>Uber is circulating a petition urging people to “protect ridesharing in California.” In the petition, Uber advocates for a policy that would offer drivers a minimum of $21 per hour, paid time off, sick leave and compensation if they are injured while driving, as well as a collective voice and “the ability to influence decisions about their work.”
Uber circulating a petition to ... urge Uber to do a thing?
They believe they can bear the expense of this policy better than their competition, and in particular they don't want to compete with lower-cost-lower-quality firms. So it's both a (presumably sincere) ethical position and a form of anti-competitive regulatory capture. I think most minimum wage laws have some of this Baptists-and-bootleggers effect.
Similarly, Wal-Mart has been lobbying for increasing the minimum wage for years. Most minimum wage earners in retail work for small businesses. Whereas Wal-Mart averages nearly double the federal minimum wage.
Wal-Mart knows that hiking minimum wage would help it kill mom-and-pop stores that it competes with.
I wouldn't assume it comes from an ethical origin. It's more about killing competition. As soon as the competition is dead they'll be talking about how non-viable $21/hr is.
Also, a high minimum wage for drivers really bumps the value of their self driving car arm.
This seems to be a reaction from Uber because they specifically do not want regulations to come into force on the issue. To me that takes it out of the baptists & bootlegger territory. Absent regulations getting involved, this is simply Uber offering better compensation.
The goal is to force every other company to do it as well, protecting the long-term prospects of Uber. A smart thing, and possibly a good one in the short term.
That would basically be suicide bombing the "ride share" industry though. Everyone is losing money hand over fist. Increasing that amount will kill everyone just as dead but do it faster decreasing the amount of time that Uber, or anybody, would be able to figure out how to be profitable. I can see how faced with a binary choice between $21/hr and classifying as employees $21/hr is better but it's not a binary choice. They can pay off politicians (indirectly and with plausible deniability of course) or do other dirty things (this is Uber we're talking about here) to get the law changed.
It's much easier for a company to do $goodThing if all other companies are also forced to do $goodThing. It's not necessarily good business sense for Uber to unilaterally do it while the competition saves money by doing $badThing.
This is exactly what happened in LA toward the end of 2018. Uber tried raising fares in order to pay their drivers more, but Lyft didn't follow suit and consequentially the market shifted toward Lyft in response. Ridesharing consumers are fickle. It seems the only way for prices to be raised are a) a stable duopoly where both companies' strategy is price matching, or b) through regulation.
"When a large company calls for regulation, what they are really requesting are regulatory costs that serve as barriers to entry, protecting them from upstart competitors. It means nothing else. Ever."
>“the ability to influence decisions about their work.”
Wow...on one hand UBER is in an existential crisis regarding the status of drivers (employee vs independent contract).
On the other UBER is now passing around a petition in order to give drivers rights (which UBER controls) that are commonly understood to be inherent for contractors. Moreover, a contractor generally has complete control over their work, and UBER by passing around this petition is essentially admitting UBER controls drivers work which is typical of an employer/employee relationship.
This is a response to a push to unionize and legislate protections. They don’t just want to do this, they want to show that lots of their drivers support it instead of the alternative, and get their drivers to lobby against the legislation and reject unionization.
Yes and no. Unionization would result in unions negotiating against Uber independently. As the dominant player I can see how unions would negotiate harder against Uber than (say) Lyft.
A law would mean Uber/lyft/etc. would all have the same playing field - which is better for Uber.
if you put a survey on your site, or send people a survey via email, asking them do you think we should do this, probably very few people will respond.
But let us suppose that you have developed a reputation for not being nice, if you propose something nice people will think you are being devious, if you send a survey you won't know how many people actually want you to be nice. But if you can get a petition out there then people will think hey, I can force those not nice people to be nice by putting in my two cents. Now you find out how many people really want you to be nice, furthermore then you can market it later - we heard, we responded, and those people all think hey my voice is important and feel good about themselves and maybe feel good about you and think maybe they really are nice after all?
It is a brilliant piece of marketing really, that will of course be taken over by everyone and ran into the ground and poisoned as a method to the point where nobody will believe honest petitions anymore either - but that is years away.
A perfect and logical move for an established company. First, get into an unregulated market. Then, attempt to make that market highly regulated, which discourages and prevents new comers from using the same techniques you used (and thus, lowers competition).
See social networking, see banking, see search engines, see... well, it happens everywhere.
Knowing the filth of Uber (at many ranks/depts) they could just be testing the waters to see what they can get away with. Politicians do this all the time. They use the media/news outlets to circulate rumors of "10% tax increase on X" and once they measure the outrage they eventually impose the 5% they initially planned. This way the masses are happy for avoiding the 10%, and the politicians are happy because they were really planning for a 3%, so yey.
I woulnd't be surprised if Uber measures the attractions/reactions the same way, and in the end of the day delivers in a similar manner.
They're trying to wield the power of the government to ensure that none of their competitors will be able to survive. It's the same reason why some big companies, like Amazon, are lobbying to increase the federal minimum wage, seemingly against their own interests. Smaller competitors won't be able to absorb the shock of the wage increase and will be forced out of business. The net result will be a less competitive market.
There is a push in California right now to clean up the whole distinction between a contract worker and an employee. This is geared toward the California legislature as much as it is other competition.
Not per hour worked. Not when going to a pickup. Not when waiting for a ride. Only "while on a trip". That alone probably means about 1/3 off. Which puts them below SF's $15/hour minimum wage.
Then, Uber counts the entire amount paid to the driver as "wage", not including their renting the driver's car. That takes off a substantial amount.[1]
And if drivers were employees, Uber would have to buy the bottled water.
You’ve identified what everyone else can’t understand. Kudos.
This is especially damaging to drivers that desire to drive their own vehicles and choose how much they want to drive. The proposed wages are way below what you should be taking home in an area like SF, and you are depreciating your own expensive asset and paying your own fuel and maintenance, auto insurance, health insurance and so on.
The real gem however is this would force drivers to use the rental car program which doesn’t make much sense unless you are driving all week long. It is a way for Uber to control drivers making them unable to reject poor work and working conditions without actually making those drivers employees. As an independent contractor you should be able to turn off your Uber driver app when the pay starts sucking, and go work for someone else at your own discretion. There’s no freedom to do that rolling around in an Uber rental.
How else could they do it though? They'd have to telling drivers they can't work or scheduling them, otherwise there'd be a flood of people chilling in their cars waiting on rides and being paid by uber.
The "gig" economy seems to work by offering people a fairly open choice of pay and work. Though Uber could be more transparent about expected earnings.
> our community relies on to supplement their income, supporttheirfamilies
While their marketing promotes driving as a fun side gig, their PR defending their labor practices includes supporting families.
It's not surprising coming from corporate PR, but the selective choice of arguments is pretty obvious.
But then again, in a society where the general populace's basic welfare is largely left to market forces, maybe it's not a stretch for corporations to make the claim that supporting families is among their side-effects (but not objectives).
You can't really expect to be paid a living wage at a job that can be done by 14 year olds, can you? There is also a greater supply of low skilled labor available, lowering price of labor. I think you should work 1 to 2 crappy jobs building skills until you can find a single good job. McDonald's also has programs that offer college tuition assistance.
Am I the only who notice the last 4 words? This will effect very few drivers as most are already making > that "while on a trip (and not stuck in complete grid lock)".
I assume at $21/h the driver has to pay car expenses? How much does that cost per hour assuming a driver does full time driving?
Shouldn’t Uber instead be guaranteeing how much drivers are paid net? If $21 really is before expenses then it’s not even $15 for most drivers after, maybe not even $10?
Also: I was assuming the pay was while working, not while driving passengers. Otherwise isn’t it even worse?
What if Uber instead just guaranteed drivers a living wage plus benefits net?
Using this website (https://usedfirst.com/cars/toyota/prius) and a Prius as the car as a guideline (Since I feel like that's the most common car I see when I take Uber/Lyft) it looks like maintenance + depreciation on a 3-5 year old Prius is about $2000-$2500 a year.
I delivered pizza's full time for 7 years of my life, so I'm well aware of the toll a job like this can take on your car, but even if we triple the high end to $7500/yr to cover the extra wear and tear, gas, and the extra miles/depreciation they are putting on their car, they are still making a little over $17/hr pre-tax. Additionally, a lot of those expenses are tax deductible which means their take home would be a lot higher that most other people making $17/hr.
There are a few major cities where that wage feels a bit light, but for the vast majority of the country, $21/hr feels like a livable wage, even paying for car expenses.
> a lot of those expenses are tax deductible which means their take home would be a lot higher that most other people making $17/hr
That part doesn't seem quite right. Maybe they can deduct more than they actually spend (using standard mileage rates) but they'll presumably have to pay self-employment taxes which would offset that advantage.
Uber needs drivers to have an incentive to maintain their vehicles as efficiently as they can. They want the overall cost of the fleet to be as low as possible, because one way or another that cost gets reflected in the price. The current structure preserves that good incentive for drivers, but if they went with a "net" structure they'd have to be much more involved in the purchasing and maintenance choices that their drivers make. That's a really difficult position to be in. (See also the entire health care system.)
This is not completely true, there are factors where the price of the trip or a bonus of that trip is larger if the pickup time is over the historical average pickup time.
For example if the trip is 10min pickup time and 10 min travel, Uber might bump up the price to make drivers be more willing to accept that trip.
The IRS sets a standard rate of 58 cents/mile for deduction of vehicle-related expenses. There’s obviously a wide range of actual costs, but that’s in the ballpark for an all-inclusive amount. If you average 20MPH then you’ll exceed $10/hr.
I think it would be a good campaign to get Americans to reduce vehicle miles if we pointed out how much it costs a mile to drive the damned things.
Like is it really cost effective to go to the theater on the other side of town because the tickets are $1.50 cheaper? Or this grocery store versus the other?
I wish rent was flexible. How about food prices, they should be flexible. Car repair costs. Flexible. Gas prices should be flexible. In general life should be flexible. Everyone should negotiate. Things should not be that predictable. It's better for everyone.
To make it a fair comparison to full-time or even part-time work as an employee, I think you'd need to take into account the cost of car insurance, health insurance, having a car, car maintenance, gas, a smart phone + plan, time spent getting inspected, and other overhead. It's probably closer to ~$15/hr after all of that. I wouldn't be surprised if they derived $21 as California minimum wage + costs of driving.
I mean, its also essentially tax free money as you get a ~.50$ tax relief/mile driven, so IMO with all the costs you probably are equivalent or possibly better than a 21/hour job.
Most residents are ridiculously underpaid given the circumstances. Salaries are pretty solidly in the $50k range, but the number of hours (up to 80/week) equates to abysmal hourly pay.
Surgical residents are being apprenticed for their expected $400k-$1m job later in life. They are far from being impoverished, and if they need more than $50k/year, any bank will gladly lend to them at a low rate.
Yeah I don't know how much more people expect to be paid. It's a completely unskilled job that almost anyone can do. Complaining that $21/hr isn't enough would be insane at this point.
Here's a thought experiment I like to use whenever this comes up.
If someone were to approach you on the street and ask you to do something for them that will take an hour of your time, what amount of money do you think would be a fair compensation for just the time expense? Now add to that the fact that it's not just an hour of someones time, it's also an hour of use of an expensive machine they own and maintain.
I've found that when minimum wage is thought of in this way, anything less than $20-25/hour sounds absurd.
$21.00 x 40 hours x 52 weeks = 43,680 in pay, for roughly one year.
$3,706 x 12 months = $44,472 in rent.
That's the first number I found on google for "san francisco average rent price" (without quotes).
I agree that those numbers are insane. Accusing someone who makes less than he needs to rent decent housing of complaining seems quite wrong. I understand that San Francisco is at the high end of cost of living. It's also where Uber and Lyft are centered.
The point of the article seems to be that Uber and Lyft support this idea because they're hoping to undermine more meaningful protective legislation, specifically California Assembly Bill 5.
Claiming that this low-ball offer from large corporations would be too hurtful to those corporations, and far too generous to their workers, would be ... insane, right?
There is a fair bit of overhead that comes with being an Uber driver (gas, maintenance, the cost of the car, additional taxes). So if you are being paid $21 an hour your take home will still be a lot lower than someone being paid $21 an hour in a normal job.
When I was driving, I could make abut $1000 a week when working 60 hours.
$150 of that would be gas
35 would be insurance
15 would be oil changes
$50 per week should be set aside for savings to reinvest into the vehicle in the form of proper maintenance.
the final number, $750 for working 60 hours 12.5/hr
And they’re probably only paid when they’re in transit to their next pick up and while driving their current pickup, or else when people are double-dipping on Uber and Lyft, they would theoretically be being paid $42/hr
Sincere question: is this true in the SF Bay and/or California? $21/hr might not make sense in Cincinnati (edit: Cincinnati is just an example)--local context is important.
I think that is the missing piece in all the minimum wage law proposals. It greatly devalues everyone making a similar amount to what the new wage would be. If someone went to two years of a trade school, their investment in increased earning power has been eroded. Eventually, these industries will have to raise their wages in order to continue to attract talent. This does mean that these industries will all have to raise prices to cover the higher costs. In the end, everything will settle down and the people with the higher minimum wage may actually have lost actual buying power. Rich people don't tend to frequent places where people make minimum wage. So raising prices in those locations mostly hurts poor people.
I think we need to just be smarter about helping the poor. How about we get rid of income tax for people under the poverty level (or multiple there of)? How about we give them some basic income to make up the difference? We can tax more on the high side to make up the difference. Also, giving poor people more fluid income will likely increase the velocity of money which should make rich people richer negating any increased taxation.
This is a completely reasonable take. You don't have a right to live in a city that requires $50/hr to live comfortably. $21/hr is an amazing pay rate for what is essentially unskilled labor
I understood the article to say the policy is specifically $21/hr while on a trip. Is their any publically available data about how much time Uber drivers spend waiting to be assigned a ride?
Yeah, this isnt a minimum wage because they're not even getting paid a wage. They're getting a slice of each customers payment, and if uber really cares about their drivers, they would call for a minimum percentage that drivers receive.
Prediction: If this goes through, there will be such an oversupply of drivers, that in order to beat the competition, drivers will de facto have to adopt unofficial practices like "Ok, you wanted to go 20 miles, we've gone 10 miles, now change the destination to where we are now, and pay me for the 10 miles, I'll drive you the other 10 miles off-the-record."
Do you have data to support your claim on the EMTs and surgical residents? That sounds surprising to me on the EMT front, though surgical residents presumably are paid quite low because their earnings will exponentially grow in the coming years.
It's not $21/hr at all. It's 21/hr "while driving". If there are a lot of Uber drivers and low demand, they could spend half of their time sitting around earning 0.
I guarantee you that EMTs definitely do NOT typically have very good health insurance, speaking as someone who has worked as one for multiple companies and as an educator in EMS in this region.
If you're talking fire department-based EMTs, then yes, but these make up a significant minority of EMTs who are often running on minimum wage and often given the bare minimum of health insurance.
Well, I mean they should - they're highly skilled and paid a lot of time and $ in education and training. And these things are relative: they're specialized and require more training that many other positions - more so than drivers.
If they're going to be paid less, they need to be compensated elsewhere.
Readit News
Uber circulating a petition to ... urge Uber to do a thing?
Why don't they just do that thing?
Wal-Mart knows that hiking minimum wage would help it kill mom-and-pop stores that it competes with.
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/05/business/walmart-shareholders...
Also, a high minimum wage for drivers really bumps the value of their self driving car arm.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/8/20793793/uber-5-billion-qu...
If it were a sincere ethical position, once again, they would just implement it... no need to make a big deal about it
Such as?
https://twitter.com/arrington/status/1112179332892385280
Wow...on one hand UBER is in an existential crisis regarding the status of drivers (employee vs independent contract).
On the other UBER is now passing around a petition in order to give drivers rights (which UBER controls) that are commonly understood to be inherent for contractors. Moreover, a contractor generally has complete control over their work, and UBER by passing around this petition is essentially admitting UBER controls drivers work which is typical of an employer/employee relationship.
They are petitioning to change AB5, because of claimed negative side effects of that regulation on their driver pool.
[1] - https://p2a.co/H9gttWA
But let us suppose that you have developed a reputation for not being nice, if you propose something nice people will think you are being devious, if you send a survey you won't know how many people actually want you to be nice. But if you can get a petition out there then people will think hey, I can force those not nice people to be nice by putting in my two cents. Now you find out how many people really want you to be nice, furthermore then you can market it later - we heard, we responded, and those people all think hey my voice is important and feel good about themselves and maybe feel good about you and think maybe they really are nice after all?
It is a brilliant piece of marketing really, that will of course be taken over by everyone and ran into the ground and poisoned as a method to the point where nobody will believe honest petitions anymore either - but that is years away.
See social networking, see banking, see search engines, see... well, it happens everywhere.
I woulnd't be surprised if Uber measures the attractions/reactions the same way, and in the end of the day delivers in a similar manner.
I don't see how they're going to afford their drivers if they're already blowing 2b on them
or cutting the grass before the unionizing movement gain too much steam
After all, if no one notices good deeds, they don't count, right? It's the currency liberal American runs on, Virtue Signals ... V$.
Not per hour worked. Not when going to a pickup. Not when waiting for a ride. Only "while on a trip". That alone probably means about 1/3 off. Which puts them below SF's $15/hour minimum wage.
Then, Uber counts the entire amount paid to the driver as "wage", not including their renting the driver's car. That takes off a substantial amount.[1]
And if drivers were employees, Uber would have to buy the bottled water.
[1] https://www.ridester.com/uber-lyft-driver-costs-and-expenses...
This is especially damaging to drivers that desire to drive their own vehicles and choose how much they want to drive. The proposed wages are way below what you should be taking home in an area like SF, and you are depreciating your own expensive asset and paying your own fuel and maintenance, auto insurance, health insurance and so on.
The real gem however is this would force drivers to use the rental car program which doesn’t make much sense unless you are driving all week long. It is a way for Uber to control drivers making them unable to reject poor work and working conditions without actually making those drivers employees. As an independent contractor you should be able to turn off your Uber driver app when the pay starts sucking, and go work for someone else at your own discretion. There’s no freedom to do that rolling around in an Uber rental.
The "gig" economy seems to work by offering people a fairly open choice of pay and work. Though Uber could be more transparent about expected earnings.
Paid for time that you're actually online.
If you're only logged on for 20 mins (a third) of the hour - you get $7 min wage ($21 / 3).
While their marketing promotes driving as a fun side gig, their PR defending their labor practices includes supporting families.
It's not surprising coming from corporate PR, but the selective choice of arguments is pretty obvious.
But then again, in a society where the general populace's basic welfare is largely left to market forces, maybe it's not a stretch for corporations to make the claim that supporting families is among their side-effects (but not objectives).
Companies in the US are utterly out of control with regards to paying a living wage.
Am I the only who notice the last 4 words? This will effect very few drivers as most are already making > that "while on a trip (and not stuck in complete grid lock)".
Shouldn’t Uber instead be guaranteeing how much drivers are paid net? If $21 really is before expenses then it’s not even $15 for most drivers after, maybe not even $10?
Also: I was assuming the pay was while working, not while driving passengers. Otherwise isn’t it even worse?
What if Uber instead just guaranteed drivers a living wage plus benefits net?
I delivered pizza's full time for 7 years of my life, so I'm well aware of the toll a job like this can take on your car, but even if we triple the high end to $7500/yr to cover the extra wear and tear, gas, and the extra miles/depreciation they are putting on their car, they are still making a little over $17/hr pre-tax. Additionally, a lot of those expenses are tax deductible which means their take home would be a lot higher that most other people making $17/hr.
There are a few major cities where that wage feels a bit light, but for the vast majority of the country, $21/hr feels like a livable wage, even paying for car expenses.
That part doesn't seem quite right. Maybe they can deduct more than they actually spend (using standard mileage rates) but they'll presumably have to pay self-employment taxes which would offset that advantage.
Right now, Uber offers a rate based on time spent per trip, and mileage per trip. Drivers do not get paid outside of trips.
For example if the trip is 10min pickup time and 10 min travel, Uber might bump up the price to make drivers be more willing to accept that trip.
The IRS sets a standard rate of 58 cents/mile for deduction of vehicle-related expenses. There’s obviously a wide range of actual costs, but that’s in the ballpark for an all-inclusive amount. If you average 20MPH then you’ll exceed $10/hr.
Like is it really cost effective to go to the theater on the other side of town because the tickets are $1.50 cheaper? Or this grocery store versus the other?
"California drivers deserve access to flexible work." https://www.independentdriver.org/
I wish rent was flexible. How about food prices, they should be flexible. Car repair costs. Flexible. Gas prices should be flexible. In general life should be flexible. Everyone should negotiate. Things should not be that predictable. It's better for everyone.
I don't know how to interpret this in that context: is this proposal absurd, or is the medical / labor system in the US absurd? (or both??)
Improving society and equalizing society can mean lifting everyone up, not keeping others down.
Is it really insane that people should get paid a living wage, regardless of whether it's a 'skilled job' or not?
If someone were to approach you on the street and ask you to do something for them that will take an hour of your time, what amount of money do you think would be a fair compensation for just the time expense? Now add to that the fact that it's not just an hour of someones time, it's also an hour of use of an expensive machine they own and maintain.
I've found that when minimum wage is thought of in this way, anything less than $20-25/hour sounds absurd.
$3,706 x 12 months = $44,472 in rent.
That's the first number I found on google for "san francisco average rent price" (without quotes).
I agree that those numbers are insane. Accusing someone who makes less than he needs to rent decent housing of complaining seems quite wrong. I understand that San Francisco is at the high end of cost of living. It's also where Uber and Lyft are centered.
The point of the article seems to be that Uber and Lyft support this idea because they're hoping to undermine more meaningful protective legislation, specifically California Assembly Bill 5.
Claiming that this low-ball offer from large corporations would be too hurtful to those corporations, and far too generous to their workers, would be ... insane, right?
When I was driving, I could make abut $1000 a week when working 60 hours.
$150 of that would be gas 35 would be insurance 15 would be oil changes $50 per week should be set aside for savings to reinvest into the vehicle in the form of proper maintenance.
the final number, $750 for working 60 hours 12.5/hr
I think we need to just be smarter about helping the poor. How about we get rid of income tax for people under the poverty level (or multiple there of)? How about we give them some basic income to make up the difference? We can tax more on the high side to make up the difference. Also, giving poor people more fluid income will likely increase the velocity of money which should make rich people richer negating any increased taxation.
The fully loaded rate is potentially much lower.
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In my high CoL state, EMTs make roughly $15-$18.75/hr, work multiple back-to-back shifts and often nights.
So this wording is essentially fraudulent.
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If you're talking fire department-based EMTs, then yes, but these make up a significant minority of EMTs who are often running on minimum wage and often given the bare minimum of health insurance.
Work out the cost per mile, and the average miles per hour, that number comes down quite a bit. Especially in places where car insurance is higher.
If they're going to be paid less, they need to be compensated elsewhere.
A joint letter by Uber and Lyft CEOs: https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/Open-F...
Lyft email campaign advocating minimum earnings: https://p2a.co/xcA3Bg3