> The measure requires ride-hailing companies to pay drivers at least $1.40 per mile and $0.51 per minute for the time spent transporting a rider — or $5 per ride, whichever is greater — excluding tips.
Whether the rates are reasonable or not, the obvious move would be for Uber/Lyft to comply and pass the costs on to the riders, just like taxi companies have been doing forever. By instead pulling out entirely they are sending a message to Minneapolis and everyone else – if you try and regulate us in any way you will lose our services and your voter base will revolt, and we are willing to take the revenue hit for it.
I'm not sure that Minneapolis is the best place to put this in place. Folks in Minneapolis are wholly liberal and support living wages. If anything, this is just going to look bad for Uber/Lyft.
I don't live in Mpls proper, although I do reside in Hennepin County, and I primarily don't use Uber or Lyft so I don't really have skin in the game either way, but I just don't see this as being a great location for these two fairly shitty companies to attempt this.
Even the most idealistic can change their tune as soon as they begin to be negatively affected. A good example might be Oregon completely walking back their drug legalization or San Francisco drug testing for welfare.
>A good example might be Oregon completely walking back their drug legalization
Links to an article about how Oregon is partially rolling back their drug decriminalization policy.
1. Oregon never decriminalized drugs and
2. The policy was supposed to implement treatment programs that never materialized.
Further as an Oregonian. No one voted for people to be able to openly use drugs wherever they wanted, but most didn’t realize that once possession was decriminalized, smoking fentanyl on public transit was suddenly not in violation of any law on the books. No one voted for that, they just didn’t know it was on the table.
I wasn't aware of this (and neither were local lawmakers), but ironically it is actually illegal in Oregon as of 1971 for any local government body to pass a law targeting the public consumption of alcohol and drugs. This threw a major wrench in plans to control the rampant public use of fentanyl and meth around Oregon cities, and this likely contributed to us to rolling back small time possession to a misdemeanor.
Although there were exceptions for limiting public alcohol use in proximity to schools and such, there were no such exceptions for hard drugs (since they were already illegal).
The issue is really that the initiative system is, quite frankly, a terrible way to govern and pass complex policies.
Had the legislature implemented this they would have been able to spend time investigating potential problems such as these and plan for a smoother rollout.
I voted for and still support measure 110 in principle. I would also be just fine with laws criminalizing public use. The two are perfectly compatible policies.
>the initiative system is, quite frankly, a terrible way to govern and pass complex policies.
On the one hand, I agree, but on the flip side decriminalization is not something I would expect from our elected officials at any point this decade. The voters are able to push the envelope in ways that risk-averse career politicians simply will not.
We may finally see substantive election finance reform in Oregon (we lag dramatically behind most of the rest of the nation) come November due to our initiative system. IIRC, Cannabis legalization was another one that the citizens of Oregon pushed through and only then did the legislature get it's butt in gear and write comprehensive legislation. Same with decriminalized and medicalized psychedelics.
If we didn't have such dysfunction at the state level due to republican state reps continued antics protesting and not showing up to deny a quorum, it's entirely possible that the issues with measure 110 could have been sorted out at the capital before public opinion had time to do the full 180 on decrim.
It's a shame, but as an Oregonian with a drug felony from over a decade ago, I'm happy with the progress of making possession of personal amounts of hard drugs a misdemeanor instead of a felony. Two steps forward and one step back is still progress.
You aren’t wrong in general, but as another MPLS local I will say that driving culture remains strong here, so picking a fight with Uber/Lyft isn’t going to hurt the average person here as much as it might elsewhere. It remains rare to not have a car here.
There's a lot of companies and cooperatives from a quick look. Even cities rolling their own. Uber/Lyft is handing an entire market over to a lucky competitor,
Uber and Lyft combined have raised upwards of $20 billion in venture funding and have been operating unprofitably for the last decade and a half. There's a reason the "free market" cannot simply replace them in a day.
This is a really elementary misunderstanding of free market principles. That theory only holds if the market is actually free.
As an extreme example, if they regulated minimum $1000 per ride. No logical person, free market oriented or not, would expect "alternatives" to take their place.
What is the point of laws like this? They are way too specific. Instead the Minneapolis City Council should come out with legislation prohibiting the re-definition of what a contractor is. Uber and Lyft claim that their drivers are contractors, but then also don't allow their drivers to set rates themselves. It's an absolute tragedy that governments just let companies get away with "disruption" when its really just flaunting established laws and regulations.
The IRS is clear on what the definition[0] of an independent contractor is. Uber and Lyft drivers do not meet the definition because of the constraints imposed upon them by said companies.
I think that this entire debate is skewed based in rather broken concepts of benefits. In the ways that ought to matter, rideshare drivers seem like contractors:
They set their own hours; overtime pay would odd, but perhaps too many hours should be banned on safety grounds. They bring their own equipment. They owe no particular allegiance to an “employer” like Uber or Lyft (and can work for more than one of them at once!). Even family leave would be somewhat odd, at least in the way that family leave works in the US.
But, in the US, this results is a problem: they are low-paid contractors, and contractors don’t get certain critical employment benefits (automatically tax-deductible health care at group rates is the big one), and the result is extremely problematic.
Perhaps a much better solution would be to let drivers be contractors but to fix the benefit situation. Insurance should not be tied to employment! I, as as independent contractor, should be able (or required) to purchase (or have provided to me by the state) insurance under identical terms to those that employees benefit from. In fact, changing jobs or taking a break from work should have no effect on my insurance plan or the taxation thereof! Contractors should be eligible for Medicare and Social Security just like employees. And perhaps family leave should even be a state benefit: after all, the presence of children benefits society and the state (future labor and tax revenue, not to mention that children are nice to have around), and this benefit does not depend on whether the parents are employees, college students, low-paid contractors or high-paid contractors.
With all of that fixed, allowing people to put miles on their car to provide a useful service for not-amazing contractor pay doesn’t actually seem so bad to me.
Contractors pay self employment taxes in lieu of the social security and Medicare payroll tax, and as a result are eligible for both.
The health insurance situation is not great, but it's available through Obamacare. In my experience the actual cost is not much worse than employer provided, but the true cost is often subsidized, so employees don't always realize how much salary they are giving up for health insurance.
No eligibility for unemployment or workers comp though.
It's not actually that clear cut. There are at least a dozen factors that speak to the differences between an employee and a contractor, and setting your own rates or prices is only one of them. In general, you don't need to have all of these different factors before you are deemed a contractor, you only need several of them. And one of those factors is whether you bring significant equipment of your own to do the job, or if you use your employer’s equipment. Ride–share drivers drive their own personal car, which is a big step towards being a contractor. They also choose which jobs to accept, and what hours to work.
Compare that with a Chef. The Chef at a restaurant decides on the menu, buys (or at least orders) the food, and cooks it to their own specifications. All of pushes them towards contractor. But they do all of that in their employer’s kitchen, using equipment provided by the employer. Therefore the IRS generally decides that chefs are employees.
Most chefs don't get to set their own pay rates, nor hours. If a restaurant gave a chef a contract of "come in and help our kitchen team whenever you like, but up to you how often you do" would using the employer's equipment matter?
The things you said (choosing what food to buy etc) just means their boss (ie maybe the owner of the place) has made choosing food part of their job requirement. I can't imagine how being given more responsibility like that is in any way related to contractor or not, as long as the chef's job requires them to provide food to paying customers.
One of the things that the IRS looks at is who makes the decisions. If your boss decides what you work on, how you do the work, when you do the work, and where you do the work, then you are probably an employee (but there are other factors to consider as well). However, the more of those that you choose for yourself then the more likely it is that you are actually a contractor. So there are some factors in favor of the chef being a contractor. However, you are right; it is very rare for a chef to actually be a contractor. That’s because these factors are usually outweighed by others. In particular, the chef works in a kitchen owned by their employer, and they can really only be the chef of one restaurant at a time.
But this is the point of the example: both the chef and the ride–share driver make similar decisions for themselves. They both decide for themselves how to accomplish the goal given to them by their employer. But unlike the chef, the ride–share driver also provides their own car. That’s a huge financial commitment that the driver makes and brings to the arrangement. Plus, they can easily work for more than one service at a time. Sure, they can only have one passenger at a time, but they can sign in to multiple services at the same time and pick and choose between jobs offered by all of them.
So while a chef is rarely going to be a contractor, a ride–share driver probably is. They have many more factors in favor of them being a contractor than the chef has.
>Uber and Lyft claim that their drivers are contractors, but then also don't allow their drivers to set rates themselves.
Your own linked document says nothing about contractors being required to set their own rate. Other IRS documents[1] also does not mention being able to set your own rate as a factor.
>The IRS is clear on what the definition[0] of an independent contractor is. Uber and Lyft drivers do not meet the definition because of the constraints imposed upon them by said companies.
The linked document doesn't say much aside from "You are not an independent contractor if you perform services that can be controlled by an employer", which isn't exactly "clear".
> Your own linked document says nothing about contractors being required to set their own rate. Other IRS documents[1] also does not mention being able to set your own rate as a factor.
Probably because everyone sets their own rates by agreeing to work; it's not a real differentiator. What does them setting their own rates mean here? They're contracted by Uber, so the "rate" here is what Uber pays them, not what the customer pays Uber.
They're already more than free to demand that Uber pay them more and quit if they don't, same as any other contractor under the sun.
The only time someone isn't setting their own rates is slave labor, which is already incredibly illegal.
You set your own hours or even if you work at all. Don’t feel like working? You just don’t. Don’t have to tell anyone or get permission and no one gets mad.
I have multiple friends who drive for Uber/Lyft, and it’s their second side gig they do when they have a couple extra hours and want some extra money.
Even if it’s not perfectly an independent contractor, from a practical standpoint it sure doesn’t smell like traditional employment at all. Imagining the Venn Diagram of features, it seems a lot closer to contactor.
Curious if they survey the drivers too, the people who are affected by this. I see no mention of this in the article. I'd think they should have a major say.
Drivers I've talked to seem supportive, at least so far. They're used to uncertainty with their income. Apparently Lyft and Uber have been squeezing driver pay very hard recently. I wouldn't be surprised if this is directly related to fed policy and VC funding dry up.
Good riddance. The whole zirp decade saw these random companies like airbnb, Uber show drastic disregard of the law and subsidizing users with VC money but all that couldn't last because they aren't real businesses.
What is your concern? It's the VCs that are losing money by subsidizing non profitable companies. Why should the government step in to disallow these companies?
Don't drivers know how much they'll be paid ahead of ride acceptance?
If Uber or Lyft tried this in China, heads would roll, literally. The American culture of complete servility and submission to corporations is so embarrassing
Let’s watch pornhub in Texas. Whatever overreaching Republican tactic to punish pornhub, let’s go one step further in Minneapolis with Uber until we end up with a Supreme Court case and/or a Congressional hearing.
Whether the rates are reasonable or not, the obvious move would be for Uber/Lyft to comply and pass the costs on to the riders, just like taxi companies have been doing forever. By instead pulling out entirely they are sending a message to Minneapolis and everyone else – if you try and regulate us in any way you will lose our services and your voter base will revolt, and we are willing to take the revenue hit for it.