[eridius]

How does an hourly minimum wage work given that Uber and Lyft drivers get paid for doing trips, not for idling in their car waiting for rides? Does this minimum wage only apply to times when I have a fare? That would mean the real hourly minimum wage is less because I wouldn't have a fare 100% of the time. If it applies when I don't have a fare too, how much idle time between fares can I have before the minimum wage stops applying? What happens if I'm driving for both Uber and Lyft, and alternate services on each ride, so my "fare density" on each service is no more than 50% of each hour?

Edit: Why am I being downvoted? These are legitimate questions. I'm not criticizing the minimum wage. I'm genuinely curious as to how it actually works.

[thatoneuser]

It’s a fair question. IMHO it absolutely should include if you’re sitting idle. One of the biggest scams these companies are taking part in wrt labeling their workers as “contractors” is you have to work the worst hours to hit metrics. You can’t just go drive 40 hours a week when you want - it has to fall on busy times and nights. If this doesn’t make them responsible for all the hours they want people out and available, it doesn’t have much teeth.

[eridius]

If a driver accepts every ride the service offers them, then I agree they should be paid for the idle time in between being offered rides. If they don't accept every ride offered them (as is their right, as independent contractors), how do you determine how much idleness is ok? Saying "if you reject a single ride you lose your minimum wage" doesn't seem ok, because that punishes them for exercising their right as an independent contractor.

This also still runs into the question of what happens if the driver is driving for multiple services? They may have relatively little idle time, but each independent service sees the driver as having a lot of idle time (any time they're on a competitor's job).

[Traster]

I would put it this way: They must be paid for all idle time. If they're on the app they're considered to be working. It's like the person working at the McDonalds drive through - if no one pulls up to the drive through that doesn't mean the person shouldn't be paid. It's then down to Uber or Lyft or whoever to determine whether they want to engage a contractor whose previous behaviour includes spending long periods not accepting jobs.

[eridius]

The person at a McDonald's drive-thru is an actual employee though, they're paid for all their time on the job, and they can't just refuse to serve a given customer. A Lyft or Uber driver is a contractor, and is legally allowed to refuse any individual ride.

If they couldn't refuse rides, then saying "pay them for all the time they're in the app" makes sense, but that's not the case. Since they can refuse rides, it doesn't make sense to say "you must pay them for all the time they're in the app", especially since a single driver can be active on both Uber and Lyft at the same time.

One could argue that drivers should be turned into part-time or full-time employees, at which point yes they'd have to be paid for their idle time, but that's a different argument.

[dx034]

I guess most drivers would be fine accepting all offered jobs within a fixed period. For most it's a full time job anyway, the only reason they would refuse jobs in between is because they're not paying well enough or because they got one with a competitor.

[tjohns]

From the first paragraph of the linked article: "The city's Taxi and Limousine Commission voted Tuesday to establish a per-minute and per-mile payment formula for Uber, Lyft, Via, Juno and Gett that is supposed to result in drivers earning $17.22 an hour."

So it sounds like this isn't an actual hourly minimum wage, but instead a time/distance-based formula that's supposed to be equivalent. Whether that's based on 100% ridership or past averages isn't specified. Unfortunately the article doesn't link to the actual legislation, nor does any of the other articles I found from a cursory web search, so details seem to be lacking. (I really wish news articles would link to authoritative sources...)