> It's the difference between employment vs working as a contractor.
That's absolutely NOT the difference between employment and contracting. The general expectation from the IRS is that if you are setting someone's hours (and Uber is, the driver chooses to be available, but within that availability window, Uber can arbitrarily define them as unavailable), then they are an employee.
Contractors don't just hang around your job site because you tell them you don't have work for them now but "stick around 5 minutes or 2 hours, we might have some then".
Agreed. These tech companies are all squeezing the definition of contractor for their benefit.
Amazon similarly abuses on-demand contractors and we see this for example in the little popup trailer parks in their distribution center parking lots during holiday crush...
I get it, as a consumer these are nice services to have - but it doesn't mean we have to be OK with these labor conditions. Further, from a self interested point of view, its a slippery slope to Amazon & the rest figuring out how to do the same to their SWEs over time.
>the driver chooses to be available, but within that availability window, Uber can arbitrarily define them as unavailable
This is basically the result of new york's legislation. In jurisdictions without such legislation, uber doesn't cap the amount of drivers that can be online. Moreover "availability" in this context is entirely arbitrary. The amount of fares available is still the same. The only difference is that uber caps the amount of people that can be online because new york puts them on the hook if anyone is "available" but doesn't make minimum wage. This was never the case for regular cabbies, but for whatever reason decided to apply this to ride hailing apps only.
>Contractors don't just hang around your job site because you tell them you don't have work for them now but "stick around 5 minutes or 2 hours, we might have some then".
Right, because the labor required to build a house isn't spiky like the demand for drivers.
That's absolutely NOT the difference between employment and contracting. The general expectation from the IRS is that if you are setting someone's hours (and Uber is, the driver chooses to be available, but within that availability window, Uber can arbitrarily define them as unavailable), then they are an employee.
Contractors don't just hang around your job site because you tell them you don't have work for them now but "stick around 5 minutes or 2 hours, we might have some then".