Monday, August 17, 2020

[NJFAC] Uber admits underpaying drivers by 30% to 120%!

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 By Frank Stricker
            Well, the company doesn't quite put it that way, but that is how much more Uber claims riders would have to pay for a ride if Uber is forced to treat its de facto employees as employees rather than as independent contractors. Uber and Lyft are fighting tooth and nail against AB 5, a California law that went into effect on January 1, 2020. The law aimed to force companies like Uber to modify their robber-baron business model and allow their workers the rights and benefits other employees have.
            The Uber business model is frosted in rhetoric about driver flexibility, modern technology, and neighborliness: the worker chooses when to work, the allocation of rides is facilitated by an app, and the whole process is sometimes called ride-sharing. ("You were driving downtown anyway--why not share a little and get paid for adding a rider?")
            But the reality of the Uber business model is that pay is low and most of the risks of the job and of life itself are loaded onto the workers. The company contributes nothing to Social Security, Medicare, workers compensation, tax shelters, health insurance, or state unemployment insurance funds. The last fact is why, early in the covid plague, the federal government--ultimately, we the tax payers-- had to pay the whole bill for giving unemployment benefits to independent contractors, aka gig workers.
            Also, independent contractors are not normally covered by overtime and minimum wage laws. Their real average pay, after subtracting the cost to the worker of car insurance, gas, maintenance, and other things, is sometimes very low--far below legislated minimums in states like California.
            While there is a real convenience factor for many people who drive for Uber, Lyft, and similar companies, drivers are generally subsidizing the price of a ride so that it is less than it ought to be, and they are subsidizing the companies who underpay the people who are, in key respects, their employees. Yes, some drivers are OK with part-time low-pay work. Others have organized to demand a better deal. Most drivers don't drive full-time or year-round and quite a few start driving after they've had a significant loss of income, due to unemployment, family emergencies, or something else. That is, they are desperate. In general Uber-type jobs are not the kind you'd like to have if you want to build a family and buy a home.
            California's AB 5 requires that companies like Uber and Lyft treat their employees like employees. Uber and Lyft refused to obey the law. They sued the government. They lost the case and were ordered to classify their California drivers as employees. The companies are appealing. Some companies are talking about creating a third way that includes aspects of the employer-employee relationship. Uber's chief, Dara Khosrowshahi, who, in 2019, received a $45 million-dollar pay package that included $2 million just for work-related expenses, has proposed a pool of cash that workers could use for health insurance, leaves, and other things. New York Times writer Noam Scheiber notes that if companies go too far in that direction, they will look more like employers of employees than mere facilitators of the work of independent contractors.
            Some third-way suggestions are on the California ballot this fall as Proposition 22. Uber, Lyft, Doordash and other companies have raised over $100,000,000 to support Prop 22. The proposition exempts transportation company drivers from the regulations in AB 5 and it makes promises about minimum wages and health benefits. These promises may be iffy in a number of ways, including how many hours drivers must drive to qualify and whether wait time will count as work time. And in general, new benefits will have to be small. Otherwise, the Uber model may not endure.
 
Stricker is a board member of the National Jobs for All Network, Emeritus Professor of History, CSUDH, and author of American Unemployment, Past, Present, and Future (2020).
 
 

--
This list is only for announcements, so you may not post. To contact the list manager, write to njfac [at] njfac.org
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "goodjobs" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to goodjobsforall+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goodjobsforall/491323783.2756097.1597695336705%40mail.yahoo.com.

Friday, August 14, 2020

[NJFAC] TODAY FRIDAY, 8/14 @ 1:00 PM >> "The Economics of the COVID-19 Public Health and Economic Crisis"


Subject: FRIDAY, 8/14 @ 1:00 PM >>  "The Economics of the COVID-19 Public Health and Economic Crisis"

National Jobs for All Network
_______________________________________________________________________
P.O. Box 96, Lynbrook, NY 11563 · njfan@njfac.org · www.njfac.org 
Special Announcement, August 2020
 

please share widely---
 
The Economics of the COVID-19 Public Health and Economic Crisis 
When: Friday, Aug 14, 2020, 1:00 PM - 2:30 PM Eastern Time
 
Register in advance for this webinar:
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar. 

Panelists will discuss:
  • Why reopening the economy now is economically counterproductive;
     
  • Why we CAN afford to float the economy and meet people's needs until it is safe to reopen;
     
  • Why the best way to respond to the COVID-19 public health and economic crisis is to enact legislation that meets current needs while simultaneously laying the foundation for a permanent restructuring of public policy in the United States to build a just, egalitarian and anti-racist society committed to the realization of everyone's civil, political, economic, social and cultural human rights everywhere in the world.

Speakers:
  • Walter Tsou, former Commissioner of the Philadelphia Department of Health and past President of the American Public Health Association.
  • Philip Harvey, Professor of Law and Economics, Rutgers Law School, and author of Securing the Right to Employment: Social Welfare Policy and the Unemployed in the United States.
  • William Darity, Samuel DuBois Cook Distinguished Professor of Public Policy, Professor of African and African American Studies, and Professor of Economics, Duke University, and coauthor, with Kirsten Mullen of From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century.
  • Radhika Balakrishnan, Professor of Women's and Gender Studies, Rutgers University, Faculty Director of the Rutgers Center for Women's Global Leadership, and co-author with James Heintz and Diane Elson of Rethinking Economic Policy for Social Justice: The Radical Potential of Human Rights.
  • Joel Segal, Co-Founder and Board Member, Progressive Democrats of America; Co-Convenor, US National COVID-19 Emergency Response Group; and former Staffer to Rep. John Conyers with responsibility for overseeing H.R. 676, Rep. Conyers's Medicare for All Act, and H.R. 1000, Mr. Conyers's "Humphrey-Hawkins 21st Century Full Employment and Training Act," also known as the "Jobs for All Act."
  •  Alan Minsky, Executive Director, Progressive Democrats of America; long-time progressive activist and journalist.
Contact:
--
Dr. Paul Zeitz, Executive Director, Build A Movement 2020 
mobile: +1-202-365-6786 | email: drpaulzeitz@gmail.com
 

Get Involved!!


 Join/Donate!      Subscribe!

The National Jobs for All Network is dedicated to the propositions that meaningful employment is a precondition for a fulfilling life, and that every person capable of working should have the right to a job.

NJFAN relies on your support. If you find our material useful, please make a tax-deductible donation. We are all volunteers, except for a part-time coordinator. 

National Jobs for All Network
P.O. Box 96
Lynbrook, NY 11563
203-856-3877
Web: www.njfac.org
Email: njfan@njfac.org 
 
 
Twitter
Facebook
Website
 
 
Copyright © 2020 National Jobs for All Network, All rights reserved.
You are receiving this email because you have signed up to get occasional updates and information from the National Jobs for All Coalition.

Our mailing address is:
National Jobs for All Network
PO Box 96
Lynbrook, NY 11563


Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.

Email Marketing Powered by Mailchimp
 

Virus-free. www.avg.com


--
June Zaccone
National Jobs for All Coalition
http://www.njfac.org

--
This list is only for announcements, so you may not post. To contact the list manager, write to njfac [at] njfac.org
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "goodjobs" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to goodjobsforall+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goodjobsforall/CAPV%3DhmC1jeFKitDWwSomnm2HGu%3DFzo9_PoR%2Bhx9X8T182WW%2Beg%40mail.gmail.com.

Sunday, August 2, 2020

[NJFAC] Automatic stabilizers could help workers and economy in a crisis

The Extremely Boring Idea That Could Save the Economy They're called automatic stabilizers Jordan Weissman, Slate, July 31, 2020

....

The United States has a number of automatic stabilizers in action already, though we don't always think of them as such. Safety-net programs like food stamps and unemployment insurance, for instance, fit the bill. They are designed primarily to help Americans in times of need, but as a result they also add ballast to the wider economy at moments of crisis by boosting household spending power and aggregate demand.

But Recession Ready's contributors wanted to take the concept much further. The government could redesign unemployment benefits and food stamps to increase in value when unemployment spikes. Washington could send households cash, deliver more aid to states, and increase infrastructure spending during periods of weakness—all automatically. In many ways, the book reflected the lessons and scars of the Obama era, when the White House spent years battling recalcitrant Republicans on Capitol Hill for more fiscal stimulus while the economy languished. And rather than praying for responsible leaders in Congress to save the day through white-knuckle, down-to-the-wire negotiations, it argued, you could set up the better part of a recession-fighting machine ahead of time, allowing it to run on autopilot whenever the need arose.

....
Programs also tend to work better if they are in advance and tested, instead of thrown together on the fly while the world is burning. Had Congress decided ahead of time that it wanted to let freelancers get unemployment benefits, or try to pay people their full wages after losing a job, or send out checks to nearly every American at a moment's notice the next time the economy crumbled, we might have had good systems in place to do them. Instead, we've run into all manner of administrative and logistical headaches, from laid off workers waiting months for their benefits to the Treasury sending out prepaid debit cards that people threw away because they looked like junk mail.....

--
June Zaccone
National Jobs for All Coalition
http://www.njfac.org

--
This list is only for announcements, so you may not post. To contact the list manager, write to njfac [at] njfac.org
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "goodjobs" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to goodjobsforall+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goodjobsforall/CAPV%3DhmCcW6hQL%3DBuEGU3RtUyyTPqpKY%3DcM%3DSKQac7MGKViE%3Dyg%40mail.gmail.com.