Rideshare services - Uber, Lyft, Hailo, etc.

yeah no i'm just talking salary, although they did just buy a house (modest 2BR) with exercised stock options once the embargo ended. as an aside, he has NEVER has mentioned where he works.

i just asked my wife if she knows if he was affected and shes not sure yet.

Uber pushed back on Wednesday against a newly passed California bill that effectively requires companies to reclassify their contract workers as employees, in a sign of the emerging resistance that the measure is prompting across the gig economy.

Tony West, Uber’s chief legal officer, said in a news conference that the ride-hailing company would not treat its drivers, who are independent contractors, as employees under the California bill. He said that drivers were not a core part of Uber’s business and could maintain their independent status when the measure goes into effect as state law on Jan. 1.

Uber’s business, Mr. West said, is not providing rides but “serving as a technology platform for several different types of digital marketplaces.” He added that the company was “no stranger to legal battles.”

FWIW I sometimes think it would be better to improve regulation of "gig economy" jobs and companies rather than try to shoehorn them into the existing employer/employee framework. Like maybe another category is needed btw employee and independent contractor.

looking forward to Uber collapsing/being litigated out of business tbh

We don't need another category.

how about masters and slaves

the thing is they are employers

suck it, shitty companies:
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/California-governor-signs-labor-law-setting-up-14450116.php

This is huge not only for the obvious, but also because Uber will have to argue the *exact opposite* legal framework as it does in opposing AB5. The legal walls are closing in. https://t.co/RxnILrYb3t

— Aaron W. Gordon (@A_W_Gordon) September 19, 2019

'130-year-old laws don't count'

https://qz.com/1683778/lyft-sees-raising-ride-prices-as-its-path-to-profitability/

“We believe we have a clear path to profitability,” Roberts said. “We began to adjust prices on select routes and in select cities based on costs and demand elasticities. We expect that these changes will accelerate Lyft’s path to profitability, and further, we believe these price adjustments reflect an industry trend.”

So they plan to fix prices (in collusion with their competitors) and then expect not to suffer any reduction in demand...

lollllll

cost and demand elasticities! impress man use big words!

If humanity is still around in 10 years, someone please revive this post in 10 years for the lols.

uber and lyft shouldn't even be allowed to pick up at airports -- it's like an enormous game of hüsker dü

take a fuckin cab

I feel like I am a luber driver in another dimension.

uber and lyft shouldn't even be allowed to pick up at airports -- it's like an enormous game of hüsker dü

take a fuckin cab

build trains

well, yes

https://www.axios.com/uber-ceo-saudi-arabia-jamal-khashoggi-mistake-92865f2a-d97c-4d6a-b171-5e7c0a69e77a.html

Who among us hasn't accidentally intentionally had someone killed

I'm sure in five years, his family will laugh about it.

It looks like Uber has been denied a license to operate in London as TFL found thousands of cases where they ID of the driver didn’t match the person actually doing the driving.

Interesting to see if this will extend to Uber Eats - tons of undocumented ppl from Brazil (and elswhere, I assume, but my connections are w/ the Brazilian community) driving for them, six or seven ppl sharing one ID. A friend who's involved told me the running joke is to say the vehicle's registered to Bolsonaro.

They can still operate while appealing so this will make no difference for now

I was at a licensing event largely focusing on taxi drivers last week and got a sense that a perceived issue with ride-share apps is raising regulatory barriers for traditional drivers as well. The guy from Uber referenced the idea that some of the new rules are, in part, motivated by xenophobia.

I’m fully on board with banning them from the entire country but there has to be a way of mitigating the impact on the (mostly minority) drivers.

I finally gave in and put fucking Lyft on my phone because the cab dispatch service I’ve been using for years has gone to utter shit + the curb app suuuuuuuuucks

I am really grouchy about this

from 8K

LYFT layoffs: 17 percent of workforce, or 982 employees

furloughing 288 employees

salary reductions:
30 percent cut for execs
20 percent for VPs
10 percent for all other employees
board pay cut by 30 percent of *cash* comp for 2nd quarterhttps://t.co/8fSVnbPgOr

— rat king (@MikeIsaac) April 29, 2020

Uber’s CTO steps down as company reportedly mulls 20 percent layoffs https://t.co/MIoNUJFjUw pic.twitter.com/6kXbfn5FUS

— The Verge (@verge) April 28, 2020

Deep cuts at Uber today:
- 3,000 more layoffs (on top of 3,700 earlier this month)
- 45 offices closing globally
- Transit downsizing
- delivery services merging (Eats, Cornershop, direct)

— rocket surgery (@kateconger) May 18, 2020

Uber Eats is bigger than the rides biz now https://t.co/o7VuMVITuF

— kate conger (@kateconger) August 6, 2020

I wanted to know what Uber and Lyft would do if forced to comply with AB 5. Here’s what I learned: https://t.co/dzkxFMrrtS

— kate conger (@kateconger) August 18, 2020

christ, what assholes

In a cruel and petulant move, Uber just announced they are shutting down service in California on Thursday. Faced with a mandate to treat their workers fairly, they opted instead to leave them unemployed — in the middle of a pandemic and a recession. pic.twitter.com/SuTvCOUDWT

— Mike Bonin (@mikebonin) August 19, 2020

Haven't been in a rideshare since the beginning of March and can't imagine when I'll next be in one (that said, we have a car and I also can't imagine when I'll next travel so the situations where I'd actually be inclined to use one of these services are not really coming up. This WSJ article (the few sentences of it before paywall) says Uber ridership is a quarter of what it was this time last year.

oops forgot link https://www.wsj.com/articles/uber-ridership-fails-to-recover-as-pandemic-drives-another-big-loss-11596744389

on monday i waited 30 minutes on a busy brooklyn avenue and saw one (occupied) cab. called a car service and was told there was a 45-minute wait. so i finally had to sign up for lyft just to get home ffs

And did that work? Because I would think that as demand for the service drops, so would supply as drivers become less willing to drive around looking for fares and getting even less $$/hr while being exposed to who knows who.

But I am not in a big city where the alternative to rideshare is crowded public transport; maybe ridership isn't down as much in brooklyn? But if so, why no cabs?

it did work; the lyft arrived in like seven minutes.

i assume the lack of cabs was due to the pandemic? this was the first time i'd used any kind of transportation at all since march, so i dunno. there were plenty of people and private cars out and about though

cabdrivers are not wasting gas roaming around looking for fares. This also means fewer available for dispatch.

rideshare drivers can park until a fare pops up.

I guess I would have thought you just can't make enough money unless you're spending most of your time actually driving fares but my grasp of how the economics of this works on the driver's side is not that strong.

From my limited experience, most rideshare drivers have pivoted to restaurant delivery and personal shopping.

another anecdote:
I stopped by a grocery store that prepandemic had serviced a downtown/financial neighborhood, and it had been converted almost entirely into a personal shopper depot. My wife and I were pretty much the only customers who weren't messengers/couriers/delivery drivers. There was a line for their pickup/checkout that was like 25 deep and not a single soul in the regular line. It was pretty bizarre, but I'd probably go back based on how quickly I was able to get in/out of there.

Kara swisher was a good get for the times

“We’ll see how it goes for you in California,” @karaswisher says

“Wish us luck,” Dara says.

“No,” Swisher responds.

— Andrew J. Hawkins 🚇🚌🚲🛴 (@andyjayhawk) August 19, 2020

So can someone in Cali explain how the prop 22 vote went down as it did?

$

^^^^^

That and labor is relatively weak in California. I might live to regret saying this, but I don’t think it’s going to be so easy (just spend $) for them to repeat this in all other Democratic states.

In other words

I've seen a lot of autopsies about Prop 22 that focused on the historic spending and the flood of mailers/ads/messaging that it bought. But at some point, I think it's worth taking a look at what labor did (or didn't do) to fight for the No campaign. https://t.co/J4rLcsZwRk

— o...k (@kateconger) November 5, 2020

If you think labor came out swinging to support No on 22, its worth revisiting @noamscheiber's reporting on the AB 5 negotiations last summer and seeing how fractious it was, even then: https://t.co/FcQSEVXfNZ

— o...k (@kateconger) November 5, 2020

Prop 22 exists because a new stricter labor law went into effect in CA as of Jan 2020 (AB5) which made it so there were very few exceptions for employers to avoid having to pay workers as employees (which include payroll taxes, workers comp, minimum wage requirements, and health benefits, potentially). I would not be surprised if a larger percentage of workers in California were paid as independent contractors compared to workers in other states. The state agencies that enforce worker classification (employee vs contractor) are very underfunded and there are a lot of employers paying workers as contractors that no way would they "pass" even the loosest test of worker classification.

There was a lot of pushback to AB5 and not just from the Uber/Lyft/Doordash companies. A lot of musicians, writers, and other arts and media workers were going to have to be classified as employees, and a lot of them didn't like that, and their employers liked that even less.

But Uber/Lyft/Doordash spent a very large amount of money to put Prop 22 on the ballot as an endrun around AB5 and lot of that was spent on advertising that emphasized that workers preferred to be contractors, and that regulating their employment by classifying them as employees would make them suffer. A lot of the "drivers" in the ads were POC and likely encouraged on-the-fence centrists and liberals to vote for Prop 22.

Whether the folks who had problems with AB5 who are "gig workers" of other types voted for Prop 22, idk, but I wouldn't be surprised.

Very helpful, thank you!