I'm retired (sort of) and my son lost his job. He had a house payment and that worried me. I noticed a girl at my local grocery store who seemed to be there every day. After questioning her, that's how I found out about Instacart. So I started with them.
I struggled with deliveries as most people do at first but eventually got quite good at it making a decent, even surprising amount of money. But, one day, I was scheduled to deliver groceries to an apartment with an address for the complex but no apartment number and no name on the apartment doors.
I contacted support who called the customer who asked if I could wait 15 minutes for them to come home. Having nothing going on that day I said, "Sure." 25 minutes later I called support again. Customer says they're almost there. "I'll wait," I said.
Customer doesn't show. Called support. They tell me to return the groceries to the store and that I would be paid anyway. (Note: grocery stores won't accept returns.)
Much of the driver support question was covered by text messages which I saved. Interestingly, later, the customer tipped me and apologized for not showing up. I saved all that along with a photo of the apartment complex.
The next day, I was deactivated for not abiding by the TOS for not delivering. I emailed them all the text messages including those from the customer and driver support along with screenshots and photos but to no avail.
Normally this would have been being laid off or fired, and you'd get unemployment.
But because the countries laws benefit the excessively rich, and the poor peoples' hard work to make the rich richer, means that these people have 0 protections whatsoever.
They are the second lowest economic class, the "can't even get W2 work". The lowest is 'homeless', who are already considered thrown away, societally speaking.
You have it backwards. Gig workers aren't employees. Quite the opposite, they are self employed and pay for a service that connects them with clients, handles payment processing, disputes, contracts, etc.
The existence of gig services is not responsible for poverty. Poverty is the natural state of all living things, and through much effort humanity has succeeded in partially eliminating poverty.
There is indeed a problem. Before we're able to achieve post-scarcity, we will reach a point where most people will not be able to provide sufficient value in a free market economy to sustain themselves comfortably. This problem was not caused by gig services or big corpo being evil or whatever people like to blame.
It's not worth it. The insurance you want to provide is not sustainable. Or if you think it is the make the company and compete. The other option are these dealers shutting down and now no one has a source of income.
There is absolutely a difference between a professional 1099 contractor charging $500/hr with a custom negotiated contract, and this garbage that we call 'gig work'.
And if the laws were actually enforced, most of it is blatantly illegal.
Many people who do this do so because they don't have other choices. And much of it is also illegal for the people "working", cause commercial driving requires commercial license.
It is a scam on everyone, except for the 'app companies' that basically added 'internet' to a regulated career and turned it into unregulated enshittified garbage.
Yep. The market should be two sided. Service providers should be able to set any terms and prices. Then it would be up to buyer to review them including fine print. This would allow real free market to operate in most efficient way.
>And if the laws were actually enforced, most of it is blatantly illegal.
>It is a scam on everyone, except for the 'app companies' that basically added 'internet' to a regulated career and turned it into unregulated enshittified garbage.
No, this predated "app companies". Taxi drivers were self-employed, only got paid if they got fares, and on top had to pay for the privilege of driving (medallion system). That's just as bad as working for Uber, if not worse (since you don't have to pay to work for Uber).
> An Uber spokeswoman said Mr. McDougall and Mr. Calnan “were initially flagged for fraud after a pattern of unusual behavior and their access was removed. After reviewing again, we decided they’re eligible for reactivation.”
Only after a NYT reporter started poking around, of course. How many others don’t have that going for them?
Everything in that article screams they already were in a precarious "devastated" financial situation.
A prime example of the modern day indentured servant: beholden to his creditors, subject to the whims of whoever pays him pennies for a dollars worth of work.
Uber's financial statements says drivers get around 70% of fares. You might think 30% is too high of a cut, but to imply that drivers are getting paid "pennies" is patently false.
The guy was making 900 dollars a week revenue (not profit) in a city where rent alone is north of $2k. The whole equation was fucked to begin with.
Staying in a city like that with that kind of income is financial suicide. He needed to move rather than take a low-paying job. Why didn't he?
Uber is able to charge little because at the other end they're able to pray on people who make bad financial decisions or have no other option for one reason or another. In a fair world they'd not only raise prices, but also lower their margin.
>Uber is able to charge little because at the other end they're able to pray on people who make bad financial decisions or have no other option for one reason or another.
Yeah, it's called supply and demand. When supply is high, prices are low.
>In a fair world they'd not only raise prices
What do you think happens prices go up? Taxi prices are already high as it is. Raising the prices would mean less riders, which is arguably worse for those drivers. Moreover this is essentially price fixing, but I guess you're fine with it because it's not an evil corporation doing it?
Same goes for YouTube creators. A YouTube couple I followed had an unusual amount of suspensions and several years later they discovered someone high-up had a grudge against them.
I know what TOS are. An employment contract is also literally the terms under which your employer must perform its obligations to you as an employee. Both are bilateral contracts between a corporation and an individual that specify under what conditions a corporation is required to provide certain services to the contracted individual.
Here's my story:
I'm retired (sort of) and my son lost his job. He had a house payment and that worried me. I noticed a girl at my local grocery store who seemed to be there every day. After questioning her, that's how I found out about Instacart. So I started with them.
I struggled with deliveries as most people do at first but eventually got quite good at it making a decent, even surprising amount of money. But, one day, I was scheduled to deliver groceries to an apartment with an address for the complex but no apartment number and no name on the apartment doors.
I contacted support who called the customer who asked if I could wait 15 minutes for them to come home. Having nothing going on that day I said, "Sure." 25 minutes later I called support again. Customer says they're almost there. "I'll wait," I said.
Customer doesn't show. Called support. They tell me to return the groceries to the store and that I would be paid anyway. (Note: grocery stores won't accept returns.)
Much of the driver support question was covered by text messages which I saved. Interestingly, later, the customer tipped me and apologized for not showing up. I saved all that along with a photo of the apartment complex.
The next day, I was deactivated for not abiding by the TOS for not delivering. I emailed them all the text messages including those from the customer and driver support along with screenshots and photos but to no avail.
Normally this would have been being laid off or fired, and you'd get unemployment.
But because the countries laws benefit the excessively rich, and the poor peoples' hard work to make the rich richer, means that these people have 0 protections whatsoever.
They are the second lowest economic class, the "can't even get W2 work". The lowest is 'homeless', who are already considered thrown away, societally speaking.
You have it backwards. Gig workers aren't employees. Quite the opposite, they are self employed and pay for a service that connects them with clients, handles payment processing, disputes, contracts, etc.
The existence of gig services is not responsible for poverty. Poverty is the natural state of all living things, and through much effort humanity has succeeded in partially eliminating poverty.
There is indeed a problem. Before we're able to achieve post-scarcity, we will reach a point where most people will not be able to provide sufficient value in a free market economy to sustain themselves comfortably. This problem was not caused by gig services or big corpo being evil or whatever people like to blame.
It is what it is. They know that going in and it's what they signed up for.
The deactivation is a different story, however.
I'm sure they'd like to sign up for something else. It's not some free marketplace of employers. The deals are shit all around.
There are lots of people that enjoy the 'gig' jobs because of the freedom to work (or not) whenever they want.
Even more 'choose' gig shit-work because that's all that was available.
And sure, homelessness, hunger, and low/no medical is a "choice", its not a choice we make lightly.
So worse is better than homeless. And people are stratified out of even the working class.
It's not worth it. The insurance you want to provide is not sustainable. Or if you think it is the make the company and compete. The other option are these dealers shutting down and now no one has a source of income.
Europe calls bullshit on this line of reasoning. You've drank too much koolaide friend.
There is absolutely a difference between a professional 1099 contractor charging $500/hr with a custom negotiated contract, and this garbage that we call 'gig work'.
And if the laws were actually enforced, most of it is blatantly illegal.
Etc.Many people who do this do so because they don't have other choices. And much of it is also illegal for the people "working", cause commercial driving requires commercial license.
It is a scam on everyone, except for the 'app companies' that basically added 'internet' to a regulated career and turned it into unregulated enshittified garbage.
Yep. The market should be two sided. Service providers should be able to set any terms and prices. Then it would be up to buyer to review them including fine print. This would allow real free market to operate in most efficient way.
>And if the laws were actually enforced, most of it is blatantly illegal.
>It is a scam on everyone, except for the 'app companies' that basically added 'internet' to a regulated career and turned it into unregulated enshittified garbage.
No, this predated "app companies". Taxi drivers were self-employed, only got paid if they got fares, and on top had to pay for the privilege of driving (medallion system). That's just as bad as working for Uber, if not worse (since you don't have to pay to work for Uber).
> An Uber spokeswoman said Mr. McDougall and Mr. Calnan “were initially flagged for fraud after a pattern of unusual behavior and their access was removed. After reviewing again, we decided they’re eligible for reactivation.”
Only after a NYT reporter started poking around, of course. How many others don’t have that going for them?
Everything in that article screams they already were in a precarious "devastated" financial situation.
A prime example of the modern day indentured servant: beholden to his creditors, subject to the whims of whoever pays him pennies for a dollars worth of work.
>pays him pennies for a dollars worth of work.
Uber's financial statements says drivers get around 70% of fares. You might think 30% is too high of a cut, but to imply that drivers are getting paid "pennies" is patently false.
https://investor.uber.com/news-events/news/press-release-det...
The guy was making 900 dollars a week revenue (not profit) in a city where rent alone is north of $2k. The whole equation was fucked to begin with.
Staying in a city like that with that kind of income is financial suicide. He needed to move rather than take a low-paying job. Why didn't he?
Uber is able to charge little because at the other end they're able to pray on people who make bad financial decisions or have no other option for one reason or another. In a fair world they'd not only raise prices, but also lower their margin.
>Uber is able to charge little because at the other end they're able to pray on people who make bad financial decisions or have no other option for one reason or another.
Yeah, it's called supply and demand. When supply is high, prices are low.
>In a fair world they'd not only raise prices
What do you think happens prices go up? Taxi prices are already high as it is. Raising the prices would mean less riders, which is arguably worse for those drivers. Moreover this is essentially price fixing, but I guess you're fine with it because it's not an evil corporation doing it?
We have already established that there are irrational actors. With that, the whole basis for a "free market" to function is out the window.
https://archive.ph/q6hVY
Same goes for YouTube creators. A YouTube couple I followed had an unusual amount of suspensions and several years later they discovered someone high-up had a grudge against them.
Also these young tech companies try to get away with horrible support services. For both employees and customers.
Tying "your account has been suspended for violating our TOS" to employment is a nightmare.
Having TOS for people that do your work sounds illegal. It's amazing it's not.
That's literally what an employment contract is.
It's not. That's why there's a whole separate term for it.
TOS as in the agreement to be served by Uber and use their network. Not the same thing as an employment contract, obviously.
I know what TOS are. An employment contract is also literally the terms under which your employer must perform its obligations to you as an employee. Both are bilateral contracts between a corporation and an individual that specify under what conditions a corporation is required to provide certain services to the contracted individual.
And the things that are allowed to be in TOS are more liberal than things allowed in employment contracts.