
Uber Drivers Protest Outside the Company’s San Francisco Headquarters - bcn
http://allthingsd.com/20130315/uber-drivers-protest-outside-the-companys-san-francisco-headquarters/
======
habosa
Why is the prevailing attitude in these comments "they have no contract with
Uber, they should leave if they don't like it"? Many people in tech have at-
will contracts yet when we get articles on HN about bad work conditions we
don't just say "well then quit!". I do agree that in the long term these
unhappy drivers should look for a different source of income but for now they
clearly need uber and as such it's not unfair of them to express their
distaste for certain things uber does until they find a better place to work.

~~~
jamiequint
I'm not sure which bad work conditions articles you're referring to but if
you're a developer and your employer is giving you a hard time or being unfair
you _should_ quit. That is a much better solution than expecting someone else
to legislate some kind of solution to your problem (with all the externalities
that usually go along with such "solutions").

~~~
kirillzubovsky
Jamie, you know, it's kind of funny that people complain about these driver's
"poor" conditions. I took an Uber black car ride about a month ago and chatted
with the driver - he works for 6 months and then passes the car to his cousin,
while he uses all the money he's earned to chill on the beach in Brazil. Oh,
did I mention that he works for ~20 hours, but only 3 times a week, or
whenever he feels like getting out of bed? Yeah, the dude wasn't just unhappy,
he was overjoyed with the flexibility and ridiculously good pay of his job.
But of course, if 10 people chant outside of a building, they aren't just
disgruntle losers, they are unhappy because they aren't given then. _sigh_

~~~
pron
I've seen CEOs making millions of dollars act like "disgruntled losers"
because they feel they haven't been paid enough. Who decides what is enough?
An employee may get paid what you think is a lot, but still not what he thinks
is fair, and he may be right. All I can say is -- without knowing which party
is right in this particular case - that there are people on wall street making
much more money than Uber drivers for much less work; they certainly
contribute less to society, if at all.

------
jamiequint
If they hate Uber so much they should stop using it. They aren't obligated to
Uber in any way.

The "rampant firing" happens when drivers who suck get poor ratings (below 4.7
and you go on probation according to an Uber driver I talked to) sounds like
their own problem not Uber's.

~~~
pud
> below 4.7 and you go on probation

This brings up a related point. For a typical Uber ride, do you give the
driver 3-stars or 5-stars?

I usually give 5-stars when a ride goes smoothly. But I know people who
default to 3-stars (average) unless the driver goes out of his way & is
exceptional.

I've considered switching my default to 4-stars for a nice ride, leaving me a
1-star buffer for exceptional service. But using that scale, I wouldn't want a
4.7 driver to get dinged.

~~~
eridius
You know people use 3-star average for Uber? That surprises me.

One of my earlier Uber rides I decided to go ahead and rate 3 stars because I
felt it was a fairly average ride. Pretty quickly I got contacted by someone
at Uber who wanted to ask me what was wrong with my ride. When I explained
that I felt it was merely average, they told me a simplistic version of what
jamiequint said, that they only want to work with the best drivers and
therefore 3 isn't an average rating, it's actually a bad rating.

~~~
nilkn
Dear lord, that's a bad rating system. They should just replace the stars with
words. "Average" means average, "Outstanding" means outstanding, etc.

~~~
mietek
Indeed. Relevant xkcd: <http://xkcd.com/1098/>

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bmmayer1
I had a Sidecar driver this afternoon who told me he was suspended by Uber
after he had the bad luck to get Travis Kalanick as a passenger, and failed to
pick him up on the right side of the street (according to him).

~~~
larrys
"he had the bad luck to get"

In fact all of these rating and ranking systems (as well as public commenting)
cause businesses to have to expend excess time and energy to keep a small
vocal percentage of customers happy for fear of backlash instead of
concentrating on simply making a good or acceptable product that satisfies 95%
of customers. I'm reminded of this sometimes when I read tripadvisor reviews
where people go off because there is a bug in their room or the desk staff was
having a bad day the particular day they arrived.

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smoyer
"A large group ..."

I count 25 (or 24 if the guy at right-rear has big hair) people in the picture
and I suspect that if there were more than that, they'd have made sure to
squeeze them into the shot.

A small group (proportionally) if you look at the number of drivers Uber has.
And do they really represent drivers from the other cities served by Uber or
is that wishful thinking.

"They don’t have the balls to come down and talk to us" ... maybe because
they're busy dispatching thousand of drivers to waiting customers? If Uber is
really that hard on the drivers, why don't they work elsewhere? They have no
contract, so they're free to go.

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brunorsini
I've been a heavy Uber user in SF since they started. I was first in line when
they launched Uber X, then Uber cab. I then saw Lyft and Sidecar rise in the
city and, honestly, do to Uber in a single month what Uber took about a year
to do to the taxi industry. Lyft drivers are more friendly and totally
trustworthy. The service is cheaper and there are a bunch of cars all around
town. Why use Uber anymore, unless all Lyfts/Sidecars are taken?

To me this is clearly what this is about. Uber is already being disrupted, so
they are desperate to lower their costs to be able to compete again. As a guy
who literally gave up vehicle ownership just because of these services, all I
can say is god bless startup darwinism.

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philip1209
I just got back from San Francisco, where I used Uber for the first time (and
continued to use it throughout the trip). I talked to all of the drivers and
they seemed quite happy - all had been using the service for over a year, and
they had been in the limo business for five to eight years each. They said
that now all of their business comes through Uber. However, one stated that
there has been a huge increase in Uber drivers, thus making it more difficult
to keep busy.

I think that some driver backlash is a normal part of growing, and that Uber
should maintain strict quality control.

------
Sam_Odio
As far as I can tell this is mostly a consequence of Uber responding to the
market (i.e.: competitors like Lyft). With Uber X, Black car drivers no longer
have a monopoly on convenient transportation (and from what I hear, that has
significantly decreased their business). I can't entirely fault Uber for
this...they need to adapt or die.

~~~
dunsudu
This is really an irrelevant question - but why does Uber make a big deal out
of the colour of the car? They say on their website that a particular tier
gets you a black car, and you say there something about black car drivers. Why
would you care if your car is black, or red, or yellow, or whatever. I can
understand not wanting a fucking pink car or something, but still.

Eg "Hop into the sleek black car", "Our classic black car option is the
default". WTF?

Maybe it's a US thing - I'm from the UK and I have no idea why you would need
a car of a particular colour.

~~~
andyakb
It doesn't literally apply to just the color of the car. A black car is a
luxury car, compare it to first class vs coach in airlines

~~~
dunsudu
In the UK taxis are black as well.

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spullara
I love the way Uber works and use it all the time. It is hard for me to assess
whether they have a legitimate gripe though since every driver I have asked
directly about the service (which is every ride I take) has answered
enthusiastically positive. Maybe just trying to use their leverage to
negotiate rather than being truly harmed?

~~~
pmb
The Uber drivers I have asked have also all been very positive. I asked one
whether he was dispatched by anyone else, and he said that he used to be, but
no longer - now he was Uber-only and he was glad he could ditch the dispatcher
model.

The guys that own their own cars are not Uber employees - they can sign up to
be dispatched by traditional radios instead (or as well). So, from my sample
in NYC, Uber is way better than existing models for the drivers.

~~~
harlanlewis
I used to talk to all my drivers about this, too - an easy conversation prompt
to pass the time if nothing else. But while most spoke positively, I began to
get the impression that they follow the basic rule of don't bad mouth your
employer to customers. Pair that with the risk of saying the wrong things to a
secretshopper-type riders, and it's become difficult for me to take Uber
reviews from drivers at face value.

~~~
pmb
Definitely. But the thing that convinced me that this driver meant it was that
he previously was dispatched by both radio and Uber, and then chose to go
Uber-only. As a sample, it's prone to survivor bias, but it definitely argues
that my particular driver wasn't just putting up a front.

------
danielsiders
Can anyone verify that Uber isn't requiring commercial liability insurance
from their drivers anymore? If so, that's a huge deal.

~~~
Aloisius
They are livery drivers. Aren't they required by the state to carry liability
insurance?

------
erso
“They’re running a sweatshop with an app."

Guys riding around in air-conditioned cars all day calling their working
conditions a sweatshop.

What if Uber can't actually pay them what they want? Is the solution to force
Uber to not fire any drivers, to pay them more than they're able? And by what
insane reasoning should they be forced to pay more? Uber isn't owned by the
government, and isn't the sole dispatcher around (and certainly not in SF!).

If Uber's business model can't support paying the drivers more than there's
nothing that can be done except for the drivers that don't like the conditions
to quit. If that means that Uber then goes out of business, so be it. No
amount of protesting is going to fix that.

~~~
n3rdy
This is typical when employees try to shake down their employer. They
exaggerate their working conditions, and ignore the financial circumstances
behind a companies actions.

------
larsberg
The major complaint I hear about Uber from Chicago taxi drivers (I like to
chat when in a cab) is that Uber only pays them after 10 days. They have to
pay weekly rent on their cab, though, which means they can only use Uber when
they already have enough money to pay the rent.

------
trvlngwlbry
I was surprised to go through these comments (including with a command-F) and
not find mention of the recent news of the Uber driver charged with raping a
customer. While that story was pretty damaging to Uber, it was equally--if not
more—-damaging to the arguments made by the protesting drivers. The rape
incident is exactly the type of thing that Uber is trying to prevent by being
so strict with its drivers (though, admittedly, a rape could still have
occurred with a highly-rated driver). For PR reasons, Uber understandably does
not want to point out that bad event, but it would be pretty compelling if
they said something like, "Drivers, even if it was just one driver who ruined
it for all of you, your bad behavior has forced our hand. We have to do
everything we can to protect our customers."

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auctiontheory
The combination of having a relatively low-skill and undifferentiated job (as
a driver) and of having no employment protection (as a contractor) is
unfortunate.

I feel for these men, but I think their best choice is to find other
employment - this protest will lead nowhere.

------
salman89
Are taxi drivers unionized? If so, what we might be seeing here with Uber is
the reason why they are unionized.

------
c0mpute
A very interesting dilemma as a consumer/customer.

I am sure out of the many fired some are legit firings - drivers not
respectful or just not good enough. And similarly some who have been short
changed by customers giving bad reviews.

So here is my dilemma, wearing the customer hat - if this move by Uber
guarantees me that every time I hail a Uber cab, I am guaranteed to get a 4.7
star experience in the minimum (ya sometimes not, but on an average yes). So
why wouldn't I want that as a customer?

Now if I wear the hat of a sympathetic human, I can probably see some
injustice if I sift through all the firings. So how can we hold Uber
accountable?

Being a realist, sometimes one has to understand that many systems don't have
equality and maybe in this case the injustice/inequality benefits the Uber
customers.

------
tlrobinson
I've used Uber a lot over the past 2 and a half years. I've made a point to
ask nearly every driver how they liked the service and I can only recall one
(out of dozens) giving anything but praise.

So yeah, does not compute, unless things have drastically changed recently.

------
scott_meade
I was surprised to see the phrase "Uber Drivers". As I thought I understood
it: Uber has no drivers and drivers haver their own companies, simply using
Uber as a source of leads for customers. It's like OpenTable for cars, right?

------
nostromo
You know what killed uber for me? Car2Go. That's what these drivers should be
worried about.

Wait until it's in SF. This company is going to change the world, even before
the driving part is automated.

~~~
realdlee
I've used Car2go a lot and would like to see it in SF, but the tighter parking
situation in SF worries me. It's annoying when you're paying by the minute and
you have to drive around for 30 minutes looking for parking.

------
Kiro
Uber's history is filled with so many scandals and I urge everyone to boycott
them.

------
saosebastiao
What a surprise...commodity producers aren't happy with commodity pay. Never
would have predicted that.

~~~
netaustin
Black car service is hardly commodity labor. Corn is a commodity. Oil is a
commodity. The difference between a good driver and a bad one is tremendous--
the better ones drive confidently and know where they're going, and the bad
ones are tethered to their GPS. As a frequent user of Uber (in NYC) I've seen
both.

But I understand I'm not paying for a commodity, which is why this concerns
me. My relationship with Uber is through its drivers, not their app--I'm just
worried they don't understand that.

~~~
sybhn
There are degres of commodity, it does not only apply to raw material, i.e. IT
infrastructure is turning into commodity, but you will still find
differentials. The range of differentials is what defines if it's commodity or
not.

I would agree with the previous poster, drivers are mostly commodity
producers. Just like barbers, you might find one exceptional here and then,
but generally it's all commodity.

~~~
wilfra
by that rationale, programmers are a commodity with a range of skill levels.
right?

~~~
Karunamon
Never really thought about it that way, but yes, that definition fits. Some
are amazingly elite, some are mediocre, and everything in between.

It's what led to lots of development jobs being outsourced to India and
similar. Thankfully though it seems that trend is reversing because businesses
are finding out what they gain in cost savings is quickly eaten up by lack of
quality.

