[pslam]

Uber's defense fails The Duck Test. They are describing a job, people doing a job, people paying for a job, and people taking a cut of the profits. They just don't use those words.

I suspect if/when this gets to a higher court, the whole thing will come crashing down, because to allow Uber's weaselly redefinition of common terms, would be to allow other classes of employment to similarly become unprotected.

[kstrauser]

I totally agree. I'm neutral on Uber, but their advertising is that you book an Uber ride. You don't use Uber to find a driver you like and then hire that driver from now on. Basically, the drivers are treated as the fungible part of providing service to the passengers. Contrast with Airbnb where owners can treat it like an advertising network to market their rental room, and it's totally reasonable to expect that a good experience will lead to more business for that homeowner specifically, not just the app in general.

[slg]

>You don't use Uber to find a driver you like and then hire that driver from now on. Basically, the drivers are treated as the fungible part of providing server to the passengers.

Which is also one of the reasons that Uber became successful. A lot of the "Uber for..." companies that provided more personal services like massages or house cleaning failed for this exact reason. As soon as a user found a provider they liked it was easy for the two parties to come to a deal for ongoing service and cut out the tech company. That is how a lead generating company works. Uber doesn't function that way because the provider and the consumer don't have an ongoing relationship because the drivers have all been commoditized.

[carlob]

As a matter of fact I know of one person who met a driver through Uber and decided to hire them daily to get to their job without going through Uber ever again. I think that this is extremely rare and that everything in Uber is set up to prevent something like this. Same thing goes for Airbnb and the obfuscation of emails.

[velosol]

I would think in addition we'd have to see the ability to book with a specific driver for a future ride for 'lead generation' to hold up.

[cortesoft]

I do feel that driver's being able to work for multiple ride sharing companies at the same time does make it a bit different from a normal job. A majority of drivers have both Lyft and uber enabled at the same time.... so are they employees of both? How should benefits be calculated?

If I am an employee of a company, they are probably not going to let me work for a competitor while I am on the clock with them.

[dragonwriter]

> A majority of drivers have both Lyft and uber enabled at the same time.... so are they employees of both?

Having the app enabled is being on-call for potential assignments, not actually working. In my youngest years, I did that for multiple temp agencies at the same time a lot. Are they employees of both? Sure. Multiple W-2 employers is not that uncommon for people doing temp work.

> How should benefits be calculated?

In most cases, they will probably work little enough for each as to not reach mandatory benefit eligibility under most employer mandates.

> If I am an employee of a company, they are probably not going to let me work for a competitor while I am on the clock with them.

If you are an employee of a company giving on-demand assignments, they probably aren't going to consider you on the clock merely because you have indicated you are available to take an assignment if it becomes available.

If there are minimum paid shift rules in play, they may consider you on the clock and demand exclusivity for the paid period once you accept a job, even if there is a lull between assignments, though.

[compiler-guy]

This is somewhat true for higher level jobs, but once you hit retail, and blue collar jobs generally, it stops being true.

McDonalds doesn't care if I also work at Burger King. Target doesn't care if I also work at WalMart. A plumber is generally fine if their assistant also works for another one.

All of this is subject to still doing the first job satisfactorially, of course.

[aliston]

The question isn’t whether they’re doing a job, it’s whether drivers are acting as contractors vs employees while performing the job.

Ironically, taxi drivers are also contractors. I’m surprised nobody has brought up the fact that the status quo pre-Uber was a contractor model as well.

The real problem is that the Dynamex decision is legislation from the bench that redefines “contractor.” The historical definition of a contractor was basically only c in the abc test. It will be interesting to see how the court decisions come down. As the press release points out, the precedent so far is mixed.

[rando56473]

Just dropping in to say that “legislation from the bench” is a charged, shallow criticism that says nothing except about the critic’s own political philosophy. The fact is, courts have been legislating from the bench for as long as we have had courts, and before then — the U.S. inherited its judicial traditions from England, after all. California is a common law jurisdiction. The essence of common law is that courts create law in the course of issuing their holdings.

[bsder]

Um, do you know what AB5 IS?

AB5 is a law codifying the Dynamax decision--the precise opposite of legislating from the bench.

[gandutraveler]

Isn't being a driver on Uber platform same as being a seller on Amazon marketplace? Amazon takes care of delivery, cancellation etc and charges a commission for those services.

[cavisne]

Interesting argument. And since marketplace is said to be more than half of sales now, maybe thats their primary business.

A coordinated Amazon/Uber/Lyft shut down in California would be something to behold.

[buboard]

That would be good. It could e.g. open the way for apple to be forced to hire all the app programmers

[simonebrunozzi]

There are $60M dollars of lobbying being deployed by Uber and Lyft to precisely try to change what would be most likely to happen.

That amount of money can go a long way. Unfortunately.