> "Under the contractor model, Lee says, the leaders at Luxe hadn’t been able to schedule workers for unpopular hours like late nights on Friday and Saturday; they could only bribe them to come online with higher rates of pay, as Uber does with surge pricing."<p>Seriously? If someone is working Friday nights or Saturday nights, he SHOULD have higher pay. What it is with CEOs that they feel they are entitled to their worker's entire existence?
"Under the contractor model, Lee says, the leaders at Luxe hadn’t been able to schedule workers for unpopular hours like late nights on Friday and Saturday; they could only bribe them to come online with higher rates of pay, as Uber does with surge pricing."<p>That's not bribery; that's simple supply and demand.
The biggest issue seems to be control over the work delivered. All of the Uber for X want their service to be a pleasant experience for the customer which is ~98% guaranteed to hit 5 stars or the local equivalent. This generally requires some degree of operational control over the workers. Aside from the (formidable!) difficulties [+] of actually structuring a business to have operational control, that tilts the relationship very, very heavily from "could possibly be an independent contractor" to "presumptively an employee."<p>Given that one is going to lose a fight with the IRS or local labor department over classification -- and one will, eventually, if you're doing things like e.g. giving the employees checklists or training them on the "company standard" -- might as well bite the bullet early.<p>[ + ] Many people employed in startups are young and may, how to put this gently, not have experience giving them an appreciation that members of the class which Stanford sources most engineering grads from are not perfectly representative of all Americans in all ways which matter towards employer/employee relationships.
The individual pays the cost. Today Uber drivers get like 80% of the fare. If Uber needed to pay benefits, give vacation time, etc, the pay rate would be much lower. That would all come out of the 80%. Just like how contract programmers bill a higher rate and get no benefits. Calling someone an employee doesn't suddenly create new money.<p>I can't imagine uber drivers would prefer a lower rate of pay, but hey, I guess that's what all these advocates of making them employees want us to believe.<p>Or maybe it raises the question, who is driving all this PR anyway? I can't see it as a grassroots thing from Uber drivers.
Some precedent here: Microsoft famously lost a lawsuit regarding contractors vs full-timers in Washington state. You simply can't treat contractors like employees in the state of Washington - you have to make a very clear distinction.<p>Now, 20 days ago, Homejoy closed down, and I said what I am quoting below:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9903831" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9903831</a><p>> the balance of power between the tech company and the "1099 contractors"<p>That hits the nail on the head. A 1099 contractor (a.k.a. freelancer) has to cut some 30%-40% off their wage to support things like self-insurance, etc (or add yea much). If you're "working" for a gig provider, you're not a 1099 employee by the inherent nature of the thing. Granted, you're not in a normal employer-employee relationship, but neither are you a skilled freelancer contracting your labor out on wages you yourself set and negotiated.
While I fully support the idea of TaskRabbit, Lyft, Uber, Homejoy et al, certain realities have to be faced squarely: they are not being real about the nature of their business. They really are something like employers, with something like employees.
Cheung is likely correct that a third legal category needs to be created (neither 1099 freelancer nor true employee), but in the absence of that, it seems profoundly more ethical to consider the workers employees.
This is kind of interesting. Seems like a lot of trade-offs on both sides that are both good and bad for the person and the company.<p>Makes sense for companies to want to be in the position to say certain tasks must be done while controlling quality. Makes sense for people to want benefits and steady work/pay.
It doesn't bother me one way or the other how workers get hired, as temps, contractors or permanents. As a worker, I see advantages and disadvantages in all.<p>Never the less, here it's stated that companies are taking contractors or independents internally as employees in order to have more control over service and presentation. That's something to strive for. As a consumer of good and services, one tends to prefer the one providing better services.<p>Yet, Japan, which is very service oriented and super customer focused to the extreme, has seen its temp workforce take over. So, it does not seem, in Japan at least that you need permanent employees to get exceptional service. Something does not jibe.
This pops out at me and raises an argument I frequently had with managers when I worked in restaurants.<p>>Managers will have to make sure workers are taking breaks.<p>I almost never wanted to take a break while working for an hourly wage. I realize I am an exception, and I do not intend to raise issue with the requirement that breaks be <i>offered</i>, but I do find it odd that it is someone's job to ensure that I do not do something I want to do, and that my employer would prefer I do.<p>When working hourly, breaks tend to entail time spent in an unappealing space, without much time to do anything worthwhile, and not getting paid to do so.<p>Particularly with waiting tables, even a 30 minute break in a slow time would probably lose me 1-3 tables which could translate to anywhere from $3-$30. At an hourly rate, that's a decent chunk.<p>If anything I'd prefer to work a shift that is simply a half hour shorter, so I could actually go home and do things I'd like to do, rather than sit in a dingy breakroom while losing money.
I feel like Silicon Valley tends to think they can save money by skipping out on whatever big businesses have always done, until they find out later that it was a bad idea, and businesses did things that way for a reason. It's what happens, I think, when 20-somethings think they know what they're doing over experienced people with 20-something years of experience in the business world.
Please, this is just click bait. The startups cited in this article are just series A companies bleeding money. A very unsubstantiated article. It's the same thing as when that one Uber driver in California was declared an Employee, there was a slew of news articles saying it was uber's downfall. But if you actually read the coverage of the case, you'd see that that court case applied to that driver and that driver alone and has not really had any repercussions through now. Then again I guess Time.com isn't the go to place for tech journalism, but still it's just not good journalism to speculate like they do in this article.