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There's probably a balance to be struck, because part of the ridesharing design's efficiency is that if demand drops they can drop their rates paid to drivers, and the drivers who don't want to drive at those prices will stop. So if Lyft starts to say "we always want X drivers available as a base load, and we'll open up to contractors to fill in the demand spikes" it might make the contractor role too unreliable for anyone to bother doing it. At the very least, their costs would go up for both the employed drivers and the extra contractor drivers. Since their valuations comes mainly from a cheap labor pool, that presumably kills it. But in the current situation, if all their drivers at the airport sign off and say "I'm not driving at these prices," you get surge pricing to make it worth driving, that increases costs too. That's what happens when you're buying labor from independent contractors - if they don't want to sell it to you at a particular time for any reason, they don't have to. The real question here is "If Lyft recognizes when these organized sign-offs are happening, calls their bluff, and refuses to activate surge pricing, what happens?" Do the drivers really refuse to drive at the regular pricing and go home? Or do they all give in to a more tamper-resistant algorithm and keep driving at regular rates? |