And Gett is dependent on the taxi cartel, its excessive price, the black market of taxi medallions, etc. It's a nonsensical market and we're overdue a shared transport option. Good luck getting around on Saturday.
All because it's illegal to take money to transport someone from A to B without an exorbitant license for no specific reason.
That comes from a privileged point of view. People with little skills will be coerced to give up these things and the cost will be shifted on other people.
Driving at 100km/h in a residential area harms others with a high probability. Can you say that of someone working the way they want to with transactions consented between two adults?
that is not the point I was making, the point is that it's stating an opinion that a regulation is wrong versus an argument that the regulation is being infringed.
Not harming others is a condition you just added to the argument, and it is also a condition that Uber does not meet in the eyes of Dutch law. By not paying taxes on the wages of their drivers, Uber shifts the costs for the healthcare, pensions and general public services (dikes, fire services, etc etc) of those drivers onto the rest of society, thereby harming all those companies and citizens that do pay their taxes as required.
> … thereby harming all those companies and citizens that do pay their taxes as required.
The only one harming them is the tax collector. Taxes are the harm here; Uber is providing a means for some to avoid being harmed. It's just too bad that they can't help everyone else the same way.
I don't know where you are from, but in the Netherlands our taxes actually pay for useful stuff. Corruption is low and public infrastructure is well maintained. Sure, it would have been even better if some things had been avoided (the F-35 springs to mind) but overall taxes bring more good than harm to the citizens here.
Taking what belongs to someone else and choosing how it will be used without the owner's consent is the purest essence of theft. It makes no difference whatsoever that—according to your own values and preferences, not theirs—you think the benefit outweighs the cost. You don't get to make that choice for them. Regardless of how the money is used the very fact that their choice was taken away is harmful in itself, and only by returning what was stolen—plus compensation for lost time and opportunities—can the victim be made whole.
Then it's stopping you from working for a company that forces you to take clients at a given price without an employment contract and all its implications. What if that's what I want? I think some Uber drivers appreciate the work mobility.
I know that there are circles in which it is argued freedom means being allowed to sell yourself into slavery, but you'd hope the vast majority of us have come to understand the danger of that interpretation of freedom.
You want to be forced to take clients you don't want. You want someone else to decide a price you might not want. You want to be unable to get employment benefits you might want.
I mean, that's some niche requirements there, I would categorise it as serfdom.
I am onboard in principle - I want try all the psychedelics, fly a plane without a licence and experiment with explosives for education purposes, but as R v Copeland shows, the law can't cater to everyone - tradeoffs have to be made.
What you want is to work with a service that customers will choose to rely on. This implies that sometimes—to get the benefit of being "an Uber driver" and not just some random guy with a car taking people for rides—you need to accept clients you wouldn't have chosen on your own, at standard prices set by someone else. It's not that you wouldn't prefer to pick and choose your clients or set your own prices, but if you insisted on doing things your own way all the time you wouldn't have nearly as many clients since they couldn't trust your service and your revenues would be much lower. Uber sets standards for drivers, which means clients can expect a certain quality of service, without which they would be much less inclined to accept rides, even from the same drivers.
You can certainly take that approach if you want, though. As an independent driver you own all the capital equipment in this business (your car) and you can stop working for Uber at any point without penalty and start offering rides under your own brand, on your own terms. However, you'll find that you still need to meet certain standards as to price and reliability if you want people to choose you over calling an Uber. Working for yourself doesn't mean you get to do whatever you feel like all the time without any commitments.
I know some software consultants that have one major client but appreciate the work mobility and forcing them to get into a full employment contract would restrict their opportunities and payment. Forget definitions, why should we outlaw this?
For exactly the reason, the parent post said, it makes all worker protection and benefits laws meaningless, and most people think these laws are a good thing.
If this was possible then every company would say:
"We don't want to have to bother to pay your vacation days, sick leave(for as long as you are sick), maternity/paternity leave(up to 12 months in most European countries), or to have to give you a permanent contract with limited termination grounds, so 'choose' to become Freelancer that works 40 hours a week for us or we will fire you".
It's true there are some people who like to work as you describe, I know some myself, but experienced software developers are a outlier case who are in an extremely fortunate position, not something the law should be optimised for at the expense of the majority.
All those things should actually be under the purview of the government, rather than businesses.
But that would increase government expenses because many more people would become eligible for the benefits. Using businesses as a proxy lets society implicitly restrict the quantity and quality of those benefits to certain people.
>All those things should actually be under the purview of the government, rather than businesses.
you know the reason these things are payed for by bussiness right?
most social welfare programs are created after world war 2, because the alternative was the workers simply seizing the wealth of their former bosses by force.
OP seems to greatly understimate how close most countries in europe came to a mass revolt of civil war after world war 1 and world war 2. (1848 revolutions are also an important time in history for civil rights).
the dutch for instance, have a constitution thanks to the threat of revolution in 1848. The alternative was the threat of revolution and the violent end of the monarchy.
The same is basically true for labour rights. In most european countries these got implemented after world war 1 and during the great depression, a time in which a lot of people got destitute and had acces to weaponry.(World war 1 also left a massive social trauma in many nations, leading to revolutions because of its effects on society).
"All those things should actually be under the purview of the government, rather than businesses."
How does this make sence - are we meant to move you on government payroll for the 1 week you have the flu and can't work? Should the government pay for your annual leave?
Even with a real UBI system, having random fluctuations in earnings when you get a cold or break a leg is not reasonable.
Additionally, this idea will incentivise employers to destroy human capital - like an employer could drive their employees to burnout and then discard them because they bear no consequences.
This is already happening to a large extent thanks to gig economy- Uk employers have cut their investments in staff training by 2.4 billion since 2011.
> Even with a real UBI system, having random fluctuations in earnings when you get a cold or break a leg is not reasonable.
You should have enough savings set aside that going without a paycheck for at least a week or two won't put you in dire straits—the official recommendation is actually several months. Anyone who is self-employed is already managing their own (unpaid) vacation time and medical leave. It is the expectation that income is guaranteed even when you aren't working—that you can safely live paycheck-to-paycheck without planning for the future—which is unreasonable.
UBI doesn't really count as "planning for the future" unless it's somehow contractually guaranteed for life and not subject to being curtailed as a result of shifting politics. A social program instituted with the passing of a bill can be limited or revoked in the same way at any time. If the goal is to ensure a predictable income stream then a fully-funded, non-revocable trust or annuity for the benefit of a specific person is a much more stable option.
> … like an employer could drive their employees to burnout and then discard them because they bear no consequences.
Just assume that an employer will take whatever an employee is willing to give regardless. It's the employees' responsibility to push back and manage their own work-life balance. It would be unreasonable (as in: an obvious conflict-of-interest) to expect employers to prioritize employees' welfare over their own.
"Just assume that an employer will take whatever an employee is willing to give regardless. It's the employees' responsibility to push back and manage their own work-life balance."
We have tried 'maximum capitalism' experiment in the 1800's: it gave us children in coal mines working 10 hours a day and dying of blacklung. It gave us people in workhouses losing their hands because the steam press malfunctioned and then starving to death because they have no way to support themselves.
Do you want goid old days back, or do you have good reason to believe it will be different this time?
You are describing corporatism, not capitalism. It is not "maximum capitalism" to always side with the employer in any dispute, ignoring the natural rights of the employee. If the employer causes harm to an employee, deliberately or through negligence, then the employer must make the victim whole. Non-aggression and strict liability for any harm done to others are integral aspects of a capitalist society. Employees have their own responsibilities, of course. If they knowingly take risks in pursuit of better pay then they ought to bear the consequences—the employer is not always at fault. This is a natural consequence of having the freedom to make your own choices.
Most places they don't prevent what you describe. There are usually just some extra hoops to jump through and/or some tax implications.
E.g. I'm in the UK. I've been a contractor with multiple contracts as well as with a single employer both in situations where they are obviously acting as an employer, and in situations where they were genuinely not.
Here there's specific legislation to handle this now - "IR35", which ensures that if your contract is equivalent to employment you'll be taxed accordingly, with an "umbrella company" acting as an employer on behalf of the company that you're contracting with if that is the case to prevent there from being a tax advantage from pretending to be freelance if you're in effect an employee. It doesn't stop you from doing it - it just takes away the tax advantage and creates some bureaucratic hurdles.
But it's easy to avoid as long as you're not trying to avoid taxes, by setting terms that ensures it doesn't match the criteria. Employers are often keen to do this, and it gives you extra negotiating power.
E.g. when I was doing this, key points involved the fact I had a small marketing budget to bring in additional work, I didn't usually work out of their office, I controlled my own hours, I determined how to carry out the work, I negotiated my day rate, the contract had a defined end-date (we could renew, but there are pitfalls there), and so on. Another strong sign you're genuinely not an employee is a right to substitution (e.g. if you can provide someone else to do the work, when you're not available and that right is genuine). UK tax authorities (HMRC) has a checklist as to what they consider "deemed employment" and or that falls under IR35 (it's not an absolute set of criteria, but basically the more you look like a business, the more likely you are to be considered one).
So for high earners like software consultants with an actual reasonable power balance vs. the other side, this is rarely a problem. It cost me a tiny proportion of my revenues to make sure that I met more than enough criteria to be able to do as I pleased.
But most of the people these regulations are there for are in a substantially weaker position. If you're a low enough earner to not be in a position to work around this, then you're not likely to have the power to genuinely negotiate either.
Who is "we" in this situation? For this specific case, it seems different countries have different opinions about what is the right tradeoff between allowing freelancers with leverage to enjoy their situation, and protecting workers with less bargaining power from being locked out of worker protection systems.
It's unavoidable, since different countries have different worker protection systems. For instance, some of these countries have to pick up the tab when employers cheat their way out of paying their dues.
No. The 'tax loopholes' are simply shifting the responsibility of paying those taxes from the employer to the employee, which when the company is doing well and the relationship is otherwise balanced is a net neutral. But once the larger picture is taken into account things like health benefits, continuing to be paid when temporarily unemployed (which for a gig worker is several times per hour) and so on become externalized to society when really they should be the problem of the employer.
The current situation allows Uber to play its employees against the state (as they're very transparently trying to do in the referenced article with their remark that their employees (because that what they are) would prefer to be self employed, which is nonsense only when compared with the situation where Uber would not employ them at all. The vast bulk of the employees really would like steady employment.
So the tax dodge should stop but not through fixing the tax loophoes, but simply by recognizing that which is already the fact on the ground: that these people are employees in all but name. Note that this is Europe where - to many American companies' surprise and detriment - it is not only the letter of the law that matters but also the intent of the law, in this case the intent of labor law here is to ensure our social contract continues to function. Hacking your way around that like you can do in the United States - where it is the letter of the law that matters far more than the intent - is going to be met with significant pushback from the courts.
Why aren't these payments taken from the employee then? In my country retirement and social security appear right in my paycheck. Why isn't it the same for freelancers (when they declare taxes)? If their wage is too low as you claim, this isn't something that will change when they become employees, so this solves nothing. If this is about a minimum wage, then the real solution is forcing freelancers to work a minimum of monthly hours, which treats the root problem.
This assumes the meaning of freelancers is being able to join and leave an employer when you want, and not being able to fix your own prices and refuse gigs like others are saying. I think you should be able to open a freelance provider with restrictions, as Uber is doing. I see no reason to outlaw that.
> This assumes the meaning of freelancers is being able to join and leave an employer when you want, and not being able to fix your own prices and refuse gigs like others are saying.
You see it that way, but the Dutch law doesn't. If the freelancer has no real choice and cannot dictate his/her own terms they are not a freelancer but an employee without the benefits of an employee. Social programs should be displayed these days on your paycheck if you are an employee. Not every (administration) company is doing it properly though.
Forcing freelancers to work more hours for less than a sustainable minimum pay solves nothing as the minimum wage is calculated on a full workweek.
I'm sure Uber is allowed to offer freelance work, but not with the current way of doing business. As soon as they let the freelancer dictate the pay (or at least properly negotiate) it looks they will be fine.
Not sure what country you are, but most also have the Employer pay on top of that too.
So you might pay a 10% social security tax, and the employer might be paying an additional 15% that doesn't appear on your payslip.
That's what Amazon, etc. are talking about when they say they pay a load of employment taxes.
That's also why a lot of countries are eying the gig economy with skepticism, it's actually often just a massive tax dodge for the company to not pay employment taxes.
I never understood why this distinction is made and why it’s not just obfuscation. The real numbers are the cost of an employee to the employer and the amount the employee gets, the difference is what the state took as a tax, and the way that cut is divided to different state budget chapters is inconsequential to both the employee and the employer
<In my country retirement and social security appear right in my paycheck
What country is that? US, the only country that its politicians actively lobbies against universal healthcare, healthcare that is successfully implemented in every! f*ing! other! Western country?!! (and quite a few other countries that are not Western, such as my full of corruption Eastern Europe one)
Every country that funds social programs with an income tax has mandatory employee contributions, differing only in the visibility of the cost to the employee (up-front taxes vs. a line-item in the pay stub vs. a "employer portion" which isn't reported to the employee but directly impacts the employee's wages).
I work at AWS. The service teams do own and write their CloudFormation providers, although if you've written a custom provider you'd see it is somewhat clunky, so it's sometimes considered more of an operational burden, and you can tell.
We dogfood both the SDK and CloudFormation internally, we just deal with its numerous gripes much the same way you would externally (although we can also contact service teams directly if needed).
Million dollar question would be if all the “feature requests” that AWS support opens when they don’t know what else to do actually go someplace or if they just get swept aside every few days. I’ve always been under the impression they receive very little or no attention. Even bugs where I have included a reproducible test case that results in an internal error, they just keep trying to close the ticket every few days until you go on vacation or e-mail burps and you miss the notice.
I work for AWS. We have an internal tracking system containing customer feature requests, and our service teams review them biweekly and they get prioritized by product management. “Working backwards from the customer” is gospel here.
That is cool to know! For several years I have been tell the support people not to bother with feature requests because I didn’t think they went anyplace, maybe I’ll let them open them going forward.
