Earlier today, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi took a break from overseeing the current company legal muoite to explain his latest argument about why his company is thousands of drivers across the country should in fact not be considered employees.
As Khosrowshahi explained in his new New York Times op-ed, the problem is not really the way the stock giant is trying gut their governing body at every turn, but rather that the current “employment system” mandates these gig workers to deal with an “outdated and unfair” choice: be an employee with all the benefits that come with full employment in this country, if be an independent contractor “with more flexibility but almost no safety net.”
Based on the previous one from Uber legal battles about the employment status of their drivers, you can probably think that he is quite opposed to the whole relationship of employer-employee that activists, legislators and his own drivers have begged the company to put in place. After all, he proposes a ‘third way’ – something where he would not be obliged to consider these drivers’ employees, but where they would also not be direct contractors.
The way Khosrowshahi explains his plan sounds like these workers would technically still be contractors – only with a little more money to spend [emphasis ours]:
I propose that gig-economy companies be required to establish benefit funds that give workers cash that they can use for the benefits they want, such as health insurance or paid leave. Self-employed workers in any state that prescribes this law can take out money for every hour of work they put in. All gig companies would be required to participate so that workers can build benefits even when switching between apps.
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Did you get that? Drivers would not get health insurance right away, or pay time – just an amount of money they could use to buy or withdraw their own health insurance instead of a day of work. When your Incrementalist Bullshit alarm flutters, I do not accuse you: especially when Uber is in the barrel of a Supreme Court, state law AB5, and a legal dismissal in their home state that managers would make full-time employees, despite the half measure it offers here (or in more detail about them company blog.)
These minimal concessions are all placed within the job flexibility versus job security canard Uber loves to run out, if realistically it is the only actor in this scenario that dictates the level of flexibility of their own platform. And in classic Uber fashion, Khosrowshahi tries to hide behind the underlying preferences of his underage workers:
In public surveys over the last decade, the vast majority of drivers have said does not want to be employees because of how much they value flexibility.
That link points to an op-ed written by Harry Campbell, who runs the site The Rideshare Guy. Indeed, the findings of a Campbell survey led to that conclusion based on the responses of 1,000 drivers (from the 1 million workers Uber rumors operate on their platform.) But Campbell’s own on-ed notes do that stupidly [emphasis ours]:
While the majority of drivers work only part-time, There are drivers on the roads today who put in 40, 50 or 60 hours a week and even sleep in their cars. For many drivers it is really difficult. They can not take advantage of the flexibility that rides hail rides, and they operate essentially an employee-like scheme, but without any of the protections. That means no minimum wage, no unemployment insurance, no benefits and no compensation of workers. I can not blame these drivers for pushing their lives.
Uber has directly benefited from lax enforcement of existing labor laws, and now it’s trying to rewrite itself to its own image, while the government itself is making the fall guy. Government is deeply flawed and still unpopular, but there is no “third way”: we have years of horror stories to show what happens when we dictate the terms to Uber.
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