California Overturns Uber's Appeal: Its Drivers Are Employees, Not Contractors 367
An anonymous reader writes: Uber's third attempt to overturn a California court ruling stating that its drivers are employees and not contractors has ended in failure, with the appeal dismissed by the California Employment Development Department (EDD). The California Labor Commission ruled in June on the matter, and in a later appeal one judge effectively decided that the difference between 'firing' a driver and deactivating their account is purely semantic.
Looks like the VCs found their unicorn (Score:2, Funny)
A court ruling that helps labor! Better go buy a lottery ticket, these things come around only once every hundred years!
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If Uber doesn't want them to be employees, they need to stop treating them like employees; or did you not read the ruling?
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Re: Looks like the VCs found their unicorn (Score:5, Insightful)
Uber would have been better off arguing that it's drivers are customers, who sign up for a service that allows them to earn money. The people who ride in the cars aren't the customers, they are the product.
Changing landscape (Score:2, Insightful)
If I set my own schedule, and take as much time off as I choose, am I under an employer's control?
Can robots marry humans, and why would they want to aside from Scarlett Johansson?
Do women have the right to choose... how their FICA re
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A root of this issue is the 18th, 19th and 20th century concepts of employees / employers and an outdated set of definitions. Like so many modern issues near and dear, we will have to reassess out fundamental assumptions about all kinds of things, this being just one.
I disagree. The fundamental concepts of employee and employer are as true now as they were then. It may take some time, but modern-day legal tools are more than capable of sorting out uber's employment issues without any fundamental shift in thought.
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New reality: A lot of gig jobs are on demand both ways; many people want the freedom to run themselves as a business, earn in a flexible / very few strings attached format, with an unlimited or unrestricted number
If the payments aren't up to date.... (Score:2)
"semantic" (Score:2)
burden (Score:2)
This is probably an attempt to make Uber bear a bigger burden in terms of being forced to include the drivers on their payroll.
Economy (Score:5, Insightful)
Is the gig economy a good thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
There are all sorts of arguments about why Uber should or shouldn't have to act like a traditional taxi company. But in my opinion, that's less important than this question, for the broader economy and labor force. Social media, tech publications, and even the MBA rags have had all sorts of glowing stories about the "gig economy." Basically, they argue that the flexibility offered to workers by allowing them to string together contract jobs to make income outweighs the stability of traditional employment. Uber is cited as an example on the low end, day laborer style side, and of course, high flying "technology consultants" making $150+ an hour are put up as shining examples of why this should be the future of employment.
I'm far from a Luddite, but I'm a big believer in stability. Especially as you acquire a family and grown-up responsibilities, life in the US revolves around a steady income, health insurance and a way to save for retirement. The high-flying tech consultants can arrange for these things, but lately I've been seeing more of these cheerleading articles advocating for all employees to switch to this model. Most average employees don't have the motivation or skills to market themselves the way these consultants do, and they may lack the skills that would make them good contractor candidates.
It just seems to me that companies want a disposable labor force that they don't need to pay benefits, vacation, etc. for. Basically, they want to go back to a pre-Depression era where workers just turn up at the factory gates every morning and hope to get work. That may be appealing to Millenials who don't have any family ties and will move at the drop of a hat. If we have to go this way, then things like real estate transactions need to be streamlined, life has to be restructured around variable income levels, etc. and I think society isn't ready for it yet.
Re:Is the gig economy a good thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
It just seems to me that companies want a disposable labor force that they don't need to pay benefits, vacation, etc. for. Basically, they want to go back to a pre-Depression era where workers just turn up at the factory gates every morning and hope to get work.
The last backlash led to unions, worker's rights, etc. Will the next one lead to a Minimum Guaranteed Income? If we had that (and working national health care, not just health insurance) then we could work for any amount which suited us.
Re:Is the gig economy a good thing? (Score:4, Insightful)
"But min wage is too high for those jobs"
Huh? Are so clueless?
1) Min. wage is in no way a living wage
2) If we can continue to give huge pay increases to CEOs and pay dividends to investors of companies that lose money then we have plenty of money to go around.
Stop with propaganda.
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I have worked gigs and as a true 1099 contractor, not an employee of a contract house (aka body shop), and liked it. I liked setting my own hours, selecting the jobs, setting the rates, etc. This "you're a contractor but we own your ass" thing that Uber does is BS. And I would call BS if it were any other company, not just an internet company.
This is great! (Score:5, Insightful)
Uber wants all the benefits of being an employer with none of the responsibilities.
If you listen to Uber, every worker is an independent contractor and all the employee protection laws we fought so hard for over the last century don't apply any more.
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It's interesting that you call Uber a steady job. Is there anything preventing them from locking your account on a whim and preventing you from driving? By anything, I mean do you have any legal recourse if it happens and you are the driver. In a steady job, the employer is prevented from doing that.
It saddens me that you think the right to create your own hours is an adequate tradeoff for all other legal protections.
Actually, in most states in the US employment is at-will so, in any so-called steady job, your employer can give you your last paycheck, walk you out the door immediately for no reason and allow you to collect unemployment insurance. The fact that they usually don't do that doesn't mean that they can't and won't (given the right circumstances).
There are only a few thing that prevents this from happening...
1. Employer wants to avoid discrimination lawsuits (and their associated costs)
2. Employer doesn't wan
Fixed the Glitch (Score:3)
Make the same ruling for Papa John's Pizza (Score:5, Interesting)
The company and its franchisees pull the independent contractor status all the goddamned time while doing all they can to violate California law - charging you for uniforms (illegal under CA law) deduction of tips from credit card purchases (illegal just about anywhere) refusal to pay mileage reimbursement (IRS law violation) and much, much more.
John Schnatter is a class-A business criminal and needs to be taken to task by the courts.
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I went to the DLSE here in California and filed a complaint. Nothing ever happened out of it, and I'm currently getting a bunch of other former drivers together to get the ball rolling in a real suit.
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and Florida, right, that liberal state down there.. Or did you not read the article?
Yes, they are employees (Score:5, Interesting)
There are many reasons why drivers should be classified as employees rather than as contractors. The most obvious is that drivers don't price their own services. The labor laws were specifically written to protect people who are working for much more powerful companies which will treat them as serfs if they can get away with it.
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Any way you slice it, this is probably going to be a big deal to Uber!!
Re:Yes, they are employees (Score:5, Insightful)
Uber will be moving to self-driving cars as soon as they can. They are just trying to string out the "contractor" subterfuge until the technology is ready.
Re: Yes, they are employees (Score:3, Insightful)
And neither will computers in the home.
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Computers in the home don't accidentally kill you when they mistake that rock in the road for a paper bag.
I love tech, but I also live in the real world, not the imagination land that is currently Silicon Valley. I love to dream as well, but I know where to draw the line between my awesome dreams and what's practical today. Self driving cars are still in the "awesome dream" category. Sadly, they'll probably go the way VR and neural nets did in the 80s and be destroyed by the hype cycle and become toxic topi
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There are many reasons why drivers should be classified as employees rather than as contractors. The most obvious is that drivers don't price their own services. The labor laws were specifically written to protect people who are working for much more powerful companies which will treat them as serfs if they can get away with it.
Does this mean that people who cut hair as contractors price their own services?
Or that if they do NOT that they are NOT really contractors?
Tim S.
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Re:Yes, they are employees (Score:5, Insightful)
Meaningless words. In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning. Words like romantic, plastic, values, human, dead, sentimental, natural, vitality, as used in art criticism, are strictly meaningless, in the sense that they not only do not point to any discoverable object, but are hardly ever expected to do so by the reader. When one critic writes, "The outstanding feature of Mr. X's work is its living quality," while another writes, "The immediately striking thing about Mr. X's work is its peculiar deadness," the reader accepts this as a simple difference of opinion. If words like black and white were involved, instead of the jargon words dead and living, he would see at once that language was being used in an improper way. Many political words are similarly abused. The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies "something not desirable." The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements like Marshal Pétain was a true patriot, The Soviet press is the freest in the world, The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution, are almost always made with intent to deceive. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality.
Federal contractors working for the IRS, who ostensibly defines what a contractor is, meet your definition of "...are really employees."
You can't possibly argue that Uber drivers aren't contracting their services. They take bids for work; they're not employed by the company to go out as service providers, but rather take bids for services requested from the company by its clients. They can opt when to drive for Uber, and can decide to drive only where and when convenient for them, and only when the rates are sufficiently high or the job looks good (pick up cute girl at bar, take back home, jackpot!!!).
Your only argument is a bureaucratic argument: can you define "contractor" in some way that doesn't rely on if a person is taking bids for short contract work, but rather relies on some nebulous and flexible ideas of your own which may not exactly match up with any other person's ideas of what a contractor is? The first step, of course, is getting away from this idea that "contract work" means anything, and arguing that a person may take contract work but *technically* be a sort of "employee" even though he's really an obvious contractor.
It's a great way to mislead an argument for the purposes of your political agenda.
Re:Yes, they are employees (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a dodge. All the "bids" come from Uber itself, not directly from clients. No negotiation takes place on the individual "bids"... it's take it or leave it. This is the typical management/employee tension. Management tries to keep all the authority and pass all the responsibility to the employee. In this case, the filter for doing that is called an app, but it's the same raw deal for the employee.
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I mean, if a person wants to be a contractor, and enjoy the benefit risks that offers vs W2 employee, why should they not be allowed to make their own choices?
Why does the Govt know better than the worker himself how they want to negotiate and work for their pay?
I would NEVER want to go back to the W2 world. Sure it is a PITA at times, doing the extra paperwork, but I enjoy writing off so much more, and with a bit
Re:Yes, they are employees (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yes, they are employees (Score:5, Interesting)
Who was holding the "gun" to the head of the Uber drivers and demanding that they drive for Uber?
Re:Yes, they are employees (Score:5, Insightful)
Landlords, grocers, doctors, pharmacists, clothiers, electric company, water company, some cellphone company, public transit (well, actually, not that one...)
It costs a lot to continue to live
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There's an oligopsony for non-skilled shitty jobs.
Better than/easier to get than flipping burgers is a really low standard./P
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Because they majored in philosophy and have no skills.
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If that was true, why would there be any taxi drivers right now? Why aren't medallions worth almost nothing.
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You answered why there were taxi drivers and why medallions were worth a fortune. This is now, today. Why are there any taxi drivers, if driving for Uber is better. Are you telling me it's harder to get an Uber job than a taxi job?
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Who was holding the "gun" to the head of the Uber drivers and demanding that they drive for Uber?
Nobody specifically, but this is a tragedy of the commons situation. If all employers are free to not have to provide any sorts of labour protections to their workers, then competitive forces (and/or greed) will ensure none of them do. That means we can all look forward to a return to six day work weeks, little health and safety (your own responsibility as a contractor), and people being valued like performing animals, discarded the day they go lame. So basically what it was like for workers around the 1900
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Sure they do, they can either offer their services to work for them or not.
As a contractor, if someone isn't giving me the money I request or we can't come to a dollar amount we can both agree on, I just pass that employment opportunity by.
Just because one party won't budge, doesn't mean the 2nd party HAS to agree. If they do, fine, as in with this case with Uber.
No one is forcing anyone to work for Uber.
Geez...why is the individual assumed to be
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Geez...why is the individual assumed to be powerless? Hey can vote with their fucking feet by walking out the door for other opportunities.
That argument works when there's jobs available. But the number of people looking for work (unemployed or underemployed) has been holding steady for years, and it's a big number.
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There are PLENTY of jobs out there.
You just might have to learn to be flexible in what you are willing to do. Maybe get out and retrain yourself while you are on unemployment...maybe you need to move to where the damned jobs ARE.
You don't have the "right" to the exact job you want where you want it...life doesn't work that way an
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Why should it NOT be up to the individual to classify themselves at contractor or employee?
There are guidelines of when a person is a contractor and when they are an employee.
http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/... [irs.gov]
It's pretty simple actually. For example, if your contractor must exclusively work for you as a person, then that is an employee, not a contractor. Contractors could replace themselves with someone else, their own employee, but that could be an issue in cases where contractor == person == employee.
If I hire a contractor to do my roof, I'm not hiring one person to smack nails through shingles.
Re:Yes, they are employees (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course they have a gun held to their head. It's called hunger. It's called being able to pay the rent. Many of the drivers for Uber are in the business of converting equity in their cars into payments from Uber. That is not necessarily a profitable exchange and many drivers don't realize that until their car breaks down. Uber drivers are not paid for the time they spend sitting in their car waiting for the next gig. And if you include that time, they are paid below minimum wage in many cases. That is what the labor laws are designed to prohibit.
Re:Yes, they are employees (Score:4, Insightful)
Many of the drivers for Uber are in the business of converting equity in their cars into payments from Uber. That is not necessarily a profitable exchange and many drivers don't realize that until their car breaks down. Uber drivers are not paid for the time they spend sitting in their car waiting for the next gig. And if you include that time, they are paid below minimum wage in many cases.
You say that with the expectation that the "Libertarian/Anarcho-Capitalists" who love Uber care about such things.
They don't.
They only care about getting what they want as cheaply as possible, screw everyone else and damn the consequences.
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Because the choice is only binary. In that case, the only alternative is to have full and complete regulation of everything controlled by a big central government and nobody has freedom to do anything, since everything is regulated.
Binary Choices are dumb, why do people who don't understand Libertarianism always thinking Anarchy = Libertarianism. ?
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"there are PLENTY of other jobs out there that don't have UBER in the name of the employer. Work somewhere else maybe?"
If Uber and other "share services" get away with their violation of labor laws, there won't be other kinds of jobs. Uber and similar companies are very efficient at extracting money from both their clients and their employees. If they get away with this "contractor" fraud, then every other company will be forced to play the same game. We will be an economy of serfs, all taking "bids" for
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Why should it NOT be up to the individual to classify themselves at contractor or employee?
I'll stop you right there. You can't have a contract if the terms are illegal, so it's not up to the individual at all. If Uber wants to have the state enforce their agreements with their drivers, they need to follow state laws.
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I agree with you.
The company and person should follow the laws.
I'm saying the laws are wrong and shouldn't exist to hinder free will of those wanting to work or hire folks to work for them.
I'm saying the State (and federal) laws should NOT force a company or a person to not be ab
Re:Yes, they are employees (Score:5, Interesting)
There are many reasons why drivers should be classified as employees rather than as contractors.
Yes. There are 20 reasons. Here is the list [mt.gov].
The most obvious is that drivers don't price their own services.
In some ways the drivers are treated like employees, and in other ways they are treated like contractors. Uber may be able to shift the balance enough to satisfy the courts, and the IRS.
Like employees:
- Uber sets the price
- Uber prohibits drivers from offering services outside of the Uber App
- Uber drivers are an integral part of Uber's business
- Uber drivers cannot subcontract
- Uber drivers are trained by Uber
- Uber drivers must follow specific procedures
- Uber drivers can quit or be fired at any time
Like contractors:
- Uber drivers set their own hours
- Uber drivers own their own equipment
- Uber drivers are not required to work full time, or a minimum or maximum number of hours
- Uber drivers do not work on Uber's premises
- Uber drivers are not directly supervised
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Why don't we call them ... "Contracted Employees" ... a hybrid between Contractor and Employee.
And then, lets set up a new set of regulations of "pick and choose" that the company has to abide by.
Simple example: Set prices = set earnings = Company pays all employer taxes .. or .. negotiated rates = negotiable profits = employee/contractor pays all employer taxes.
The problem with Uber and its Contractors and Employees is that both are trying to skirt around legalities. And if you don't like Uber, you can try
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Why don't we call them ... "Contracted Employees" ... a hybrid between Contractor and Employee.
American labor law was formed in the Great Depression of the 1930s, when the distinction was much more clear. Since then, government management of the employee-employer relationship has become a HUGE part of both our system of taxation, and our political system.
In the 1930s, the Republicans represent the interests of big business, and the Democrats represented the interests of big labor. Today, the Democrats still represent the interests of big labor, the Republicans represent the interest of small busine
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Check out McLaughlin US v. Seafood Inc (5th Cir. 1989). It pretty much directly addresses your argument (Spoiler alert: letting unskilled piece workers set their own hours or work for others doesn't matter much. They are employees.).
http://openjurist.org/861/f2d/... [openjurist.org]
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Many of the things you post above are false, because over 75% of drivers drive for Uber and Lyft simultaneously (source: http://therideshareguy.com/how... [therideshareguy.com]).
Does their Uber contract allow that or has Uber simply not bothered to enforce the clause?
So yes, they can subcontract
Subcontracting is something different. Are you allowed to give your Uber phone to a friend and have them drive and use your account for a cut? Can you make a collective of drivers under a single account for a cut?
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over 75% of drivers drive for Uber and Lyft simultaneously
That may be true, but if so they are violating Uber's policy. Uber prohibits driving for Lyft [cnn.com]. It is only relevant that Uber has this policy. It is not relevant that most drivers violate it.
If Uber wants to shift their "employees" back to classification as contractors, they might want to dump this policy, since it doesn't seem to be working for them anyway.
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Because it's impossible to be an employee at two companies at the same time? Huh, that's a new one.....
Many companies have a "no moonlighting" policy, that prohibits second jobs. Other companies have non-compete or "All your IP belong to us" policies that effectively prohibit you from working a second job in the same field. Some states prohibit or restrict these policies, but most do not.
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Hey, if contractors want to charge me 10% more than I want to pay, I won't hire them. I'll hire their competitors.
Most contractors work on work hours for pay; Uber contractors work on pay for work hours. Today Uber rates are higher? Today I'll work. They're low today? Not worth my time.
It's not only a contracting job; it's an extremely short-term contracting job with an unusual amount of contractor flexibility. How many employees can decide to only come to work when the pay is high enough, and on
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The most obvious is that drivers don't price their own services.
Yes, and this is probably a useful outcome, even if the central planners at Uber don't understand that yet - when drivers can compete on vehicles, prices, etc. and Uber just provides a robust market, everybody will profit more, especially those who are woefully underserved by the extant taxi regimes.
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Based on this reasoning, pretty much every franchisee ever is an employee, not an owner.
Take a close look at the ads sometime. See that asterisk? Follow it to the matching asterisk that says "prices may vary".
A franchiser often does set "recommended prices". And products, but the franchisee has some discretion, and that's the difference between them and employees.
Granted, when you're talking operations the size of McDonalds, there's not a whole lot of discretion allowed before they simply yank your franchise and give it to someone else, but that's the Free Market for you!
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Actually, a McDonalds franchisee is allowed to set their own prices...
For awhile when the double cheese burger was on the dollar menu, a decent number of franchisees were removing it and moving it to $1.19.
Yes, they are allowed to do that.
Re:Yes, they are employees (Score:5, Insightful)
from TFA:
According to the administrative law judge who heard the first appeal, Uber has sole discretion over fares, and can charge drivers a cancellation fee if they choose not to take a ride, prohibit drivers from picking up passengers not using the app and suspend or deactivate drivers' accounts.
Based on that, "there was in fact an employer/employee relationship", according to the decision.
I agree with the judge on one point: if they were independent contractors, they would be free to pickup passengers not using Uber.
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Yep, 100%...
Lord you'd think Uber would have better lawyers than this...
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I agree with the judge on one point: if they were independent contractors, they would be free to pickup passengers not using Uber.
If Uber allowed that, they'd be allowing street hails, which would in effect make them a taxi company. Regulators have been operating stings lately where somebody will wheedle their way into an Uber car without using the app, and then regulators fine the hell out of everyone for violating the law.
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If Uber allowed that, they'd be allowing street hails, which would in effect make them a taxi company.
Not the judge problem.
I would also say that they are already a taxi company.
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I agree with the judge on one point: if they were independent contractors, they would be free to pickup passengers not using Uber.
If Uber allowed that, they'd be allowing street hails, which would in effect make them a taxi company. Regulators have been operating stings lately where somebody will wheedle their way into an Uber car without using the app, and then regulators fine the hell out of everyone for violating the law.
How does this affect Uber? If someone gets in a "uber" car without using the uber app then how does this have anything to do with uber and what makes it a "uber" car?
Yes, the individual could be fined for picking up someone but without it being with the uber app, I don't see it any difference than a random person who's never used uber picking up someone.
They are basically "moonlighting" as an independent person with no association with uber at that point.
Are they not free to pick up non-Uber passengers? (Score:2)
I agree with the judge on one point: if they were independent contractors, they would be free to pickup passengers not using Uber.
I've heard of drivers keeping 3 phones and having Uber, lyft, and sidecar all up and running at the same time. With a driver doing that you would indeed have a good argument that he's a contractor.
But many/most don't do that.
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Franchisees are more like co-investors or co-owners. They buy in by providing start up capital to join a business network. They then have some oversight and control of their investment. This is a huge difference.
Re:so when (Score:5, Insightful)
Does EBAY, facebook, or youtube prevent you from selling your products if they dont like who you are selling them too? Or dont use specific things? methinks you did not read the article.
Re:so when (Score:5, Interesting)
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[anarcho-capitalist]
But they're on the INTERNET, so they're the same thing and your normal laws don't apply.
[/anarcho-capitalist]
Re:What's the difference? (Score:5, Informative)
False dichotomy. Many employees do not get benefits.
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While you are correct that not all employees get healthcare benefits (what is usually referred to as "benefits"), all employees get some benefits, which contractors do not. For example: social security contributions (which raise your rate in retirement), workers-comp insurance, and unemployment insurance. All of these things cost employers money, but the law assumes contractors will pay for themselves.
This is what Uber has been fighting so hard to avoid paying.
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While you are correct that not all employees get healthcare benefits (what is usually referred to as "benefits"), all employees get some benefits, which contractors do not. For example: social security contributions (which raise your rate in retirement), workers-comp insurance, and unemployment insurance.
Err no, unless we are talking as corp-to-corp contractors, contractors typically get those benefits through their contracting agencies. The majority of contractors in numbers similar to Uber's do not work corp-to-corp.
All of these things cost employers money, but the law assumes contractors will pay for themselves.
This is what Uber has been fighting so hard to avoid paying.
Correct. Uber's accounting/labor farce is over me thinks.
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Personally, I think if a person wants to be a contractor and sets up his own business, he should be a contractor no matter what. But the law seems to not operate that way.
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Personally, I think if a person wants to be a contractor and sets up his own business, he should be a contractor no matter what.
The issue here isn't about the degree of freedom from government interference a person has — it's how the regulations work when the client/employer (whichever the case may be) imposes too many restrictions on how the contractor/employee can do his or her job. In this case, Uber has been dictating too many terms to their contractors, to the point where the state of California determined that they were playing semantic games by using the word "contractor," i.e. the relationship they imposed on their dri
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According to the administrative law judge who heard the first appeal, Uber has sole discretion over fares, and can charge drivers a cancellation fee if they choose not to take a ride, prohibit drivers from picking up passengers not using the app and suspend or deactivate drivers' accounts. Based on that, "there was in fact an employer/employee relationship", according to the decision.
I don't know if that is sufficient argument to make someone an employee in the US (for purposes of taxation / benefits), but this is about there being an employer/employee relationship, which is not the same thing. There's a similar distinction here in the Netherlands, where freelancing is becoming rather popular. Internal Revenue considers someone to be a contractor ("entrepreneur") if they are free to set rates, and perform their assignments as they think best. If a client or an agency sets too many co
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but this is about there being an employer/employee relationship, which is not the same thing.
I don't find the evidence for an employer/employee relationship as cited in the article to be more convincing than the evidence for a contractor relationship. Uber offers jobs to people explicitly as non-employees (and without any of the benefits employees are entitled to), and those people agree to those terms.
I agree that there is an incentive for employers to convert their workforce to contractors rather than employers (i.e. because you don't have to pay benefits), but traditionally employers also had t
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I agree that this is true, but it does seem rather arbitrary to me. I am a proponent of the free market, but I do accept that people are often irrational. That said, I think the "solutions" to the problem of the irationality of people are often poorly thought out and often just make things worse.
The federal and California governments have a *general* policy that they want most workers to be employees, especially low level workers, because being a proper individual contractor is actually fairly complicated tax wise, and low level workers are the most likely to not realize things like the increased social security cost, meaning they're making less money than they thought they would, in addition to extra expenses like insurance.
Uber will probably be able to change this designation by changing up their
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>What's the difference between an employee and a contractor?
1) The amount of tax paid by the payer and the worker.
2) Employer provided health insurance.
3) Local bureaucratic procedures differ a lot between employing an employee and paying a contractor (It's easier with a contractor).
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Well, not 100% true.
1. You pay the same tax for the most part, the big difference is, as a contractor, you have to wear your Big Boy pants and plan to save to pay tax owed, since it is not taken immediately out of your
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There are other differences as well. A contractor may hold many contracts simultaneously and sub-contract work. Would Uber allow me to have a fleet of vehicles and drivers or to provide services to both them and a local competitor?
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You're applying the logic backwards.
That was intentional (although I don't agree that the "backwardedness" makes it incorrect).
(P implies Q) implies (!Q implies !P)
If being an employee implies that you have benefits, then not having benefits implies that you are not an employee.
All I am saying is that the *fact* that they do not receive benefits is different than whether they *ought* to receive benefits (which is what the court seems to be arguing).
This is roughly analogous to so many companies designating IT workers (especially programmers) as "salaried exempt" in order to get around overtime laws. That went on for years until a few high-profile cases (specifically IBM) finally scared employers into obeying the law. Employers - or contract negotiators - don't get to decide these things unilaterally.
I am currently a salaried exempt programmer, and as far as I know our company (which is a defe
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Major differences are (at a minimum):
Employees have state, local, federal tax, FICA, and unemployment insurance tax, withheld from their compensation. Employees are covered by unemployment insurance. The employer has other liability issues they must cover themselves for (such as workman's comp).
Additionally, the employer matches dollar amount of the FICA withheld and generally pays the majority of the costs associated with unemployment insurance.
Most of the time an employee costs 30%-50% mor
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That's a difference between being classified as one or the other by a company. But the companies classification is not the determinant. There are rules that classify you as one or the other.
It's not normative vs. descriptive, it's declared vs. actual.
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It's not normative vs. descriptive, it's declared vs. actual.
Those 2 dichotomies are not mutually exclusive.
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What's the difference between an employee and a contractor? The contractor doesn't receive any benefits.
Oh wow, that was stupid. Using that line of argument a part-time employee is a contractor because he/she does not get benefits usually given under the law to full-time employees.
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You really like to take your labels literally. I would suggest maybe trying to think about what is actually going on rather than just accepting labels at face value.
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Working around the legislation is the business-like thing ;)
No, the business-like thing is to embrace regulation and turn it to your advantage, the way the taxi companies are seeking to do. Life's a lot easier if you can get government to shut down potential competitors.
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AC brings up a good question. If I'm selling for Mary Kay, Avon, or god forbid AmWay, I'm not employed by those companies (?)....but they do set the guidelines on the price of their products and the guidelines. How does Uber differ in this situation according to California law?