Ebay doesn't control how much you sell your product for. Ebay doesn't police how you sell, package, or ship your product. It's mostly hands off. Compare this with the level of control Uber exerts on its drivers.
Similarly, Ebay's service is less dependent on how well you provide your commerce services, it pretty much lets the market determine your prospects on its platform. On the other hand, Uber is highly reliant on the conduct of its drivers and the service the provide.
That's a difference that arises out of a goods market (with some services attached) vs. a more pure-play labor/services market, but it's not a fundamental distinction about control or what is core to the platform provider. The whole gig economy is a new phenomenon, because it is enabled by the ease of communication that is only recently possible to create a liquid labor market, something that should be applauded.
The obvious Duck test is staring you in the face, that here is a new type of thing that only half looks like a duck, and should be treated as such, which is what rideshare companies have been arguing for forever, including at the legislative level. Instead of forcing a non-duck into a duck because of stupidity, lack of imagination, or pure emotional hatred for certain companies, the level-headed thing to do is to look at how such a new type of market really should work for the benefit of all participants. The race-to-the-bottom thing that drivers complain about is a consequence of ideological cock-blocking by pandering politicians unable to come up with a real solution between fucked-up taxi medallions and raw market forces. AB5's madness lies in pretending it's the 1950's and takes the cake in making it worse not just for gig companies but a shit load of other industries as collateral damage.
Uber and lyft have to dictate the price the end user pays. Nobody would use the service if they had to collect bids from a bunch of drivers each time they wanted to go somewhere. As a result they wouldn’t have an effective pool of customers needed to attract drivers.
I agree with others. These “gig economy” jobs are a different classification of worker that doesn’t currently exist. Dunno what the details should be but they aren’t quite contractors and they aren’t quite employees.
California could have taken the lead and helped define this new classification...
Whether they need to do it for their business to work isn't that relevant, they are still doing those things.
In the UK we have two classifications that are different from self employed (contractors). We have worker and employee. They're similar but differ in the level of control the employer has and the responsibilities of the employer.
The case in the UK decided that the drivers were workers but not employees.
Making it illegal is the the whole point of AB5. Contractor status was once for a very specific kind of worker: independent professionals who were basically solo businesses. It has turned into a giant loophole, where worker have the downsides of employment along with the downsides of being a contractor. AB5 aims to return to the status quo, where if you want to hire a bunch of employees, you really have to treat them like employees.
They were arguably employees before (and outside of CA) and unarguably employees under AB5. That’s why Uber is making this ridiculous claim that it’s not a transportation company: otherwise, its drivers are employees.
If the law says they're employees, they're employees until the law changes. In the same vein as my earlier post, the fact that a corporation wants to "employ" (in the basic dictionary sense) workers under certain arbitrary terms doesn't make said arbitrary terms legal, nor does it create a mandate to make them legal.
> These “gig economy” jobs are a different classification of worker that doesn’t currently exist.
This isn't necessarily wrong, but if you want to make the claim, you'll have to say what that new classification is.
Current employment law has a well-evolved set of protections that help prevent employees getting too badly screwed. Traditional contractor relationships, on the other hand, use the power of the market (that is, the contractor ability to either easily switch clients or maintain multiple clients) to keep things fair.
If there's something in between, it can't be the status quo (we treat you like employees when it's convenient but call you contractors so we can screw you over). And it also can't be some midpoint, like an employee-lite, where Uber, etc, just exploit people 50% less than now but 50% more than they could with real employees.
> Traditional contractor relationships, on the other hand, use the power of the market (that is, the contractor ability to either easily switch clients or maintain multiple clients) to keep things fair.
There's a lot fewer clients to choose from but doesn't driving for Uber and Lyft simultaneously satisfy this to some extent?
Similarly, Ebay's service is less dependent on how well you provide your commerce services, it pretty much lets the market determine your prospects on its platform. On the other hand, Uber is highly reliant on the conduct of its drivers and the service the provide.