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Uber Drivers Demand Higher Pay in Nationwide Protest (cnet.com)
Uber drivers will join forces with fast food, home care and airport workers in a nationwide protest on Tuesday. Their demand: higher pay. From a report on CNET: Calling it the "Day of Disruption," drivers for the ride-hailing company in two dozen cities, including Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco, will march at airports and in shopping areas carrying signs that read, "Your Uber Driver is Arriving Striking." The protest underscores the dilemma Uber faces as it balances the needs of its drivers with its business. Valued at $68 billion, Uber is the highest-valued venture-backed company worldwide. But as it has cut the cost of rides to compete with traditional taxi services, Uber reportedly has experienced trouble turning a profit. Unlike many other workers involved in Tuesday's protests, Uber drivers are not members of a union. In fact, Uber doesn't even classify its drivers as employees. Instead the company considers drivers independent contractors. This classification means the company isn't responsible for many costs, including health insurance, paid sick days, gas, car maintenance and much more. However, Uber still sets drivers' rates and the commission it pays itself, which ranges between 20 percent and 30 percent. "I'd like a fair day's pay for my hard work," Adam Shahim, a 40-year-old driver from Pittsburgh, California, said in a statement. "So I'm joining with the fast-food, airport, home care, child care and higher education workers who are leading the way and showing the country how to build an economy that works for everyone, not just the few at the top."
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become a taxi driver. Uber is for ride-sharing. Not full-time taxi service.
Uber is already moving to driverless cars, and that was always the plan. Not only is that the plan, the long term prognosis for Taxi and Uber like drivers is dim. Eventually, driverless cars will be the norm and we'll see drivers go the way of the buggy whip.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
How can Uber have trouble turning a profit? What expenses do they have? Are they literally wiping their asses with money, or something? I can't imagine how maintaining a few little apps would cost billions of dollars a year.
These ride sharing services were set up to allow people to casually earn a little extra money. They do this by bypassing the cruft that's accumulated around traditional taxi services. So immediately, government, workers, and to some extent even the public wants to re-load all the baggage - destroying what ride-sharing was intended to be. It's not the 30's, in a company town - if they don't like the wages, there are other agencies and other industries.
Next, everyone strikes to have an above-average income.
If you don't like the system, then work to change it, which is what they're doing.
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When Uber implements driver-less cars (which they do want to do) how are they going to continue to claim that they are not a transportation company and instead are just an app to connect drivers and riders? Are they going to have third party driver-less car owners and have them provide the "ride"? It seems it will be harder for them to lie to government regulators about what their business model is at that point...
If you don't like the pay, don't work for them.
Isn't that what a strike is?
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
I think that's rather the point - no one is proposing raising wages across the board - they're proposing raising wages at the bottom, but not the top.
AC is right - a burger flipper doesn't deserve as much as a skilled electrician, but what they do deserve is enough to live on (as anyone working full time does). The disparity between top and bottom has got so large that it's not possible to live at the bottom any more. That needs to be fixed.
AC is right - a burger flipper doesn't deserve as much as a skilled electrician, but what they do deserve is enough to live on (as anyone working full time does)
What does deserving have to do with anything?
I could "work full time" counting blades of grass in the park. I imagine it's time-consuming work, with a lot of job-specific challenges.
What, no one wants me to do that? No one wants to pay me for it? But I deserve enough to live on for working full time!
"Deserving" is irrelevant. Your work gets you what someone else is willing to pay for it.
Burger flipping is at the point in the supply-demand curve that it's not worth what an adult needs to live on.