Uber makes us wonder what road we’re on
Similar to other industries, the ‘freelancer’ approach degrades employment standards
There are a lot of reasons to dislike Uber, as a company: the so-called “ride-sharing service” (read: unlicensed taxi company) heralded as the lead horseman of the Sharing Econopocalypse has a long history of corporate bad behaviour, extending to reported sexism and misogyny displayed by its executives, a well-documented disregard for government taxing and regulating authority, and treatment of its employees — who it insists are independent contractors — that sees its workers subject to arbitrary wage cuts and snap firings, among other crappy conditions. Among the brave new capitalists of Silicon Valley libertarian techno-utopianism, Uber is not alone in any of these traits, but as its name appropriately indicates, it is the biggest, brashest, and most all-encompassing example of the type.
But it is useful, in thinking about the public policy issues Uber raises, to separate our approach to the company’s sinfulness as a corporate citizen from the transportation riddles its offerings are created to solve. Its basic services prompted a much-needed (and stillongoing) rethinking of the value of micromanaging and protecting a taxi cartel — and a re-examination of how that cartel has treated its existing workers as well as its customers. And as several reactions made clear this week, the launch of its UberHop service in Toronto could have a similar effect on our thinking about public transit service. UberHop’s launch points to a likely failure of our existing transit system on one hand, and a possibly unexploited opportunity for our transportation network on the other. In my next two columns, I’ll explore that particular failure and particular opportunity in more detail.
But if we want to further examine that baby and see if it’s something we can grow to love, let’s deal first with the corporate bathwater we’d like to throw out. The part we’d least like to soak in much longer concerns what Uber and companies like it mean for the labour market: the so-called “sharing economy” they are said to be bringing around that, in fact, involves no visible sharing. More distressingly, it involves no visible jobs.
Instead of hiring people and providing them with an hourly or annual salary, a schedule, a benefits package, the tools to do their jobs, and the kind of protection laws for severance and holiday pay provide, for instance, Uber says its workers are independent contractors. They sign up and can work at non-negotiable piecework rates on non-negotiable terms, pay all their own expenses, and be subject to shifts where they earn less than minimum wage or immediate (and possibly unexplained) dismissal at any time. The way you or I deal with the shop where we buy coffee — as just another place we may make a purchase on our own terms and at our own dis- cretion — is the way a company like Uber thinks of the people who provide its service.
This is a problem much bigger than one transportation company. The same approach to freelance contract work has taken over much of the journalism world, for instance, and has colonized many other creative or artsy professions such as design and photography. The Star’s Sara Mojtehedzadeh has written recently about the toxicity of this style of employment in the office-cleaning business. The list could go on.
This presents a problem: because independent freelance work is one thing when we’re talking about retired executives taking on a few consulting gigs, and something else entirely when it becomes standard for blue-collar and service workers who have little marketplace leverage.
Needless to say, it seems like the solution to this problem is unlikely to come in the form of a municipal licensing bylaw, even if Uber’s particularly confrontational approach and market success means that is the strange forum where we’re currently having the debate. At some point, and one hopes some point soon, it’s going to need to be addressed provincially or federally. And it seems to me we can either deal with it through labour laws, with a radical overhaul on both regulations about freelance work and how they are enforced, redefining who is considered an “employee” and how they are treated, or we can deal with it through rethinking the social safety net in ways that support those who work full-time but never have the conventional benefits that come with a long term job. Or we could do both of those things, and maybe should. But we can’t do neither.
Uber presents interesting innovations, and opportunities, it’s true. But it also presents problems, and we need to deal with them directly.
NEXT COLUMN: A King-sized failure downtown that UberHop points out. Edward Keenan writes on city issues ekeenan@thestar.ca. Follow: @thekeenanwire