Engine warning light appears on Uber's $100m driver settlement Uber's $100m settlement with thousands of its drivers has spun around, mounted the curb and is careering back toward a California courthouse. Following the filing of objections [PDF] from drivers who take issue with terms of the settlement that they say only favors Uber and plaintiff lead attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan, the …
Classic ambulance chaser tactics,
Shannon Liss-Riordan, the drivers’ lawyer, told the judge a company such as Uber “will only come to the table if they can get global peace.” She said she made a strategic decision to focus on mileage reimbursement and tips claims because they were most likely to succeed.
The 'strategic decision' being that she is on a 25% no win, no fee arrangement with O’Connor et al, and she decided that that was more than enough for her.
They can be pretty minimal. But they do force companies to follow minimal standards for employee pay, benefits, and safety. There are also regulations about fares, picking up passengers, marking cars, etc. for the taxi industry
Uber is attempting to side step these laws by claiming to be a matching service not a taxi company. But if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it is a duck.
Worker protection no. Laws from multiple jurisdictions requiring lots of billable hours to say the equivalent of my self audit shows I'm compliant, no need to look behind the curtain; most definitely.
It's win win all around. Conservatives get to fundraise about the burden of government regulation, liberals about the "need to do something" (TM) to protect workers, and larger companies get to keep their labor costs low.
Uber only exists because the drivers are not considered private contractors. This group has decided that only status as full employees will do. Once this is achieved, they will have the full panoply of labor law at their disposal. Then the real squeeze starts.
Only problem is that, in the act of harnessing Uber, they will kill the company.
If this case is decided in plaintiff's favor, then distributed employment models generally become non-viable and any examples of such will likely disappear for good.
Maybe that's a good thing and maybe it isn't, but I kinda resent important decisions like this being made by arbitrary judges and juries in one or two 'special' places, rather than by some kind of mass voting.
These issues have been voted on: in Congress, which determines the labor laws.
It's just that Uber chooses to ignore those laws and objects to being called on it. And it's the judges and juries who have the task of doing something about it. That's the way the system is set up, and there is nothing special about Uber that exempts them from the process.
If you want to have some kind of voice in it, get Congress to change the laws. Uber is certainly spending a lot of lobbying money on that effort, perhaps you joining their effort will make a difference.
As for me, I'm not likely to expend much effort at ensuring my right to be someone's serf.
And as for the awful thought that Uber might be forced to comply with labor laws and thence go out of business: boo fucking hoo.
And when Uber and its ilk go away, so go millions of potential entry-level jobs. Those people may remain dependent on taxpayer dollars all their lives. And strangely it works out, because many of them (having nothing better to do) end up as activists fighting for "the workers."
@Big John
Uber is on record as wanting to embrace self-driving vehicles once they are ready. So in 5-10 years, 90% of Uber driver jobs will go away anyway, with a small number left to take care of people who want a ride but don't trust self-driving vehicles.
And Uber is not a good entry-level job. One, younger entry-level workers are usually worse drivers, and as such get disproportionally weeded out by Uber's complaints/review process. Two, the job actually requires a fairly new-model car. I have a 2008 Mazda with less than 70K miles on it, and my car supposedly doesn't qualify. So you need money/credit to buy a newer model car, and money and credit aren't something that entry-level workers have a lot of.
F*CK your buy-you-own-uniform McJob, entry-level jobs. Especially if it enriches some tax-dodging yank monopolist.
Prosperity means long-term planning. We need to encourage quality jobs, and the university students to support those jobs. Not globalist (US) industries who are only here for the low tax rates.
Long-term and environmentally sound thinking; high-speed rail and self-driving / hydrogen buses, subsidized so that Uber go out of business.
We need to strengthen labour laws, get rid of unpaid internships and zero-hour contracts, so that young people can build towards their goals protected from exploitation on their way up.
Finally privacy laws so strong that it poisons the well, and makes all the data-pimping yanks F off home.
Then every company should lay off its employers and tell them 'work as a private contractor for half of the previous wage, or will look for someone else that will do', more or less the same sotuation in the XIX century.
I live in a country were companies were allowed to use 'private contractors' instead of true employee for a long time, far before Uber came along with its 'disruptive' idea. It just meant a lot of underpaid workers (even in sectors like IT), with middlemen like Uber reaping the most benefits, and workers without a true future - no access to credit, and at least here the health system is free. Now that the damage done is clear, legislation tries to fix this, but companies fight back, and lobbying often works.
Labour laws are there for a reason. Slave-like jobs are not the solution to unemployment issues. There will always be someone more desperate than you accepting less. If not available locally, they will import him or her from abroad... don't believe all those people migrating now will just stay in a few places...
Click this link (Houston Chronicle) Uber is in the sub-prime auto business
Company needs drivers badly, offers high-fee car leases
"Uber, which is now valued at $62.5 billion, can only make money if tens of thousands of people sign up as drivers. That's because 50 percent of Uber drivers quit after just six months."
I have never been involved with Uber and am not familiar with how much the drivers make. I think the original concept was based on "Someone needs a drive and I'm heading that way anyhow...might as well make a buck." If this is the case it was not really meant to provide someone a real income.
After dealing with gas, maintenance and depreciation (as those kms rack up), the increased cost of insurance (because, yeah, all the drivers are carrying extra insurance) are the drivers really making that much money? What is their % take of the Uber charge?
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