This decision affects the consumer experience of Uber only if the sole way the company can remain profitable is to exploit its workers. Otherwise nothing here stops folks from ordering taxis on demand via their smartphones.
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If taxis offered better value for the cost, the Uber model would be dead before it started.
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Clearly youâre not on the CA Labor Relations Board!
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Where I said âordering taxis on demand via their smartphonesâ I was referring to Uber. They technically may not be taxis due to the medallion business but they are functionally as far as Iâm concerned.
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New York City classifies regular olâ taxi cab drivers as independent contractors.
Why isnât anybody shitting bricks and bringing a court case against the Taxi and Limousine Commission?
Coordinating the rental of a product, a car or a house, is fundamentally different to coordinating the provision of a service like being driven somewhere. Cars and houses cannot be employees and do not need labour protections - people performing a service can and do.
As you say, itâs down to how extensively Uber itself is involved in the process - organising your own clients and your own rides you are obviously not an employee, but when youâre being centrally managed by a company - even if you set your own availability - you very much should be recognised as deserving the rights extended to you by law designed to protect the exploitation of workers no matter how that company structures your agreements.
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Germany had a period of companies selling off their fleets and rehiring the drivers as âfreelancersâ. This led to a bunch of laws against Scheinselbständigkeit, and Uber had been outright banned there (they are now trying to claim that they are in the same class as ride hitching services, but those are legal only because the drivers earn nothing and the portals only charge a flat membership fee).
[quote=âfnordius, post:27, topic:59870, full:trueâ]
Germany had a period of companies selling off their fleets and rehiring the drivers as âfreelancersâ. This led to a bunch of laws against Scheinselbständigkeit,[/quote]I guess they will (have to) be adamant that the individual passengers are the driversâ customers and totally not Uberâs.
[quote]and Uber had been outright banned there (they are now trying to claim that they are in the same class as ride hitching services, but those are legal only because the drivers earn nothing and the portals only charge a flat membership fee).
[/quote]I think you may have missed the latest round. In Germany UberPop, their flagship service, is now dead and buried. It has been replaced with UberX which will rely on businesses operating Funkmietwagen with fully licensed drivers. Effectively it is now Minicar with a slicker app.
Iâve noticed the (very few) Uber cars here in NE England have the exact same taxi plates (and, presumably, must adhere to the exact same rules) as all the other taxi firms. Our cab firms here are pretty slick, so I canât see Uber making much headway, really.
âSo when the supplier decides instead to drive you himself, instead of just letting you rent his car, is there a significant difference?â
Are you kidding me?
He is doing the driving. He is providing a service, he acquires (or should acquire) a set of legal responsibilities for that since he is performing and activity that could actually harm the person contracting the service he the provider isn;t skilled or is careless.
Sure, heâs doing a service, but you can argue that every seller in the âsharing economyâ is also doing a service.
When I rent my home on AirBnB, I am organizing cleaners, facilitating the guestsâ arrival, answering their questions over the course of their stay, and cleaning up after they leave. In short, everything that a front-desk attendant/hotel manager/janitor/concierge do â those are all clearly employees of a hostel.
When I rent out my car on RelayRides, Iâm doing everything the person behind the counter a Herz does â clearly an employee.
To put it another way, AirBnB/Relay Rides could be handling all those things for me, but they donât: they expect me to do those things, and if I donât their system would fall apart.
So again, I think itâs a question of degree, not a categorical description. Clearly Uber was treating its drivers more like employees than AirBnB treats its home-owners. But thatâs why I said each of these cases are going to have to be treated separately, and will probably even lead to contradictory judgements at times.
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