05-08-2019, 04:14 PM
(05-08-2019, 01:32 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: So I'm not sure how much anyone here has been paying attention to this, but Uber and Lyft drivers in several places are on strike. I don't pay a ton of attention to news about them as I have never utilized their services, but it got me thinking. The drivers are on strike due to decreasing wages and little to no job security. To me, this seems like it would be an inherent problem with most gig economy situations.
Temporary employees, or gig employees, are compensated less on average that permanent/direct employees. They aren't afforded the same protections as regular employees. When there are so many of them, they increase supply to the level that can exceed demand, which will push the wages down.
At the risk of sounding unsympathetic to their plight, why should any of them be surprised? This is also the same sort of pattern we have seen with many corporate behemoths where they have come in, shut down local run businesses (taxi services in this instance), and now are in the phase of giving their employees the shaft because they simply can.
Am I missing something here? Is there some reason I should be more shocked about this? Don't get me wrong, I want everyone to earn a fair wage, but this is the system as it has been working for a long time. It feels a lot like the people striking are frogs giving rides to scorpions.
While I agree that they or we should not be shocked by how workers are treated in this current “gig economy”, I think they are doing the right thing to try and change that. My opinion has always been that the natural counter weight to capitalism, isn’t government laws and regulations, but unions and workers. When the workers stand up and say enough is enough, that’s what can change a culture. If the government makes a labor law, the corporations/lobbyists just bribe the right politicians to make it go away or get watered down to nothing.
