The Gig Economy

[GMDino]

(05-13-2019, 10:27 AM)Benton Wrote: Not sure why you're jumping from 'this isn't a good business practice' to 'this is a moral injustice.'

But to answer your question, I have. Same company twice paid me less than minimum wage after they switched to a "more consistent" pay method. They still do it to people. 


I'm not getting into legal definitions of words. They agreed to become drivers for those companies (as opposed to working for a taxi company or driving a bus) because of whatever reason. Logically, the pay rate was probably a factor for many. I'm not going to spend a lot of time juggling the logic of people doing a job for a company for money and whether or not someone else defines that as a job.


The difference being that Angie's List doesn't tell the plumber he has to fix the clog for X dollars. The plumber sets his price. If Uber wants to let drivers set their rate and take X commission, then I think there's less of a deceptive issue. 


We'll eventually get back around to that, but not for a while. Big business has spent a ton on making sure "labor" and "unions" are bad words. I wonder how many of the drivers trying to get people to organize and protest are also guys who would say 'I'd never join a union, they're bad.'

This plus workers asking for more is now treated as them being "greedy" versus the CEO's making bigger profits and making more themselves is treated as "good business".