[mikeryan]

Contractors get to set rates, employees don't. So you can't say they're contractors AND accuse them of committing fraud when they try to set their own rates.

This isn't how it works? Rates of pay are mutually agreed upon between an employer and employee regardless of classification.

[learc83]

They're not just talking about how much of the fee that drivers get to keep, but the rate they charge riders.

>Uber sees itself as an “agent” acting to connect the actual “merchant,” the driver, and the customer. [1]

Under the theory Uber is operating on, it's weird that drivers can't directly set rates with riders.

1. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/uber-an-early-adopter-of-n...

[mikeryan]

This has no bearing on whether drivers are employees or contractors however.

[learc83]

No not really, but I wasn't saying it did.

[thebradbain]

I think the pro-labor argument is Uber doesn’t even consider / allow negotiating their standard contract for rate-setting.

IIRC Microsoft got in trouble in the early 2000s for doing something similar in having separate standardized pay-scales for contractors depending on how long they’ve contracted with Microsoft, and no option to negotiate, and the labor board argued that Microsoft was trying to shoehorn contractor-employment law into employee roles without the legal protections and tax burdens of employment rights

[dnautics]

Yeah, that makes sense, because the rate of the contract should only depend on the content of the job. And contractors should be able to compete for those jobs. That's certainly the case for Lyft/Uber.