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It accelerated a shift from W2 employment to 1099. 1099 employment has all the cons of self employment (unlimited liability, cruel double taxation, unpredictable pay, and quarterly tax payments) without any of the pros of working for an employer (benefits, better tax rate, eligibility for unemployment, etc.)
1099s work every day in fear of not making as much as yesterday, saving enough to meet their exorbitant tax rates, and the possibility of getting kicked off the platform for no reason.
I hope uber, lyft, doordash, fluc, taskrabbit, and all the other overvalued "gig economy" companies go out of business and their owners go into poverty.
You are blaming the general trend of using 1099 contractors on a company that epitomizes the ideals of the USA? Free market, supply and demand, competition?
I've got news for you. Law firms, Fortune 500 corporations, small businesses, large companies--they are all using contractors in order to avoid giving benefits, providing job security and insurance and being able to fire at will without being sued. And they are using it big time. They call it many things. Temp jobs, long term temp jobs, contractor positions.
This is not an Uber problem--this is a corporate America problem. They are not only screwing people with low and stagnant wages, they are now using the contractor jobs to screw employees further.
I worked for one of the largest and wealthiest law firms in the country. They have offices all over the US and world. I was basically an employee without benefits or on a salary. I had to go to their office, use their equipment, play by their rules. This is illegal and they know this, but they get around it by using an agency as the 'contractor' which made me a sub-contractor. I worked there for 9 months before being offered a much better permanent position with a smaller firm.
Again, this is not the fault of Uber, which is a valid company offering a valid service in the face of a monopoly of bully cab drivers. Put the blame where it should go--corporate America.
There is no such thing as "keeping low wages" in the private sector. Compensation is set in the marketplace; any entity that pays too low rapidly finds they lose employees or only retain the worst employees, and then go out of business. Any entity that compensates too highly finds they are inundated with applicants, and there is no desirable employee turnover. Again, a bad outcome.
Really? You believe that? You don't think an oligopoly is capable of restricting wages in a narrow field? How about Las Vegas cab drivers.
Does not the capitalist in the market place do whatever he can to maximize profit?
Do you think all the Indian IT folk now working or contracting work in the US are simply players in the US economic system?
Having been one for many years I certainly would never trust a US business man to do the right thing. Short term optimization is their mantra. What we need is a way whereby people get paid by their 10 year or 20 year success...not next quarter.
That appears fixed in California and other places. So I would think it will eventually get to about everywhere. So wait for the insurance coverage in your area if interested and concerned about the issue.
It remains completely unresolved. No comprehensive / collision for period 1 in CA or any state.
If you are going to play this silly game you have to read your own cites.
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The only way to have collision coverage during that pre-ride period — dubbed Period 1 by lawmakers — is to buy a new, special insurance policy that explicitly allows for work on Uber, Lyft or a similar platform and agrees to cover accidents during personal driving and Period 1.
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Which is exactly what I cited in my prior post. And those policies appear to be relatively cheap.
You are blaming the general trend of using 1099 contractors on a company that epitomizes the ideals of the USA? Free market, supply and demand, competition?
I've got news for you. Law firms, Fortune 500 corporations, small businesses, large companies--they are all using contractors in order to avoid giving benefits, providing job security and insurance and being able to fire at will without being sued. And they are using it big time. They call it many things. Temp jobs, long term temp jobs, contractor positions.
This is not an Uber problem--this is a corporate America problem. They are not only screwing people with low and stagnant wages, they are now using the contractor jobs to screw employees further.
I worked for one of the largest and wealthiest law firms in the country. They have offices all over the US and world. I was basically an employee without benefits or on a salary. I had to go to their office, use their equipment, play by their rules. This is illegal and they know this, but they get around it by using an agency as the 'contractor' which made me a sub-contractor. I worked there for 9 months before being offered a much better permanent position with a smaller firm.
Again, this is not the fault of Uber, which is a valid company offering a valid service in the face of a monopoly of bully cab drivers. Put the blame where it should go--corporate America.
There is no such thing as "keeping low wages" in the private sector. Compensation is set in the marketplace; any entity that pays too low rapidly finds they lose employees or only retain the worst employees, and then go out of business. Any entity that compensates too highly finds they are inundated with applicants, and there is no desirable employee turnover. Again, a bad outcome.
So they don't keep low wages because they think that they can get the best employees for dimes if not pennies on the dollar. Most companies especially since we have seen vastly globalized markets have decreased wages, especially since the 2000's when the Indian IT jobs became the latest of the "outsourcing" (really offshoring) whoppin' boy.
Really? You believe that? You don't think an oligopoly is capable of restricting wages in a narrow field?
Hmmm. You have a point about a monopsony (not a monopoly, which is a single seller -- a monopsony which is a single buyer, or possibly about an duopsony).
The argument is that a monopsonist is able to hold wages below the equilibrium level, just as a monopolist is able to hold prices above the competitive equilibrium. That is, the monopsonist has market power - the ability to determine what the price of labor is regardless of the laws of supply & demand because the monopsonist has no competition.
In the cases where there is a natural monopoly or a state-granted monopoly, we do have a regulatory framework -- in theory, at least -- to review pricing. We don't allow an electric utility to just raise prices at will; we have Public Utility Commissions (PUCs) keeps them in check. Note that such public electric utilities, for example, are frequently monopsonists: if you are a high power engineer, utilities are the main employers; if you are a nuclear engineer, utilities are the main employers. Moreover, utilities are known for paying their engineers very well, at least in part because they do not have cost pressures or efficiency pressures - their pressures are uptime availability and stability, and the utilities do a remarkably good job of keeping the lights on.
The textbook examples of a monopsony are the single-company coal towns of West Virginia in the 1800s. As a company town, essentially all the economic activity was owned by The Company - the coal mines, the "company store", the housing rental stock, etc. Or some Railroad towns from the 1800s. Note that modern research indicates even those coal companies did not have monopsony power as a 1% drop in wages would result in a 2% drop in the labor force that same year, indicating coal miners were more mobile than originally thought.
In the modern era, you're hard pressed to find such a true monopsonistic economic order in the US.
You hear it claimed relatively often today that low wage employers have monopsony power. For example, this is a sometimes cited explanation for the claim that there is no disemployment effect of the minimum wage. However, a recent study provides empirical evidence that is at odds with this: large retailers pay more than small retailers. See NBER Working Paper No. 20313https://www.nber.org/papers/w20313 If they had market power due to their size, they would pay less -- but the data show they do not.
Quote:
Originally Posted by lvoc
... What we need is a way whereby people get paid by their 10 year or 20 year success...not next quarter.
I did very well by that approach. Because I worked for public companies, I was awarded incentive stock options (ISOs), non-qualified stock options (NQs), and restricted stock units (RSUs). These had value to me only if the company performance over 10 years was exceptional.
We didn't find much rank-and-file employee support for these types of deferred compensation that were valuable only if the company performed extraordinarily. You can't pay the electric bill with stock options that have not yet vested.
Last edited by SportyandMisty; 09-16-2015 at 11:06 AM..
Really? You believe that? You don't think an oligopoly is capable of restricting wages in a narrow field? How about Las Vegas cab drivers.
Does not the capitalist in the market place do whatever he can to maximize profit?
Do you think all the Indian IT folk now working or contracting work in the US are simply players in the US economic system?
Having been one for many years I certainly would never trust a US business man to do the right thing. Short term optimization is their mantra. What we need is a way whereby people get paid by their 10 year or 20 year success...not next quarter.
I am not the poster you're responding to but I believe that. I am a businessman and I cannot charge what I want; I have many worthy competitors. I cannot pay what I want; it is difficult to get good people. We all must respond to market forces.
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