Uber does not pay Social Security, Overtime, workers comp etc. When these people retire they have nothing, this money was effectively stolen from the workers.
Unia has successfully sued Uber at the highest courts and Uber recently lost. Geneva has banned Uber and others are expected to follow. There will now be an attempt to recover almost a Billion USD that is owed to drivers from Uber. [1]
Uber didn't "steal" anything as competition is not a zero-sum game. Drivers chose contract work over a full-time job, and it's their choice to save their income. Besides, pensions and Social Security aren't shields against elder poverty befalling spendthrifts. They're merely buffers and one's that come at the opportunity cost of being able to take the money at that point in time and investing it.
> And children chose to work in the coal mines and die of blacklung
Are you saying the average Uber driver has no more ability to make decisions for themselves than the average child? Uber drivers cannot consent? I reckon they must also be prevented from buying cigarettes and having sex? This is absurd. An adult entering into a voluntary contract is profoundly different than a child being forced into work, in fact it's the main thing that it means to be an adult. What sort of weird infantilization does this line of logic even come from?
> An adult entering into a voluntary contract is profoundly different than a child being forced into work, in fact it's the main thing that it means to be an adult
Ah, okay, let's deal with adults: can you volunterilly sell your organs, sell yourself into indentured servitude, or into prostitution? Can you buy heroin or uranium? Can you at least open a coalmine without health and safety and let other people agree to work in it when they know they will get blacklung? No, you can't even buy some financial products without proving you are a sophisticated investor.
You are not allowed to do shit like that because when we allow business to profit out of misery and misfortune of others, business will purposefully trap unfortunate and vulnerable. It isn't an adult vs another adult -> it's one man vs multi billion dollars of lobbying, marketing and legal department.
You're seriously comparing driving for Uber to working in a coal mine, selling your organs, and selling yourself into slavery or prostitution?
When I was in college I drove pizzas and Chinese delivery for $2 an hour plus tips. It was fine, and I was happy for the work, which was the best I could find part-time. I'd have been much happier if I could have driven for Uber, and I'd have missed rent payments far less often. Miss me with the "this should be illegal" stuff, it's a completely different thing than any of the other stuff you mentioned.
I know people for whom prostitution worked out great, some of them made serious money. Why shouldn't I compare one form of expoitation to another form of exploitation?
In fact I would rather have prostitution than people working at $2/hour.
Why do you think successfull business happens in UK/US/{Insert first world country} and not in Somalia?
It's the fact that we have law & order, educated population and infrastructure. These things cost more than $2 an hour to maintain. Now if you started your own business and end up making $2 an hour, thats one thing.
But when an international corporation systematically exploits our people by underpaying them, it's destroying local businesses who can't compete and routing taxes through panama, it's stealing from all of us.
If you focus on a single aspect and ignore all the other issues, sure, there's no problems whatsoever. But when gig economy jobs are the only jobs available for a certain person, it's hard to argue that they're entering those fully voluntarily. The only alternative to them is starving or getting assistance. In the case of Uber, they can cause long-term issues for workers who gamble on buying a car for the job. Additionally, they cause the higher paying versions of the job to disappear, cause taxes to go away, and force employees into not being able to plan for the future. As much as I enjoy having a single mini-cucumber delivered to my door in 10 minutes for a few euros (thanks, Gorillas), there are some extremely negative things that come with those jobs having replaced other better paying jobs.
There may be a disconnect here for those who are not Swiss. That very "idea" is arguably detrimental to the social health of a country like Switzerland (whose citizens appear to practice a sort of honor system when it comes to social norms and laws), while it may well be a non-issue in most other countries.
I think a global company like Uber will have a social impact, whether positive or negative, that very much reflects specific regions or nations, so white knighting Uber as a general proposition is not very sound.
This is the case for many other european countries aswell.
In the netherlands for instance, uber and many others got slapped down hard for circumventing the law according to the literal implementation of the law, instead of taking into account the spirit of the law aswell.
> Please link to English sources — as it makes it hard to hold you accountable for what appear to be false claims.
Google translate is your friend. Linking to local sources makes more sense than to link to some 2nd hand reporting in English media.
> Uber was neither banned, nor ordered to pay any money to government, union, or drivers. All the order did was state Uber & Uber Eats must treat drivers going forward as employees and Uber in response pulled out of the market.
Sounds to me like their business model was banned. Sure I guess pendantically that is not Über being banned, it still is the same outcome.
> As for the drivers, they were not forced to work for Uber and were aware of the impact.
The servs in 1800s russia also chose to work, so all is good?
> I personally do not agree with the ruling, since drivers were in control of when & where they worked and as such, they were not employees of Uber.
So what other companies did they work for? Also by your definition everyone who works from home (can choose where to work) and has flexible hours (chooses when to work) is not an employee?
> Thanks to the Union’s actions 1000s of people are out of work. Is the Union going to pay the Uber drivers the money they “stole” from them?
The Union did not break laws, Uber did
It seems you don't seem to believe in the rule of law.
"All the order did was state Uber & Uber Eats must treat drivers going forward as employees and Uber in response pulled out of the market."
That they would choose not to do business there at all, rather than pay people what they were entitled, is very telling of an operation that's in the business of exploiting people.
Of course it is controversal. There are sucessful businesses like Uber, AirBnB, Amazon etc. that base their success on collecting profits and outsourcing social costs to others. They have a lot of customers among HN readers and quite some supporters.
Back in the day if you were working as a contractor you'd quote a price that reflected your higher costs. Let's say I'm an employee in a software company, that company may offer health insurance, if may provide me with a laptop, it may provide me with an office, it may provide me with severance pay if it lays me off, it will cover the various overheads of said office (electricity, insurance, whatnot). So if I'm an employee and I make $100/hour and I switch to being a contractor for that same job the company might expect to pay me $150/hour or $200/hour. Companies that employ contractors in that manner are fine. If a contractor is paid $70/hour vs. the full time employee $100/hour before overhead that's exploitation. A business that bends the laws so it can get away with attacking the business model of companies that are decent while at the same time exploiting employees shouldn't have a right to exist, isn't that pretty much the business model of organized crime?
Most of them are. But that's not the only criterium: Amazon for example is in the business of exploiting people by employing them directly under such poor conditions that the implict assumption is that few will stay for 2 years.
Heck, there is an entire spectrum of politics which state that pocketing excess value from the productions of others is wage-theft and thus exploitative.
The app doesn’t transport people from point A to point B which is the whole point of using it in the first place. They also specifically argue against any claims they are anything more than an intermediary between the producers and consumers.
> As for the drivers, they were not forced to work for Uber and were aware of the impact. I personally do not agree with the ruling, since drivers were in control of when & where they worked and as such, they were not employees of Uber.
They are effectively forced to work for Uber when the company eventually captures the market away from taxis, either due to subsiding rides and lowering prices vs taxi rides, or other offers that make them initially more attractive to riders than city taxis. After capturing said market by network effect you force more drivers to join because their customers are in the platform.
>Please link to English sources — as it makes it hard to hold you accountable for what appear to be false claims.
I appreciate this post, thank you for the chuckle. It’s pretty rare to see somebody outright admit to being unwilling to use basic google functionality in the middle of a disagreement and request that the counterparty do the work for them.
>Please link to English sources — as it makes it hard to hold you accountable for what appear to be false claims.
This is incredibly obnoxious. A) English language sources might not exist B) you can use Google etc translate so it's not up to the source provider to even find English language sources and C) you are assuming you are right.
Unia has successfully sued Uber at the highest courts and Uber recently lost. Geneva has banned Uber and others are expected to follow. There will now be an attempt to recover almost a Billion USD that is owed to drivers from Uber. [1]
[1] https://www.unia.ch/de/aktuell/aktuell/artikel/a/19138