
Uber drivers consider legal action - rb2e
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34733862
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will_brown
Always with the employee/contractor issue...

It has always been my prediction that there is a legal action lurking in the
shadows that will ultimately be the undoing of the ~$50B unicorn, but
employee/contractor is not it (these can be resolved moving forward with
jurisdiction specific revisions to driver agreements and tweaks to the actual
process to ensure compliance on a jurisdictional basis).

However, the legal action to ruin the company? My guess is a class action of
drivers who have been arrested/criminally charged while serving as UBER
drivers. Moreover, I believe such a case would open up a can of worms
including: 1. UBER recruiting/paying bonuses to drivers to leave counties
where ride sharing is legal to drive in counties where ride sharing is
illegal, subsequently resulting in criminal charges; and 2. UBER's payment of
criminal defense counsel for said drivers (which on its face may not seem
problematic, but I would be willing to bet not a single lawyer paid by UBER to
represent the drivers ever once advised the drivers they may have civil causes
of action against UBER).

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VincentEvans
Does anyone else consider 20% (soon 25%) cut excessive?

Personally i think driving for Uber is nearly pointless - the costs of
operating a vehicle make this occupation very unattractive. But i think the
20% rent makes it even worse.

Many of legal problems Uber faces could be avoided if they simply charged
drivers a fixed subscription fee to be "listed" with the service. 100$/month?
10$/day? I don't know, but i can't shake the feeling that this service is crap
work and it has a lot to do with greed.

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zacharycohn
It's not excessive compared to how much most taxi drivers have to pay, every
day, to lease their cars...

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celticninja
it is if you look at the UK market, in the UK most drivers own their own cars
and they hire a radio from the taxi company at a daily rate. They then keep
the fares themselves. As with UBER you have to provide your own vehicle, there
is no radio so you have to provide your own smartphone too.

And as their pricing indicates they will take a greater cut from new drivers.
That will continue to increase if they are successful in putting other taxi
firms out of business. i.e once they remove the competition (or minimise the
sufficiently) there will be no alternative but for drivers to pay uber a 45%
fee for each ride.

~~~
zacharycohn
Uh, no. You don't have to provide your own smartphone.

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blisterpeanuts
The drivers who would rather be employees--which Uber claims are a small
minority--might be better off finding a traditional job with a livery service.
The whole point of Uber and its ilk, or so I thought, was to "crowd-source"
transportation using ride _sharing_. It's not "sharing" if they're employees.

Amazon Flex is going to crowd-source deliveries by engaging tens of thousands
of individuals to drop off packages in their neighborhoods. Does that mean
Amazon must automatically hire tens of thousands of employees, with all the
paperwork and overhead, even if some of them only deliver an occasional
package?

This whole approach probably needs to be hashed out in the courts, but my gut
feeling is that some people are wanting to have their cake and eat it too--the
ease and flexibility of self-employment combined with the benefits of full
time employment.

~~~
adrusi
This is simply not what Uber does. Uber has never _actually_ been a ride
sharing service. A carpooling service is a ride sharing service. A real ride
sharing service doesn't have drivers and riders where the riders pay the
drivers.

Don't drink the kool-aid, all of Uber's "ride sharing" and "crowd sourcing"
and "sharing economy" nonsense is just marketing and legal stunts. They are
essentially an online sweatshop a la mechanical turk for driving.

I don't hate Uber, I think that on an ethical level it's probably superior to
traditional taxi companies who entrap their drivers by paying for their taxi
license (they lobby to make these very expensive) and then paying the drivers
poorly until it's time to renw the license.

But Uber is not a magical wonderful silicon valley company that's going to fix
all the problems with taxis by disrupting it with some sharing economy. Uber
is a company that found a loophole in the law that would allow it to create a
global taxi service that isn't legally a taxi service, and this loophole
involves drivers giving up a lot of legal protections.

~~~
VincentEvans
Your explanation strikes a nerve and certainly makes me "hate Uber".

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zeveb
They existed and fed themselves before Uber existed; they freely chose to join
Uber as contractors; now they want to break the contract they have and be
employees. How does this seem right?

~~~
aikah
> They existed and fed themselves before Uber existed; they freely chose to
> join Uber as contractors; now they want to break the contract they have and
> be employees. How does this seem right?

What's wrong with fighting for ones rights and interests ? corporations do
that all the time. It's not like people should just submit and shut their
mouth. If they feel Uber is cheating them well, they should sue Uber.

~~~
SilasX
What caused you to characterize anyone as opposing "fighting for one's
interests"?

The issue here is that someone is claiming that it violates their rights but
keep doing it. Is there a case of a corporation that thinks a certain deal is
bad but keeps making it?

"Doctor, it hurts when I do this ..."

~~~
aikah
> The issue here is that someone is claiming that it violates their rights but
> keep doing it.

Keep doing what? drivers have the right to sue , period. And they should do
exactly that if it benefits them, they owe no servitude to Uber which wouldn't
exist if not for these drivers that do all the actual work.

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nns
For someone wanting to start an on-demand service, what would be the correct
way to design their app so that you could meaningfully link requester to
providers?

~~~
BukhariH
I think if you have a bidding model where the requester can select bids from
providers then your 100% safe.

However, that being said this is ridiculous! Having employees would completely
change what Uber is about. Uber is a platform not a taxi company.

Uber drivers right now can:

* choose their own schedules

* turn down customers they don't want

* just stop working with Uber with no notice

All things that most employees can't do.

~~~
will_brown
Doesn't UBER also:

1\. Finance cars for their drivers; 2\. Provide the legal interpretation of
federal/state/county/local laws and regulations to its drivers; 3\. Provide
the actual tools (except the car) to complete the work; 4\. Provide training
for drivers; 5\. Pay bonuses to drive specific hours and/or in specific
locations/jurisdictions

All things that most companies can't do with independent contractors?

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rm_-rf_slash
We need a third class of employment, the employee-contractor. It is one thing
for independent contractors to provide a service for a company without
necessarily being employed by the company, like a software consultant, but
when a business cannot exist without so-called independent contractors (unless
they're hired outright), then they ought to be responsible for some of the
cost, such as gasoline or repairs, but at the same time, their contract can be
canceled at any time by the employer. That gives the employer flexibility and
the employer-contractors stability.

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dheera
I'm not sure about "paid time off". It's not a salaried job in the first place
-- you work as little or as much as you want, and take vacation whenever and
however much you want. However, give them a time/distance-wise wage increase
to get to an equilibrium point where most drivers are generally happy in life
with the amount of unpaid time they can feasibly take off.

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throwaway049
BBC headline is a little misleading. According to the article, legal action
has already been taken. Cases have been submitted to the London Central
Employment Tribunal.

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miguelrochefort
That clearly is the future of employment.

Better get used to it now.

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toomuchtodo
That's both a humorous and short sighted statement. Uber isn't a magical
"unicorn". It could be gutted by regulation overnight.

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miguelrochefort
I made no claim about the "magic unicorn"-ness of Uber.

I simply despise regulation and entitlement.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> I simply despise regulation and entitlement.

And I like civilization, which has a foundation partially of regulation and
entitlements. Perhaps Somalia is more to you're liking?

