No one will win the court battle over ride-sharing

But those who rely on service will ultimately be the losers

An Ontario judge recently certified a class-action lawsuit and — hey, wait! I promise it's interesting. The lawsuit was launched in 2017 by an Uber Eats courier named David Heller who wants drivers and couriers to be recognized as employees of Uber instead of independent contractors. So what, you say? Oh, so much.

I drove part time for Uber and Lyft in 2018 and 2019 — an experience I chronicled in my book, Le livre Uber, published earlier this year. (There's also an English version, titled Ride-Hailing is a Four-Letter Word.) I learned a lot from the experience, and let me just say this: In this court battle, there will be no winners.

Yes, of course drivers deserve better working conditions. Money is, at best, OK-ish, and that's if you work crazy hours including party nights, which I refused to do. You don't get sick leave or paid vacations. You get paid for the rides you accomplish while you're at work, from which you need to deduct your expenses including phone, gas and car maintenance, and that's that.

You do enjoy a certain amount of independence: you drive whenever you want, wearing whatever comfy clothes you want, drinking whatever brand of insipid coffee you want. But in a critical sense you are not your own boss because whether or not you make anything depends entirely on getting rides, and you do not control any of that process. If nobody needs a car while you're out, you get nothing. If there are too many other drivers out at the same time and business is slow, you don't get very much. The companies control the app and the algorithm and dispatch calls your way — or not — to maximize their profits, not yours.

The companies control the app and the algorithm and dispatch calls your way — or not — to maximize their profits, not yours.

I have often sat idle for long periods, earning nothing. Yet I was at work. I tried to notice patterns of busy-ness so I could be out there when my odds were better, but that never worked. As far as I could tell, the algorithm was operated by a drunk chicken randomly pushing buttons — just not mine very often.

The issue we don't talk about is that Uber and Lyft don't really sell transportation services. They sell convenience to potential riders. It's great when you need to get somewhere quick at a moment's notice.

A few taps on your phone and within minutes a car is there to pick you up. But that model only works when there is much more offer (drivers) than demand (potential riders). If riders had to wait a long time, they would stop using that app.

Companies aggressively recruit drivers and tempt them with special offers to get out there as much as possible. Again, this maximizes their profits, at the expense of drivers' earnings. The price of offering cheap convenience to riders is paid for by drivers sitting in their cars waiting.

Treating drivers better — for instance by paying them while they wait and offering them paid vacation and sick leave — would result in a sharp increase in prices for potential riders. It might even kill the entire business outright. And that in turn would punish the people in economically vulnerable situations who rely on that service. That was one of the lessons I learned doing this job: that a huge part of the clientele are people who work in low-paying jobs at odd hours in areas badly served (if at all) by public transit. If, instead of spending $20 a day on Uber for transportation they're suddenly looking at $35, that's a much bigger chunk of their paycheque devoted to just getting themselves to work and back again.

No matter which side wins that court battle between Uber and its drivers, it's those people who will lose the most. A problem we would not have if we invested adequately in public transit for everyone, not just office workers downtown on day shifts. But that's the subject of another book.