Uber says drivers don’t want to be employees.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/california-judge-ruled-uber-lyft-204947364.html

“”Drivers do not want to be employees, full stop. We’ll immediately appeal this ruling and continue to fight for their independence. Ultimately, we believe this issue will be decided by California voters and that they will side with drivers,” the spokesperson said.””

—They’re half-right on this issue. Drivers actually do NOT want to be employees, that is true, but Uber and Lyft keep lowering the pay, increasing their prices for passengers and food delivery to customers and restaurants, and they’re pricing drivers out of it. For example: On UberEats deliveries used to pay something like 20 cents a minute and like 75 cents a mile. Plus a pick-up and drop-off fee. They cut the pay by 60% and then told all of us that WE asked them for lower pay because figuring out how we got paid was too hard. We never asked them to do that. They always lie when they cut rates and make up an excuse that we asked them to do it. We didn’t. Who would want to make less? So like last night I got an offer to deliver from from Fairfield, CT to Darien, CT. The total trip was 14 miles. The offer to do it was $7. That’s 50 cents a mile. That’s below the IRS mileage rate so right off the bat you’re losing money. If the customer doesn’t tip you get just the $7. The trip alone is like 15 minutes, but you also have to go to the restaurant, and typically wait 10 minutes or so for the food. So you’re talking about $7 for half an hour’s worth of work if you’re lucky. Now subtract the gas and wear and tear on the car. That trip will actually pay closer to $6 depending on your car’s mpgs. Prior to the pay change it would be $1.25 to pick it up, 75 cents to drop it off, $3 for the time from starting the trip to dropping it off, and another $10.50 for the mileage. So that trip used to pay $15.50. Now don’t think that Uber cut the rates on their end when they changed the rates. That extra $8.50 we no longer get goes into their pockets. It’s why most of us won’t take most UberEats deliveries any more.

They did the same thing with driver pay for taking passengers. The rates have gone down several times. Now the average passenger trip pays I think 65 cents a mile and 20 cents a minute. That’s it. And if it’s under a certain distance it’s capped at $3. Which, again, is why drivers don’t accept a lot of trips. I take short trips, but a lot of drivers don’t. When they changed the pay they lowered the per mile rate and slightly bumped the per minute rate saying WE asked for it. We never did. We make our money on the miles traveled, not the time. It used to be around $1 a mile, and higher before that. Their excuse was drivers wanted more per minute for traffic jams. Bullshit, we’re almost never stuck in a traffic jam. Even driving people to NYC it rarely happened to me. I no longer take long trips because of it. It’s not worth it. A trip from here to NYC could take 60-90 minutes. There are tolls, traffic, different rules driving in Manhattan than other areas, and you really have to pay attention. But those trips pay on average $40. And you can’t pick up in NYC so you drive back empty. So you’re looking at 2 hours of driving for $40 less gas. Not worth it.

I’m sure you know about surge pricing. Like 3X. They changed that, too, and told us we couldn’t understand the pay, so the made it easy to understand by offering a flat fee. Passengers got no such deal. They’ll still pay 3x or whatever it is. So if it’s 3X, and the trip is $5, the surge is $15. Before we’d get around $18 for that trip. We got 100% of the surge, and our cut from the base pay. Now we’ll get maybe $5 extra, meaning that other $10 Uber pockets. So when Uber says we don’t want to be employees, they are correct about that, but we don’t want to be taken advantage of even more. You have no idea the horrors of being a driver. Aside from being one of the most dangerous jobs in America, look it up, transportation is in the top 5 most dangerous jobs, WE do not get any information about our passengers other than a name, not even a picture. There are no background checks for passengers. On top of that, people throw up in your car, they pee in your car, spill food and drinks, and even have sex in the car. Yup, had all of that happen. Multiple times. Delivery drivers and passenger drivers get robbed and aren’t supposed to avoid certain areas because it’s “discrimination” but we all do it for our own safety, we’re not allowed to have weapons of any kind, you’re not even allowed the bulletproof shield behind you.

So as long as they control every aspect of what we do, LIKE employers do, they maybe as well pay us like employees everywhere that they lose these cases.