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Well I bet the whole of California are quaking in their boots.

Then again, “So I think that Uber will shut down for a while." suggests they might just sulk for a while and then finally bring their dodgy business practices and flagrant and wilful ignorance of standard working practices back ‘real soon now’ :-)

And the good people of California rejoiced. For the great benevolent and glorious taxi company returned. No longer would they have to use their own cars. Or walk. Or catch a bus. Or just phone a normal taxi company. Uber had anointed their lowly Lands with its godliness! Behold!!

Now bloody well be grateful and don’t upset them again. Ok?

When one looks at the financial end of their business model, it is a clone of the worse version of sharecropping.

In traditional sharecropping, the landlord fronts the money for owning the property & for planting the next crop, the sharecropper does the labor, and the landlord & sharecropper share in the proceeds of the crop sale. The goal is for both the landlord & sharecropper to make at least enough money to survive another season and this system has them co-invest in the crop, albeit in different "currencies", and so share the investment risk. In other words, they both have skin in the game.

The digital neo-sharecropper economy ah la Uber, is vastly more abusive to the "sharecropper" than in normal sharecropping. In the digital sharecropper economy, the "digital landlord" takes on zero risk and simply skims cash off the cash flow. The "digital landlord" thus makes money regardless of the profit & loss of the "digital sharecropper". The "digital sharecropper" takes on 100% of the risk both in terms of capital investment (owning & maintaining a car or property) and in terms of operating profit/loss, while the "digital landlord" has zero risk & can only make money.

The "digital landlord" also starts with the premise that they can flaunt all of the Public Safety & Labor Laws that the traditional Service Sector has to abide by. They only reluctantly abide by those laws when a gun is put to their heads.

Here in Austin, we tried to (very, very modestly) regulate Uber and Lyft. They left in a huff and ran crying to the Texas Legislature to make stop Austin from being so mean to them and the legislature complied. Bashing Austin is sport for them despite our being the capitol. I personally want to see Uber go down in flames.

Hat tip to [1]London Reconnections for their coverage of Uber in the UK.

[1] https://www.londonreconnections.com/2019/schrodingers-cab-firm-ubers-existential-crisis/

@A Non e-mouse

That is an excellent read, it looks as though British law has the measure of Uber too, particularly with the Duck Test.

Let's face it, they provide the client to the driver, they are the collectors of the fare and they subsequently pay the driver, sounds like an employer to me.

I have worked as a mini-cab driver in the '80s, in those days a driver would rent a radio from a company (£40 a week) and pick up fares who had called in to the office for a ride, the fare paid the driver who was self employed and paid his own way with regard to insurance, car maintenance etc.

Where Uber falls down is they want to handle the money first and dole it out to the drivers and have control, if they have control they are the employer, if instead they just sold a subscription to the app for a fixed period ( in a similar way to renting a radio) so that drivers and rides can connect, they would have far less overhead and would not be an employer in any way. Might still have to pay VAT in the UK though.

"If the court does not reconsider, then in California it is hard to think that we will be able to switch our model to full-time employment quickly," he said. "So I think that Uber will shut down for a while."

Empty threat, methinks. It would cost the ride-share-flingers much more money to un-ass California than it would for them to simply give the serfs what they're due.

That said, should the fat-asses actually follow through in cutting off their noses to spite their faces, we need only remember the immortal words of one Elmer Fudd: "Good widdance to baaaad wubbish!"

Lyft, amid all this, is opting to keep its head down. The number two ride-sharing outfit did not respond to a request for comment.

They are probably making plans to sign-up out of work Uber drivers...

My daily newspaper (yes, I read one -- its all about paying journalists) told me recently that Uber ridership had fallen off a cliff.

https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2020-08-06/ubers-revenues-tumble-as-food-delivery-outpaces-ride-hailing

They're currently make more money from food deliveries than from rides.

Uber are throwing a wobbler because they resent us classifying drivers as 'employees' rather than 'contractors'. Being employees guves the drivers some standing with regard to unemployment insurance and working hours regulation, also the requirement to chip in for benefits like health insurance. This naturally screws up their business model so they're doing what they can to fix this. One way is to put an 'initiative' on the ballot in November (this is a form of direct democracy where voters can propose and pass their own laws -- actually its now typically 'industry groups and their consultants' that do this but that's not how its supposed to work). I don't know if this initiative is getting any traction.

I have rarely used Uber, but when I have the drivers all seemed to like the independence of being a contractor rather than an employee. One example was a retiree who just liked meeting new people, but wanted to have the flexibility to determine his own hours. Several other drivers said the same thing.

I just don't know if that is a representative sample. If this was a full time job for them, then I doubt the drivers would be happy with not having the benefits of employees, particularly considering the low wages. For students and retirees working part time, like I have had for drivers, the freedom of schedule may be more important. I have no idea how many Uber drivers fall into each category.

Many employers offer employees flexible working, and in the UK all employees have the legal right to request it. It's Uber's business model that's inflexible.

I'm not conflicted at all. Nothing says their employees have to be full time salaried employees. Nothing says they have to have fixed schedules.California is just saying that they are employees under the ancient legal principle of "if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck then it's a duck.

Cue obligatory mention of "Best use of multimedia in an online encyclopedia" at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_test

When I say flexible, I mean a totally flexible schedule, i.e., you choose how much and when to work on a weekly basis. Like to do things in the summer, take the summer off. Break between semesters, work full time. This isn't my preference, but then I'm not an Uber driver. But every driver I talked to (5 total) has said the same thing when I have asked them how they liked working for Uber. Again, I have no idea whether that is typical of other drivers, but I hesitate to "help" people who don't want helped. YMMV

I've worked with employees with that much flexibility. They'd tell us when they were available and when they weren't. We offered work, they took it or didn't. They were all employees with full rights.

The rules they use to classify whether a person is an employee or a sub-contractor make perfect sense and Uber fails on every one of them.

It still boggles the mind how Uber is still allowed to run a business after its many dubious actions but I chalk that up to the many dirty politicians that accept "campaign donations" to turn a blind eye.

I think the main issue here is that these sort of "gig economy" companies cannot operate profitablly if they pay their employees properly (especially Uber and similar schemes which very heavily rely on the contractor paying for their car and gas).

So Uber will just suddenly cede it's thriving business in the world's 5th largest economy to Lyft?

Even the quoted threat is so mealy mouthed that it's plainly obvious they have no intention of following through.

Probably why Lyft is keeping quiet....

C.

This is keeping quiet as in "sorry we were laughing too much to reply"

Also Judges don't tend to like being threatened, so they might have broken out the pop corn are are sitting back waiting for the firework display to start.

I could understand Uber asking for a waiver if they were unintentionally hit by a law directed at another type of business, like a food bank or convenience store having problems complying with a law that was really aimed at supermarkets.

However, Uber is at the front of this contractor vs. Employee problem. You cant do more than anyone to create a problem and then expect a personal reprieve from the solution. So Uber, just stop your whining and obfuscation. If the voters hand you a get out of jail in November, that's up to them. Until then, stop the tantrums.