is this supposed to be an unintended consequence? We all know that the cheap rides of Uber are (partially) the result of them dodging around employer obligations.
I disagree with this. What other job on the planet allows me to work when I want to work, bring my own tools, have no boss, and never even talk to the company I am working for?
To me, this is a lot like someone a hundred years ago asking, "what other job on the planet allows children to work around heavy machinery for half an adult wage?".
No one here is saying that people shouldn't be able to drive for a rideshare company. We're saying that people who choose to do that should at least be paid a minimum wage for their time and given basic worker protections. If you oppose this kind of thing, you should probably also oppose minimum wage laws in general (which is a valid opinion).
Even if it means that fewer people get the opportunity to to do it at all? I know people who drive for a little extra money while they work other jobs. This kind of flexibility is what might be at risk, excluding many people who need that extra income from ever getting the opportunity.
So the trade off is always "more jobs" vs "better jobs". A company can hire 10 people at 10 dollars an hour or 20 people at 5 dollars an hour.
Which situation is you believe is "better" depends on your end goal: Are you trying to make more small jobs, or are you trying to make jobs meaningful in their earning ability?
Framed another way, the people you know driving for "a little extra cash" are chipping away at opportunities for someone to be consolidating those jobs into a single, better job.
Not going to debate which is actually "better", because that's just personal opinions/economic model preferences.
People wouldn't take $5 per jobs if someone else was offering them $6 or $7... so better to have 15 people learning skills that hopefully let them move up in their profession & career to higher earning occupations.
There's a lot of assumptions here, biggest among them being
>>People wouldn't take $5 per jobs if someone else was offering them $6 or $7
Sure they would. Because a job isn't only wages, there's always some other factors involved in employment decisions. Someone might have med-school and limited free time. There's a ton of reasons why "job with lower pay and factor X" seems more appealing to someone than "job with higher pay only".
Look at game developers. They work horrible hours and often get paid less than similarly skilled devs in other fields. Why? Because demand for these jobs are extremely high relative to supply which provides management with greater bargaining positioning to lower wages.
Some of these people aren't trying to move to a career with higher earning, and see this as their end goal or "a tangential job I'm doing today". This allows them to drive down market rates on the job for people who are in a different circumstance and have higher financial needs.
We can get into a whole discussion about labor vs management and labor rights and best practices and all that. TL;dr- That's an opinion, and it's a lot more nuanced than you're making it out to be.
No, the trade off is being employed vs being unemployed. You can demand people pay you more for a service but you can't force them to hire you in the first place.
>>No, the trade off is being employed vs being unemployed.
For some people, yes. But we're looking at the laborers as a whole, not the individuals (and my specific example was more from the perspective of the managers at a company with a limited budget for employees).
Some people will go from "contractor job" to no job. Other people will go from "contractor job" to "employee job".
Uber still needs drivers. They're not going to not have drivers because of this. Some people currently working for Uber will keep doing that. Some people currently working for Uber will not keep doing that. In the future, some people will apply to work for Uber and be both rejected and accepted as employees.
> A company can hire 10 people at 10 dollars an hour or 20 people at 5 dollars an hour.
No, it will probably exclude people who just want to work 2 hours some evenings whenever they have time to make some extra money, who'd make the full 10 dollars an hour like other drivers do in the time that they do work.
Frame it another way: You have 120 hours of shifts that you need covered at your job in a given week. You can hire 12 people who each work 10 hours, or 3 full-time employees.
The "better" choice again comes down to your goal: More jobs or "better", full time jobs.
There are more considerations than just "number of jobs" vs "quality of jobs" in evaluating what is better.
Consumers should also be considered. If casual drivers are excluded, the smaller pool of drivers will cause prices to rise. Some consumers who previously used ride sharing will go back to driving their own cars.
There's also the removal of a smooth transition driving as a career. If you can do it casually for a few hours you can discover if you enjoy it and want to quit your job and do it full time. If the only option is to be a full time employee, you have to go through the hiring process and take a risk of quitting your current job just to see if it's for you.
No, workers lose their jobs. 2-3x increase in prices is not sustainable for such services except for a minority of rides. UberX will disappear and it will become only UberBlack.