying you can't freelance. But there are some pretty
| clear rules about what you should be able to do in order to
| really be a freelancer: choose which jobs you take, set your
| own hours, decide how you want to do the job, how you dress,
| etc.
|
| What's not OK is when the company wants all the advantages of
| having contractors but still wants to dictate all these things.
| briandear wrote:
| The rules around that are pretty clear already. And in the
| case of Uber, you not only can drive when you want, you can
| drive for multiple providers at the same time.
| paulpauper wrote:
| I think uber has rules about declining rides that may not
| be as profitable despite being in close vicinity.
| gshulegaard wrote:
| I think you might be more in agreement with the original
| comment than how I interpreted your comment.
|
| Personally, I think OP is calling out that most of the issues
| with current Uber (and similar companies) is the asymmetry of
| information. Only Uber knows where all the riders are, what
| they are paying, and where they are going. They also are the
| only ones that know where all the drivers are and how much
| they are expecting to be paid. This information asymmetry
| allows them to expose just enough information to both rider
| and driver to facilitate the outcome Uber wants. In my mind,
| when Uber (or anyone else) starts controlling the flow of
| information they cease to be simply a platform/market place.
|
| The majority of issues (in my mind) resolve themselves when
| this data asymmetry is removed. Driver's have more freedom of
| choice if they can see all available fares rather than just a
| yes/no prompt on an individual basis, for example.
|
| I also think there is far more gray area to these types of
| employment relationships that is generally acceptable when it
| comes to things like how you do the job, how you dress, etc.
| For example, if you are an independent delivery driver but
| enter into a contract with FedEx it is acceptable for FedEx
| to stipulate that you wear a FedEx uniform while delivering
| FedEx parcels. If you don't find that stipulation acceptable,
| you can decline the contract. Likewise, if FedEx discovers
| you aren't following contractual obligations they can
| terminate the relationship.
| tqi wrote:
| I think it's less clear than one would expect.
|
| What does set your own hours look like? If I hire someone to
| mow my lawn, and want it to happen while I'm at the store, am
| I setting that person's hours?
|
| What does decide how you want to do the job look like? If I
| specifically want them to use an electric mower for noise
| reasons, am I deciding how they do the job for them?
|
| Ultimately I feel like we are trying to shoehorn a
| fundamentally new model into preexisting paradigms, and as a
| result we waste time haggling over who is what. It feels like
| instead we should just say this is a new thing, and create a
| new set of laws to regulate it in the way that we think is
| best.
| dheera wrote:
| > want it to happen while I'm at the store, am I setting
| that person's hours?
|
| > If I specifically want them to use an electric mower for
| noise reasons
|
| The fundamental difference is you, as a customer, can
| _want_ these things, but the person doing the mower is
| self-employed and they can negotiate and figure out whether
| or not they can come to a mutual agreement with you. They
| could also just simply not come to an agreement with you
| and the worst that would happen is they don 't get your
| money, and move on with their work and life.
|
| It's different than if there was Uber Mowing Co. that
| managed them and forced them to forgo their lunch and mow
| your lawn while you were at the store or be fired.
| whitexn--g28h wrote:
| Uber mowing co does not manage them or fire them. They
| are a marketplace where a large amount of customers who
| trust Uber to negotiate prices on their behalf the cost
| of a ride from A to B and have that trip made available
| to willing drivers.
| [deleted]
| hellomyguys wrote:
| None of the your examples are relevant to how Uber and Lyft
| treats their employees.
| Bukhmanizer wrote:
| I agree that we are dealing with a new paradigm and should
| treat it that way.
|
| But I don't think your examples are relevant. The customer
| should be able to request as much as they want on the gig
| worker, as long as there is no middle man employer forcing
| the worker to agree to subpar conditions.
| ska wrote:
| > I agree that we are dealing with a new paradigm and
| should treat it that way.
|
| I don't think it's that clear - it's more like people are
| still arguing about a) is it really a new paradigm and b)
| if so, is it on net enough benefit to be worth doing.
| balls187 wrote:
| > I think it's less clear than one would expect.
|
| In WA State (https://esd.wa.gov/employer-taxes/independent-
| contractors), there is a three part test. If you force
| someone to mow your lawn with specific equipment, and at a
| certain time, they would be en employee; they are not free
| from control.
| synsynack wrote:
| You are not forcing them. Say you post a gig to
| craiglist, I need someone to mow my lawn, with this law
| mower, at this time. Those are the details of the gig
| offer, take it or leave it, and complete it in any way
| that meets the requirements of the gig
| synsynack wrote:
| You are not forcing them if it's mentioned in the gig
| description before the offer is taken: I need someone to
| mow my lawn, with this lawn mower, at this time. Those
| are the details of the gig offer, take it or leave it,
| and complete it in anyway that meets the requirements of
| the gig. No different then I need someone to walk my dog,
| with this leash collar, at this time, and use this
| biodegradable bag. Or should the dog walker bring his own
| leash...
| tqi wrote:
| Hm is there a difference between hiring a person and
| telling them to mow my lawn at 2pm vs choosing a person
| who is only available at 2pm?
| ev1 wrote:
| Neither of these really compare to the part where "If you
| don't accept all jobs assigned to you, we will no longer
| assign jobs to you and remove you from the platform
| entirely, also we are nearly the entire platform - you
| will find <1% of the jobs you previously could anywhere
| else"
| BeetleB wrote:
| There are a bunch of criteria for employee vs gig, but the
| law isn't written prescriptively - so the person's work for
| you satisfies some of one and some of the other, then
| someone will have to decide how much control the contractor
| has over the working conditions (the greater the control,
| the more likely the classification of "contractor").
|
| Generally, contractors should have expertise, use their own
| equipment, decide how the job should be done, and have a
| risk of losing money.
|
| If you insist they use your lawnmower, that's a very quick
| employee classification (from what I've experienced). My
| gardener refuses to use any soil/mulch/whatever we own -
| likely for this reason. I've worked with real estate folks,
| and when they do a flip, they're very careful _not_ to buy
| raw materials for the contractors lest some of them sue to
| be classified as an employee and collect benefits. They 'll
| even use SW to set up an order with Home Depot, which
| emails the contractor's a simple way to place that order at
| HD and pick up, and then they'll ask the contractor to add
| the raw materials cost to the invoice. But they will _not_
| buy the materials for them.
|
| Also, if I screw up my current job, I'll merely get fired.
| My employer cannot demand I repay wages (generally). If
| your situation with your contractor is comparable, he will
| be classified as an employee. They _must_ take on risk of
| losing money if they negotiate poorly or screw up a job.
|
| > It feels like instead we should just say this is a new
| thing, and create a new set of laws to regulate it in the
| way that we think is best.
|
| I don't think anyone is disagreeing with this.
| grok22 wrote:
| As someone who doesn't have any skin in this game, I too think
| the about the same things. That we are going towards fixing any
| problems by forcing companies to make gig-workers employees
| instead of fixing the systemic problems in the gig-economy in
| other ways. To me having the freedom to freelance while making
| decent money seems to be a tremendous benefit giving people
| lots of flexibility.
| throwaway189262 wrote:
| Most gigs jobs are exploitative.
|
| You're not setting your own rates. You can't choose which rides
| you take. You can't follow your own rules.
|
| Remember when Uber was giving back to back rides to drivers
| that had Lyft driver app installed so they couldn't effectively
| drive for both? That doesn't sound like freelance work to me.
|
| Much of the pay structure is based on hitting a certain number
| of rides per week. So to get "decent" pay rate you need to work
| a certain number of hours.
|
| Sometimes the company even owns your car and leases it to you
| contingent on doing a certain number of rides.
|
| And you have no input on which rides you get once you go
| online.
|
| It's nothing like traditional freelance work. It's more like
| high tech pizza delivery driver. And those workers are all
| considered employees.
| SllX wrote:
| Counter-proposal: move the BLS and OSHA* under Commerce; abolish
| the remainder of the United States Department of Labor.
|
| *Are there any more remaining worthwhile agencies under Labor?
| I'm going from memory here.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| It seems backward that the government, instead of fixing
| government policy and laws that disadvantage independent workers,
| wants to force independent workers to become employees so that
| the government doesn't have to fix anything. It is abdication of
| responsibility for social outcomes.
|
| Many gig workers explicitly do not want to become employees, as
| there are many disadvantages to doing so. In these cases, the
| only people that benefit are the politicians that can go on
| ignoring the real problems.
| duxup wrote:
| What do you imagine " fixing government policy and laws that
| disadvantage independent workers" would be?
| analog31 wrote:
| I'm thinking: Free health care, paid time off, a robust
| safety net, better protections for workplace safety, etc.
| Level the playing field.
| duxup wrote:
| So what is the difference then?
|
| Generally what you're describing is a full time employee...
| that's kinda the thing you didn't seem to like.
| Seattle3503 wrote:
| I think they want the government to provide those, rather
| than employers. If society decides that this is the bare
| minimum someone should have, then society should provide
| it.
| cobaltoxide wrote:
| If they are "independent contractors" then who exactly is
| paying for this time off, etc?
| arrosenberg wrote:
| I'm not sure how it would work for vacations, since it's
| kind of your job as the contractor to earn enough to set
| aside your own vacation time. Parental leave should be
| administered as a public insurance pool that ICs pay into
| through self-employment taxes.
| trentnix wrote:
| _Level the playing field_
|
| Otherwise known as, _redistribute the wealth_.
|
| Heinlein's "bad luck" incoming...
| _vertigo wrote:
| "Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of
| man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded --
| here and there, now and then -- are the work of an
| extremely small minority, frequently despised, often
| condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-
| thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from
| creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a
| society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
|
| This is known as "bad luck."
|
| This quote assumes that what held true for most of
| history holds true today, when machines and computers can
| complete the tasks necessary for ensuring the flourishing
| of our species orders of magnitude more efficiently than
| ever before. Why should we assume that poverty would be
| the normal condition of man today?
| jpadkins wrote:
| > Why should we assume that poverty would be the normal
| condition of man today?
|
| Because if it wasn't for a complex network of trading &
| specialization, we would be in poverty. That network uses
| trade & profits to organize itself. Those machines and
| computers you cite are created and maintained by people
| who are seeking to make themselves wealthy. None of this
| is a given. Free trade and specialization is what gives
| us the abundance we have today. Your average North Korean
| or Venezuelan standard of living is what you would
| observe if you forced people away from free trade &
| specialization.
|
| I don't think people appreciate how delicate supply
| chains are, or how much starving and poverty would happen
| if trade was disrupted.
| analog31 wrote:
| Indeed, but I also think that such a system also depends
| on having a civil society and a number of other things
| that are provided by society as a whole: The entitlement
| of corporations (e.g., liability limitation), the modern
| money system, and a relatively prosperous consumer class
| providing demand for goods and services. We're living on
| top of a huge pile of what can only be described as
| technology.
|
| Consider cell phones. The richest person in the world
| could not have a phone that they can carry in their
| pocket and make a call to another rich friend from
| anywhere in the world, if not for the widespread consumer
| demand that drove the construction of the cell phone
| system.
| francisofascii wrote:
| To use the playing field analogy, leveling the playing
| field could mean one team does not get an unfair
| advantage in the game. I agree the reward for winning or
| losing should not be the same. But winner takes all is
| not good either.
| analog31 wrote:
| Yes, you can call it that. I'm not afraid of that word.
| trentnix wrote:
| I'm not afraid of the word. I'm terrified of its
| outcomes.
|
| But hey, since we've already mortgaged our future so we
| might as well kneecap our present as well.
| akiselev wrote:
| Also known as _people and organizations paying their fair
| share._
|
| Please. I'd love to redistribute my wealth to subsidize
| people's healthcare instead of subsidizing a tiny
| minority's bank account. Because that's what my low tax
| rates are doing right now - that and bombs.
| trentnix wrote:
| Define _fair_. Quantifiably, preferably. At least not in
| some fallacious "when we've reached my desired outcome"
| sort of way.
| xpe wrote:
| Yes, there are many definitions of fair.
|
| One is 'ability to pay':
| https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/ability-to-pay-
| taxation...
|
| > One idea behind "ability to pay" is that those who have
| enjoyed success should be willing to give back a little
| more to the society that helped make that success
| possible.
|
| The idea of 'ability to pay' rubs some people the wrong
| way. On its face, some view it is "take more from the
| rich" without any underlying principle, much less any
| notion of fairness.
|
| However, there is an underling principle that
| (imperfectly) justifies ability-to-pay taxation. It goes
| like this:
|
| 1. People profit from society unequally
|
| 2. This profit is often largely to rule of law and
| societal spending (i.e. public education, infrastructure,
| etc)
|
| 3. Therefore, tax the people who reap the benefits at a
| higher rate
|
| To be fair, a moral philosopher should be prepared to
| defend why a higher _rate_ is warranted -- as opposed to
| simply a higher total amount. I 'm going to skip this
| aspect for now.
|
| There are many ways to implement a tax based on whatever
| fairness criteria you choose. For example:
|
| > Most taxes can be divided into three buckets: taxes on
| what you earn, taxes on what you buy, and taxes on what
| you own.
|
| https://taxfoundation.org/the-three-basic-tax-types/
|
| I'd like to see more public debate about asset versus
| income taxes -- however; tracking assets tends to be
| viewed as more difficult than tracking income.
|
| Also, one could add 'taxes based on what you do' ... but
| these are often called 'fees'; e.g. driver license fees.
| trentnix wrote:
| _1. People profit from society unequally_
|
| Harrison Bergeron's world incoming...
| jessaustin wrote:
| You might want to read something other than YA polemics
| written in the '60s and '70s. I recommend China Mieville.
| trentnix wrote:
| I guess I just didn't think references to Avancs and
| Grindylow and Mosquito people to be all that relevant to
| the discussion. But to your point, I have read some
| Mieville.
| akiselev wrote:
| Easy: the taxation rates introduced by the Revenue Act of
| 1964 with the brackets adjusted for inflation are fair.
| blackearl wrote:
| I'd like everyone taxed to a point that reaches my
| desired outcome.
| flatline wrote:
| Not all wealth redistribution is equal. There are a
| number of areas of wealth disparity I would not mind
| seeing flattened a bit in the interest of societal well-
| being. Some of those would come at my own expense as an
| upper middle class homeowner. A lot would come at the
| expense of the wealthy and corporate tax shelters. You
| don't necessarily need the kind of taxes you see in
| prosperous EU countries to make meaningful improvements
| here.
| xpe wrote:
| I'd like to mention an important argument for some degree
| of wealth distribution:
|
| A skewed wealth distribution monetary has a tendency to
| corrupt both government and markets. Therefore, it is in
| society's interest to prevent high levels of inequality.
| (I'm assuming some flavor of a representative democracy
| paired with some degree of capitalism.)
|
| To some, this feels like a rather blunt instrument. Many,
| of course, advocate for more targeted policies:
| regulation of mergers, inter-generational wealth taxes,
| campaign finance reform. In my view, all of the above
| sound good, in practice, because making progress is hard
| work.
| [deleted]
| osipov wrote:
| >>so that the government doesn't have to fix anything
|
| sounds like you are naive to how the government works
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > It seems backward that the government, instead of fixing
| government policy and laws that disadvantage independent
| workers, wants to force independent workers to become employees
| so that the government doesn't have to fix anything. It is
| abdication of responsibility for social outcomes.
|
| Quite the contrary: the government acts to prevent a ruthless
| race to the bottom as someone who skips e.g. on health
| insurance or on worker protection laws (e.g. daily work time
| maximums) can outcompete someone who sticks to the rules.
|
| Especially with health insurance, the government has to pay the
| tab of those who skip it and then can't pay for the hospital.
|
| > Many gig workers explicitly do not want to become employees,
| as there are many disadvantages to doing so.
|
| The only reason I see why people want to voluntarily go gig
| worker is schedule flexibility - they don't want a regular full
| time or part time schedule because of children, elder care or
| whatever. And for what it's worth employment regulations should
| be made more flexible in that regard, but it must be prevented
| that employers go and abuse it to exploit their workers (e.g.
| by arbitrarily cutting their hours).
| freeone3000 wrote:
| What, specifically, are those disadvantages? And are they
| actually related to employee classification, or are merely
| privileges not usually granted to employees?
| viro wrote:
| When and for how long I work is a pretty big one. Most
| employees don't get to just decide their hours on a whim.
| kube-system wrote:
| When an employer dictates that a worker must work certain
| hours, it is evidence that they are an employee. But, the
| opposite is not true -- employers are not obligated to
| dictate the hours of their employees.
|
| The fact that most employers do dictate hours is a function
| of those job expectations, not their legal employment
| classification.
|
| It _is_ pretty common for mid or senior level white-collar
| salaried jobs to have a decent amount of freedom in working
| hours within what is functionally reasonable for their
| role.
| viro wrote:
| > It is pretty common for mid or senior level white-
| collar salaried jobs to have a decent amount of freedom
| in working hours within what is functionally reasonable
| for their role.
|
| That is so disconnected from reality for the majority of
| American workers that you might have broken me. But lets
| start with salaried workers have a job .. Their employers
| don't care what time you work as long as you get that job
| done. How exactly would that work for Uber? quotas? avg
| 2-3 rides and hour or ur fired?
| kube-system wrote:
| Of course -- the majority of Americans are not employed
| in mid or senior level white-collar salaried jobs. Uber
| drivers are definitely not in this classification.
|
| I am saying, classification as an employee does _not_
| require Uber to change _anything_ about their
| expectations of their workers ' work frequency, duration,
| or schedule. It can remain voluntary just as it is now.
|
| There are currently voluntary hourly jobs that exist, but
| people here are probably less familiar with that concept
| as compared to salaried jobs.
| hagy wrote:
| What if far more drivers want to work 10:00-16:00 than
| are needed? In the current situation, the spot price
| drops and some drivers leave while more riders enter.
|
| As employees, Uber cannot dynamically vary the pay/minute
| rate, especially if it falls below minimum wage combined
| with vehicle/gas reimbursement.
| kube-system wrote:
| Employers can vary the wages of their employees. They
| just can't pay wages that are so low that they violate
| minimum wage law. I don't see an issue.
| viro wrote:
| That doesn't address drivers signing on when they know
| they won't get any rides then just sitting in their drive
| way.
| lupire wrote:
| Nothing is forcing Uber to fix employee hours.
| viro wrote:
| Most Uber drivers I know would find that to be a huge
| negative. but then again thats probably just a difference
| between big urban centers and the rest of the country.
| lupire wrote:
| No one is proposing that so it doesn't matter.
| viro wrote:
| But it will happen tho because if Uber drivers are all
| considered employees they will get minimum wage, which is
| fine. Only issue why exactly wouldn't I go "on duty" only
| when I know there isn't any rides to rank in free cash.
| While I play games on my phone.
| giantg2 wrote:
| For my wife, she can get more hours and higher pay as an
| independent contractor. Part of this is because we get
| insurance through my job. They also give her more autonomy
| than an employee would have.
| itake wrote:
| Off-topic, but do you think its a problem that gig workers
| have no upward mobility? A worker with 10 years of
| experience will be paid exactly the same as a worker with 1
| month.
| adamiscool8 wrote:
| Plenty of employees have no upward mobility either.
| Though with 10 years of positive ratings, I would think
| The Algorithm would reward them with more frequent/better
| gigs?
| giantg2 wrote:
| I'm an employee. I have 9 years experience and a masters.
| I had one promotion. I've been stuck at the intermediate
| developer level and do not see any promotions in my
| future
| itake wrote:
| The Algorithm could decide their car is older and they
| could get less gigs :-/.
| giantg2 wrote:
| She has upward mobility. They let her choose the rate she
| charges the customer and then they take their cut. The
| more hours she wants, she can have. If she's good at her
| job and the customers love her, she can give herself a
| raise by increasing prices (it's already like $50-120/hr
| depending on the class). She even has the authority to
| hire someone to work under her.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| That depends on the type of gig. There are some gigs
| where experience and skill command a substantial premium.
| itake wrote:
| The largest gig employers (Uber, Lyft, Doordash, etc.) do
| not seem to provide a substantial premium for experience.
|
| In 5-10 years, what will be the current driver's
| expectations for pay?
| giantg2 wrote:
| Beyond a month or two of experience, what would more
| experience benefit in that role?
| lupire wrote:
| Why wouldn't her employer let her opt out of insurance?
|
| Are you comparing _full-time_ hourly employees to _part-
| time_ contracting?
|
| > They also give her
|
| When you say it like that, you are describing an employee
| not an _independent_ contractor.
|
| But your layer comment, about setting her own rates, makes
| me think that she is working as an actual freelancer, not
| as a gig employee.
| losvedir wrote:
| > _Why wouldn 't her employer let her opt out of
| insurance?_
|
| Is this... a thing? I've never had that option in any of
| my jobs. Sure, I can choose not to take the employee
| sponsored health insurance, but then I'm just opting out
| of my share of the monthly premiums the company would
| deduct. But in general, a company pays more than that.
| I've never been able to opt out of company insurance and
| recover _their_ share of the premiums! I assumed that
| wasn 't legal for them to offer.
|
| Oh, and to be explicit about the connection: that's why
| an independent contractor would be paid more. If an
| employee's wage is $x, a company generally pays something
| like $(2 _x), and so an independent contractor would
| expect to be paid something closer to 2x than x. (Usually
| because_ they* then have to pay certain taxes, and worry
| about their own benefits, etc.)
| giantg2 wrote:
| Most employers aren't going to pay you more for opting
| out of insurance. Many employers would try to keep your
| hours low so they don't have to offer you insurance.
|
| "When you say it like that, you are describing an
| employee not an independent contractor."
|
| This doesn't make sense to me. She has more autonomy than
| an employee would. They give her that level of autonomy
| by not making her an employee. She does not get a W2.
|
| "But your layer comment, about setting her own rates,
| makes me think that she is working as an actual
| freelancer, not as a gig employee."
|
| There's a lot of overlap between those terms, except
| replace employee with worker. I would say she's a
| freelance gig worker. Freelance tends to mean that you
| are just independent. You can work on an individual
| project for a company and move on, but it's usually
| larger pieces of work. As a gig worker, I see it as being
| more of a repetitive task for various customers. You can
| be a freelance driver and work for both uber and Lyft, or
| even uber and a taxi company. The gig part is that they
| are always individual tasks you get paid for - each ride.
| This is very similar to what she is doing.
|
| So I see gig workers as freelancers, but not all
| freelancers are gig workers.
| dheera wrote:
| If you are a contractor, you are paid for every hour you
| work. If you work overtime, you are paid for it. If you work
| holidays, you are paid for it.
|
| If you are a salaried employee the sad state of the system is
| a lot of companies tend to take advantage of you and overwork
| you and don't pay you overtime.
|
| The flip side of it is contractors don't usually get paid
| vacation, so it's both an advantage and a disadvantage.
| itake wrote:
| If I drove for Uber/Lyft for moonlight income, I would prefer
| to paid purely in cash instead of being forced to be paid in
| health insurance, pto, etc. since all of that would be
| provided by my primary employer.
| grecy wrote:
| Why not go one step higher up the abstraction, which is one
| step better, and provide healthcare irrelevant of jobs - it
| doesn't matter if you have 1 or 2 or none. You still have
| healthcare!
| gnopgnip wrote:
| You aren't paid in healthcare at an hourly job. There is an
| employer healthcare plan you can buy into if you want. If
| you have insurance through your parents, spouse, another
| job, you just don't opt in.
|
| At lower paying hourly jobs typically the employer doesn't
| cover any of the cost. For many these are prohibitively
| expensive, even if you work full time. Typically for higher
| paid work, most salary positions, the employer covers most
| of the cost.
| kec wrote:
| Employers are only forced to extend healthcare etc benefits
| to employees, there's no law stating the employee has to
| accept them.
| salawat wrote:
| No law? Technically correct.
|
| Practical barriers in terms of the maximum limit of
| complexity legal and HR are willing/able to take on and
| remain effective while dealing with? Absolutely. Everyone
| thinks "It shouldn't be that hard!"
|
| In reality, it kinda is. HR abstracts away the
| complexities of jurisdiction specific hiring requirements
| from the rest of the org, and legal does much the same.
| If you ask for extraordinary accomodation, I'm not saying
| it won't work, but I can guarantee you will experience
| friction while HR/Legal figures it out.
|
| On the plus side, if it works, new employment template.
| If it doesn't, you don't get offered the job.
|
| I've ended up the awkward giraffe in a couple places. You
| being flexible, and the HR/Management recognizing your
| unique capability to create value helps. However, when
| talking Gig work, they will invariably go for the
| template approach. There's also the fact that Gig work
| really conflates the distinction between "contractor" and
| "employee" in the sense that contractor carries with it
| an assumption you are providing for your own affairs. The
| compensation you quote them should have parity with their
| total outlay for an employee to do the job, because you
| should be arranging the same things for yourself; thereby
| obviating your need for the employer to do it. The thing
| you get out of by the contract route is all that
| paperwork and process overhead. You do a one-time
| disbursement of funds, and donezo.
|
| The problem is, no one ever tells you (the contractor)
| that, and Uber et al does not let you quote price or have
| input on the cost calculation. So you accept super under-
| bid compensation, because you don't know the difference
| between a market rate and a hole in the wall, or an
| appreciation for the total footprint of the business
| model.
|
| Uber, and services like it, make their money by
| predating. on this ignorance. This is not to say that
| stuff like "licensing" gig workers to vouch for the fact
| they really know what they are doing is really a good
| idea... I'm kind of curious though what kind of effect
| that sort of thing would have on the worker pool. Like a
| short course that make sure they understand the
| accounting. Wonder if an experiment could be run with
| that sort of thing somewhere and how it would effect the
| market.
|
| That being said, it kinda kills the value prop of people
| just needing a few bucks here and there, but I question
| the seductive simplicity underneath that pitch, because
| everytime I've run into something that's pitched that way
| there's a big ole ugly iceberg beneath it.
| itake wrote:
| Will employers pay a higher wage if the employee chooses
| not to accept them?
|
| In my experience, most benefits are use-it-or-lose it.
| ruined wrote:
| generally among low-wage jobs, if you accept employer-
| provided healthcare you must pay for the plan from your
| wages. so kinda
| hansvm wrote:
| My last employer did. You could only opt in/out once a
| year or during major life events, but it gave enough
| flexibility that I could have higher pay or more benefits
| when it suited me.
| [deleted]
| Spooky23 wrote:
| No, the government gets stuck picking up the slack when
| employers evade the law.
|
| Gig workers should be able to organize and effectively
| negotiate reasonable contracts instead of getting the shaft. My
| brothers union contract for musical performance crates a more
| free market environment than the whims of companies like
| Doordash.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| Not to mention that the people forced into the "gig" economy
| are often ADOS, black and/or latino. It helps to cement their
| bottom caste statuses in this country. The white/asian people
| on HN cling to their classist agenda and aren't willing to talk
| about race because of how privileged they are and how
| segregated their workplaces are. They just don't know the
| experience and make abstract claims about what is fair based on
| class.
| mountainb wrote:
| Under the law as it is written, the labor secretary is
| basically correct. It's not the labor secretary's job to
| rewrite the law. What congress should have done several years
| ago is to address the emergence of the gig economy with a new
| designation that is distinct from both independent contractors
| and employees.
|
| Lots of issues in modern US business arise from laziness /
| stupidity / corruption / uselessness of Congress.
|
| I believe that there should be reform and that we should be
| working towards a better legal environment for informal workers
| and companies that want to use them at scale facilitated by
| technology. You can believe that and still recognize that the
| law as written would not support a definition of these workers
| as independent contractors (because they are not and it really
| is not a gray area due to the way that they are
| managed/directed).
|
| It's also an issue for the US that we can go many years under
| an enforcement regime that assumes that we basically have this
| new category of worker that we are, for reasons of convenience,
| defining as independent contractors, but that the law clearly
| states do not meet the definition of independent contractors.
| Then we get a new administration that decides it will enforce
| the law as it's written instead of tacitly recognizing the fake
| pseudo reform of non enforcement that we had from earlier
| administrations. That isn't good government.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| _It 's not the labor secretary's job to rewrite the law_
|
| This.
|
| Sometimes I feel like the entire nation needs to go back and
| revisit our civics books. The job of the Labor Secretary is
| to make certain that federal labor laws are followed. If you
| want changes to federal labor law, it does you no good to
| demand them of the Labor Secretary. Call your congressperson
| and your senator. Even better, vote for more qualified
| congresspeople and senators.
|
| This is a republic. Which means that ultimately, the labor
| laws are far more our fault than the fault of the Labor
| Secretary.
| SilasX wrote:
| Well, yes and no. If you mean the labor sec shouldn't
| arbitrarily decide not to enforce certain laws based on
| ideology, I agree completely.
|
| But if you think the labor sec should merely concern
| themself with robotically enforcing the most literal
| meaning of the labor code, I think that's dubious as well.
| They should be thinking more big picture than that, like
| about whether the laws, when enforced, achieve their
| ostensible purpose. In this case, I would think it means
| saying, "well, if we want to do right by workers, I
| recommend we refactor the labor system like so...". That
| is, pass that on to Congress and the administration.
|
| That, I think, should be a higher priority than fighting
| ever harder to be technically correct on an increasingly
| arcane distinction.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| _" well, if we want to do right by workers, I recommend
| we refactor the labor system like so...". That is, pass
| that on to Congress_
|
| At which point congress is free to ignore the secretary.
| Ultimate authority always lies with congress. We can
| change that, assuming we want to change the Constitution.
| But today, congress is in charge of making laws. It is
| not in the remit of the Secretary to short circuit the
| Constitutional order. The best the secretary can do is,
| effectively, to send an email to congresspeople and
| senators. Which email would be a whole lot more effective
| coming from the voters instead of the secretary.
| brudgers wrote:
| The Labor Secretary is empowered by laws passed by Congress
| to interpret the law in order to implement it. Congress
| passes laws delegating certain authority to Executive
| Branch departments.
|
| If the Labor Secretary is not acting in accord with Federal
| Statutes passed by Congress and legal precedents
| established by the Federal Courts, the Secretary can be
| sued and injunctive relief sought. Of course the Secretary
| can be sued even if they are following the law.
| throwaway_isms wrote:
| >Which means that ultimately, the labor laws are far more
| our fault than the fault of the Labor Secretary.
|
| It also doesn't really matter what the Federal law is or
| Labor Secretary does/says, worker agreements are governed
| by State law, and their are 50 States with similar, but not
| identical legal standards defining employees vs independent
| contractors. In some cases you may be defined as an
| employee at the State level but Independent Contractor for
| purposes of the Federal level (say the IRS Code/Federal
| Taxes). Even within a single State one agency say
| unemployment office was classify you as employee and
| another such as workers comp classifies you as independent
| contractor.
| lhorie wrote:
| > Even better, vote for more qualified congresspeople and
| senators
|
| The problem with this comment (and others like it) is the
| presupposition that the problem is that people are not
| voting "correctly", because if only they did, all the
| problems would be solved.
|
| But that glosses over a very large number of problems, some
| of which are deeply systematic, at which point questions
| like "whose job is it really to fix these issues anyways"
| may in fact deserve answers that are more out-of-the-box
| than "the republican democratic system works as intended,
| so the problem must be elsewhere".
| rsj_hn wrote:
| >But that glosses over a very large number of problems,
| some of which are deeply systematic, at which point
| questions like "whose job is it really to fix these
| issues anyways" may in fact deserve answers that are more
| out-of-the-box than "the republican democratic system
| works as intended, so the problem must be elsewhere".
|
| This glosses over the fact that enough of the population
| disagrees with your assessment of the problem and
| proposed solutions that there is no consensus and that is
| why your problems are not being solved in the way that
| you want. In fact, that is almost always the case.
|
| People feel that the thresholds of consensus required in
| republican processes get in the way of their plans only
| when they fail to persuade others. Then they start
| looking for more authoritarian solutions, such as having
| party-bureaucrats make laws by fiat.
| lhorie wrote:
| > enough of the population disagrees with your assessment
| of the problem and proposed solutions that there is no
| consensus and that is why your problems are not being
| solved in the way that you want.
|
| Yes, this is part of it, but it goes even deeper than
| that. For example, California government passed AB-5, and
| then later popular ballot passed prop 22, which
| essentially goes contrary to AB-5. Does that suggest that
| leadership is out of touch with the electorate? Maybe.
| The fact that numerous pages of exceptions had to be
| carved out in AB-5 in the first place (and it's still
| criticized even after that) also indicates that the
| legislation wasn't very well thought out to begin with.
|
| If you think in terms of a software engineering
| organization, it would seem crazy to take bug reports and
| just blindly do whatever the tickets with largest number
| of CAPS LOCK words says. But governments often do exactly
| that: they take some top-of-mind idea and just go with
| it, without paying heed to any sort of expert research,
| leaving implementation details to be determined by others
| "lesser" offices of government, and without care for the
| repercussions of rolling out such policies. It's the
| equivalent of pushing the "release" button in your
| enterprise software, cross your fingers and hope for the
| best, without any observability infrastructure and
| without a rollback plan if everything breaks.
|
| > People feel that the thresholds of consensus required
| in republican processes get in the way of their plans
| only when they fail to persuade others. Then they start
| looking for more authoritarian solutions
|
| This is also true, and it's definitely a touchy subject.
| On one hand, global consensus seems "fairest", but is it
| really the fairest if the vast majority of people are not
| affected by a decision (or they are affected to different
| degrees depending on various factors)? What of their
| expertise in the subject matter? Many problems do have
| solutions that align with common sense, but many others
| require solutions that are counterintuitive, but that can
| only be proven to be more effective with hard research.
| It's a difficult line to thread, and I feel that the
| status quo favors popularity more than science when it
| comes to decision making.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| > For example, California government passed AB-5, and
| then later popular ballot passed prop 22, which
| essentially goes contrary to AB-5. Does that suggest that
| leadership is out of touch with the electorate?
|
| The idea of representative government is you outsource
| decision making to people, not that you hire people to
| always do what the majority wants. That is the
| justification for a ballot initiative override. Not
| necessarily saying that ballot overrides of legislative
| actions are good structure -- there are pros and cons.
| But in the case of AB-5, that was clearly an out-of-touch
| legislative body taking some very extreme measures that
| were more radical than the state population wanted. That
| is a common thing when you have one-party states like CA,
| so in the current CA landscape ballot initiatives are a
| good safety check on what is a one party legislature
| controlled by party insiders.
|
| > If you think in terms of a software engineering
| organization, it would seem crazy to take bug reports and
| just blindly do whatever the tickets with largest number
| of CAPS LOCK words says. But governments often do exactly
| that
|
| In my experience in the corporate world, working from
| everything from non-profits to start ups to DJIA member
| companies, I find corporate decision making to be equally
| random and opaque. They are just random in different
| ways. In the corporate world, if you can find an
| executive sponsor and frame something the right way, you
| can convince them to follow a road of sheer madness. In
| government, if you can convince a politician that
| something is trendy or a cheap way of getting votes, they
| will commit huge blunders. If you can convince them that
| something is a moral imperative, they will commit
| unspeakable atrocities.
|
| > This is also true, and it's definitely a touchy
| subject. On one hand, global consensus seems "fairest",
| but is it really the fairest if the vast majority of
| people are not affected by a decision (or they are
| affected to different degrees depending on various
| factors)?
|
| Indeed a tough subject. The way I think about is this. If
| you are in the business world and you are leading a team
| of 5 engineers, who are trying to make a decision. Let's
| say 3 strongly believe in A. 2 Strongly believe in B and
| are strongly opposed to A. Do you say "majority rules"?
| Unlikely. You will try to find consensus. Consensus could
| be something like 60%A and 40%B. This consensus gathering
| process is why businesses often do crazy things, but they
| don't know a better way as pissing off 40% of your team
| is something you need to avoid. The 2 people can quit --
| they can transfer to another team. So ultimately you do
| need to gather consensus rather than search for 50% +1 in
| making decisions within a team.
|
| But a society is like that team. It requires more than
| 50% +1, otherwise you will find groups seceeding. One way
| of addressing this is to put in various roadblocks to
| require more than 50%. Say you need 2/3. Then people have
| to negotiate. If you want to do something 1/3 hates, then
| you can do it if you give them something in return. You
| bargain and you reach a consensus where everyone gets
| some of what they want, even if they don't like it. But
| then you might reach a situation where the society is
| split and simply can't come to a consensus because there
| are moral issues at stake that they are not willing to
| compromise on. Then your option is federalism. You break
| the society up into two groups and let each one make
| rules for themselves. Within each federalist group you
| have the super majority requirement again, but because
| they have shared values, they can reach that super
| majority.
|
| All of this stuff was debated long ago in 18th-19th C
| France and England, and many very smart people looked at
| all these issues, which is why we have this weird
| federalist form of government in the US where you have
| both a senate and a house and it's really hard to get
| anything passed into law unless you have both a
| geographic and population supermajority on your side. But
| as the nation splits into two camps that view each other
| as basically evil, unreedemable, hopelessly foolish
| people, you are finding more and more gridlock and more
| and more appeals to Federalism. California wants to run
| their own climate policy? Fine, let them. Oklahoma wants
| fracking and free gasoline to everyone? Fine, let them.
| If you don't, the days of the republic are numbered.
| lhorie wrote:
| > I find corporate decision making to be equally random
| and opaque
|
| That's fair, but it's still madness :)
|
| > ultimately you do need to gather consensus
|
| I think consensus is just one form of conflict
| resolution. Compromise is another, for example. When we
| have a scenario of 5 people, 3 pro-X and 2 pro-Y, one
| could argue that are actually three choices: X, Y and the
| status quo, where an impasse between X and Y is
| functionally equivalent to everyone being pro-status-quo.
| Rephrasing in terms of status quo vs something else might
| help in understanding where X and Y overlap and where
| they differ and might lead to more productive open-ended
| discussions than a discussion that is solely adversarial
| between X and Y.
|
| I don't believe it's necessarily possible to reach
| consensus in all cases. For example, the issue of
| abortion doesn't seem like one where either side is
| willing to let go. But I do believe that it's possible to
| reach a compromise in many cases (for example, pro-life
| proponents might be willing to concede that a
| anencephalic fetus posing life threatening risk to the
| mother is an acceptable case, while still believing that
| normal unplanned pregnancies should be taken
| responsibility for).
|
| There's also always a possibility of a fourth choice Z,
| for example a policy from a different country (e.g.
| Portugal's handling of drug abuse being seen as a medical
| problem, rather than limiting the discussion to one
| solely about the spectrum of criminal severity). And
| there's yet other ways to handle conflicts, such as the
| iron fist approach that China uses (which some might
| argue was effective at handling covid, for example,
| questionable as it may be in other areas such as freedom
| of speech).
|
| My take away is mostly that even if things are as they
| are because of something that was settled by scholars
| centuries ago, it still behooves us to revisit different
| ideas, ideologies and approaches to tackle today's
| problems, rather than ignoring or not understanding the
| weaknesses of the status quo processes.
| awillen wrote:
| You're putting a lot of weight on the word basically in your
| first sentence - the reality is that gig workers have
| characteristics that clearly fall under the classification of
| employees and others that clearly fall under the
| classification of contractors.
|
| The problem with your argument is that because the law is
| ambiguous with regard to this situation, the labor secretary
| is effectively making law by choosing a particular
| interpretation of the law.
|
| Though to be clear, I agree with you 100% that this is
| because Congress is just perpetually failing America through
| corruption, selfishness, etc., and that failure puts the
| labor secretary in an unenviable position of having to
| enforce laws that don't really work for the situation.
| larrik wrote:
| > The problem with your argument is that because the law is
| ambiguous with regard to this situation, the labor
| secretary is effectively making law by choosing a
| particular interpretation of the law.
|
| As a member of the Executive branch, that seems to be his
| job, yes.
| brudgers wrote:
| [IANAL]
|
| My understanding is that if a worker has any characteristic
| of an employee, they are an employee. Any of several
| criteria are sufficient and only one of them is necessary.
|
| In the bigger picture, Congress passes laws and delegates
| authority to a branch of government to establish rules and
| regulations using a process complying with other statutes
| that dictate how rules and regulations become binding.
|
| Essentially, in the US at all levels -- Federal, State, and
| Local -- there are two types of legal requirements.
| Statutes and rules/regulations. The statute is the what.
| Rules and regulations are the implementation details...ok,
| there's actually a third parallel part which is legal
| precedent established by the courts.
|
| Anyway, Congress delegates authority to executive agencies
| so that it can focus on other things and not have to micro-
| mange each tiny detail of everything under the sun.
| awillen wrote:
| I am also not a lawyer, but my understanding is that the
| system is not clear in the way that you are describing
| it.
|
| As to "Anyway, Congress delegates authority to executive
| agencies so that it can focus on other things and not
| have to micro-mange each tiny detail of everything under
| the sun." - each tiny detail? This is a case of
| classifying millions of workers. We're not talking about
| a tiny detail, we're talking about something that is
| immensely important both to all the people affected by it
| as well as all the companies that have to operate under
| these labor laws. This isn't Congress delegating away the
| details, it's them failing for an extended period of time
| to address an absolute enormous and critical issue in the
| labor market.
| brudgers wrote:
| So are you saying the Labor Secretary should classify
| them as independent contractors?
|
| In terms of scale the Department of Labor classifies all
| workers. Should Congress classify each worker
| individually?
|
| Were previous Labor Secretaries out of line for
| classifying the workers as contractors?
| auiya wrote:
| >Lots of issues in modern US business arise from laziness /
| stupidity / corruption / uselessness of Congress.
|
| And by extension lots of issues in Congress arise from
| laziness / stupidity / corruption / uselesssness of the
| electorate that put them there. Invest heavily in education
| and revisit in a few generations.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| What kind of education?
| auiya wrote:
| The kind that doesn't result in an intellectual race to
| the bottom as we're witnessing today, where people eat
| tide pods, purposefully hasten pandemic spread, and
| bottles of Windex have to have legal disclaimers like "do
| not spray directly into eyes".
| willcipriano wrote:
| > Invest heavily in education and revisit in a few
| generations
|
| It is a persistent myth that the US does not invest in
| education. Not only is the dollars per student spent in the
| US competitive, it exceeds the majority of European nations
| spending per student by a large margin.
|
| "In 2015, the United States spent approximately $12,800 per
| student on elementary and secondary education. That is over
| 35% more than the OECD country average of $9,500. At the
| post-secondary level, the United States spent approximately
| $30,000 per student, which was 93% higher than the average
| of OECD countries ($16,100)."
|
| https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/020915/what-
| country...
| jjav wrote:
| Invest, not spend. You'll see plenty of school districts
| which receive tons of money but at the classroom level
| teachers are barely paid and kids have no supplies.
|
| Money is going somewhere but most of it isn't into the
| actual education.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| The question is what part of those dollars really buy
| quality and what part just ends in pockets of well-
| connected interest groups.
|
| I see this question only rarely asked. Too many people
| seem to think that shoveling extra money on X will get
| you better results almost automatically. No, it won't,
| corruption and special interests can capture that extra
| value unless the investor is careful.
|
| Now it _is_ true that underfinancing will get you worse
| results, but the opposite just does not hold.
| epistasis wrote:
| I think the bigger problem is the lack of citizen
| representation. Individual legislators are servicing an
| absolutely huge number of constituents, which means that
| their elections cover absolutely massive amounts of people,
| necessitating massive amounts of money for campaigns. Which
| means that the influence comes from donors, as they are the
| ones who enable reelection.
|
| It also means that outside money can lead to successful
| primaries of otherwise popular legislators, if the
| legislator doesn't toe the line required. There used to be
| many Republicans that not only publicly agreed that climate
| change is a real, human-caused, phenomenon and that also
| proposed action to solve the problem. After a few
| legislators got primaried out of their seats, this position
| is no longer allowed at all in public statements by
| Republicans, because most legislators are too scared to
| risk being primaried.
|
| Increasing the House of Representatives by ten fold or more
| might help.
|
| Getting rid of many of the procedures that prevent votes
| from happening would probably help too.
|
| And of course, overturning Citizens United...
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| "Increasing the House of Representatives by ten fold or
| more might help."
|
| While you would end up with much more representatives -
| and in theory more representation - each individual rep
| would become much less influential. I think expanding the
| house to be thousands of members large would also make
| deliberations much more difficult and shallow as a
| result. I have no idea how parliamentary procedure would
| work with thousands of interested parties. But I do
| acknowledge that it is do-able.
|
| That being said, I am in favor of increasing the size of
| the house, but only by about 100 seats or so. I'd also
| want term limits in order to facilitate more turnover for
| district seats. But that's a separate debate.
| thesimon wrote:
| In the UK apparently there are 3 types. The Economist wrote
| on the Uber case in UK:
|
| "Employees" gain access to the full gamut of employment-law
| protections; "workers" get some protections but can be
| dismissed at will; the self-employed are taxed more lightly
| but receive few legal rights.
|
| The Surpreme court ruled that Uber drivers are workers and
| not self-employed.
| xpe wrote:
| > Many gig workers explicitly do not want to become employees,
| as there are many disadvantages to doing so.
|
| On what basis do you say this? Have you found good unbiased
| survey research?
| jdasdf wrote:
| > instead of fixing government policy and laws that
| disadvantage independent workers,
|
| You're mistaken. It is not independent workers that are
| disadvantaged, but employees who as a result of those laws are
| less attractive to hire.
|
| The solution here is to remove those arbitrary restrictions,
| not to expand them.
| omgwtfbyobbq wrote:
| One solution to that is to allow employees to opt out of being
| employees.
|
| The government policy would prevent companies from
| misclassifying employees as independent contractors, and any
| individuals who did not want to be employees could opt out of
| that classification, but that's up to the individual, not the
| company.
| sokoloff wrote:
| How long before Uber starts assigning mandatory job hours (as
| inconveniently as necessary to suit their needs) for drivers
| who have not opted out of employee status? I'd guess a
| maximum of two sprints.
| omgwtfbyobbq wrote:
| They can. It'll work where the labor supply exceeds demand
| and won't work where it doesn't. It also won't be as
| effective as ride sharing becomes more of a commodity.
| hagy wrote:
| Many employees will be assigned inconvenient hours
| regardless. That is a key difference between employees and
| gig workers.
|
| When there are more people who prefer convenient hours than
| shifts available, some will only have the option to take
| inconvenient ones. As hourly employees, Uber can't use
| dynamic pay to manage supply and demand imbalances.
|
| I dealt this as a teenager working at McDonald's. Most of
| us didn't want closing shift, and occasionally at 25
| cent/hour incentive would be added. But more often than
| not, the demand for any hours was sufficient. Labor supply
| simply exceeded demand.
|
| Still think Uber and likes should be regulated away until
| we have true self driving cars. That may take a decade or
| more.
| throwaway_isms wrote:
| It seems to go without saying Employee protection laws are for
| the benefit and protection of the Employee. The law
| specifically prohibits employers from improperly reclassifying
| employees as independent contracts by simply titling a worker
| agreement/contract as an Independent Contractor Agreement in
| lieu of an Employment Agreement.
|
| If these drivers want to be independent contractors and not
| employees, great, if these laws were fully enforced from the
| beginning it would be the drivers that organized and owned the
| ride sharing business and UBER would have never been able to
| compete with them (UBER's own S-1 admits this risk, and
| acknowledges if drivers were Employees it would be an
| existential threat to their business). Its also no surprise
| this legal inevitability comes after their public offering.
|
| Sure many gig workers may not want to be employees, but they
| were, they just were not being provided the benefits and
| protections. I don't think the politicians are the only ones
| who benefited clearly the UBER investors and private
| shareholders pre-IPO were the single largest beneficiary.
|
| Is there any reason on the merits you disagree with the current
| legal standards distinguishing employee vs independent
| contractor? I mean the drivers desires is not part of the
| standard, and in fairness, I don't think you are able to
| collectively speak on behalf of all drivers and say that's what
| they wanted, clearly based on the number of lawsuits and
| employment claims many of them did want the employee status and
| benefits that come with it.
| geofft wrote:
| There are many successful independent workers in the US, from
| your local plumber to Paul Graham. And they have plenty of
| support in government policy.
|
| The people who are not successful are independent workers who
| are dependent on an employer. The government cannot fix a
| logical contradiction.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| That would be fine but these self employed people aren't
| exactly saving money for retirement or healthcare.
|
| Gig worker falls off a ladder and ends up a paraplegic. Guess
| who will be footing the bill?
| esolyt wrote:
| In normal countries, the government provides you healthcare, no
| matter what your job is, or if you have a job at all.
|
| In America, we already gave up on that fight. Instead, we made
| it your employer's responsibility to provide you healthcare.
| And now the government is yelling at Uber for not giving you
| healthcare.
|
| Fascinating.
| hctaw wrote:
| Backwards as it may be it's far easier to change a regulatory
| interpretation or judicial test than to make a fundamental
| change to government services, like healthcare.
|
| >Many gig workers explicitly do not want to become employees,
| as there are many disadvantages to doing so
|
| Then companies that want to attract gig workers can give them
| the freedoms that are set by statute, regulatory bodies, and
| precedent. Like setting their own rates and picking which
| contracts to fulfill.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > It seems backward that the government, instead of fixing
| government policy and laws that disadvantage independent
| workers
|
| There are all manner of things we seem to lean on business to
| provide that government does not. Health insurance is the
| obvious one.
|
| But we also seem to have a large part of our electorate that
| like it that way -- that _don 't_ want government involved in
| our welfare.
|
| If you want to tip the table toward government taking more
| responsibility and corporate America less, that is a tougher
| battle.
| vegetablepotpie wrote:
| According to an Uber survey in October, 20%, of uber drivers
| are unsatisfied working for the company [1]. If you want to
| work for Uber, and you can work any time you'd like, why would
| you be dissatisfied with working there? The reason people work
| for Uber is that it's available as an opportunity, with a
| fairly low bar of entry, in a way that a lot of other
| employment opportunities are not.
|
| The "gig economy" is a legal hack by corporations to pay
| workers less than minimum wage [2]. We can talk a lot about
| problems with government (there are a lot of issue there), but
| the fact that the government has issues does not act as a free
| pass to allow private institutions to pay workers less.
|
| [1] https://mashable.com/article/uber-driver-survey-pandemic/
|
| [2] https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-uber-
| driver-w...
| megaman821 wrote:
| So if the other 80% are satisfied working there because they
| get to pick their hours, it is best to change that because
| the 20% would be more satisfied with a full-time job and
| benefits?
|
| I don't even get your initial point. Have you never worked a
| job you didn't like? Many jobs suck, but people have to earn
| money. They will hopefully, eventually move on to more
| satisfying jobs.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| When Uber gives drivers the ability to set their prices,
| I'll believe they're independent contractors. As it stands,
| Uber doesn't even let their drivers know what the value of
| a given ride is going to be until they've already started
| it.
| vegetablepotpie wrote:
| I apologize for not being more clear about my point, I
| stated it implicitly for brevity. The job satisfaction
| quote was a rebuttal of what the parent said, which was
|
| > Many gig workers explicitly do not want to become
| employees
|
| I'll be more clear, I have two points, point 1 is that
| "workers do not choose gig economy jobs because they offer
| flexibility, they choose them because they have low
| barriers to entry". This means that employee classification
| is irrelevant to workers, they do not explicitly want to be
| contractors. The 20% job dissatisfaction statistic is
| sufficient to prove my point because if there were
| alternatives, those 1/5 of workers would not be working for
| Uber.
|
| Point 2 is "the gig economy benefits employers more than
| traditional employment and disadvantages workers more than
| traditional employment" I support this claim with the
| statement that Uber drivers have been paid less than
| minimum wage.
| gher-shyu3i wrote:
| It's not a legal hack. If the government is not doing its
| job, these companies provide ways for people to make ends
| meet instead of going out to the streets to beg.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > According to an Uber survey in October, 20%, of uber
| drivers are unsatisfied working for the company [1]. If you
| want to work for Uber, and you can work any time you'd like,
| why would you be dissatisfied with working there?
|
| 20% is good for job dissatisfaction. Why would you be
| dissatisfied working there? Because you'd rather be doing
| something else. _That 's why they pay you._
| slantedview wrote:
| > wants to force independent workers to become employees
|
| Sounds exactly like a gig industry talking point, a classic
| conflation of making something a right with forcing it onto
| people. At the moment, being categorized as an employee is not
| even an option for gig workers. How's that for choice?
| pvarangot wrote:
| There's a lot of jobs as a driver where you are categorized
| as an employee. I work for Lyft so I'm familiar with most of
| the talking points and I'll reserve my opinion on which ones
| are bullshit or which ones are not. That being said, that
| _most_ drivers don't want to be employees is undeniable, and
| even on polls that unions conduct the outcome is something
| like half and half.
|
| You can say that they can't decide for themselves because
| they are being oppressed, etc, etc... and while I agree with
| the sentiment I don't think "oppression" here is that bad as
| to force people to vote what gig economy companies want them
| to vote on an independent poll.
| mbesto wrote:
| > Many gig workers explicitly do not want to become employees,
| as there are many disadvantages to doing so. In these cases,
| the only people that benefit are the politicians that can go on
| ignoring the real problems.
|
| I agree with the ethos of your response, but not the rationale.
|
| Many people don't understand the costs associated with being
| gig workers.
|
| Many people don't understand the value of benefits given to
| them by employers.
|
| This is a big reason why democracies exist - many people simply
| can't make decisions for themselves.
| megaman821 wrote:
| I always love the, "People are too stupid to make decisions
| for themselves" argument. People are more than adequate in
| making important decisions that directly touch their lives.
| mbesto wrote:
| I always love the various countries[0] who implement direct
| democracies because "people are more than adequate in
| making important decisions that directly touch their
| lives."
|
| [0] - There's only one for the record and it's Switzerland.
| megaman821 wrote:
| You must have no understanding of the word "directly"
| then. Do you think the military, trade deals, etc
| directly touch people's lives? Of course the average
| person isn't going to waste time educating themselves on
| these topics, they are going to pick someone who
| represents them to. I think most people might know a
| little something about their own jobs.
| mbesto wrote:
| > I think most people might know a little something about
| their own jobs.
|
| So then why do articles like this exist? If people know
| all of the things that directly affect them, why do they
| make so many mistakes?
|
| https://blog.stridehealth.com/post/1099-tax-mistakes
|
| https://www.taxslayer.com/blog/rideshare-drivers-avoid-
| these...
|
| https://www.ayroyal.com/uber-tax-form-mistakes-avoid/
|
| https://www.ridesharingdriver.com/top-5-uber-lyft-tax-
| mistak...
| kube-system wrote:
| I disagree. There _are_ jobs that are reasonable under the
| construct of "independent contractor". The issue is that the
| classification has been grossly abused to the point where the
| majority of people who employers attempt to classify that way
| really shouldn't be eligible.
|
| I have _real_ independent contractors in my family, they might
| work 2 hours each for 50 different customers in a year. They do
| their job exactly how _they_ want to. It 's not like it makes
| sense for any one of their customers to provide benefits of any
| kind. This is the kind of stuff this classification was meant
| for.
| yibg wrote:
| Isn't the solution here to turn contractor vs employee issue
| into a question of choice and benefit for the employee vs the
| employer? If retirement, time off and health benefits are
| also equally available to contractors then people can make
| the choice for the type of work they want without being
| disadvantaged.
| sokoloff wrote:
| What does "time off" mean for someone who is unambiguously
| a contractor (such as a one-person plumber, handyman, maid,
| babysitter, landscaper, CPA, lawyer, etc)?
|
| They already have as much time off as they choose to have.
| It's all (obviously) unpaid as "who would pay them?"
| Frost1x wrote:
| Time off is one of the greatest scams in the modern
| economy. Unless you work a position where the time
| increment of your work is less than the amount of time
| you take off, ultimately you end up being pushed to do
| the same amount of work in less time. You might as well
| have skipped your vacation or planned your PTO during a
| less busy time.
|
| Really all PTO is for most salary exempt positions
| anymore is ability to delay work without getting fired.
| Now if you work in a position where you churn out things
| on a daily basis or less and someone will fill in for you
| while you're gone, PTO is actually PTO.
| maxerickson wrote:
| An agreement to be able to delay work without getting
| fired doesn't seem entirely like a scam.
| Frost1x wrote:
| It is when you call it vacation or paid time off. Call it
| "work delay credits" or something of that nature.
|
| There's an implication from PTO of a different era where
| you weren't required to makeup work you missed while on
| PTO. Much of that has disappeared. That's fine for most
| salary exempt positions assuming you aren't fed a
| constant queue of work to keep you pushing 50+ hour weeks
| regularly and it's OK to do 20 hour work weeks and some
| 50 hour work weeks.
|
| Maybe I'm just old and people don't care that they do
| more for less TC than they did in years past.
| yibg wrote:
| Yea time off is a bit iffy here. Some of the gig
| companies currently (due to covid) provides some level of
| "paid" sick days. But yea as a contractor it's probably
| less relevant than retirement and healthcare.
| kube-system wrote:
| If it's a scenario where it even remotely makes sense to do
| something like that, they probably should be employees.
|
| There's a lot of jobs where work simply is not with a
| regular customer -- i.e. tradesmen, independent
| consultants, musicians, etc.
|
| If a person mows lawns for 25 different customers in a
| given week, who gives them their vacation/retirement/health
| benefits?
| throwaway_isms wrote:
| If you make it a choice, it effectively becomes no choice
| because employers will never agree to classify a worker as
| an employee because it would increase their costs and they
| have the ability to seek out another worker who would agree
| to the independent contractor status against their own
| interest because they need the job to keep a rood over
| their head and food on the table. It would give employers
| the ability to make it a race to the bottom for employees,
| like what would happen if minimum wage laws were removed.
| proc0 wrote:
| > against their own interest
|
| And how exactly would you reach this conclusion? How
| would you know what's better for someone, better than
| they do? At least in CA, the decision was clear that it
| wasn't against people's interest.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _At least in CA, the decision was clear that it wasn 't
| against people's interest._
|
| This must be why Uber incessantly spammed their workers
| with Prop 22 propaganda via push notifications[1] on
| their phones and tablets.
|
| [1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/15/21517316/uber-
| spamming-u...
| jessaustin wrote:
| In CA, the voters were duped by a massive marketing
| campaign underwritten by employers with interests in the
| outcome, with perhaps a small amount of "gosh I don't
| want Uber to cost more" personal interest.
| jayd16 wrote:
| You can (and actually must) work in both directions
| simultaneously. We can't do nothing in the hopes of sweeping
| changes. You have to work within the system that is in place
| even if you are also working to replace that system (and many
| are).
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| "Many gig workers explicitly do not want to become employees."
|
| I think most know the worker routine. If they don't look a
| certain way, the right age, the right resume, they won't get
| the job.
|
| And the fact once they are an employee, they lose any bit of
| autonomy they think they have by being a independant?
|
| It's too bad that we have a huge line of people:
|
| 1. Buying a vechicle specific four door vechicle Uber approves
| of before even applying to use the app. That is a huge upfront
| expence. Uber makes it sound like we all have a late model four
| door sedan collecting dust in the four car garage?
|
| People are going bankrupt at best, but usually ruining credit,
| buying this huge asset in order to drive at the whims of Uber.
| There's no guarantes whatsoever. Want a deal on a four door
| sedan? Look at Craigslist used vechicle sales. Look for the
| last year Uber allows independents to drive. Actually I have
| noticed guys get another newer vechicle a couple of years
| before their vechicle ages out of Ubers strict year
| requirements. Some keep the useless four door sedan to drive a
| few more years under Lyft, or that's what I heard.
|
| 2. The guys whom are making a livible wage are usually driving
| to a big city. (A guy I know drives from santa Rosa to SF 7
| days a week to make it work financially, and he is barely
| making it. He's working 80 hrs week.)
|
| 3. No health, they pay for gas, and insurance.
|
| 4. Yes--I'm picking on Uber.
|
| My point is before Uber Bought the proposition, many drivers
| wanted better working conditions, and most seemed excited Uber
| might have to give them a vechicle, and working conditions
| would be better.
|
| Then reality/fear set in? They will probally be fired next, or
| never hired me in the first place?
|
| Maybe I'll just stick with this chitty job? America has become
| the king of chitty jobs.
|
| And we have a lot of desperate people who will take these lousy
| jobs.
| toast0 wrote:
| > 1. Buying a vechicle specific four door vechicle Uber
| approves of before even applying to use the app. That is a
| huge upfront expence. Uber makes it sound like we all have a
| late model four door sedan collecting dust in the four car
| garage?
|
| I'm not seeing it anymore, but I recall seeing an Uber
| related lease program, and now I'm seeing Uber related rental
| car programs. In the Seattle area, it looks like I could rent
| a car from two different companies for about $220 per week
| that's intended to be used for unlicensed taxi services.
|
| If I were going to drive for Uber, and they didn't like my
| current vehicle, I'd drive a rental for a few weeks at least,
| to make sure it met my needs before dumping a bunch of money
| into a car.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It makes sense if you realize that everyone wants everyone else
| to have a minimum quality of life, but everyone is also trying
| to pay/sacrifice the least to achieve it.
|
| We want employers to provide benefits, as opposed to the
| government because that means higher taxes. Then you put a
| million exclusions and tax deductions and other loopholes, so
| no one knows what they're really getting, but we can say we did
| something and that benefits do exist to serve as arguments
| against broadly, easily accessible benefits to serve as a floor
| on quality of life.
| nerdponx wrote:
| > We want employers to provide benefits, as opposed to the
| government because that means higher taxes
|
| This is a silly argument. You pay for your healthcare no
| matter what, it's just a question of who administers it.
|
| > Then you put a million exclusions and tax deductions and
| other loopholes, so no one knows what they're really getting
|
| This is precisely the current state of employer-sponsored
| healthcare, and also the wildly complicated medicare/medicaid
| system.
|
| Universal coverage combined with higher taxes (ideally on
| people who already have lots of money and therefore place
| very little value on marginal income) is arguably better and
| easier to reason about than a mandate for employer-provided
| coverage and its associated opaque and complicated effects on
| labor markets, including higher fixed costs of hiring people
| and decreased ability for people to move between regions,
| industries, and even jobs within the same industry/career.
| munk-a wrote:
| > This is precisely the current state of employer-sponsored
| healthcare, and also the wildly complicated
| medicare/medicaid system.
|
| I'm happy to talk about manufacturer drug rebates which is
| an amazingly crazy portion of the healthcare market that
| would be illegal in almost any other market due to the
| perverse market incentives it creates. But yea, the short
| version is that the private healthcare market is incredibly
| inefficient.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > This is a silly argument. You pay for your healthcare no
| matter what, it's just a question of who administers it.
|
| But who administers it has a lot to do with how much you
| pay for it. For example, a high deductible plan will save
| you a lot of money as long as you aren't in the 99th
| percentile of healthcare needs, and (unless the deductible
| is _really_ high) still not bankrupt you if it turns out
| you are.
|
| Any kind of government plan that doesn't give you that
| choice because it's paid from taxes rather than premiums is
| plausibly going to cost you more money. And that's true
| even on average, because high deductible plans make people
| more price sensitive, which exerts downward pressure on
| costs. (The fact that US healthcare regulations disfavor
| high deductible plans is one of the reasons costs remain
| high.)
|
| The US system is also uniquely screwed because the rest of
| the world piggybacks on US medical R&D while in practice
| regulating prices even for products under patent. The
| result is that the US market is paying a disproportionate
| share of the R&D cost. Cost comparisons to single payer
| systems that pretend that single payer systems are
| inherently less expensive are ignoring the lower
| contribution of those systems to worldwide medical R&D.
| Moreover, the recipient companies are disproportionately in
| the US and have lobbyists and large numbers of voter-
| employees, so implementing a single payer system here would
| be unlikely to remove those costs. Then you're left with
| the resulting increase in price insensitivity and the US
| system becomes even more unaffordable.
|
| It's actually a hard problem. The solution probably has to
| involve the other countries paying more of the R&D.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "It makes sense if you realize that everyone wants everyone
| else to have a good quality of life, but everyone is also
| trying to pay/sacrifice the least to achieve it."
|
| And what defines a good quality of life depends on who you
| ask.
| treeman79 wrote:
| What about people that can not handle a normal job?
|
| I have a chronic condition and for a year the only reason
| family didn't end up on street is because of gig jobs. Most
| days 12-16 hours a day in bed essentially blind in horrific
| pain. But sometimes totally fine. Disability straight up
| laughed at me.
| lupire wrote:
| Are you claiming that gig/piece work isn't a "job" for an
| "employee"?
| novok wrote:
| If you are an employee, the employer has the right to
| dictate your schedule and put significant more
| restrictions on how and when you work, which they do
| because it's more economically efficient for them to do
| so (think: time and transition costs). When your a
| contractor, not so much.
| wtf42 wrote:
| What you described is called "sick leave" in Europe and
| you are entitled to sick pay by law.
| [deleted]
| xyzzyz wrote:
| In Europe, any time he wanted to get this sick leave, he
| would need to go to a doctor every single time. That
| means multiple visits at a doctor every week. After a few
| weeks or months of being only available randomly, he
| would get fired from most jobs anyway (which happens
| regularly in Europe too, there is just a few more hoops
| to jump through).
| robertlagrant wrote:
| While I agree with the thrust of your statement, he'd
| probably only need to go once a week at most.
| treeman79 wrote:
| On average I was going to three doctors a week. Mostly
| trying to find out what the heck was going on with me.
| Each outing would eat up all of my energy for a couple of
| days. I have nothing left for work family or generally
| life.
|
| At a certain point I had to stop going to the doctor so I
| would be able to get enough hours in keep keep the house.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Apologies - I meant in order to stay on sick leave in
| Europe, not for diagnosis purposes.
| zepto wrote:
| _This_. so much policy is designed around the idea that
| people should work a 9-5 at a corporation, without any
| consideration for the fact that this simply doesn't
| support a lot of people's needs. We need _more_
| flexibility not less.
|
| Ironically this completely flies in the face of any
| motion or 'diversity and inclusion'.
| minimuffins wrote:
| There are certain things that aren't in question about
| this. Enough income to afford decent housing and food,
| healthcare, etc. It's not so mysterious.
| citilife wrote:
| I know _multiple_ people who have never worked a day in
| their lives. They get food stamps, free health care and
| live in a $300 /month apartment subsidized by the state
| (aka free).
|
| They basically make money buying and selling items
| occasionally, when they see a deal. That's enough for
| them to buy all the "luxuries" they want ($5k car, $2k
| laptop) every couple years.
|
| I think there's a big difference between peoples
| desires/definition of acceptable and what they put in to
| obtain them.
| hobs wrote:
| Buying and selling items is in fact considered work!
| nradov wrote:
| Decent housing where? If I want to live in a high cost
| area but can't afford it then should the government make
| up the difference?
| minimuffins wrote:
| Yes or no. Take your pick. It's not such a hard question
| that there's no answer. You can make a policy on this
| stuff. We solve harder problems all the time.
| umvi wrote:
| Again though, define "decent". It will vary depending on
| who you ask.
| minimuffins wrote:
| There is enough space to move around in the dwelling. It
| is not falling apart. It is not infested with rats. There
| is clean running water. Come on. Stop pretending this is
| a hard question.
| Domenic_S wrote:
| It is bad faith or sheer ignorance to think this isn't a
| hard question. Consider that even people spending their
| own money on their own housing often can't define their
| own parameters, which is why touring houses is a thing.
| Now scale this out to the population of a country and
| creating a single bar of "decent housing" is incredibly
| hard.
|
| And then that's just talking about the structure. What
| about the location - if a person's entire support system
| is in one location but the available free housing is 75
| miles away and they don't have a car, that isn't decent.
| This comes up all the time re the affordability of the
| Bay Area where locals get priced out, someone says "just
| move to stockton" and the resident feels it's not fair
| (or "decent") to have to leave where they were born and
| raised.
|
| You could link location to workplace I suppose but then
| that would create massive downward pressure on wages
| since people would be willing to sacrifice pay in order
| to live where they prefer. This sounds like a net
| negative.
|
| This question is only hard if you haven't thought about
| it for more than like 2 seconds.
| minimuffins wrote:
| > even people spending their own money on their own
| housing often can't define their own parameters
|
| I can't believe I'm spelling this out. A person picking
| out their ideal home has trouble figuring out exactly
| what they want. Ok. We all don't ever know exactly what
| we want. It's the human condition. But I don't want to
| live in grinding poverty. I don't need to look within to
| figure that one out.
|
| I don't want my home to be dilapidated, overcrowded, full
| of pests and toxins, or to not exist.
|
| If you're still pretending to have a hard time with the
| definition of "decent," consult a dictionary.
|
| This line of argument is absurd word chopping. "Oh my, I
| could never in good conscience try to lock down a subtle
| word like 'decent' into a singular meaning, guess drivers
| will have to stay earning a sub-living wage forever.
| Sorry! Definitions are hard!"
|
| No.
| Domenic_S wrote:
| I didn't say (and nobody in this thread except for your
| straw man said) that the definition is too hard to create
| and therefore we should just throw our hands up and walk
| away. Literally nobody is saying that.
|
| What I am arguing against is your baseless assertion that
| defining "decent housing" is easy, and that everyone who
| thinks it's hard is simply being obstructionist/anti-
| poor/whatever.
|
| The closest thing we might have today to an across-the-
| board definition of "decent housing" might be HUD's FHA
| standards which -- to your shock and amazement, I assume
| -- is much more complex than "must be decent"
| minimuffins wrote:
| This is a discussion about whether gig economy workers
| ought to be classed as employees by the government. The
| reason that is a salient question is because a lot of
| these workers can't make ends meet under the current
| structure.
|
| The current structure treats them as serfs and says what
| really matters is the efficiency of the overall system,
| or its ability to generate a profit for its shareholders,
| or whatever. In short, the problem is these guys work too
| much in exchange for too little. Whatever theories
| anybody might have about the market, the role of the
| state in the market, etc, those are the basic facts on
| the ground: over-exploited workers seeking dignity where
| they currently lack it. The idea that they are
| "contractors," in the way that you or I might be
| contractors sometimes (I assume you are a tech worker),
| as experts in a technical field, is a sick joke. They
| don't have any power to get what they need, in that
| market, as individuals (they aren't even allowed to set
| their own prices!). If they could bargain collectively,
| they might. That's the context here.
|
| When somebody enters the discussion and says, "Well,
| yeah, but what IS dignity, anyway, when you really think
| about it, man???" you'll have to forgive me if I don't
| believe they're doing it out of a devotion to clarifying
| terms but because they just want to take Uber's side in
| the fight. Yes, it's obscurantism.
| Domenic_S wrote:
| This is a weird phenomenon that I see across discussion
| platforms - it's like reverse sealioning, where
| legitimate good-faith questions are taken as evidence of
| supporting the other position.
|
| In deeply complex and high-stakes systems, the details
| matter a lot; I haven't thought about it too deeply but
| my intuition says that they're the _only_ thing that
| matters. Unintended consequences (like my salary
| depression example above) need to be carefully
| considered. There is inherent inequality built into a
| naive system like you suggest: an apartment in SF is
| worth multiples of an apartment in OK, are we alright
| with that? (don 't answer, just an example). The details
| and their impact are important.
| missedthecue wrote:
| Still, there is an extreme range within those parameters.
|
| What is 'decent housing' for instance? An apartment in
| the affordable part of town, shared with 3 room-mates?
| Your own condo? Your own house in the suburbs? A home in
| a gated community?
|
| Is 'decent food' the minimum amount of recommended
| nutrition as defined by the USDA? Or eating out 3 nights
| a week? Or enjoying prime rib whenever you feel like it?
|
| Is "decent healthcare" a checkup every year? Or a
| Cadillac insurance plan?
|
| Any combination of these could be called an acceptable
| standard of living depending on who you ask. It's totally
| subjective, but the difference between them is tens of
| thousands of dollars a year.
| minimuffins wrote:
| Yeah, any of those would be acceptable. What would be
| unacceptable is when somebody has none of them.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "Enough income to afford decent housing and food,
| healthcare, etc."
|
| And how do you define those? I've heard people on here
| complain that $200k isn't enough for a good life with a
| family. Yet I make less than half that and pay all the
| bills for my family. Clearly standard of living and cost
| of living can have a huge fluctuations on location and
| what one thinks they are entitled to under a decent life.
|
| For example, a studio apartment in a bad school district
| might be decent for a single person with no kids. Yet
| that likely would not meet the definition of decent for a
| family of 4. Unless, that was a step up from wherever you
| were living before (maybe on the street). Some people
| might say they have to eat out or have steaks to have
| decent food. But others might just want a discount
| grocery story with freash fruits and veggies with off-
| brand staples to meet their criteria of decent.
|
| It all depends on people's expectations and needs.
| dhritzkiv wrote:
| For starters, there's what many developed nations have
| agreed the minimum is, including: 2 or more weeks of paid
| time off, statutory holidays, parental leave and benefits,
| and -most importantly- socialised healthcare.
|
| Some -certainly not all- have taken it a step further and
| offer pharmacare, daycare, a livable minimum wage, and free
| higher education.
|
| Still, worldwide, there's an uneven or inequitable
| provision of other basics, such as disability benefits,
| guaranteed housing, food, and internet access. All of which
| I would argue is even more necessary for a good quality of
| life for all.
| mikestew wrote:
| _We want employers to provide benefits_
|
| "We" don't necessarily think benefits should be provided by
| the whims of private businesses.
|
| _as opposed to the government because that means higher
| taxes._
|
| The assumption here being that benefits from the government
| are paid with higher taxes, and benefits from employers being
| paid from the kindness of the CEO's heart and not from wages
| that would have otherwise been paid you.
| reedjosh wrote:
| >We want
|
| >"We" don't
|
| I want the money that my employer pays into health
| insurance to be paid to me into an HSA like tax sheltering
| of healthcare funds, and then I want no health insurance
| middleman. Poof---there goes all the corrupt incentives and
| ridiculous administrative overhead.
| warkdarrior wrote:
| > I want no health insurance middleman
|
| That is literally impossible. Even if insurance companies
| are made illegal tomorrow, that role of market maker
| between providers (doctors and hospitals, drug companies)
| and customers (patients, employers) will always exist.
| This is because such a role is needed.
|
| Patients do not have the capacity nor the knowledge to
| find the best doctor, the best hospital, or the best drug
| maker for them.
| reedjosh wrote:
| > That is literally impossible.
|
| Okay, but I didn't mean literally outlaw insurance
| middlemen.
|
| I mean fix the incentive structure such that I have the
| option to forego insurance middlemen.
|
| > Patients do not have the capacity nor the knowledge
|
| I completely disagree, and what business of yours or
| anyone's is it to say I'm `lacking in capacity and
| knowledge` to such a degree I shouldn't be allowed to
| make my own healthcare decisions!?
|
| Worse still, right now the US government puts a cap on
| the percentage of profit an insurance company can take
| from premiums which coupled with the current near
| monopolistic healthcare insurance system incentivizes
| paying as much as possible for treatment to justify
| higher premiums.
| jessaustin wrote:
| _...do not have the capacity nor the knowledge..._
|
| Health insurance was invented in the late 1930s as a
| political ploy to forestall government health programs.
| Did patients all get stupid at that time, or was it the
| case that they were all going to the wrong doctors and
| hospitals before then?
|
| Please give human beings a little credit. We make
| decisions every day, some of which are a lot more
| substantial than which state-licensed physician to hire.
|
| ps. you don't know what "market maker" means...
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| I don't want government or employers to provide benefits. I
| want people to keep their money and decide what is best for
| themselves. I don't believe the government or my employer has
| my best interest at heart, nor are they equipped to cater to
| my unique family needs..
| ddingus wrote:
| Sadly, you do not live in a vacuum. The system needs to
| serve everyone and make sense.
|
| Everyone choosing what is exactly right for them implies
| those choices are all possible and the complexity, risk and
| cost profile also makes sense.
|
| Those things are not true, and the outcome is rapidly
| escalating cost and risk exposure.
|
| This has been addressed in many ways, and one of the easier
| ways is to have government fund those bennies to provide a
| respectable floor. People who need more can choose to do
| that and the market for such things would make much more
| sense and be lower cost and risk for everyone.
|
| An example seen worldwide is supplemental plans that
| operate in addition to primary plans, which are actually
| illegal in many parts of the world due to the inherent
| conflict between profit motive and health care.
|
| You wanting to keep your money and make choices is very
| different from wanting other people to keep their money,
| which is an overreach frankly.
|
| Further, in the current scenario, you really can't be sure
| medical people have your best interests in mind because the
| priority is making money not making sure we have healthy
| people.
|
| When medical people are free to actually make healthy
| people a priority, the discussion about best interests
| becomes a much easier one.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| I don't want to argue with you or change your mind. I
| just don't want to live in the same country with you.
| ddingus wrote:
| Again, sadly, unless you find new land to settle, ideally
| with some very committed peers to help against risk, you
| will be living with people, many who will express the
| same sentiments, pretty much anywhere you go in this
| world.
|
| Rough state of affairs, I would imagine.
| taurath wrote:
| I'd say you have the first statement wrong - some will give
| but only not if they're forced, some won't give anything in
| any circumstance, and some would give a lot of not blocked by
| the other two.
|
| I don't want to be chained to my employer for benefits, for
| retirement, for healthcare. It's stupid to put a sociopathic
| entity with no accountability to you in charge of your basic
| needs.
| hagy wrote:
| Similarly, many of us don't want to be chained to a
| comparably sociopathic and unaccountable government entity.
| We'd instead prefer to independently manage our own unique
| needs using our own individual economic agency.
| taurath wrote:
| Sorry you think government is sociopathic and
| unaccountable, it honestly seems like a rough life if
| that's what you've experienced.
| hagy wrote:
| How can anyone look at the atrocities committed by every
| major government over the centuries of its existence and
| not see that large governments are orders of magnitude
| more sociopathic than the worst corporations? Its just a
| general feature of large and powerful organizations;
| shared by governments and corporations alike. Governments
| simply hold the power to commit larger atrocities.
|
| Just look at how the city of Flint, MI poisoned their own
| citizens water while suppressing knowledge of their
| actions. [0] While in the grand scheme of government
| atrocities this actually appears relatively minor, this
| issue happened in very recent times.
|
| One could fill pages listing government atrocities before
| even getting to basic incompetence and mismanagement.
| While inefficiencies happen in all bureaucratic
| organizations, governments hold singular power over their
| citizens in a way that no corporation could ever dream
| of.
|
| This is not an argument against government. There are
| some services that only the government can provide. E.g.,
| a strong military. Nor is this an argument against
| government playing some role in promoting general
| welfare.
|
| I just personally would like the option to not be further
| dependent upon our government and would rather use my own
| economic agency to provide for my own unique needs. Many
| other people feel similarly and therefore reject this
| further intrusion of government in dictating our labor
| relations with employers.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis
| ddingus wrote:
| And that really is a priority discussion.
|
| Universal healthcare, say Medicare for All style, does not
| have to mean higher taxes. And it would make a big difference
| to gig workers and the ones working for the likes of Walmart.
|
| A very high percentage of Walmart employees need government
| assistance due to their income not actually being enough to
| pay the laborer what their labor costs them to deliver.
|
| At a minimum, labor needs to exist reasonably and show up for
| work. Healthcare is a part of that, right along with the
| basics.
|
| All of us are subsidizing labor for a few of us to put
| profit, or more peak profit in the bank.
|
| The priority discussion boils down to what makes the most
| sense for the nation.
|
| Do we cut back on the military industrial complex?
|
| Maybe we decide subsidizing labor makes sense. That would
| also mean not shaming and blaming people who seek and obtain
| help from the government. Doing that is baked in right now,
| in that no matter what those people do, a large percentage of
| them will need help.
|
| Or, we simply change nothing and yes, taxes are higher, but
| the national spend is lower overall. Many of us will benefit.
|
| We could prioritize it so employers are more on the hook in
| various ways. Some of them will not be viable. Even if they
| all are, we may not have enough jobs. Government could be an
| employer to make sure everyone has a work opportunity that
| pays enough to exist and show up for work.
|
| There are many options. Not all mean higher taxes, but all
| that discussion means a national priority talk also has to
| happen.
|
| If we do nothing, our priority is not having people make it,
| exist reasonably and show up for work.
|
| Predictably, lots of people are not making it, may do crime,
| are homeless, may not have health care, maybe will show up
| for work, if they can get it.
|
| If our priority becomes about people existing reasonably and
| showing up for work, we will see that, but will have higher
| taxes, or back off some other things we currently make a
| priority.
| hash872 wrote:
| >Do we cut back on the military industrial complex?
|
| The US spends $676 billion on defense, almost the exact
| same amount on Medicare, $1 trillion on Social Security,
| and $409 billion on Medicaid. Social welfare spending is a
| much, much larger portion of the US budget than military
| spending. Here are the numbers straight from the
| Congressional Budget Office https://www.cbo.gov/system/file
| s/2020-04/56324-CBO-2019-budg...
| ddingus wrote:
| Yes, and so?
|
| Did that Trillion not come from people contributing? You
| know it did.
|
| And still, we can and should totally question our current
| spend.
| hash872 wrote:
| To answer the second sentence, no, I don't know that.
| Boomers are taking out 5 times as many benefits as they
| paid in, it is absolutely not paid for (many Boomers
| believe otherwise!)
| ddingus wrote:
| Let's say for a moment that is true. ( and we can ignore
| under payment of benefits, like the social security tax
| cap being at a hundred some thousand dollars.)
|
| How does that impact the discussion? Do we think we need
| another problem by not actually paying those benefits?
|
| Secondly, back to the first question, so?
|
| What's our priority?
|
| Right now that priority is not healthy people, able to
| show up for work, existing reasonably.
|
| Does that make the best sense? I don't think so.
| tharkun__ wrote:
| Are there any numbers on how much of the non-defense
| discretionary spending of 661 billion is actually related
| to the military spending? It lists "veteran's benefits"
| under that for example. Same for "Other", which lists
| "military retirement" and again "some veteran's benefits"
| for example. That sounds like defense spending to me.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > Universal healthcare, say Medicare for All style, does
| not have to mean higher taxes.
|
| How would that be? It seems like it certainly would to me.
| Maybe by less than employees plus employers currently pay
| in aggregate healthcare costs, but I can't imagine a way
| where the government pays for Medicare-for-all and taxes
| don't go up.
|
| Do you have a specific idea in mind that I'm missing?
| munk-a wrote:
| I suspect that was a misstatement - I haven't seen a
| proposal that avoids higher taxes without a large debt
| being written against something else (i.e. redirecting
| funding from the military). It is, however, accurate to
| say that personal out-of-pocket expenses wouldn't
| increase for most individuals. The cost per patient for
| government funded healthcare is expected to significantly
| undercut private costs per patient due to some
| efficiencies of scale and removal of some pretty big
| market friction points - so less money would end up being
| extracted from the economy to pay for an equivalent level
| of care.
|
| In short - you can buy a banana for a dime or give the
| government a nickle and get a "free" banana.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Medicare just forces providers to take less money than
| insurance companies, it's efficient in some sense, but
| it's not operational efficiency.
|
| I'm super glad my mom has Medicare! But she isn't
| benefitting from it being efficient, she's benefitting
| from it setting the rate it pays and requiring providers
| to accept it.
| munk-a wrote:
| To clarify a bit these market insights don't just come
| from comparisons to medicare but by comparing patient
| care costs to similarly developed nations and trying to
| account for factors like the obesity epidemic - the US
| just pays a lot more for a patient to get treatment than
| similar countries.
| sprite wrote:
| You would be able to cut out an entire for profit
| insurance industry, I would also think people would be
| more inclined to go to see a doctor before a minor issue
| turns into a major one than they are now.
| ddingus wrote:
| Well, if you and or your employer are not paying
| premiums, and the overall spend is less (this is a well
| supported CBO finding), most of us will be better off.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Totally agreed. Saying that most of us will be better off
| even though our taxes will go up is significantly more
| accurate.
| ska wrote:
| > Do you have a specific idea in mind that I'm missing?
|
| All in the US more or less pays roughly 2x or more what
| some other countries pay for equivalent healthcare, so
| there is nominally room to extend coverage while keeping
| costs flat in _theory_. In practice, it 's complicated.
| Also 'roughly' and 'more or less' have some wiggle room
| for systemic differences, but it's about right.
| [deleted]
| manigandham wrote:
| A _" minimum quality of life"_ has nothing to do with your
| worker qualification. People can, and should, have the
| freedom to choose how they work.
|
| The obvious solutions include new hybrid classifications or
| mandating certain benefits based on tenure. Why is this not
| considered? Why take away choice from those who specifically
| decided not to get a full-time driving job (which have always
| existed)?
| throwaway1777 wrote:
| I choose the work minimally, maybe 2 hours a month for
| doordash. Can I collect my benefits still?
| KMnO4 wrote:
| Almost all discussion on this topic suggests a minimum
| amount of work to qualify.
| manigandham wrote:
| There are always basic limits. For example you don't get
| all of your healthcare coverage or benefits on the first
| day of your job, and certain things like vacation time
| are accrued as you work. It's not a complex problem to
| solve.
| d4mi3n wrote:
| I see things like this that seem to me to imply that in
| order to _deserve_ benefits, someone needs to work.
|
| I think a more productive line of debate would be:
|
| 1. Do we, as a society, believe we should only care for
| those who can be productive?
|
| 2. Do we, as a society, value things other than
| productivity?
|
| 3. Do we, as a society, believe it is the place of a
| governing body to ensure a standard quality of life
| (whatever that standard may be)?
|
| Putting barriers around who deserves what doesn't really
| serve to do much other than exclude people who don't know
| how to work the system, or those who are unable to work
| the system.
| [deleted]
| ipaddr wrote:
| A negative production value society member needs to be
| carefully balanced against a positive production value
| society member.
|
| Not balancing this means society will go into decline one
| way or the other.
|
| Offering basic levels to society members is health if the
| society can afford it and allows the society to grow
| quickie because risk is removed.
| sethrin wrote:
| > A negative production value society member needs to be
| carefully balanced against a positive production value
| society member.
|
| This is overly simplistic. Someone providing child or
| elder care is providing social value in a way which
| should not be measured against economic measures of
| production. Life is not an economic zero-sum game.
| manigandham wrote:
| I disagree. The better framing is around choice.
|
| In some countries these decisions are made for you and
| funded through taxes and fees. Other nations require you
| to plan your own way. The USA leans toward the individual
| over the state.
|
| Certain things like healthcare should be revamped to
| remove the ties to employers but it's important to keep
| the prevailing culture in mind. People overwhelmingly
| still want the ability to _choose_ here - what they lack
| are the options to choose from.
| mindslight wrote:
| FWIW under current Medicare as it exists, you can choose
| between different private Medicare Advantage providers,
| or buy a private "supplement" that fills in where
| Medicare lacks. The same big insurance companies provide
| these plans, but have to actually conform to Medicare
| guidelines of not screwing people.
|
| To me the "prevailing culture" is more about the vibrancy
| of walking into a vendor and directly paying for services
| that you would like, rather than needing to appeal to
| some bureaucracy (whether "public" or "private") to
| convince it to agree that you "need" something. The
| medical system is currently so far from this, that I
| don't think it has much bearing on the practical reforms
| being discussed. Although I would love to see reforms in
| this direction as well - eg published price lists uniform
| for any payer, and a prohibition on arbitrary post-facto
| billing.
| munk-a wrote:
| I strongly disagree that people want to be able to choose
| healthcare - Americans value the ability to choose their
| healthcare merely because it's being dolled out by
| corporations (on all sides - not just the insurers) that
| are trying to squeeze as much profit as possible out.
| When you're denied choice in American healthcare you get
| bottom of the barrel service so asking someone to
| surrender that choice generates a kneejerk response.
|
| As an example my grandfather lost his leg to a blood clot
| due to being sent to an overwhelmed hospital that left
| him sitting undiagnosed for hours on end - it is easy to
| read that scenario as being forced into a lack of care,
| but choices wouldn't help things here. If he had a choice
| he would have advocated for going to his family doctor
| first which would have made the situation worse - in all
| honestly hospital overcrowding and underfunding is the
| only thing that led to him losing his leg.
|
| Healthcare is a sector of the market that most people
| here (even me - and I work in a company that deals
| specifically in the US healthcare market) don't have
| enough knowledge to make intelligent choices in because
| the knowledge needed to comprehend all the random crap
| that can go wrong with your body is intensely deep.
|
| I also don't think it's far to say the US favors
| individuals over the state - the US cares very little
| about individual health. And that's not precisely what
| you meant when you said it favors individuals over the
| state but I think it's important to highlight that the
| situation in the USA is quite detrimental to a lot of
| individuals.
| mattmcknight wrote:
| > "I strongly disagree that people want to be able to
| choose healthcare "
|
| I absolutely want to choose my healthcare.
| manigandham wrote:
| I literally explained that healthcare should be separated
| from corporations and that people are missing options to
| choose from in the first place. Hospital overcrowding is
| an entirely different issue. Did you reply just to argue?
|
| And yes, I do want to choose my healthcare. I want to
| select the plan that best fits my needs. If you want a
| larger simpler plan that covers everything then you can
| choose that.
|
| Me having choice does not take away from you, it only
| provides more for both of us.
| deanCommie wrote:
| As someone from a country with Universal Healthcare, I
| don't understand what "yes, I do want to choose my
| healthcare. I want to select the plan that best fits my
| life and needs. If you want a larger simpler plan that
| covers everything then you can choose that." means.
|
| And I especially don't understand how it doesn't lead to
| exactly the problematic outcome we are talking about
| which is that poor people can't afford access to quality
| healthcare.
|
| You don't "choose" what level of fire department
| protection you need. How is healthcare different? I
| suppose you can always hire your own private
| firefighter/doctor...
|
| So long as you give people the choice, and it's based on
| PERSONAL financial contributions rather than government-
| organized taxes, those with less means will have less
| access to a finite set of healthcare resources and result
| in systemic inequalities.
|
| I suppose I can imagine that there is some "ultra deluxe"
| version of healthcare where instead of crutches you get a
| wheelchair, and instead of a shared recovery room you get
| your own, and I do support those with the means to pay
| extra for something like that. But the baseline
| HEALTHCARE access part needs to remain the same...
| manigandham wrote:
| That's not how it works. America is a mix of several
| different systems. Everyone has access to care, and there
| are several public healthcare offerings; some
| specifically for seniors/low-income/single-
| parents/children/etc. The ACA already gives everyone an
| insurance option.
|
| The issue is that better coverage requires private
| insurance, mostly offered through corporations. Smaller
| companies can't compete, some people can't leave a bad
| job because of losing their plan, and others are limited
| to public options because they don't work. This is the
| overwhelming problem with USA healthcare. There aren't
| actually many choices because of this complex and
| outdated connection between jobs and benefits.
| deanCommie wrote:
| I think we didn't understand each other.
|
| I know that _today_ America has choice. But it leads to
| the highest healthcare costs in the Western World (to
| allow for middlemen healthcare companies to be some of
| the largest privatecompanies in the country), with the
| worst quality for the poorest people.
|
| So the question is, how do you solve the problem of
| universal access while giving people the "choice".
|
| > The issue is that better coverage requires private
| insurance, mostly offered through corporations
|
| Not in the rest of the western world. We just simply
| don't have these companies. They don't need to exist.
| They are a form of corporate socialism transferring
| wealth from taxpayers to mediate something that can be
| handled directly.
|
| Health insurance companies is a moral failure. I'm going
| to double down on my metaphor. Fire engines don't check
| your insurance to decide if they should put your fire
| out. That _used_ to be how things worked 100 years ago.
| manigandham wrote:
| No, like I just said, America already has access and
| healthcare insurance options for everyone. _Nobody is
| denied_.
|
| The choice for _better_ healthcare is limited and locked
| behind employment. That 's the problem, instead of
| letting everyone have access to all plans, and the
| solutions are too complicated to discuss here. However
| insurance is not a moral failure, it's a financial and
| risk management concept. Just because your government
| manages somethings for you with your taxes doesn't mean
| it doesn't exist.
| deanCommie wrote:
| What you call "better" healthcare is considered basic
| healthcare in the rest of the world.
|
| I understand that when you're a fish it's hard to
| understand what water is, but the fact that employment
| plays any part into this whatsoever is a problem. Nobody
| in Canada or the UK or Luxembourg (some countries i have
| some experience with) would ever factor in healthcare in
| a decision to start or leave a job. It is absolutely not
| a variable.
| manigandham wrote:
| > _" the fact that employment plays any part into this
| whatsoever is a problem"_
|
| Yes, I've said exactly this about half a dozen times now.
| It seems you're arguing based on myths and preconceived
| notions against the USA rather than actually responding
| to anything I've said. Let's end it here.
| deanCommie wrote:
| I misread your last comment, apologies for that.
|
| I just don't understand you acknowledging that healthcare
| choice being locked behind employment and insurance
| companies middlemen being a problem yet still wanting
| "healthcare choice." What does that mean to you if you
| don't have the others any longer?
| [deleted]
| Futurebot wrote:
| Yes, you should. Everyone should get a home, medical
| benefits, education, all of it. Period. If you work on
| top of that, great. If not, OK.
| tchalla wrote:
| In your opinion, what "benefits" should someone have when
| working 2h a month?
| cgrealy wrote:
| The same as everyone else.
|
| You might "work" 2h a month, because you spend the rest
| of it caring for family members, or maybe you're trying
| to get that first draft/beta version out the door.
|
| Or you might just not want to work.
|
| We need to stop assigning so much worth to work. We know
| automation is coming, and we know that not everyone is
| going to be able to find work in the future.
| balfirevic wrote:
| Not the parent poster, but I'll repeat the question: what
| benefits do you have in mind?
|
| I mean it as a serious question, as it's not clear to me
| what the difference between benefits and salary is (not
| being from US).
|
| I understand that the health insurance is one of them
| (and, to be clear, I do believe you should have that
| whether you work 0 or 100 hours a month).
|
| But what are others? Pension contribution is just a part
| of your salary that you are required by law to put aside.
| Guaranteed minimum time off comes to mind, but that
| obviously makes less sense if you are already not working
| too much. What else?
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _Why take away choice from those who specifically decided
| not to get a full-time driving job (which have always
| existed)?_
|
| There are millions of employees in the US who work part-
| time and choose their own schedules.
| manigandham wrote:
| Part-time schedules are still preset schedules.
|
| They do not allow you the same flexibility to work for
| the next 30 minutes, take a few hours off, then work
| another hour this evening without doing anything more
| than just starting or stopping the app whenever you feel
| like.
|
| How would you replicate that with part-time hours?
| xpe wrote:
| > It seems backward that the government, instead of fixing
| government policy and laws that disadvantage independent
| workers, wants to force independent workers to become employees
| so that the government doesn't have to fix anything. It is
| abdication of responsibility for social outcomes.
|
| There is a logical fallacy here, but I'm not sure if there is a
| name for it. In essence, the above argument is assuming "the
| government" is one actor who is able to choose between various
| options at the same time. In practice, "the government" is a
| collection of actors, with many competing interests, with
| different mechanisms of influence available at different times.
|
| Aside: for anyone that thinks technology is hard, I would
| suggest running for office -- even a 'minor' role like being a
| school board member. This might shed some light on the
| difficulties of leading in a broader context. There is a reason
| it is called 'public service'.
| seany wrote:
| I really hope what every they end up doing here doesn't screw
| over all the people that really want to be part time contract
| workers like AB5 did.
| alexrustic wrote:
| See also CNBC article about this:
|
| _Uber, Lyft, DoorDash stocks fall sharply after U.S. Labor
| secretary says gig workers should be classified as employees_
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/29/uber-lyft-doordash-stocks-fa...
| siruva07 wrote:
| Most gig workers should be given the opportunity to become
| franchise owners, not employees and lose their independence.
|
| That could also solve the equity discrepancy, and give the
| workers real ownership upside.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| It blows my mind that these platforms refuse to let workers set
| their own rates, choose their clients, choose how the work gets
| done, where the work gets done and how the work gets done. Those
| are the defining characteristics of what makes a worker a
| contractor or not.
|
| Instead, platforms like Uber dictate rates, dictate how, where
| and when the work gets done, and penalize workers if they don't
| take the clients Uber wants them to take. Uber even dictates what
| cars they can and can't use.
| chaostheory wrote:
| Yeah the Ubers and Lyfts of the world would have a stronger
| argument about their drivers being contractors if this was the
| case, but it's not.
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| Workers actually could set their own rates higher but Uber puts
| a floor on how little a ride can cost. Uber tested this feature
| and found that everyone who set a rate higher than Uber's floor
| amount didn't get a ride...
|
| Uber does not let you choose your clients because they
| discovered discrimination occurred based on who the client was
| and where they were being picked up from. You are free to
| cancel but repeatedly cancelling means Uber will remove you
| from the network (you aren't putting in anything good to the
| system...so maybe the system isn't for you)
|
| The work gets done when someone requests it, you don't get to
| negotiate that as a driver. You are able to look at customers
| who want future work done (scheduled rides) and book those at
| your convenience. If you are working in an on-demand contract
| role, the work has to be done...on-demand.
|
| The ride has to be done in the same way as every ride as that
| is the expectation of the product. Uber doesn't tell you how to
| drive, doesn't tell you to set your car up in a certain way,
| but it does tell you some basic ground rules for doing the
| work.
|
| Dictating what car you can and can't use is like regulating the
| equipment on the platform. You can't use 2-door cars, cars past
| a certain age, and a few completely reasonable restrictions
| (https://www.ridesharingdriver.com/uber-vehicle-
| requirements-...)
| lokar wrote:
| In your reply I see a theme common in most defences of Uber,
| it boils down to "without X, the business would not work"
|
| Uber has no inherent right to exist and do business. If the
| existing laws preclude your prefered business model, you need
| to get the law changed BEFORE you go into business.
| Bukhmanizer wrote:
| To me it sounds like a service like Uber requires so much
| control over their product that they just can't use gig
| workers/independent contractors.
|
| These are all completely reasonable things to require from a
| company/customer point of view. It's completely unreasonable
| to demand these things of independent contractors.
| justapassenger wrote:
| No one said it's an easy business. Your arguments are
| basically "if they don't get control over that, then it's
| hurting the business".
|
| If you need to either be at the edge of the law and
| discriminate or be the edge of the law and misclassify
| employees as contractors, to make your business work, then
| maybe your business model is flawed.
| r00fus wrote:
| Sound a lot like Uber needs workers who act like employees
| (who Uber can dictate the work to) but wants to pay them like
| contractors.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| That discrimination is the onus of the independent contractor
| drivers. Without full transparency about a potential ride's
| pickup, drop off, and how much they will be paid for it,
| there is effectively no way to argue that Uber drivers are
| independent contractors.
| kfarr wrote:
| You did a good job describing constraints Uber has in order
| to deliver a product to customers. From your description
| there might be good reasons for those constraints such as
| anti discrimination or price stability. But even for "good
| reasons" it doesn't absolve Uber of liability for treating
| employees as contractors.
| nickff wrote:
| This comment seems to contain a non-sequitur; you argue in
| favor of one thing, then make a tangentially related
| assertion (that Uber drivers are employees) with no
| argument in its favor.
| peteradio wrote:
| Seems like the non-sequitur would be on the part of the
| grand-parent since it was in defense of Uber that these
| limitations were placed.
| karpierz wrote:
| > Uber does not let you choose your clients because they
| discovered discrimination occurred based on who the client
| was and where they were being picked up from.
|
| This assumes that the only solution for Uber is to stop
| drivers from selecting who they pick up and where they pick
| up from.
|
| Another would be for Uber to allow drivers to make the
| choice, but subsidize rides from discriminated areas using
| money from desirable areas.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > Uber does not let you choose your clients because they
| discovered discrimination occurred based on who the client
| was and where they were being picked up from.
|
| It was pretty well known that getting a cab from certain
| (non-white) neighborhoods and just hailing one as a PoC was
| very hard pre-Uber.
|
| You could always lodge a complain at the centralized taxi
| authority where some bureaucrats would input it in "the
| system". But in the end it achieved nothing. Uber kicking out
| racist drivers probably did more than decades of complains.
| pvarangot wrote:
| What driving job as a contractor lets you choose your clients
| and set the rate? Not even truck drivers and not even most
| private pilots can do that.
| bongobingo wrote:
| Uber is the client, not the person the driver picks up. The
| drivers are contractors, and they contract to Uber (or Lyft,
| etc) to do some job, in this case driving some person to a
| destination.
|
| Each requested ride is a new job. The contractor can choose to
| not take that job, for any number of reasons.
|
| The fact that the job has a set rate is not abnormal at all.
| The fact that the client will "punish" you for not being
| available is also not abnormal at all.
|
| Additionally, the contractors are able to work whenever they
| want, wherever they want, and for whichever companies they
| want.
|
| The only real oddity here is that the contract work is
| dependent on the ride sharing companies. There should be an
| additional classification for dependent contractors. These
| drivers are definitely not employees, under any definition.
| paulpauper wrote:
| Being an independent contractor does not mean being independent
| of rules
|
| WWE wrestlers are independent contractors yet are instructed to
| perform certain moves and even deliberately lose matches
| minimuffins wrote:
| > Being an independent contractor does not mean being
| independent of rules
|
| Surely it at least means being independent from some of the
| rules that you have to follow if you have a full time job, or
| why do it? If it doesn't at least mean setting your own
| price, then what in the world is the point?
|
| Imagine you are freelancing on a software project but you
| can't ever make any good money because, strangely, the price
| you're allowed to charge is set by Stackoverflow and not you.
| Seems kind of presumptuous of them to decide that for me, no?
|
| I don't understand why so many people in tech will bend over
| backwards to not notice the most obvious, basic nature of the
| economic arrangement between these firms and the people who
| do all the work. Just look at this stuff straight on. It's
| obvious what it is. Imagine yourself as a worker instead of a
| boss for once.
|
| There is an Upton Sinclair quotation that fits.
| rigden33 wrote:
| This is not a great example because WWE wrestlers should also
| be employees and not independent contractors.
|
| There's the John Oliver's video
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8UQ4O7UiDs
|
| And also a journal article in response to the video
|
| https://bit.ly/3vqHHar
|
| Which concludes,
|
| "But in the end, the totality of the evidence is
| overwhelmingly in favor of wrestlers being more accurately
| classified as employees."
| Jonanin wrote:
| This is a blatantly false characterization. Uber workers _can_
| decide when and how to work.
| xur17 wrote:
| This is one thing that confuses me about the drive to
| classify Uber drivers as workers. Admittedly anecdotal, but
| when chatting with drivers, it seems like a fair number drive
| part time to make some extra money. I don't think they really
| want to be classified as employees of Uber.
|
| That said, I'm not really sure what the solution is. If
| drivers that drive more than X hours per week have to be
| employees, I wouldn't be surprised to see Uber attempt to
| limit hours for each driver.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _Admittedly anecdotal, but when chatting with drivers, it
| seems like a fair number drive part time to make some extra
| money_
|
| There are millions of part-time employees in the US who
| choose their own hours.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _The defining aspect of these gig worker jobs is that
| independent contractors _can_ decide when and how to work._
|
| So the workers can negotiate when, how and for how much
| they'll work for their clients? I've got an '01 sedan
| collecting dust, can I decide that's how I'm going to pick up
| my clients via Uber?
|
| When I worked as a contractor, it didn't matter that I used
| some shitty laptop or OS to get my work done, because I had
| the freedom to decide how and where I completed my work.
| Workers using Uber are denied that freedom.
| kevincox wrote:
| > it didn't matter that I used some shitty laptop or OS to
| get my work done
|
| This isn't a reasonable comparison. Your shitty laptop or
| OS was likely not part of the product. If I want a website
| I don't care what your laptop looks like. If I am being
| driven somewhere I certainly care about what condition the
| car is in.
| jjav wrote:
| > If I am being driven somewhere I certainly care about
| what condition the car is in.
|
| Right, so sounds like Uber sensibly wants their
| representatives on the street to project their desired
| corporate image.
|
| Thus, employees.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _This isn 't a reasonable comparison. Your shitty
| laptop or OS was likely not part of the product_
|
| If a client hires me to build a web app, I get to decide
| how, when and where it is built. That means I get to
| choose if I use, say, Django or Rails on the backend, and
| maybe React on the front end. These are certainly part of
| the product.
| kevincox wrote:
| That is not necessarily the case. The client may well
| have restrictions on what technologies you use,
| especially if they are to run and maintain it after you
| have built it. This probably is considered part of the
| product.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| The contractor and client would negotiate those terms.
| iudqnolq wrote:
| But you and the client negotiate and come to an agreement
| or decide not to do business. If you fail to come to an
| agreement with many clients this may affect your
| reputation, but no central authority will ban you from
| talking to future clients.
|
| If I started "Daniel's Ruby Shop", collected money from
| clients, and paid it to you if you made Ruby websites
| that met standards I set, and required you to Skype me at
| specific times or forever be banned from "contracts"
| you're not an independent contractor, you're my employee.
| yibg wrote:
| A lot of those don't apply to the likes of uber and doordash
| though. An uber driver can't choose where the work gets done
| because the where is part of the gig itself. The how as well,
| as that's basically part of the task. Seems to be we're
| fundamentally trying to force an old classification to a new
| set of jobs.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _An uber driver can 't choose where the work gets done
| because the where is part of the gig itself._
|
| An Uber driver can certainly decide how and where their work
| gets done by using the car of their choice, except they
| aren't allowed to. Uber decides what vehicles they can use.
|
| > _Seems to be we 're fundamentally trying to force an old
| classification to a new set of jobs._
|
| There's nothing new about delivery driving and taxis. What's
| new is that companies are pretending that an app means that
| they shouldn't have to play by the same rules as every other
| employer.
| yibg wrote:
| Weren't delivery and taxis mostly (or at least a major
| portion) contractors before this as well? And can't uber
| drivers use the car they want as long as it meets some
| criteria?
| filoleg wrote:
| >And can't uber drivers use the car they want as long as
| it meets some criteria?
|
| This. The cars have a bare minimum requirement to ensure
| a good passenger experience and for safety (no older than
| X year of manufacturing, etc.), but beyond that, you are
| welcome to use whatever car you want. Uber has no issues
| with letting you use any car of your choice, as long as
| it meets the minimum requirements (which seem to be
| pretty reasonable).
|
| I've seen regular Uber drivers (not Uber Black or any
| other more premium services) pull up in anything ranging
| from a few years old Priuses to pretty much brand new
| Teslas and Audi Q-series SUVs.
| kube-system wrote:
| A traditional independent contractor would choose which jobs
| they take. Many musicians, for instance, might turn down a
| gig because they don't want to drive to the location, or
| might ask negotiate for more money because of it. A guy
| mowing my lawn might ask for more money if my lawn is
| particularly difficult, or deny the job if we can't come to
| an agreement. Rideshare apps deny their so called
| "contractors" this freedom that most contractors have. They
| could certainly give their drivers the ability to negotiate
| terms, as every other contractor gets to do, but they don't.
| It is the denial of this freedom that makes them employees.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Sounds like a definining characteristic of monopsony, which you
| could argue makes the difference between contractor and
| employee somewhat irrelevant.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Yes, I also agree with this sentiment.
| baby wrote:
| This reminds me of how SF killed the electric scooter business.
| This is why we can't have nice things. America wants you to own a
| car, and drive it.
| temp667 wrote:
| Which is nuts - they were so popular and efficient. Was it the
| taxi companies who wanted them gone or uber? Uber I'm sure did
| a lot better business once you couldn't grab a scooter.
| duckfang wrote:
| I'm glad to see most Limes and Birds gone.
|
| More often than not, they ended up in roads, across sidewalks
| blocking access, thrown in parking spots, in lakes rivers and
| other deep-enough bodies of water, thrown off parking
| structures, and more.
|
| And in my city, both Bird and Lime came in the city on
| flatbed trucks between 4-5AM and offloaded them en masse.
| Where I come from, that's abandoning trash. Had they work
| with the city, this rollout couold have gone loads smoother
| and not start by trashing the public commons...
|
| But in reality, thats what Silly-con valley companies do -
| they exfiltrate good will and good things like public commons
| and take it for themselves, all the while screaming that
| they're being wronged when people take, disassemble, throw in
| trash their littered goods.
| baby wrote:
| Every time I read a comment like this, that seems to ignore
| the amount of space, noise, and danger cars bring to a
| city, I just can't believe it was written in right faith.
| josu wrote:
| It's just as bad in Madrid where the public transportation is
| actually OK, and not everybody owns a car.
| kzrdude wrote:
| What's bad?
| danlugo92 wrote:
| I hate driving.
| makosdv wrote:
| I feel like we should be trying to phase out this special
| "employee" classification that the gov't defined instead of
| expanding it.
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| Be aware: contractors and other workers fall into this category
| of "gig workers" - this will end 1099-based work as well.
| superbatfish wrote:
| In most discussions around this topic, Uber and Lyft are
| highlighted as typical examples. This article is no exception.
| But it includes the following quote from Labor Secretary Marty
| Walsh:
|
| >"These companies are making profits and revenue and I'm not
| (going to) begrudge anyone for that because that's what we are
| about in America. But we also want to make sure that success
| trickles down to the worker," he said.
|
| If he's referring to Uber and Lyft specifically, then he's
| mistaken. Uber and Lyft remain breathtakingly unprofitable.
|
| Would that fact change the way people think about this issue? I
| think it does... and advocates for reform think it does, too.
| Otherwise, why would they keep making this "mistake" when they
| talk about this issue?
|
| As a side note: it's pretty poor journalism on Reuters' part to
| include that quote without any context or criticism, especially
| since they mention Uber and Lyft by name in the opening
| paragraph. Or, if he wasn't talking about Uber and Lyft, then
| Reuters' presentation makes him look like a liar, or at least
| embarrassingly misinformed. (He's the Labor Secretary after all
| -- he ought to know what he's talking about.)
| vsskanth wrote:
| Elephant in the room here is tying benefits to employment.
| jeezzbo wrote:
| Employees, by structure of tax code, pay Government taxes prior
| to receiving their own salary. Corporations pay Government for
| access to labor market in form of tax on employees. People who
| own their own labor, like much of the innate structure of
| "Rights" that exist in lieu of Government administration, like
| 1st, 2nd, etc.. only pay the Government after all expenses have
| been deducted from revenue, and the self has been paid. This
| inherent structural shift, between the owner and the owned, is
| the fundamental source of tension being pulled at by this view of
| labor market. The Government owns its labor pool. People own root
| authority over a Government "of, by, for" those people. This is
| the fault line of civil Society, as presently defined in
| Constitutional literature. The actual source of American
| Sovereignty of course, demonstrated by John Hancock and peers,
| and recursively denied to all that followed, is directly
| personal. In other words, Amrica, and all Sovereign labor is
| issued by self-Sovereign authority, or else this dream never
| exists. Employees opt-out of this inherent structure, and by
| acting thus, degrade the labor market as defined by this labor
| Secretary. The Government can't pay for infinite wars and debt
| without employees paying the Government before their own lives.
| Structure yields results.. administrative enslavement -to-
| employment came about, at great human cost fought via war, and
| owners were victorious on both sides of history.. structure
| yields results..
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| After doing God's work upvoting anything that's grey, whether I
| agree or not....
|
| Having hit this kind of thing when the Great State of California
| got interested in contractors a few years back I have to say that
| the cynic in me tends to come out on these issues.
|
| So many people have a personal interest in this general issue,
| large companies who don't use contractors, large companies who
| do, health insurance mavens, the state wanting to extract a few
| bucks in things like unemployment insurance, people in the
| grievance industry, politicians generally, I think you basically
| can't trust any heartfelt opinions on the way-things-oughta-be.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| Fix the fact that health insurance, retirement program, etc are
| all tied to traditional employment rather than forcing everyone
| into a square box.
| standardUser wrote:
| We disincentivize starting business (anti-entrepreneurial),
| work hour flexibly (anti-family), working independently (anti-
| individualism) and instead _heavily_ incentivize reporting to a
| boss, on their schedule, at their chosen location, and getting
| paid only whatever you can convince them to pay you.
| oramit wrote:
| Indeed - this is the real problem. We've bolted on so many
| things to the employee/employer relationship that should not be
| there. It's no surprise that contractor vs full time questions
| become so fraught when as a matter of policy, we've made that
| distinction hugely important.
|
| I want there to be more flexibility in work arrangements. That
| would be awesome, but the only way to make that work is to
| sever Health care and retirement plans from employment.
| kevincox wrote:
| This is the weirdest thing to me. Why do I get whatever health
| plan my employer selected? I shouldn't have to switch jobs to
| change my health insurance. And sometimes there is a delay
| before your coverage starts at the new pace, or I want to take
| a couple of months off. Now I have no coverage! This is
| nonsense. It seems that the main argument for it is that
| companies have more negotiating power, but that seems like it
| would largely change if there was a significant market for
| individual/family health insurance where competition can
| actually exist between the people who are benefiting.
|
| Employment should be simple, I do work and they pay me. Instead
| so many critical aspects of my life are tied to it as you
| mention.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Yes, this!
|
| People need more stable access to basic needs: healthcare,
| education, food, water, housing, communications (some kind of
| basic phone & internet access). This will necessarily lead to
| greater labor market mobility and therefore greater market
| power by labor providers (i.e. employees and contractors).
| citilife wrote:
| This is a super weird stance to be honest...
|
| Imagine if I sell my book on Amazon. Is Amazon the employer or my
| publisher?
|
| If I rent my home out on AirBnB, is AirBnB by land lord or
| realtor?
|
| If I offer to fix plumbing via craigslist, is craigslist my
| employer?
|
| So, if I offer to much of my services on a platform am I to be
| employed by that platform?
|
| The drivers of Uber and Lyft have opted not to be employees
| before. There seems to be some sort of political agenda here
| (maybe increase in taxes?), because no one seems to want this.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Only the plumber is a contractor/employer scenario. The rest of
| the examples are irrelevant.
|
| Individual plumbers are often contractors. If they work for a
| larger plumbing company, they'd be an employee. There are
| specific criteria at play here:
|
| https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/understanding-employee-vs-contr...
|
| > A worker is an employee when the business has the right to
| direct and control the work performed by the worker, even if
| that right is not exercised.
|
| Uber sets the driver standards, how the work should be done,
| policies, pricing, etc. They clearly have _some_ aspects of an
| employer /employee relationship. The line's a little blurry in
| spots; I can see both sides of the argument, and I'd say it's
| clear the law didn't anticipate this scenario.
| citilife wrote:
| What is a contractor?
|
| They are person or company leasing labor aka providing
| services. The other items I listed were both services and
| goods.
|
| The point is that you shouldn't force a platform to employ or
| act as anything other than what it is (a routing system).
| Uber is not directly employing people, it's connecting
| customers to produces of a service (taxis, effectively). It's
| also acting as the payment processor and price setter.
| Everyone can know what they're getting / paying ahead of
| time. It's a transaction.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > They are person or company leasing labor aka providing
| services.
|
| The formal definition - see the IRS link - is substantially
| more complex than that.
|
| I provide services to the company that employs me. I am not
| a contractor.
| IncRnd wrote:
| > Imagine if I sell my book on Amazon. Is Amazon the employer
| or my publisher?
|
| In that case Amazon is your book seller. They may also be a
| publisher through Kindle Direct Publishing.
|
| > If I rent my home out on AirBnB, is AirBnB by land lord or
| realtor?
|
| You'd best check in the jurisdiction where your home is, but it
| is more likely they would be a property management company.
|
| > If I offer to fix plumbing via craigslist, is craigslist my
| employer?
|
| This is a bona fide activity performed by contractors.
|
| > So, if I offer to much of my services on a platform am I to
| be employed by that platform?
|
| There is a reason why we don't see Uber drivers advertising on
| Cragislist but lots of ads on Cragslist to hire drivers for
| Uber.
| kokanator wrote:
| This is about TAXES and the cost of healthcare for the
| government.
|
| 1. We implement OBAMA care which allows most people to receive
| subsidized health insurance. Supposedly to cover the uninsured.
| Then pension plans, employers, gig companies take advantage of
| this fact and push the people to the marketplace. The cost of
| OBAMA care skyrockets along with all other insurance plans.
|
| 2. Gig companies do not have to carry employee tax liability on
| their balance sheet. Each independent gig work needs to do
| this. Would the IRS rather collect from 1 company or hundreds
| of thousands of independent contractors. Additionally,
| independent contractors are viewed as a business and can take
| substantial deductions. The combination of taking advantage of
| tax deductions, the cost to collect from all of contractors and
| the fact that a good number of contractors do not make their
| tax payments, leads to reduced revenue.
|
| 3. Personal mandate goes away and the Gig worker drops their
| health insurance or the personal mandate wasn't paid int he
| first place. By creating this scenario OBAMA care becomes
| unsustainable.
|
| I worked 19 years as a contractor and loved it. Never was
| provided benefits. I purchased my own health insurance until
| the ACA came along and it doubled the cost the plan I purchased
| for my family year over year until it was unaffordable. I
| didn't want to purchase the terrible plans available through
| the marketplace so I got a job.
| throwaway823882 wrote:
| Gig working only exists because our economy is rooted on income
| inequality. If people could get a regular job that paid a living
| wage, they wouldn't be working 14 hours a day for 3 different
| companies just to make ends meet.
|
| Gig companies are the 21st century robber barons.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| Gig workers only exist because the state has tied more and more
| programs like 401k and health insurance into employment. The
| fact that you can't hire someone without also worrying about
| health insurance is insane. That is what needs to be fixed I
| don't want my employer involved at all in my personal health
| care.
| ckocagil wrote:
| So you're proposing we go back to the 19th century?
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| What do you even mean? I just don't want my employer
| involved in government retirement programs or my health
| insurance. "Benefits" from employers are just nicely
| constructed traps to make it hard to retire or switch jobs.
| myko wrote:
| A lot of these problems stem from healthcare being tied to jobs,
| which makes zero sense.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| The whole world is going this way. The UK just brought in IR35 to
| force as many people to be employees as possible. But I don't
| want to be an employee. I was much happier when I started
| contracting instead.
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