
Uber Treats Its Drivers the Way Cellphone Companies Treat Customers - mykowebhn
https://slate.com/technology/2019/03/uber-gig-workers-customers.html
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foxyv
Uber seems like a new take on the same exploitative multi-level marketing as
Tupperware parties, Amway, and Herbalife. They take advantage of the desperate
and unemployed by re-classifying them as something other than employed to make
a business model that wouldn't work otherwise.

Instead of buying $6000 of product from Uber, you are essentially leasing them
your car and getting barely enough back in fares to pay the depreciation and
operating expenses. Some even manage to get enough to pay themselves minimum
wage. In the meantime Uber is advertising that their drivers are making close
to six figures.

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austerenyan
Yep, it's a shame there aren't more services such as libretaxi to fill in the
market.

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buboard
but they _are_ customers/clients. it is dangerous to think otherwise

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DATACOMMANDER
They used that argument in court, and a judge disagreed. From TFA:

Uber has tried to maneuver around legal walls using this thin argument of
technological exceptionalism to protect its management practices. However,
Judge Edward M. Chen seemed to find the company’s reasoning highly improbable
in a class-action lawsuit brought by Uber drivers alleging that Uber violates
labor law by misclassifying drivers as independent contractors, rather than as
employees. When presented with the idea that drivers are customers of Uber’s
technology, he said, “The fact that you screen drivers, select them, the fact
that you, Uber, sets the fare, not the drivers, the fact that the company
could not operate and exist as a company and make money without drivers, you
think that does not establish, among other things, that these drivers serve
Uber?”

