[TheGeminon]

So your argument is that since Uber was classifying them as contractors, they should always be able to?

According to a quick search, they have 900,000 drivers and 27,000 employees. At most 3-ish% of the people that they pay to work for them are tech employees (and we can probably safely assume most of those 27,000 are not tech).

[LatteLazy]

My argument is actually the inverse: currently uber has no driver employees, the only way to change that under this law is to assume they do, then you can use that to argue any new driver is an employee. You need a first set of driver-employees to argue others are now employees. But there has never been a first set of driver-employees. Its actually a little confusing that that is required as it seems to allow Uber etc to skirt this definition (unless they have been taking on drivers as full employees without my knowledge?)

I'd be interested to know how many creators YouTube "employs" or how many retail workers Ebay has and what their percentages are. This is where this whole thing confuses me: If Uber drivers are employees (and maybe they are?) then basically every major tech company has millions on employees they have been misclassifying. Paying them all minimum wage with benefits and taxes deducted etc will be a massive massive change for these companies.

[sudosysgen]

> I'd be interested to know how many creators YouTube "employs" or how many retail workers Ebay has and what their percentages are. This is where this whole thing confuses me: If Uber drivers are employees (and maybe they are?) then basically every major tech company has millions on employees they have been misclassifying. Paying them all minimum wage with benefits and taxes deducted etc will be a massive massive change for these companies.

YouTubers are not contractors of YouTube. eBay sellers are not contractors of eBay. Uber drivers are contractors of Uber.

This is why Uber will be affected and not YouTube, nor eBay. Uber would also be free to have a system where drivers are not contractors nor employees of Uber (but it would not fit their business model).

[LatteLazy]

Whats the difference between youtube paying creators $x/1000 views and Uber paying drivers $X per km/minute of driving? Surely they're both contractors right? What distinction am I missing here?

[sudosysgen]

YouTube is actually very different. As a YouTuber, you, by default, have no monetary transaction with YouTube. It is possible for you, however, to ask YouTube to place ads on your video, where they get a 30% cut of the ad revenue. Crucially however, you are allowed to place your own ads and monetize your videos any which way you like. So YouTube just acts as an ad agency, and as far as YouTube is concerned you are just a user of their ad service, or in the majority of cases just a user of their video sharing platform.

There is no contract between you and YouTube where you do work and in exchange you get money. There is only the option for YouTube to choose ads for your videos and give you a cut in exchange - it's quite literally just like placing ads on your website using AdSense. No guarantee of $ per video or even $ per view, it works almost exactly like AdSense.

Which is crucially different from Uber where the contract is that you do a task in exchange for some money, therefore meaning that you do the work for Uber. On YouTube, you're allowing YouTube to place ads on your IP for money, and you're allowed to do anything else with your work and monetize it however you like, so really YouTube is providing a service for you.