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Contractors or Not, Seattle Uber Drivers Might Get Collective Bargaining
The Seattle Times reports on a development in Seattle that might have implications for other cities with contentious relationships with transportation coordinating services like Uber. Seattle councilman Mike O'Brien has proposed a system under which drivers for Lyft, Uber, and similar companies would be represented in collective bargaining agreements with the companies they do work for.
The proposal would require taxi companies, for-hire vehicle companies and app-based ride-dispatch companies, including Uber and Lyft, to negotiate agreements with drivers on issues such as payment and working conditions.
The approach would be novel because of the drivers’ employment status. The National Labor Relations Act gives employees, but not independent contractors, the right to bargain as a union. ... Under O’Brien’s plan, a nonprofit organization would need to show support from a majority of a company’s drivers to be designated by the city as their bargaining representative. The organization would use a list of drivers provided by the company.
Uber secretly hates its drivers, and is dieing to replace them with bots. Its founding members can't wait until the day Uber becomes a fully autonomous moneymaking machine and they can live a life of endless hedonism on the Bahamas while being fed a constant supply of effortless funds
Sucks to have your pay docked by a shadow government that does nothing for you, but that's the way it's going to have to be in some retrograde cities.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
the Collective.
It's not the drivers who are calling for Guido to take a cut of their earnings to buy hookers and blow for mobsters and politicians.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The IRS defines who is and is not a contractor. These drivers simply are not independent contractors. First they would need a business permit in order to be contractors. They can not be supervised by Uber in any way, And they would need a written contract that offers them benefits roughly equal to any benefits Uber gets by offering the contract. So many businesses steal money by falsely calling people independents or piece workers and it is fraud both to the workers as well as numerous public agencies. For example, a Uber driver, injured in a wreck can not get Workman's comp. And Workman's compensation suffers an economic loss when employees are falsely called independent contractors.
except for the increased wages by bringing strike pressure to bear. Oh, and they make sure you can strike without fear of reprisal and with enough food/money to survive a strike. Oh, and then there's the better benefits from the bargaining. Then there's enforcing worker safety when OSHA can't or won't. Then There's protecting workers from age discrimination. Then there's ensuring workers get trained instead of paying for their own training out of pocket.
You know, you're right. Unions have done about as much for the working man as the Romans did for those guys from Monty Python.
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We busted up the mob years ago. They've got nothing to do with Unions now. They mostly made it in because some muscle was needed to deal with the strikebreakers (which, btw, is a word Firefox's spellchecker recognizes, which depresses me to no end...).
See, if there's a problem with something with an enormous upside you solve it. You don't just declare the whole thing over and call it a day.
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Whether you are pro or anti union, you shouldn't deny workers the right to organize.
Being able to stand together as a counter-balance to the power of the company is kind of important, whether they choose to take advantage of that right or not.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
And Workman's compensation suffers an economic loss when employees are falsely called independent contractors.
You *do* realize, right... Workman's Comp is not supposed to be a profit center for the state, and that because contractors who do not pay into it can not make claims against it, you're only counting a lack of revenue from taxes as them suffering a loss, and they aren't suffering an actual loss in terms of having to pay out funds that they did not collect in the first place?
I know that many states treat it as a slush fund they can borrow against, and (effectively) never pay back what they;ve borrowed out of it, in the same way the federal government borrows from the social security trust fund. But it's not actually *supposed* to work that way.
I really wonder how other employers/employees are going to take this.
The Seattle areas top ten employers all make heavy use of contractors:
1. Boeing
2. Microsoft
3. University of Washington
4. Amazon
5. Weyerhaueser
6. Group Health Cooperative
7. Fred Meyer
8. Bank of America
9. Qwest Communications
10. Nordstrom
Good luck with the lawsuits guys! You're going to be getting it from both side, if this passes!
Side A: The employers who provide all your jobs, and don't want to have to give up contract workers
Side B: The contract workers for those employers, who wonder why Uber contractors deserve your intervention, but they don't
The statement about contractors not having a right to bargain as a union isn't quite the full story. What contractors don't have is a right to have a union as the sole bargaining unit for all contractors. With employees, the union bargains on behalf of all employees whether they're members of the union or not. Contractors have every right to form a union and have it bargain on their behalf, but it can only bargain on behalf of those contractors who're members. If you aren't a member, you negotiate your own terms. And the company can't refuse to negotiate with the union because they aren't negotiating with the union, they're negotiating with you with the union acting as your agent. They can of course refuse to negotiate with you, but they could do that anyway (and frankly any sane contractor has an attorney involved in contract negotiations to make sure there aren't any hidden loopholes or gotchas in the contract, so refusing to deal with a representative would be a red flag that these aren't negotiations) and the basic idea behind a union is that refusing to deal with the union cuts the company off from so many contractors that they can't afford to do that.
The thing to be wary of is joining a union or other organization where the management has the right to overrule the membership. That's when things always go badly.
Reading some of the horribly misinformed comments about unions here leads me to believe that the anti-union propaganda's still working. Check your facts before you assume that workers that have union representation are worse off than those who don't. Also check out the difference in performance of companies that have majority unionised workers vs. those that don't. If a union isn't protecting your pay, health and safety, contracts, and benefits, then who is?
You have the implicit assumption that technology equates to doing things better. It does not. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Uber's way of doing things may not be better even if it does use technology.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I see that you just stepped out of a time machine after travelling from pre-1980.
Here's a news flash: the mob doesn't have any appreciable influence over unions anymore. They haven't for decades.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Correct they grew out of the small level organized crime that the mobs provided and ushered in a whole new level of organized crime
Correct they grew out of the small level organized crime that the mobs provided and ushered in a whole new level of organized crime
You are spectacularly ignorant of history.
Unions grew out of a desire for fairness and justice for workers. There have been sad periods where mobs influenced some unions (not to mention governments and police forces) but unions were never founded on the objectives of mobsters.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Walk into your local Chamber of Commerce and tell them you're a business owner. Then, demand all the benefits of a Chamber membership while paying none of the dues, and see what the response is.
It's funny how many people hear the word "unions" and race to the garbage disposal to cram in their brains and flip the "on" switch, based on the same tired 50-year-old capitalist buuuuuulshit. If you work for a living and are against unions, then you're as much of an idiot as a slave who opposed the 13th Amendment.
when Uber greatly improves the taxi industry
For who? Certainly not the owner-drivers, for them it is an uninsured race to the bottom. As for customers - Uber do not have any "taxis", they are a plain old (illegal) limo company "on a computer". Taxi's can be hailed on the street, taxi's have ranks and other infrastructure to manage street queues at popular locations, you can talk to a human to book a taxi or use an uber style booking app, taxi's have appropriate insurance, taxis have regular mechanical inspections, and yes, you can legally negotiate an up front price with a taxi driver.
You claim to embrace technology and better ways of doing things.
I was desperate enough to drive cabs in the 80's for three years, I can't imagine being desperate enough to be an Uber driver. Uber brings absolutely nothing to the taxi/limo industry that wasn't already illegal 30yrs ago.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Or try opening a business in a gang run area then demand all the benefits of the gang's protection (i.e. not having your store burned to the ground) while paying none of the dues.
Voluntary association. It either is or it isn't.
There's also the assumption that taxi companies don't have "technology", when in fact they have had computerised dispatch since before the internet was a thing.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Or try praying to Santa? Has as much relevance to the subject as your non sequitur about protection money. But, there's something about the word "union" that causes a lot of people to toss their brains down the garbage disposal without a second thought....must be a trigger word buried somewhere in Atlas Wanked.
Somebody will need to be president of such an organization. And secretary. And they would need to of course be paid and have a cushy office.
Ahem. The Daily Heil is NEVER a reliable source on history, technology, literature, art, science, politics, or indeed, anything. At best, it's a reliable source for previous things they've got wrong. An article plugging someone's new book is not a primary, or any, reference.
when Uber greatly improves the taxi industry
For who? Certainly not the owner-drivers, for them it is an uninsured race to the bottom.
That is a problem that should be fixed. Insurance companies should not be able to deny you coverage while you are on your way to pick up a fare. Uber provides additional insurance while you are transporting them.
As for customers - Uber do not have any "taxis", they are a plain old (illegal) limo company "on a computer".
Oh, so it's better than taxis?
Taxi's can be hailed on the street,
Not in most cities.
taxi's have ranks and other infrastructure to manage street queues at popular locations,
Not in most cities, or at least, they don't function.
you can talk to a human to book a taxi or use an uber style booking app,
Most companies don't have a booking app, and it is not uber style in any case. It's just like making a phone call. It doesn't do any of the things that the Uber app does.
taxi's have appropriate insurance,
You said that already. Having trouble following your own conversation? Are you new?
taxis have regular mechanical inspections,
A problem best solved by demanding mechanical inspections at mileage checkpoints for all vehicles, taxis or not.
and yes, you can legally negotiate an up front price with a taxi driver.
In my experience, they always tell you that they can't do that in the USA. In other countries, I've had more luck.
Uber brings absolutely nothing to the taxi/limo industry that wasn't already illegal 30yrs ago.
having failed to make a valid logical argument you resort to the false idea that legality equals morality
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The contractors they use are corporations which provide workers who are W-2 employees of those corporations. A true contractor is an independent 1099 worker who set rates, covers their own healthcare, retirement, etc. Don't confuse the two.
I don't. The contracts we dealt with at IBM and Apple, and the contractors I've personally dealt with in the context of Microsoft and HP, were all 1099 workers.
While I've dealt with contracting corporations in the service industry as well, most of the people who fulfilled the contracts were doing piecework as 1099 contractors, and not full time employees of the contracting corporation. In this context, I'm referring to "temp reps" (for sales), and traditional temp agencies for seasonal work, or to bolster e.g. accounting or HR departments during "flash mob" situations (accountants brought on as 1099 contractors for audits are a good example of this).
Most things like forensic accounting or private investigation for law firms are run on billable hours. Most law firms which do not operate on a retainer or contingency fee basis, are also contractors. Generally, in Silicon Valley, you'll see a lot of outside law firms brought in to prosecute patents (for example) after vetting by in house counsel to ensure that the boiler plate on the application, and the claims, are more or less correct.
When I was tech lead for the UNIX Conformance project at Apple, we had four contractors, all 1099 workers: one for man pages, one for some of the user space work, one to run the tests, and one to do the compiler conformance work on gcc. We ended up hiring two of them full time, later on, which is something which we couldn't have done, if they were employees of a contracting agency.
In fact, I have to say I've personally only interacted with an agency at one point in time, and that was at IBM. The agency was contracting a worker to IBM that was in the U.S. on an H1-B visa, and the contractor whose services were being provided to us had to have a placeholder to act as the sponsor for the visa as a means of (eventually) getting a green card. Generally, I've only seen contracting agencies use either 1099 workers themselves, or they employ H1-B workers who have to have a business sponsor them, without actually having a job at one business long enough to deal with the Green Card process (although you can get a Green Card in about six months, if you do the things, like medical, in parallel with all the other steps that can be done at the same time).
And as much relevance as your comparison of an act of voluntary association to one of compulsion. Which was the point.
In the cases I have seen "contractors" have all been W-2s I should move to your part of the country, I hate being a W-2
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
In the cases I have seen "contractors" have all been W-2s I should move to your part of the country, I hate being a W-2
The easiest way to accomplish this is to start your own contracting agency, and then employ yourself, and any friends who are in the same boat, as a 1099 worker. The bonus is that this will let you deduct most of your taxes as either "operating expense" or "capital outlay" on the part of the agency, you can run an expense account for most of the day to day expenses, including a car if you want, you can incorporate retirement fund operating company for the contracting agency to reallocate income into for the principals in the contracting agency, and you still get your 1099 job on top of it.
BTW: This is how most massage studios, day spas, nail salons, hair salons, and so on operate. Everyone who does the actual work is a 1099, with the exception of the owner, and maybe a hourly receptionist, if the business is big enough to merit one for bookings.
yes extorting protection money and strong arming are not mob practices at all
There's a multi-billion dollar lobbying industry telling them to oppose unions.
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