How Uber Profits Even When Its Drivers Aren't Earning Money (vice.com)

tedlistens writes: Jay Cassano spoke to Uber drivers about "dead miles" and what work means when your boss is an algorithm, and considers a new frontier of labor concerns and big data. "Uber is the closest thing to an employer we've ever seen in this industry," Bhairavi Desai, founder of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, told him. "They not only direct every aspect of a driver's workday, they also profit off the entire day through data collection, not just the 'sale of a product.'"

Comments

New York Taxi Workers' Alliance

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

Let's see. An organization with a vested interest in perpetuating the Taxi industry's grip and pricing doesn't like something about Uber and it's ilk. I think there's a picture of Captain Picard captioned "I've just shat myself with surprise!".

Fuck cabbies. Fuck cab owners. Let 'em all starve like buggy whip manufacturers. Price gouging, monopoly having, tourist and local abusing, talking to their overseas family on the phone motherfuckers.

I don't give a single shit about your labor concerns. You screwed yourself out of that with your attitude, your work ethic, and your lies. Fuck off and die already.

Re:New York Taxi Workers' Alliance

[110010001000]

I 100% agree. Uber is optional for drivers and passengers. Taxi service is terrible. Taxis are dirty and old and frequently rip you off if you don't know where you are going. Uber doesn't have this problem. Ever seen a dirty Uber car? I don't even use Uber, but I have no love for the taxi "alliances".

Re:New York Taxi Workers' Alliance

[Anonymous Coward]

> Ever seen a dirty Uber car? I don't even use Uber,

Solid reasoning.

Re:New York Taxi Workers' Alliance

[BarbaraHudson]

Complain to your municipal government. Taxis here are clean, the drivers have to conform to a dress code and a service code, and there are dedicated inspectors to make sure that standards have to be maintained. When a taxi enters service, it cannot be more than 5 years old, and has to be retired when it it 10 years old, no matter if it's still in great condition. Rusty cars aren't allowed. Heck, there's even one cab driver driving a tesla because the extra initial cost is offset by the lower running costs.

If taxi drivers are expected to live up to professional standards, they'll actually behave like professionals, which is good for everybody. When you get a company that just reinforces the race to the bottom, all you're going to get is bottom-feeders.

Re:New York Taxi Workers' Alliance

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

The taxi industry in South Florida has (or had) the municipal government in it's back pocket. They tried to shut down Uber, etc, until it became clear that everyone knew that the commission was being bribed, and that federal investigations were incoming unless they started representing the will of the people and not the will of Yellow Cab (Jessie Gaddis, here).

Re:New York Taxi Workers' Alliance

[DarkSabreLord]

Complain to your municipal government.

This is really going to depend on where you live - around here, lobbying groups for taxi companies and their drivers forestalled any attempts at legislated change for over a decade before Uber stepped in, quickly picking up market share due to its reliability. It used to be that even if you called to schedule a pickup (in an hour!) there was only a 30-40% chance a taxi would actually show up. I remember the days of being unable to get home via taxi at night without offering a 100% tip in advance all too vividly and have no desire whatsoever to return to that.

I'm not saying Uber is the best answer here - clearly, the new model comes with its own share of problems - but the previous monopoly (taxis) really screwed themselves out of a future with their own behavior. There was a hotline to call to report problems, but absolutely zero accountability for the drivers at the end of the day. The situation has since improved, but generally falls along the lines of 'too little, too late'.

Re:New York Taxi Workers' Alliance

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a hunch but I suspect government employees are just not as efficient or even very useful overseers. The customer is far more reliable.

Then you don't have a democratic government. Sticking another band-aid over this problem won't fix it.

Re:New York Taxi Workers' Alliance

[Applehu Akbar]

If medallion taxi companies tracked their drivers, they could collect the same data, and drivers could make the same pitch for getting paid something for the data they are generating. But tracking would also reveal those roundabout routes cabdrivers like to use on newbie passengers, so I'm betting the union would nix it.

Re:New York Taxi Workers' Alliance

[dbIII]

Yes, but on the other side of the coin it's the old story of piecework with a race to the bottom plus deliberate criminal action even if the laws broken are unfair. It's like bringing a little bit of the third world home or digging up a 19th century robber baron.
There is nobody to cheer for in this situation. Unfair monopoly versus a new player that wants to take over the unfair monopoly and move a lot of cost onto their employees. The lie of "ride sharing" as a smokescreen is an especially blatant lie and is being used as a pretended point of difference to get around laws protecting the current local monopolies.

Re:New York Taxi Workers' Alliance

[SuricouRaven]

He probably got it on credit. It makes financial sense - if you're getting very heavy usage from a car, as a taxi driver would, then a reduction in running costs will eventually offset the initial purchase cost - even when interest. Payback time may be a few years.

Re:New York Taxi Workers' Alliance

[stephanruby]

"They not only direct every aspect of a driver's workday...

Except that they actually don't. If a Uber driver doesn't feel like driving passengers, he doesn't do it. It's as simple as that. He gets to decide whether he works 5 minutes each decade, or ten hours a day. He gets to decide whether it's a hobby, a second job, or his main way to make a living. It really doesn't get freer than that.

"...they also profit off the entire day through data collection, not just the 'sale of a product.'"

New York Taxi services also profit from their drivers when they're not earning a fare.

New York Taxi companies carry advertisements on their roof, and a great number of them also rent taxis and medaillons to their drivers. So when a taxi driver doesn't have a customer he's working for, and earning zero money, he has this taxi meter in his head that is always on -- and that represents the amount of money he's paying to the taxi companies and to the taxi medaillon holders.

Re:New York Taxi Workers' Alliance

[NicBenjamin]

Accountability is actually a major part of Uber's legal problems.

The difference between an employer/employee relationship and a contractor relationship is all about who has the control. With most taxi companies the Taxi Company's entire role is renting out the car, and then telling them "At 6th and Wilkins there's a guy who wants to go to the South Side. Show up if you want to. Or pay us to rent the car for 72 hours while you drive the it toi Vegas for a night of debauchery, and then come back. We really don't give a shit."

With Uber it's different. They pay you extra for working certain times (giving them an element of control over your schedule). They throw you out of the system if you're late or piss customers off (giving them control over your income). Note the "piss off customers." Since customers can be ridiculously petty ("This guy spoke ebonics while wearing a Pistons shirt! So fucking unprofessional! I'll give him a three!"), this means that it is very hard to name a single element of an Uber-driver's career Uber does not insist on having some influence over.

Re:New York Taxi Workers' Alliance

[Rain2]

More to the point, Tesla are claiming a 'Guaranteed Resale Value' figure on their website.

Re:New York Taxi Workers' Alliance

[TotallyNotYellowCab]

Me too, I don't see why taxis are so slandered/libeled by Uber!

Re:New York Taxi Workers' Alliance

[fluffernutter]

And you think taking that industry and releasing it from any form of regulation at all will make things better?

Re:New York Taxi Workers' Alliance

[fluffernutter]

Unfortunately, the rating system is never going to work for the person in a wheelchair that needs a ride, or the minority that exists in the rough area of town that Uber drivers never want to go to.

Re: New York Taxi Workers' Alliance

[Anonymous Coward]

Being a large black man on the north side of chicago, the best part about Uber is I don't spend all night watching empty taxi's passing me to pick someone else up.

This is the number 1 reason I say taxis can eat a dick.

Planning for driverless cars

[BarbaraHudson]

They're collecting all this "dead time" behavior (as well as the rest) to help them figure out how to best have the driverless uber cars 10 years down the road. If you drive for uber, you're working to put yourself out of a "job."

Re:Planning for driverless cars

[Livius]

you're working to put yourself out of a "job."

So... Uber is just like every other employer.

The solution is to reset your env vars

[Anonymous Coward]

..but they're exactly a product of our current political and economic environment.

Uber drivers will get paid for that which they have the economic power to extract payment for and not anything else.

Is that unfair? Yes. Everything TFA suggests about how Uber is screwing drivers is true. It's also irrelevant. Uber is scum. The idea that they aren't employing people is among the most evil types of legal fictions aimed at perpetuating and protecting a corrupt and exploitive economic relationship under color of law.

The solution isn't to make Uber marginally less evil toward its employees.

The solution is to pull up a terminal and type sudo ECONOMY=$ECONOMY/socialism

Depending on your distro you may need to use $ECONOMY/democratic_socialsm. Make sure you don't under any circumstances add "comunism" to your ECONOMY vars. If you do that you'll have to rm -rf on your whole society.

Also I love TFA was all about how companies exploit freelancers in the gig economy. Check the byline. Sure enough, it's by a freelance journalist. It's not like VICE media is a small struggling company anymore. They're worth more than several mainstream media companies I've worked for.

Title answers itself

[nitehawk214]

Uber makes money because their drivers are often not earning any.

Re:Title answers itself

[jjo]

Why do those drivers continue to drive for Uber? Do they all want to drive for other people as a hobby?

Re:Liars!

[SuricouRaven]

That just means Uber is also acting as a payment processor. A transaction can be legally from A to C even if the money actually goes via B - you'll find it burried in the terms of services somewhere.