Lyft drops $27m on the table to make annoying driver lawsuit go away A federal judge has accepted a proposed $27m settlement to resolve a dispute between ride-sharing service Lyft and more than 200,000 current and former drivers in California. The drivers sued Lyft in 2013 arguing that they should be classified as employees rather than independent contractors – the same issue that has dogged …
Not a lawyer, but I didn't see anything - in this admittedly brief article - to stop the parties from accepting the settlement and a different group initiating the same kind of suit. Especially since the judge admits those issues still haven't been resolved.
I'm a bit jaundiced by all this app-taxi bashing. My dad was a private hire driver about 25 years ago - and just like all the other drivers he rented the radio from a bloke with an office, a landline and an advertising budget. AFAICR the rental was £400 a month - quite a lot back then. Account work was paid via the office with a deduction for "admin" the rest of the work was, in those days, cash only.
Today, most private hire drivers in the UK work as self-employed - many still rent radios from the minicab firm although apps are being rolled out. Today, most black cab drivers are self-employed and pay a fee to the cab companies, many rent cabs from other self-employed drivers. Account work is paid via the office still with a deduction for "admin" and the rest of the money is still largely cash only although the rise of 4G connected terminals mean a lot of the drivers can now take cards.
All the app-taxi firms have done is automated the middle-man process and payment collection and remittance with new tech. But that's all they've done - it really isn't a revolution, just evolution as tech has evolved. I suspect all the railing against them is driven by people who see their hegemony being flushed down the toilet by the Internet or by people who never knew what the "old" business model was anyway.
When a new so-called "disruptor" comes a long and "disrupts" well, that's just business as it always has been, harsh or not and whether we like it or not. Progress? Maybe, maybe not. Are the firms involved perfect? Possibly not - but then again, who is?
"All the app-taxi firms have done is automated the middle-man process and payment collection and remittance with new tech. But that's all they've done - it really isn't a revolution, just evolution as tech has evolved."
Dunno about you, but around here, at least one private hire firm was using an app before I'd heard of Uber. Maybe they'd heard of Uber before they expanded to the UK and copied the idea. But those private hire firms use licenced drivers. Uber sort of does and doesn't. They don't seem to care. THAT is is the disruptive element. They are undercutting by breaking the law and running at a loss. That's not a "disruptive" business model. That's a predatory and anticompetitive model. Maybe in the long run we might look back and see that the business needed a shake-up, but Uber are pumping billions into a massive attempt to shove out the incumbents in many places around the world and they are doing it using illegal methods in many places.
Fair questions, but no. Bashing is mostly reserved for those app-taxi companies who are lying about it - that they are something entirely different from taxi services and thus should be exempt from regulations & taxes applicable to taxi companies.
See for example one recent discussion
https://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2017/03/03/uber_app_greyball/
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