Fuck Lyft and Uber. Mass transit FTW.
this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2024
5 points (100.0% liked)
Work Reform
8979 readers
282 users here now
A place to discuss positive changes that can make work more equitable, and to vent about current practices. We are NOT against work; we just want the fruits of our labor to be recognized better.
Our Philosophies:
- All workers must be paid a living wage for their labor.
- Income inequality is the main cause of lower living standards.
- Workers must join together and fight back for what is rightfully theirs.
- We must not be divided and conquered. Workers gain the most when they focus on unifying issues.
Our Goals
- Higher wages for underpaid workers.
- Better worker representation, including but not limited to unions.
- Better and fewer working hours.
- Stimulating a massive wave of worker organizing in the United States and beyond.
- Organizing and supporting political causes and campaigns that put workers first.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
I find it concerning that they both decide to leave due to price increases. Seems like if lyft stayed when Uber left they could easily make more being the only player. How does stuff like this not scream collusion.
It's more that all of these rideshare companies rely solely on undercutting every other cab company in the area - by not paying a living wage and forcing drivers to use their own vehicles (thus paying for their own gas and maintenance), they avoid a lot of operating expenses. They manage to do this by billing themselves as tech companies instead of any sort of transport company, and cities have been forced to go along with it purely out of convenience and mass adoption.
Democratic Gov Tim Walz, who vetoed a bill last year that would have boosted pay for Uber and Lyft drivers, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he was concerned because so many depend on those services, including disabled people.
I get the sentiment, but relying on private for-profit companies to provide basic transportation services in a city is stupid. That's how Minneapolis got in this situation.
If a business cannot operate while paying a livable wage, it does not need to exist. That doesn't mean minimum wage, that means a liveable wage.
Any business that's not even willing to do the minimum... Fuck 'em.
Well the living wage in the twin cities is roughly $23/hr while living alone with no kids, so it's still a ways off. However, I actually hope they leave. Then metro transit has good reason to greatly expand the lightrail lines
Oh good. Maybe a regional competitor can get a hold then. It's not exactly a small market.
It's also for this reason I don't think Lyft and Uber would actually leave.
They will leave.
They have left countries all together because of this.
Well In that case someone call up the IWW. Let's fire up some computers.
This is so weird. Why would they not just pay their drivers more. Add it directly to the cost of doing business. What's the issue?
It's like making a minimum wage for all fast food employees. All fast food establishments now have higher wage costs. So what? The cost of a hamburger goes up $0.50. All your competitors now have the same costs. How does this change anything for you? Versus going out of business?
Think about if only Uber left. That's a lot of extra business for Lyft. What's the big deal? Hm... maybe they have to cover the salary even if the driver doesn't accept any rides? Maybe that's the real issue. How do you guarantee drivers are busy and not just signing in and doing nothing and canceling offered rides? That still doesn't seem that hard to fix.
Their only edge over taxi companies was their ability to avoid current labor laws.
I don't know if taxi companies have upped their online game, but Uber and Lyft's huge advantage used to be that the customer could see what the ride would cost them, when their ride would arrive, and pay online. Those of us old enough can remember days when you'd worry about whether a taxi driver was going to take the scenic route, whether you'd have enough cash, whether they'd accept a credit card, whether they'd add some surcharge to credit card transactions, and then having to trust your credit card to yet another random stranger. Having to use taxis used to be a reliable source of stress when traveling; Uber utterly removed that (if you were male; I know women have additional sources of angst when getting into cars with strangers).
If Taxi companies have gotten their online shit together, where I can see the entire transaction - times and costs - in advance, then yeah, I'll agree with you. But originally, Uber and Lyft were huge game changers for customers.
Taxis have upped their app game. And a lot of people prefer taxis and drivers who actually know where they are going. Uber and Lyft started by discounting rides and paying for them with VC money. After they took enough taxi market share they had to switch to making a profit so they took it from driver pay. Their only path for making a profit is their ability to skirt labor laws. That's why they want to pull out of markets that force them to pay drivers better.
Like, in Seattle, I’m taking Lyfts and Ubers for ~$35 for a 20 minute drive. They could pay their driver $16 to cover the minimum wage for the full hour and then they still have OVER 50% of what I pay. Like, it’s such simple business economics. Why can’t these big corporations figure it out? I hope they get taken over by local services that actually pay their workers.
I don't know the economics, truly, but there are a LOT more expenses involved in running a large business like Uber on top of driver wages, such as technology service and hardware costs, programmers and central admin/customer service, rent or cost of buildings including utilities, insurance, taxes, fees, consulting and auditing, cybersecurity, legal, and probably quite a bit more I can't think of. Running a business is friggin expensive.
Definitely not defending paying workers less, just trying to explain why they still might not be in the black even in your scenario.
They shouldn't even exist in the space since they skirted regulators when setting up. It's like if the pirate bay set themselves up as a legitimate business.
Don't let the door hit you on the way out
That's great but now all the Uber and Lyft drivers in Minneapolis will have to find a different gig.
Sure, I will believe Uber and Lyft are going to leave when they actually do.
See the thing is, as titanic as these “rideshare” companies are they don’t fucking do anything but maintain a shitty app and provide some kind of legal stability.
All it takes is for one functional socialist worker cooperative to get a basic ass rideshare app off the ground and if it starts to build serious momentum even in an American city or two all of a sudden the billions and billions of dollars that rideshare companies claim they are worth starts to turn invisible like one of those parts to a time travel movie where a character has begun to turn transparent and disappear because they have been erased from the timeline.
The vast majority of the time these companies aren’t going to want to take that risk, or if they do they are idiots for doing so.
We don’t need software companies like this the way we need electronics companies, grocery stores, power companies and other modern conveniences that take massive, physical organizations of material.
Sure software isn’t trivial to do, having that amount of servers isn’t trivial to do but how much do you REALLY need a year to fund development, hosting and maintenance of a rideshare app owned by a worker collective or open sourced? 5 million a year? That barely buys the CEO of Ubers office furnishings I bet.