None of this was all that surprising in the light of what I had heard before. Still, I had to wish him luck when he talked about joining a nascent labor movement for rideshare drivers. We'll see how that goes.
Monday, January 29, 2024
Taken for a ride
Today while getting lunch I heard a guy talking. Talking about Uber and Lyft, both of which he's driven for. The deal now apparently is that they don't pay you benefits because according to them you're not an employee, you're an independent contractor. But you're not really an independent contractor because you can't negotiate. And they go out of their way to hire younger drivers because the older, more experienced ones know how much more they used to get paid.
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2 comments:
Corporate greed and vampirism account for the sad situation of gig workers who have been classified as contractors. I recall Uber had stated th average driver made $25. an hour, but in consideration of the fact they have to pay their own business expenses they actually earn far less.
I remembered there had been court cases in California against Uber, Lyft and other services in the employee-contractor dispute. Anyway, when I did a search to see how that had been resolved I was happy (and surprised) to see a new worker classification rule will go into effect in March of this year per the Department of Labor.
It looks as though, despite some minor challenges, the 22 million gig workers in the country may soon have the same benefits as regular workers. Hopefully, that guy you overheard has been informed about this by now.
That's a good point. For most of us $25 per hour sounds like a pretty solid deal. For a job where you're driving all day and have to pay for gas--or whatever obscene expenses come with an e-vehicle--it's not so good. It's a ripe for abuse job.
Uber and Lyft both surely do merit more scrutiny in terms of how they deal with their workers. I have seen warnings that the new rule you're talking about could make it impossible to work as an independent contractor. The thing is, though, that gig economy workers aren't truly independent contractors. Given how much leeway they have to negotiate they're very much dependent contractors.
I hope he does know and that he's able to benefit. I got the impression that he had been working hard and that his issues were things he had observed and experienced over a considerable amount of time.
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