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Uber Class-Action Case May Hinge On What the Drivers Want
New submitter shanemccarthy writes with a story at Forbes that lays out a non-intuitive factor in the ongoing class-action suit over alleged labor law violations filed in the name of Uber drivers. Namely: how Uber drivers see themselves in relation to the company. While some drivers consider themselves, or would like to be considered, employees, and accrue the conventional benefits of employee status at a large company (and Uber, for all its crowd-sourcing, disintermediating origin story, is large enough to garner a valuation in the billions), a considerable number of the drivers do not want to give up their status as independent contractors. The rules of class action lawsuits, though, mean that if Uber's drivers are classed as employees, those who would like to remain independent won't have that option -- so the company is lining up examples of drivers who would seem by no one's definition to be employees, and who want to keep it that way. See also this earlier story about workplace classification for these drivers and others in non-traditional work arrangements.
Drivers don't really have the option not to take rides...they have to accept 90% of rides offered, or they're out of Uber. Uber also doesn't let drivers see the routes they're going to take ahead of time, just where the pickup locations are. Uber also sets prices that the drivers are going to work at.
So going with your analogy, imagine if the agent told the actor, "in order to remain an actor, you're going to work some unknown jobs at specific locations I give you, and I've decided you're going to do this work for 20% less than you received last time, and your only recourse it to quit." It sounds like a W-2 job to me.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
I'm sorry, what is that supposed to be telling us? What do you think you added to the conversation?
A couple of things:
(1) There isn't actually a class action lawsuit yet, since there are certain legal disclosures which must be made in order for it to legally qualify as a class action lawsuit. Among these, is going to a court, and getting a registered class.
(2) It's a solicitation for business; the article attempts to make it look like Uber drivers spontaneously banding together, but the domain name is registered to a lawyer at a Boston law firm. The Boston law firm, incidentally, went to the trouble of anonymizing who registered the domain where the domain contact from the lawsuit site has their email address, but they forgot to do the same thing for the lawsuit site.
(3) If you want to unionize Uber drivers, which would have long term benefits for the Uber drivers (assuming the courts hold them to be employees; the case in question applied only to a single person, not all Uber drivers, as a class), then by all means, attempt to unionize them. Just don't try and backdoor it as if this were a collective bargaining situation, collect a single class action payday, and then leave the drivers high and dry.
(4) They lied about opt-out for the class, rather than opt-in.
Typically "when is a contractor an employee?" hinges on three primary factors:
1. Who sets the hours? Company? Employee. Worker? Contractor.
2. Paid by the task? Contractor. Paid by the hour? Employee.
3. EIN on the 1099? Contractor. Social Security Number on the 1099? Employee.
The IRS has a page describing the myriad other factors that are considered, but if answers to the three above all agree with each other, that's generally what you are.
http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/...
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Years ago, I worked for an IT consulting company that gave its workers the option of being full employees (with a standard benefits package including 401K, health insurance, paid time off, etc.) OR contractors who received no benefits, but a significantly higher wage. The client paid the same rate either way, the workers got to choose which arrangement worked best for them, and the consulting company (presumably) got their cut ... a true win-win.
I'm sure the trade-offs with Uber aren't exactly the same, but I still don't see why they can't offer their workers more than one option.