Uber/Lyft layoff sympathy
I think people who drive for uber or lyft deserve more sympathy than corporate employees got layoff from U and L. Uber/Lyft drivers earn very little per hr on average thanks to Uber/lyft’s huge cut, sometimes more than 60% or even 70% from passenger fares (so that U/L can pay $500k per yr to their employees). A typical driver who depends on the driving has to work long hrs everyday, and assumes all the risks, pays all the cost, get none of any benefits (health insurance, 401k, time off etc), and then still may not even get federal/state minimum wage. I heard 90% of the driver will quit within a year, because the earning cannot support their daily living and someone even broke because of this. Now due to the virus, many of these drivers virtually need to depend on the unemployment insurance. This can only support for a short time, big trouble will come for them later on. I feel very sorry that large portion of my fare that I paid for many previous rides did not go to the driver, who I think deserves it; but instead flew into the corporate for no sound reason. The high pay for U/L employees and especially the management, CxOs, are built on the year-long pain and financial suffering of the driver group. Building an app is not easy, but it definitely is not rocket science, and not as hard as the Apollo project. People should be paid according to their actual contribution to the society. Capitalism exploitation is truely wrong and now it seems mother nature and principles of economics are at work. Whenever I took a Uber/Lyft ride, I always chat with the driver to understand more of their life. From my observation, 8 of 10 drivers have very negative emotion against Uber and Lyft. Two major reasons are (1) low pay; (2) hard to get out after join as driver and depends on it for living. Factor (1) is obvious. Look at those Uber/Lyft driver who went to protest in the past couple yrs, see how angry they are. #(2) is trickier for us "outsider" to understand. From the drivers I have talked to, before driving for U/L full time they typically work as supermarket cashier, warehouse workers, shop sales attendant etc. and they have known working hrs and stable hourly pay. They quit their previous jobs and drive for U/L in the hope to make more. The U/L advertisement gave them impressions that they (as driver) will earn more money, and it seems this is the case, but only for the initial 2-3 weeks. The couple days/weeks immediately after they freshly join, U/L intentionally send more back-to-back "good" trips to new drivers and "lure" them to settle down as full-time driver. But things back to "normal" after that and now they barely make the federal/state minimum wage on average. So they need to work very long hours each day. After they signed off they become too exhausted and need to eat/rest to prepare for the next round of driving, so they do not have time to learn new knowledges/improve their skillset to get another better job - they even do not have time to prepare and go for any other job interviews. Most of the driver I have talked to, they all feel they are like a slave, with no hope to improve. #layoff #uber #lyft
Better to show the drivers some ads and ask them to buy something they never needed and make them borrow from bank and pay 20%+ interest. That’s contributing to the society.
Okay PIMCO financier. Now that you see the evils of capitalism, time to stop raping pensioners.
No need to get mad about pimco. I simply go to work and collect my pay check. I will say the same thing no matter what company I am working for.
Lmfao the dissonance
Nobody is forcing the drivers to drive for Uber and Lyft. You are encouraged in both apps to tip drivers. Do that if you don't feel they're paid enough. Most Uber and Lyft employees don't get paid anything near $500k.
There are people who are unfortunate to need to do the driving, but that is not a valid reason to exploitate them. Legally it is ok, but ethically not. Being in the industry for long time and saw too many things, I somewhat believe in the karma thing...
Uber and Lyft provide a convenient option for making money. If Uber and Lyft did not exist, these folks that you patronizingly refer to as unfortunate would have fewer options to make money. Do you think that having fewer options would benefit them?
Uber is not only “an app”. There are service people who look at all the complaints to ensure good experience and safety of the customers, there are engineers and analysts who keep improving the algorithm to make sure the number of drivers and riders are balanced , there are marketing people who expand the markets to make sure you can use uber in more cities. It is the same logic why you need to pay hundreds , thousands more than the manufacturer price to buy medicine, cosmetics, almost everything in the world. The cost is not only the manufacturing cost for the consumer goods, or the cost of adding one copy for apps, it never is.
Plus, before uber and Lyft are there, the taxi company make a lot of money by doing nothing but holding and selling the licenses.
The idea of Uber/Lyft is OK, the problem here is they are taking too much away the pay from driver. For example, in China most of the ride share companies set a hard upper limit of the commission, DiDi only takes a maximum of 25% as commission. If Uber/Lyft only take at most 25% of the passenger fare, which means the driver will get > 75% of what passenger paid, no one will complain. There are multiple Uber/Lyft driver protests and even strike happened recently, things happen for a reason.
And, before uber freight is there, agents take a big portion of it by making phone calls. Truck drivers actually make more money from uber freight, because uber simplified the process, which needs huge amount of backend work.
Uber and Lyft are illegal as they do not consider their drivers as employees. Trump should just remove their licenses from usa
So sellers on eBay should also be considered employees? Uber just connected drivers and riders similar to the way eBay connects buyers and sellers.
ebay is different from U/L. You can NOT quantify seller's hours while it is not true for these drivers.
U/L drivers should be considered as full time employees and get all benefits as long as they work 40 hours per week.
2nd this.
The direct impact would be uber will file bankruptcy and everyone loses his job
Then it means this process does not work and adjustment need to be made to the business conduct and model.
Or it means you need to pay as much as you pay for taxi to take rides.
Ok