
CA Labor Commission Has Just Killed Uber - acheron
http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2015/06/ca-labor-commission-has-just-killed-uber-though-it-may-take-years-to-bleed-out.html
======
stephengillie
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9731963](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9731963)

~~~
blisterpeanuts
Yes, thank you, I knew there had to be more than 3 comments on this topic :)

------
ChuckMcM
Note this is a different article than the TechCrunch one, this goes into the
impact to Uber if they classify drivers as employees and you can see that it
doesn't look good for Uber.

I wonder what the appeal process is here. I guess one of the good things about
the current 'all money is private' investment strategy is that there isn't
some hedgefund dumping millions of shares of Uber stock in uncovered short
sales.

~~~
x5n1
Couldn't have happened to nicer people. They will likely now double down on
automated vehicles. Which I think are the future and I hope someone else
succeeds in that as well.

------
lsiebert
"This would obviously make Uber drivers subject to minimum wage. How does one
even figure that out? Now that there are local minimum wages (e.g. LA soon to
be $15 an hour) how do you compute minimum wage for a trip that begins outside
of LA but ends inside the city? Or vice versa?"

Probably you count time in LA at the LA rate, and when they leave the LA area
by crossing the city limit, you calculate that accordingly.

A lot of these seem like non issues.

Like the time waiting to pick up a driver isn't the responsibility of the
company anymore then your time checking a website to see if you got hours that
week is the company's responsibility.

The California Supreme Court, in Brinker Restaurant Corp. v. Superior Court,
found that you don't have to force meal breaks, simply provide them, and my
understanding is that that only applies if they work more then five hours, and
if a work period is no more then 6 hours, meals can be waived by mutual
consent.

Easy enough to do through the app.

The employees will just be part time employees working a variable shift. That
solves like half of these "issues".

This didn't kill Uber. It still has economies of scale that put it ahead of
normal taxi services, and the ability to intelligently adjust pricing.

~~~
sharemywin
usually you would have to pay people from the first stop of the day to the
last stop.

------
warmfuzzykitten
Seems more like a lot of whining about how hard it is these days for a small
business to hire really low-paid, uninsured workers than anything to do with
Uber. I'm inclined to think Uber won't go out of business if it is treated
just like taxicab companies. After all, the selling point of Uber isn't low
cost - if you can find a taxi it will usually be cheaper - it's superior
service.

Also, see the comment by Morgan D. Frank below the article.

------
msabalau
CA <> the addressable market in the world.

------
sudioStudio64
I know that this site is going to be overwhelmingly pro-uber, but this guy is
also a climate denier?

~~~
blisterpeanuts
No, he's a climate skeptic, according to his website. I browsed that tab which
has some extensive analysis.

~~~
homulilly
"climate skeptic" is to "climate change denier" as "intelligent design" is to
young earth creationism. It's the same position dressed up with language to
seem less extremist.

~~~
sudioStudio64
As "Amen" is to "Hell Yeah". Well done.

