Uber Drivers Are Not Employees, National Relations Board Rules. Drivers Saw It Coming
This recent decision by the NLRB has got me thinking about the gig economy. It looks like it is here to stay and in its current form.
What do you guys think of it? Do you think the gig economy is good or bad for the country as a whole? Are its problems due to greedy companies or stupid people not doing their due diligence? As gig workers become a bigger part of the workforce how should society adapt to this drastic change to employment?
Yes, the gig economy is here to stay. In a broad sense it has always been here in the forms of industrial progress (the cotton gin, the assembly line, automation in general) but it is on steroids now and for the foreseeable future. It is what it is - bad for some, maybe many, good for others, initially the few at the top, maybe more later. It will not change back. As this happens we are concerned about the jobs that are eliminated - which for the most part were jobs that eliminated or consolidated other jobs before those jobs existed.
The Uber decision is not a surprise. In most areas livery and taxi drivers (who replaced horse drawn carriages) are independent contractors. Taxi drivers tend to "rent" their vehicles from a fleet or medallion owner and get to keep what they make over the rent they will pay out. Uber as a model just shifted the major costs to the driver, away from the fleet owner. Now Uber gets the "rent" disguised as a commission and the driver has to buy and maintain a vehicle to their standards, accept their pricing and be at the mercy of their pricing system. Of course this screws the fuck out of the driver who has a bad day, or needs to divert his capital to something silly like food for the kids, a visit to the emergency room (with little insurance). He just winds up getting fewer rides or terminated. Great fucking system.
Media, specifically newspapers have shifted the costs to the consumer as well - presses don't print nearly as many papers because people get it online, behind a paid firewall but take on the cost of a computer or other device, the internet access fees, and the need to update or replace the devices as they age. It costs more than a 25 cent paper. Food markets are chucking staff left and right with on line apps and shopping services that pick up your order and put it in the car. Banks - well - the countdown on brick and mortar buildings is on and tellers are starting to be as rare as blacksmiths in some area.
To the larger question - Greedy companies or stupid people - its not really either. Obviously greed is a factor, but that is a name for something else - economic efficiency. It is Adam Smith's "invisible hand of the market place," that sets demand, price and profit. Uber became a thing because it responded specifically to demand - cost rise in peak hours, decline in others, labor adjusts its own schedule, works the hours they want on need and don't work when they don't "want" to. If a competitor uses a different model that requires more people he has higher costs and loses market share and eventually his business. The drive to lower prices and costs is always present but that is how the markets work and it forces initiative and efficiency - brutally. It doesn't do this out of evil motivation, it is a survival need.
When unions existed it slowed the process down somewhat, and good unions worked hand in glove with management to keep the doors open to adapt in tough economic times but those don't exist as much - the gig era organizers have not been able to adapt to the fast changing market.
The "stupid" issue is subtle. Let's make a distinction between "stupid" and "under educated" or better still "poorly educated." American public education educates most people far below the capacity to know much beyond basics, and these days not even that. The election of Donald Trump and the alt. right is a direct result of the dumbing down of almost all public education. We educate a workforce to get a low end job and the rest is on the worker when he is not needed. Workers have a hard time adapting in their 50's because they did not learn shit in their teens and twenties to make decent decisions socially and politically. A man got a job as a railroad worker, he was done - his goals were met, he had a good job, insurance, pension, and security. Now the trains can drive themselves, be moved from one location in Florida by computer in Chicago or Mississippi. The same dude in Florida can move the train. Meanwhile the railroad worker is chucked - "see ya, wouldn't want to be ya," but hey - the 7-11 needs someone to be robbed at gunpoint in a high crime area at 20% or what you made at the railroad so the #MAGA crowd says "Hey we created a job for a worker." It is a spiraling pit. I can't call a worker "stupid" for getting caught by technology. When that happens it is a hard place to rebuild from. The dream that workers can get to a place of economic stability has always been precarious at times, but the gig economy has just accelerated the pressure and the speed. It is scary.
Right now only Andrew Yang appears to be trying to address the issues but as interesting as he is be is trying to educate a public that as Obama correctly noted "clings to Bibles and Guns", wants to go back to mythical old days that never were and has been taught that more unleased irresponsible capitalism is the only way to fix the problem. This guy is not even registering on the scales and is probably 5 generations ahead of people who want to be 3 generations behind.
Solutions are going to be hard coming.