[jpollock]

Employees might not get to claim the cost of their car (loan and depreciation), but contractors will. Healthcare doesn't come into it, NZ has government provided healthcare.

While you don't get vacation, you get to claim a lot of expenses.

In New Zealand, it's pretty much "at-will" anyways, with the cost of removing an employee typically being 3-months wages.

Personally, being a contractor was much more profitable than being an employee, even if I was on the same wage.

[beachy]

> In New Zealand, it's pretty much "at-will" anyways, with the cost of removing an employee typically being 3-months wages.

No way. Removing an employee in NZ (other than for redundancy) requires a series of warnings about performance and assistance to said employee each time to get their shit together. It takes months, is easy to get wrong by missing some step, and it's nothing whatsoever like "at-will".

[yarg]

I left a job in large part due to the fact that they couldn't get rid of our incompetent tester.

We really need it to be easier to get rid of idiots in positions too technical for them to understand.

[sofixa]

That's what the initial probationary period is for.

[yarg]

And it's clearly an insufficient protection.

[M95D]

I see it as bad management or bad HR.

[muti]

Redundancy may be the method they implied. I've seen it happen to my partner and several colleagues. It's laughable how easy it seems to tailor a redundancy to 1 or a few specific people, and the cost of fighting it is not worth it.

[beachy]

Faux redundancy is indeed a tool that can be used by smaller NZ employers. It's risky though for bigger companies to try it and it would never work for the homogeneous group that is Uber drivers, since they all effectively fill a single identical role, and redundancy must be about the role, not the person(s) filling it.

[roenxi]

In this particular case I think this might be a bit of a red-herring discussion for Uber. I doubt they care about the drivers for reasons that aren't legitimate for firing them. For example, if the driver isn't getting enough rides to justify paying them they probably are redundant.

[CamelCaseName]

But performance seems like a very easy thing for Uber to measure, which, according to this thread, is an allowable reason for termination?

[yarg]

Redundancy is complicated as well - it places burdens on hiring new people in the same position.

So if you want to remove an incompetent to replace them with someone useful, you cannot do it with a redundancy.

[crowcroft]

In New Zealand it's illegal to make someone redundant and then hire back someone into the same position for at least six months. You don't make a person redundant, you make a role redundant. This would be hard for Uber to do with drivers.

[jpollock]

When I was following these things, if you end up in employment court, the typical penalty was 3 months wages.

[beachy]

That could be so for first offences but I would imagine any business flouting the law and making repeated appearances in the employment court would experience escalating punishments.

[crowcroft]

Citation needed for New Zealand being pretty much 'at will'. Especially for large companies.

From https://www.employment.govt.nz/ending-employment/dismissal

If an employer wants to dismiss an employee (end their employment), they must: * act in good faith * have a good reason

Redundancy would cost three months reasons and Uber would be required Uber to argue, not that the person doing a job isn't a worthy employee, but that the role they perform shouldn't exist in the company anymore – a hard argument for Uber to make about their drivers I imagine.

> NZ has government provided healthcare.

Which contractors have to pay for through ACC levies.

[Taniwha]

ACC levies in NZ pay for no-fault accident insurance - it's paid in part by taxpayers, and (for industrial accidents) paid for by employers (companies that employ coal miners pay more than companies that employ programmers).

Our public health system (hospitals, doctors, etc) are different and is largely paid for from income tax (lower than many states in the US, 10% lower marginal rate than I was paying in CA).

[crowcroft]

Yea it's very different to the US, and it's much much cheaper than what people in the US would think when they think about paying health insurance, but contractors do generally need to pay ACC levies still. Flat rate is a little over 1%, and for high risk industries you would generally pay more.

https://www.acc.co.nz/for-business/understanding-levies-if-y...

> If you’re self-employed, a shareholder-employee or a contractor you’ll pay three different levies

[yarg]

> NZ has government provided healthcare.

We really don't. You won't be bankrupted by hospital bills, but the absolute shambles that we're working with is far from an adequately functioning healthcare system.

The ACC (which is meant to cover injuries) often refuses to help, sets impossible burdens of proof, or provides completely inadequate compensation.

And they've only gotten worse since covid (their website still says they require you to be fully vaccinated to visit them - even if you're visiting due to a vaccine injury).

[latentsea]

> NZ has government provided healthcare. We really don't. You won't be bankrupted by hospital bills, but the absolute shambles that we're working with is far from an adequately functioning healthcare system.

We do have it though, and it works, though it's not perfect. Wait times are definitely long unless you go private, but the public system has helped me many times. I've not had to deal with ACC, so I can't speak to that.

In practice if you work for a good company you often get health insurance included or at a discount (at least all the software companies I've worked for have done this), so you get a mix of public/private healthcare and that works pretty decent.

I can't imagine the stress of the nightmare inducing hospital bills you hear about in the US.

[Taniwha]

My experience with ACC (broken achilles full reconstruction, 3 operations in the private system and physio, 80% salary for time off) has only been positive - I know some people have a different experience but IMHO when it works it works really well

[yarg]

When it works sure, but too often the system is adversarial and the behaviour more in line with what you'd see from a private insurer - as opposed to a government entity acting for the good of the people.

[superb_dev]

How much time do you book keeping to claim all of that?