It all goes out the window once you have to treat people as employees j
ust because they're doing all the work for you.
A
San Francisco-based driver for smartphone-based ride-hailing service
Uber is an employee, not a contractor, according to a ruling by the
California Labor Commission.
The
ruling, filed on Tuesday in state court in San Francisco, was the
latest in a host of legal and regulatory challenges facing Uber and
other highly valued start-ups in the United States and other countries.
The commission said Uber is "involved in every aspect of the operation."
Classifying
Uber drivers as employees opens the company up to considerably higher
costs, including Social Security, workers’ compensation and unemployment
insurance. That could affect its valuation, currently above $40
billion, and the valuation of other companies that rely on large
networks of individuals to provide rides, clean houses and other
services.
Uber, of course, insists that it's merely an app. All these drivers are just using the service as independent contractors. Other than that, the company
doesn't have anything to do with them or their business.
Uber has landed in hot water before for tracking the movements of passengers
without their permission. But what about tracking its own drivers?
Obviously, the company needs to do that in order to know where drivers
are in real time so that it can supply rides. According to the Wall Street Journal, though, this past weekend in Hangzhou, Uber found another use for that GPS data: scaring drivers into staying away from a protest over its service:
In two short messages sent to Uber drivers in Hangzhou and circulated online—verified with Uber in China by The Wall Street Journal—Uber
urged its drivers not to go the scene and instructed those already
there to leave immediately. Uber said it would use GPS to identify
drivers that had refused to leave the location and cancel its contracts
with them.
The messages said Uber’s actions were designed to “maintain social order.”
Well.. okay.. sure. Somebody's got to "maintain social order."
What better use can you think of for an app, really?
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