While you don't get vacation, you get to claim a lot of expenses.
In New Zealand, it's pretty much "at-will" anyways, with the cost of removing an employee typically being 3-months wages.
Personally, being a contractor was much more profitable than being an employee, even if I was on the same wage.
No way. Removing an employee in NZ (other than for redundancy) requires a series of warnings about performance and assistance to said employee each time to get their shit together. It takes months, is easy to get wrong by missing some step, and it's nothing whatsoever like "at-will".
We really need it to be easier to get rid of idiots in positions too technical for them to understand.
From https://www.employment.govt.nz/ending-employment/dismissal
If an employer wants to dismiss an employee (end their employment), they must: * act in good faith * have a good reason
Redundancy would cost three months reasons and Uber would be required Uber to argue, not that the person doing a job isn't a worthy employee, but that the role they perform shouldn't exist in the company anymore – a hard argument for Uber to make about their drivers I imagine.
> NZ has government provided healthcare.
Which contractors have to pay for through ACC levies.
Our public health system (hospitals, doctors, etc) are different and is largely paid for from income tax (lower than many states in the US, 10% lower marginal rate than I was paying in CA).
We really don't. You won't be bankrupted by hospital bills, but the absolute shambles that we're working with is far from an adequately functioning healthcare system.
The ACC (which is meant to cover injuries) often refuses to help, sets impossible burdens of proof, or provides completely inadequate compensation.
And they've only gotten worse since covid (their website still says they require you to be fully vaccinated to visit them - even if you're visiting due to a vaccine injury).
We do have it though, and it works, though it's not perfect. Wait times are definitely long unless you go private, but the public system has helped me many times. I've not had to deal with ACC, so I can't speak to that.
In practice if you work for a good company you often get health insurance included or at a discount (at least all the software companies I've worked for have done this), so you get a mix of public/private healthcare and that works pretty decent.
I can't imagine the stress of the nightmare inducing hospital bills you hear about in the US.
Once a driver starts driving more than 30 hours a week for Uber, they're effectively Uber Drivers, and the employment concept starts to make sense.
Every Uber driver I've ever had also did Lyft and would go with whichever was paying better or more active or would get them where they needed to be at the time. So even if they're driving 30 hours a week, that time is split between two companies.
But nearly all my Uber drivers have been immigrants working full time or more.
I would love to drive for Uber when I have a bit of free time, but I'd need a licence from my local authority, and taxi insurance which is unrealistically expensive to obtain on a ride by ride basis.
In another Universe, a technology company would develop software that taxi companies can use to provide the same services that Uber does. But that wouldn't be as profitable as there wouldn't be scope for labor exploitation.
why would they? uber takes more money from the customers than taxis got in the past, pay less to the drivers and less taxes. Everybody pays for uber benefit
The innovation you mention also varies by jurisdiction. In some places, Uber's are licensed taxis, so clearly there's more than just breaking the medallion monopoly.
"We are a driver-owned cooperative in New York City specializing in paratransit and Non-Emergency Medical Transportation."
I've always been skeptical [of self driving] but at this point (after having a few rides with Waymo) it appears that the folks at Alphabet have figured it out already and are coming for Uber. Why is not that affecting Uber's price?
Also, on an apples-to-apples basis, ~46% of Uber's revenue comes from markets outside the US where self-driving is yet to go through its own motions, regulatory approvals, local dynamics, learning (see how autos drive in subcontinent), etc.
Waymo is only testing in 4 cities. Market share is barely scratching the surface. Maybe in a decade, it will be viable replacement.
Like if you don't live in the Bay Area or one of the very few places outside it where Waymo has been testing, people have never heard of it.
Basically, Uber is everywhere and Waymo is nowhere. Uber achieved dominance by rapidly scaling and being able to fight regulation with venture capital. Waymo hasn't been able to do that anywhere.
You need someone ruthless and aggressive at the top, like Travis Kalanick, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk or Steve Jobs who basically stop at nothing. Folks who act fast and can take big decisions. MBA business types often get caught up in endless meetings, prevaricating over inessential things.
Weta Digital had people building models on "at will" contracts and not paid very much. They were working on a film for Warner Brothers (if memory serves, I am not looking this up)
A contractor was fired and took a case that since they: worked only for Weta, only on Weta equipment, and for all the working hours there were for Weta they were an employee of Weta (that is the law here - until then)
The employee won.
Peter Jackson and Richard Taylor are very rich, very entitled, and Warner threatened to throw their toys across the room and the government changed the law so that any artist, or computer programmer working on a movie or a computer game had no employment rights....
I doubt that will happen this time. I do not think Uber wants to pay enough.
From my experience, in big cities, Deliveroo and similar apps riders are mostly half legal young immigrants not realizing (at first) that they are being exploited and that they take quite some work risks without any coverage at all. But hey, at least we can have a Big Mac delivered to one's door for almost nothing.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_surrounding_Ub...
Declaring Uber drivers to be employees seems to be a political move, likely lobbied for by low wage employers that are being forced to offer higher wages because many of their former minimum wage employees are now contractors for apps.
Its also clearly not just something they're pushing in New Zealand given that California voters had to overturn a similar state law via referendum[1] a few years ago. They did this by a 17 point margin at the same time that they voted for the left wing candidate for president by around a 30 point margin[2]. In virtually any other state in the US, declaring Uber drivers to be "employees" would almost certainly lose at the polls by a much larger margin.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootleggers_and_Baptists
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_California_Proposition_22
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_California_elections#Pres...
