It’s seems clear that by “us” he means corporate management. This kind of response shows that they are feeling the heat. It’s about time.
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Or maybe its possible that some uber drivers actually feel this way and think of the service the way I would if I was driving for it (or how my father in law did when he was driving for it) - as a way to pick up a couple extra bucks without dealing with the overhead of being an employee. It’s not necessary to believe every single uber driver to be an exploited wage slave to believe that its appropriate for regulators/legislators to examine the effects of large numbers of workers operating in this business model and propose some changes to the rules around contractors, or to support efforts of uber/lyft drivers to unionize (which I do support). Also keep in mind that the incumbent taxi companies were/are disasters from the perspective of drivers’ “rights” and treatment.
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As already stated VERBATIM, it is possible, but not very probable.
Perhaps it’s the way that “person” deigned to end their lengthy corporate-script-sounding diatribe with the broad overgeneralization “we are happy,” as if all drivers are monolithic and of one solitary mind that compels such intense disbelief.
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There are only two ways to read the original text. One is that they are working for Uber’s PR department, the other is that they are in a cult. Considering that Uber is run by ayn-caps, I suppose it could be either, or possibly both.
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One way or another, the Uber driver is still an employee and not the rugged individualist entrepreneur that the company likes to promote in its propaganda. More specifically, he’s a precarious contract employee in a job almost any adult can do with the overhead of owning and maintaining his own capital equipment who has no chance at the “overhead” of benefits and workplace protections.
If someone is driving part-time as a way of supplementing their full-time or retirement income and ammortising their wasting-asset vehicle, good on them. But for an increasing amount of drivers, driving for Uber seems to be yet another of several “side hustle” gigs cobbled together to create the semblance of a living wage (or, for some who’ve been aged out of the job market, a desperation move).
They were also monopolists and sleazebags who smugly thought they could go on forever without innovating and improving things for customers and drivers. The problem is not that they received their well-deserved comeuppance from disruptors, it’s that the main disruptor is yet another exploitative greedpig steeped in Ayn Rand’s pseudo-philosophy.
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All of this, exactly.
Personally, I use Lyft regularly, and I actually talk with the drivers. That’s the feedback that I hear the most; many of them are trying to patchwork several side-gigs into a semblance of a living wage.
I’ve never used Uber, because by the time I’d started patronizing ride-share services, they’d already had all sorts of negative press from their common practice of fucking their drivers over to certain drivers actually sexually assaulting their passengers. And the negativity has never ceased since then; it’s only ‘waxed and waned.’
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I don’t use Uber, either – it’s a rotten company with a rotten corporate culture and rotten business practises. Nice to see that at least one of its corporate employees hasn’t imbibed the “Atlas Shrugged” Kool-Aid.
Lyft is part of the same problematic gig economy ecosystem, but I’ll still choose it over Uber (and over medallion taxi companies). The Lyft drivers I chat with for the most part seem to be happy with the company and (until recent conversations) use it mainly to supplement their full-time income. Uber seems to recruit a different type of contractor: career drivers displaced from the incumbent taxi, black car and limo industries; and desperate people who can be sold the idea that they’re actually Galtian empire-builders in the making instead of people with no other options to put food on the table.
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Absolutely, it is.
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Just because you feel one way or another doesn’t give you the right to under mine the livelihood of others.
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I entirely agree, and I certainly hope these protesters and lawsuits don’t ruin the gig economy for the rest of us who are happy with our livelyhood as it is.
Thanks for speaking up!
On the subject of taxi companies, I suspect this is more of an American problem. My experience with taxis is mostly limited to Germany, where taxis are clean and modern. The last one I rode in was a Tesla, for example. And the thing about Uber is that I had the impression that they did not care if their drivers had chauffeur licenses or not. The view from the EU is that Uber is yet another American sleazeball company trying to fool people into doing its work for them.
In fact, I think “normal” Uber is outright illegal in Germany and they haven’t had much luck convincing limo companies to join in their Uber Black or whatever it’s called. I haven’t even heard of Lyft being available in Germany. All the heat and fire over here has been over ShareNow (formely DriveNow/Car2Go).
Oh, and @americanparser? Methinks thou dost protest too much.
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I really think it’s nuts that people who believe in free market capitalism hate unions so much. What is a union really if not a business partner (a group of people but essentially on half of a business transaction exchanging a service for a fee) using power they have to influence the best position in a transaction. These people wouldn’t blame a business for using market advantage to charge the maximum price for a product. How is it different for workers to try to charge the maximum they can for a service. The difference is of course workers have to organize to have the same sort of leverage that an employer can wield unilaterally.
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Aye, it it the Randian “greed for me, but not for thee” mentality. An inability to see unions as partners that really ought to be listened to. Nope, to them unions are the enemy, keeping them from fleecing the serfs extracting their just share of the profits.
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I don’t know why Rey is disappointed. One quarter portion is the going rate and 90 percent of us scavengers are happy with that. I’d much rather be a freelance scavenger and set my own hours than be coddled by a corporation or government. https://66.media.tumblr.com/c9a25d6b8081da788cadb3930e9e02b4/tumblr_o5wppe0KzD1s7mi6zo2_540.gif
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Yes, and one that’s bad in particular American cities (NYC being the most prominent example). As I recall, some American cities had co-op – as in worker-owned, as in (Libertarians cover your ears) socialist – taxi companies.
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Are you kidding? I write one comment (the first one) and get fifteen rebuttals? I protest too much? Wait a minute. I’M not marching in the streets. I’M not organizing. I’M not boycotting. I’M not filing lawsuits. I’M not trying to force alteratons to already signed contracts through the force of legislation.
I’M not the reason this article exists. I’m too busy making good money — much of it with Uber — to have time to protest too much. Protesting too much, my friend, is the luxury of professionals.
So, your preferred working patterns should be what they all have to have, because why?
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Oh, man, you even read like a Nigerian prince! Or an Amway representative.
Sorry, you just don’t read like an actual driver, more like some paid shill.
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No, not at all. Others can do whatever they want, like leave and go do something else. It’s a free country.
And neither should Uber, or a million other drivers who prefer to work on its current platform as independent contractors, have to adapt to the preferred working patterns of a few thousand protesters. Uber should be allowed as a business to operate under the business model it has chosen, and those who want to work with Uber under that model should not have that option taken from them by a bunch of fine, upstanding proletariat who want to have their cake and eat it, too.
You can either have the freedom and flexibility of being self-employed, or the security and stability of being employed by a larger entity. Take your pick. But no one owes you the right to both, and no one should be forced to act against their best interests to accomodate yours, because at the end of the day, yours are no more noble than theirs are. We all want whatever we can get.
We should all have the right to free association, and constitutionally, we do. No one, though, including anyone calling themselves “workers,” should have the right to mandate the terms by which other parties must associate with them.
