Uber, Lyft drivers in Massachusetts form first US ride-share union
reuters.com33 points by onemoresoop 43 minutes ago
33 points by onemoresoop 43 minutes ago
Good for them. These companies appear exploitative and rent-seeking far beyond what the infrastructure they provide suggests is reasonable.
If you're interested, next time you take a car, ask the driver what their end is - you may be surprised how little of the fare they actually take home. That share will only decrease unless they all get on one side of a table.
Given that Uber isn't their W-2 employer, what happens if they just ignores them? My guess is Uber invites them to walk off the job.
The end of driving as a profession is going to hit the economy hard. Teamsters may have the organizational strength and political influence to protect themselves. But they only represent ~20% of US truck drivers and none of the other ~3 million people who drive for a living in this country.
I don't see either American labor or American government being anywhere near strong enough or capable enough to facilitate a soft landing.
Society is fragile and operates in tension, a shared delusion like a currency. If workers burn down every autonomous truck on the road, there simply is not enough law enforcement to prevent them from doing so. There are only 1 million US soliders on US soil, there are 100 million workers. If they can't solve cargo theft incurring ~$35B/year in losses, how would they solve this? There are millions of trucks on US roads at any one time.
> I don't see either American labor or American government being anywhere near strong enough or capable enough to facilitate a soft landing.
Certainly not yet, but a resolution will present itself. The quality of which is to be determined of course.
(not advocating either way, simply enumerating the risk model)
This is of course a dangerous suggestion, but also, never in the history of the world has the destruction of a technology that was replacing workers ever turned out well for the workers. At best it briefly delayed adoption.
When has it worked out for workers? Genuine question. If its not offshoring manufacturing (China before, South East Asia today) and services (India primarily), its importing labor to depress wages and keep workers in peril (there are approximately 720,000 to 750,000 foreign-born truck drivers in the United States, representing about 18% to 20% of the total commercial driving workforce).