But while the Uber apps may be wonderful, the “uber” exploitation of workers is unacceptable!
One group who won’t benefit much from Uber’s IPO: its drivers, who numbered 3.9 million at the end of last year. They are likely to see their pay worsen as the company strives to become more profitable while facing public shareholder pressure.
Recent filings suggest that the gig economy giants are hoping to get ahead of a wave of enforcement actions and new legislation that could force these companies to finally and formally classify full-time workers as employees.
Transportation experts see Uber and Lyft as the future. But rural communities still don’t use them.
Only 19 percent of Americans in rural areas use ride-hailing apps.
The so-called gig-economy is celebrated, maligned, fetishized, and qualified by analysts. Whether it is called the collaborative, platform, crowd-sourcing, or sharing-economy, the rise of peer-to-peer exchanges does raise important questions for workers. Do emerging ‘sharing-economy’ platforms such as Uber and Airbnb mark a significant shift in production and distribution systems? Are they emancipatory or exploitive?
So who will be most harmed by less public transit service? Well, everyone who breathes dirtier air or sits in clogged traffic as transit use declines will be hurt, but transit-dependent low-income communities of color will suffer most. And city leaders can’t just ask these riders to replace their usual bus routes by downloading a ride-hailing app.
The removal of a single toxic CEO, like the condemning of a single home in the wake of a chemical leak, won’t make the region livable.
The American obsession with self-reliance, which makes it more acceptable to applaud an individual for working oneself to death than to argue that an individual working her/himself to death is evidence of a flawed economic system. The contrast between the gig economy’s rhetoric (everyone is always connecting, having fun, and killing it!) and the conditions that allow it to exist (a lack of dependable employment that pays a living wage) makes this kink especially clear.
In Uber's early days, it said it wanted to be "everyone's private driver." Now the company and its main U.S. competitor, Lyft, are playing around with the idea of becoming the bus driver, too.
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