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When Their Shifts End, Uber Drivers Set Up Camp in Parking Lots Across the US (bloomberg.com)
A feature report on Bloomberg today illustrates the lives of several Uber drivers, who find shelter in car parking at nights when it's too pricey and tiring to go home. An excerpt from the story: In Chicago, Walter Laquian Howard sleeps most nights at the "Uber Terminal." "I left my job thinking this would work, and it's getting harder and harder," Howard said. "They have to understand that some of us have decided to make this a full-time career." Howard has been parking and sleeping at the 7-Eleven four to five nights a week since March 2015, when he began leasing a car from Uber and needed to work more hours to make his minimum payments. Now that it's gotten cold, he wakes up every three hours to turn on the heater. He's rarely alone. Most nights, two to three other ride-hailing drivers sleep in cars parked next to his. It's safe, he said, and the employees let the drivers use the restroom. Howard has gotten to know the convenience store's staff -- Daddy-O and Uncle Mike -- over the past two years while driving for this global ride-hailing gargantuan, valued at $69 billion. "These guys have become my extended family," said Howard, 53. "It's my second home. We have this joke that I'm the resident. I keep asking them: 'Hey, did my mail come in yet?'"
America! Fuck yeah!
They all seem grateful for the work and only work as much as they want. Also a taxi license plate sells for $125k in my Soviet Canadian city - Uber is a great deal for those needing a bit extra here. I would seriously consider it if I got sick of my business.
put them all out of work, taxis too & city buses, maybe even trucking industry and railroad too
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Interesting article, it pretty much explains why regular taxi service employees are so against Uber. When you have a competitor that undercuts the service so much that you need to live out of your car in a parking lot, it's somewhat hard to make a living from it.
leasing a car from Uber sounds like the company store days of the past where they lock you into the job and when the work slows down / something bad happens your on the hook to make the company full and you are not even an W2 worker.
As a society, we have 3 options:
Now which one is it going to be?
Hours-of-Service Safety Regulations uber does not give a dam about them but what will happen when an uber driver falls asleep at the wheel and does big damage?
I live in central London and we have a similar situation with food delivery bike riders. A couple have a very organised camp setup at a local church park. Another sleeps every morning at my wife's gym (where I presume he has discovered a membership is far cheaper than rent). I don't think I've ever seen a situation where there were so may people working yet homeless. There was a story in the paper recently about a guy who got a job at a pub that opened till 3am, and would then wonder around until one of the train stations opened at 5am so he could go in and sleep.
I just cannot see how this situation can continue. I don't think I could personally stand visiting the big empty homes of rich people to deliver them overpriced takeaways every night, while knowing that I'll never be able to buy a home of my own anywhere on the wages I'm earning. At some point surely these people will realise they outnumber the rich they are delivering meals for, and something is going to happen?
you must rent / buy your uniform and rent our phone / pda at $50 a week to work for us.
marketing: our billion dollar business idea is to empower the gig economy with a system that frees them from the shackles of the traditional labour paradigm by allowing drivers to work their own hours on their own terms. the government hates us because we're revolutionary disruptors of traditional capitalism
Reality: live out of a parking lot, subsist on slurpees and hotdogs, work more hours than you ever imagined, get sick, die somewhere conveniently outside any media scrutiny of your employe...er..i mean, app.
Good people go to bed earlier.
I'm always amazed when I hear stuff like this. People really believe that other people will treat them right when a) it's not in their interests and b) they're not being forced.
When I tell people I'm a socialist one of the responses is: "Well, are you gonna force people?". Yes. Yes I am. This is civilization. You don't get to say 'no' to civilization. Just like you don't get to say no to the polio vaccine. That's because your actions do not happen in a vacuum. They don't just hurt you, they hurt me too.
So yeah, I'm gonna force Uber to pay a living wage or go out of business. I'm gonna force everyone to give everyone else health care (aka "single payer"). Because that's civilization. We're all humans. We're all valuable. Yes, everybody gets an ever-loving Gold Star. We all earned the right to a good life simply by being born human.
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I'm sorry, but there are certain jobs in society that really aren't meant for a person to fully support themselves. Even moreso when the person is trying to support themselves and their family. Delivering the local newspaper was great job when I was 12 and I wanted to buy some hockey cards and music CDs. It's not a job that really requires any skills, and even if you are doing it full time, I couldn't see it being a job that's likely to pay a living wage.
Same with the job I had flipping burgers at McDonald's. I was making minimum wage and even if I was working full time, there's no way that I really deserved to make a living wage in that job. Again, it required very little skill and they didn't really expect much from me other than to show up and make some hamburgers. But that's fine because I was in highschool and just wanted some money for CDs, computer games, and going out to the movies.
Theses were great jobs to get me used to working, and if they weren't allowed to pay me such low wages, I wouldn't have had the opportunity to work at all. Especially in the year 2016. They will just get a robot to do your job if it becomes too expensive for a person to do it.
If you want to make a living wage, be prepared to get some real skills. You don't deserve money for doing nothing, or for doing a job that requires almost no skills.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I use Uber several times a month. I love the service, and I believe that some of the improvements in Uber over Taxis are due to technology and innovation rather than just taking advantage of employees. Especially in smaller cities like mine, where critical mass for traditional taxi service is not there, but being able to track and summon Ubers works pretty well.
That being said, I have noticed that drivers are getting less happy. One problem I see is that people underestimate the wear and tear on their car. This is a real expense - more frequent oil changes, tires, etc.
The other problem is I've noticed less surge pricing. Uber has recruited drivers so aggressively they have effectively gotten the price down. If you think about it, Uber's model is great, because they raise the price until someone picks you up. This ensures you get a ride home. However, their base prices are probably unrealistically low, so if they can flood the market with drivers, they are basically getting them cheap.
Now they will churn through drivers doing this, but I wonder if Uber thinks there are enough drivers out there to churn through to tide them over until they have fully self-driving cars?
In such a wold of automation, you need to wonder about basic income.
This just so exemplifies the scam aka – Gig Economy.
Looking at his numbers
Let say he makes $300/day, that’s $230 after gas and a couple of 711 munchies.
Well, since he’s self employed, he pays full SS & Medicare tas of 13.85% - which goes against GROSS receipts of $300 = $41.55
Secondly, reading through most Uber forms, people who work 55+ hours per week drive © 300 miles a day. A DAY!. The Federal allowance for vehicle maintenance is $.54 / mile. At 300 miles = $162.
The reality is he will have to change his tires, breaks, engine oil, much more often, and that costs Probably not far from the fed estimates.
So, take is net after gas, subtract $41.55 in SS/MC taxes, subtract $162 in maintenance leaves $96.45, which he as to pay Federal Income Tax of 10%.. or $9.65..
This leaves him with a NET of $86.81, for a 10 hour shift – or $8.91 with zero benefits.
You’re WAY better off flipping burgers.
Well, not starving is high on people's lists. The fact that they are grateful for the work cuts against the 'they don't need the money' argument you're about to make.
But yes, children in sweatshops were also grateful for the work.
Which may include over 40 hours a week. After all, most people convince themselves they want to do something if they are forced into the situation. And people tend to want to work over starve.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Uber's own ad campaigns bend over backwards to emphasize that this is supposed to be a side gig to make some extra money.
Uber was just this week fined $20M by the FTC for doing the exact opposite of what you're saying, so pardon me if I don't believe anything you've just said. They were overstating median incomes by as much as $29,000/year, advertising unlimited mileage for leases that didn't actually have unlimited mileage, and advertising that their leases were lower-cost than their competitors (which wasn't true in the least). The FTC found that in some markets, only around 10% of the drivers were making as much as the "median" incomes that Uber was advertising.
So while I do generally agree that the world doesn't owe anyone anything, I'll add the caveat that companies are obligated to not make fraudulent claims, which is exactly what Uber is being fined for having done.
look at India, South America and large parts of China. And that's just the places we pay attention to. This is nothing new and nothing surprising. For most of the world's 6 billion inhabitants this is they way things are and always have been. The best thing you can do it get over the surprise that it's like this while keeping that feeling of disgust. Don't let the fact that these situations are so far outside the norm for you let you turn away from the truth in disbelief. It's like that old quote: The greatest trick the devil ever did was convincing the world he didn't exists.
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Hate to break it to you but most jobs, by the numbers, require "almost no skills." 40% of US workers are unskilled. Should they all starve to death?
It seems like what you are saying is "some jobs aren't meant to pay for someone's subsistence"
My question is "what jobs are those?"
Are they "unskilled" jobs? If so, are you suggesting that there needs to remain a majority of people without proper education in order to have an "unskilled" work force so that you can go to the grocery store on Sunday or out to eat in the evening?
What happens if everybody has an education and is competing on the same level for "skilled" jobs and nobody wants to do the "unskilled" jobs? What happens if we don't have anyone to man the register or pick your food from a field? Wouldn't you say those jobs are necessary?
Is this a reason why we shouldn't make education easily accessible to all?
It seems to me that "unskilled" workers are necessary in order to provide a quality of life for the workers in "skilled" jobs. So why don't those "unskilled" workers, people who wake up every day and GO TO WORK in a job that they probably HATE, not deserve to be able to live a reasonably comfortable life?
I certainly appreciate the ability to order food that arrives at my doorstep or a cab/uber that can take me to where I want to go.
I am guessing that you appreciate those things too.... but you somehow don't feel that the people doing those jobs deserve a wage that will allow them to live at or above the poverty line....
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
A few years ago, a friend of mine who had been working in a full-time job in the hospitality industry, had signed up to be an Uber driver during his spare time. He claimed to be making an extra thousand dollars a month or so, which he used to finance a used vehicle.
I probed for more details. "What about insurance," I asked. "Have you accounted for wear and tear on the vehicle due to increased mileage? Is this a sustainable income model? What if the pool of drivers increases and you face increased competition for fares?" He was completely nonchalant: at the time, Uber was still growing, there weren't as many drivers as there are now, and since he was still receiving a salary, he had no concerns for wage instability.
Months later, he mentioned that he quit his full time job because he could make more money driving for Uber, and it was lower stress. He seemed happy. Well, we know how that turned out. He ended up essentially destitute, unable to afford food and rent; unable to fix his car when the inevitable breakdown occurred and would cost thousands to repair; and still had payments to make on the loan.
I'm not saying that these kinds of jobs cannot be sustainable as full-time employment, but it is a great deal more difficult to make it viable than the vast, vast majority of people enticed into the idea are led to believe. The fact that these companies make it sound like it's easy (for obvious reasons) is the modern-day equivalent of selling Amway.
Hours-of-Service Safety Regulations uber does not give a dam about them but what will happen when an uber driver falls asleep at the wheel and does big damage?
Nothing will happen. Mr Driver will be held responsible just like any Joe Sixpack that fell asleep behind the wheel. If he says anything about being an Uber driver:
1) Uber will bring up their "independent contractor" (not our employee/liability) business plan.
2) His insurance will bring up their "you're not covered under your personal policy if you're acting as a ride sharing/taxi-for-hire service" clause... and more of them have this nowadays.
The loser will be victims in the accident.
Unfortunately not everyone has the means to go out and get those skills required to earn a decent salary.
I agree with the GP, if you're willing to put 40 hours in of work per week, it should earn you a basic living wage in the area you're in. I don't really care what skill level the job is, it's a job and someone's working hard to complete it. Society needs people of all skill levels to function.
Minimum wage has not kept up with inflation. There are thousands of manufacturing jobs open in my area that go unfilled because they cannot find the people who want to work hard, starting at $10/hr without benefits. That's almost $2/hr above minimum wage. Even in this region where living expenses are very low, good luck paying your bills on $20k/yr.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
I was making minimum wage and even if I was working full time, there's no way that I really deserved to make a living wage in that job. Again, it required very little skill
You keep talking about skill as it if was the only thing that mattered. Well, time matters, too. If you spend 1/3 of your life doing something for someone else then you should be able to make a living from it. It's just not a question of how hard it is, it's a question of how much time you spend doing it. If it order to pay flip burgers a living wage they have to raise the price of the burgers then so be it.
And what do you propose should happen to those who don't have the skills, and can't acquire them? What about those who try, but just aren't good enough? There are presently some 3 million or so drivers in the U.S., between taxis, Uber, delivery trucks, and long haul trucks. What should happen to them as demand for their previously valuable skill dwindles to the point they can't support themselves anymore, or wind up unemployed en masse when the vehicles can drive themselves? There are some 3.6 million fast food employees in the U.S. - what about them?
Perhaps you think they should learn to program, or become auto mechanics, or HVAC technicians, or some other job that remains in demand. Some of them may well be able to, but is there really immediate demand for several million more of them? Did it ever occur to you that some of them might like to learn those skills, but lack the time and money it takes to do so? Education isn't cheap, and it's getting significantly more expensive by the year. And worse, you might find after you complete it that you can't get a job in that field, because the competition is high, and others are simply better at it than you are.
So what then? Because I'm going to hazard a guess that you're not suggesting that we fund a robust social safety net with programs to make sure those people don't starve, or some form of universal basic income.
Yet another reason why they're just like taxis and taxi drivers.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
This desperation is what happened when factories left the Midwest. The good jobs are gone for the unskilled. The remaining jobs need training that the unskilled can't afford. This is the guy's best option right now. If he could just stop being poor, he would. His best option is to sleep in a parking lot where he could freeze to death in a Chicago winter. Think about how bad things must be to have that as your best available option. This man isn't the only one making this choice. There is a bigger problem, and telling people to just stop being poor won't solve the bigger problem.
Don't know if that's intended as a joke, but years ago when I clerked an Allsup's, they did in fact make us rent our aprons. They paid a few cents over minimum wage, but fell below that bar if you deducted the cost of apron rental. They gave us the option of buying an apron, but they were fairly expensive and the laundering requirements were absurd compared to the laundry schedule the store managed.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
And they have 99% of the new ideas, .
No, actually they don't. Some of the 1% did get there by work, but most of them got there by inheriting money. They don't have any ideas; they don't need to have any ideas. They can buy ideas. The world is full of people with ideas, but most of them don't have the resources to do anything with them.
provide 99% of the funding to develop new stuff, own/run most of the private infrastructure,
Yeah, that's the thing. They control all the funding, so if you have an idea you want to commercialize, you are pretty much guaranteed that you'll have to sell it to somebody with cash. And they own the infrastructure. One way or the other, you end up paying them.
The trouble with all that is branding. When the right wing start a debate they've got simple answers to complex problems. They're always the wrong answers, because if a problem has a simple answer then, well, by definition it's not complex. But those simple answers feel good, sound good, and just got a Demagogue elected President of the United States...
Norwegian here, you don't think socialists have simple answers? Some people have a [something] problem, let's regulate [something]. Which means that right now at 8:30 PM on a Monday I can't buy a damn beer at the store. We need more money for [good cause]? Increase taxes. I could work harder, but I don't. Why? Because on my marginal dollar I pay 25% + 8.7% + 8.2% = 40% taxes and 25% VAT on most things mean I lose another 15%. Sorry for 45 cents to the dollar I'll just get an easy job (37.5 hours/week, paid overtime, flexible hours) and be lower middle class. If was in the US I'd probably work 50-60 hours/week and make $200k.
Getting kickback from creating value is not a socialist virtue, if you got lots of money you can pay lots of money is their thinking. The day we run out of oil all hell will break loose because we're lazy and think everybody deserves good pay just for showing up at work or doing meaningless paper pusher jobs. And since I can't change the public opinion and tax system to reward hard work, I've decided if you can't beat them then join them. Even on cruise control I seem to get praise for good work, which is both cushy and a bit creepy at the same time. Maybe it's just that I can't stand all the stupid and make actual working solutions from time to time.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
No, nobody should starve to death, or left without healthcare, or without drinking water, or not given the chance to get quality education at an affordable price.
Maybe we should push for things like Universal Basic Income, Single Payer Healthcare System, Free Education, and stop privatizing utilities?
Well, time matters, too.
No, not really. You can spend 80 hours per week doing a job that returns $1000 in value to the company you work for, but you can't expect them to just hand you $1500 for your time. You have to do something that results in the money you get paid, it truly does not grow on trees.
If it order to pay flip burgers a living wage they have to raise the price of the burgers then so be it.
And when do you expect to get the raise that will allow you go buy the now more expensive product? Someone making $15/hr already who gets no raise when the minimum goes to $15/hr will be in serious trouble as the prices for everything that come from current minimum wage workers goes up to cover your largesse. I'm glad you have lots of excess cash now that you can spend on the more expensive products, but most people do not.
if you don't pay your taxes you go to jail. If you speed in your car you get a ticket. If I shoot somebody I go to jail. We're just arguing over where to draw the line, not whether it should be drawn.
You're going got get forced to do things one way or another. If you leave a power vacuum by trying to live with a weak central government then somebody will step in and take the reigns. Central Governments are just too valuable. Somebody sooner or later will create one for their own purposes. The question is never, "Will we have a strong Central Government?" but whether _you_ will participate in it?
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If you're sinking all your time into a low paying job instead of an education then that's your problem.
Because such an education costs nothing, and magically pays all your bills. And people don't need things like "food" or "shelter" while getting an education. Also, if you make the "right" choice and get a STEM education, there aren't more STEM graduates than entry-level job openings. (This site claims 1.55 graduates per job opening)
Oh wait, absolutely none of that is true. Huh. Almost like reality doesn't quite fit your model.
There are about 1.5 STEM graduates for every entry-level STEM job opening in the US.
Even making the "right" choice and getting an education is no guarantee of a successful future. No matter how much parents push it as a magic bullet.
It IS a company's job to pay a living wage to its workers. We had this discussion during the civil war. Slavery is now illegal. It's a moral issue. In any case there's also the economic argument that impoverishing the middle class (who drive economic growth through consumption) is a bit of a silly idea.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
We know that half the population is not intelligent and we know that modern marketing techniques can subvert intelligent, aware and thoughtful people. Ergo half the population is very vulnerable to exploitation by malicious people and companies that have resources.
You may consider those victims a cash cow. I personally feel that it's appropriate that society provides them with a level of protection, including preventing cunts like Uber from building a massively valuable company by breaking the law and exploiting people that were unfortunate enough to trust them.
Conning people out of money is illegal in most countries. It's fraud or comes under other legislation. Why do you think that conning people out of their labour is perfectly just fine?
Yes.
Easily.
Among OECD countries, the US has the 5th lowest economic mobility.
More economic mobility than the US:
Denmark
Norway
Finland
Canada
Australia
Sweden
New Zealand
Germany
japan
Spain
France
Switzerland
Less economic mobility that the US:
UK
Italy
chile
Slovenia
http://www.epi.org/publication...
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.