How Minneapolis VETO Saved Uber & Lyft Drivers
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- Опубліковано 1 чер 2024
- Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey vetoed a city ordinance that would have established a minimum wage for rideshare drivers (Uber and Lyft). Here's a breakdown of the situation:
The Proposed Ordinance
Goal: Guarantee a minimum wage for rideshare drivers in Minneapolis.
Rationale: Supporters argued the ordinance was necessary to ensure fair pay, claiming that rideshare companies weren't providing drivers with a livable wage.
The Veto
Mayor Frey's Reasons:
Potential for unintended consequences: Frey cited concerns that the ordinance would force rideshare companies, particularly Lyft, to leave Minneapolis, ultimately limiting transportation options and harming consumers.
State-level approach: The mayor argued for a statewide solution rather than a city-specific ordinance to ensure consistency.
The Aftermath
The Minneapolis City Council initially overrode the veto.
Uber and Lyft did not cease operations in Minneapolis. This may be due to factors like market size and the potential for a revised, less strict ordinance.
The debate highlights: The continued struggle to establish fair regulations and working conditions within the ever-growing gig economy.
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Chapter:
00:00 Introduction
00:50 Veto Breakdown
02:00 The Backstory
05:15 Will Uber & Lyft Leave?
07:00 The Council Responds
08:05 Tristan's Opinion
08:48 Reasonable Driver Pay?
13:48 Immigrant Workers?
16:28 The Price Of Change
18:23 Is Tristan an Uber/Lyft Shill?
21:35 How Min Wage Law Affected Seattle
23:26 Actual Opinions From Drivers
29:56 Actual Data From Seattle
32:09 What They Should Try Instead
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![Minneapolis Mayor Frey on Uber/Lyft proposal [RAW]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/LVE29OJtMWw/mqdefault.jpg)
Do you agree or disagree with the bill?
I side with the proletariat.
Yes
Thank you so much for your research and sharing. Very insightful
Your analysis is FLAWED
Be more specific. Because even the council is walking back their veto.
On internet it says Uber left Austin b/c of fingerprint requirement. That was rescinded by state of Texas and Uber came back. Seems it had nothing to do with base rate increase ?
Sure but that's why I didn't use it as an example and instead used NYC and Seattle.
When I brought up Austin, it was more about judging their bluff about leaving the market.
The report’s authors, James Parrott of The New School and Michael Reich of the University of California, Berkeley, advised that policymakers consider the potential for demand to sink - and with it drivers’ earnings - if costs rise significantly.
“If the companies raise fares, passenger demand for rides might fall enough to lower the aggregate earnings of drivers,” the authors write.
That’s what happened in Seattle, according to Uber spokesperson Josh Gold. He said after Seattle set minimum pay rates, drivers’ saw their per-trip earnings increase but their overall per-hour earnings decline. That also coincided with the pandemic and growth of remote work, among other factors that could have also negatively affected demand.
There is no way that a market with 19 million rides will be left unattended. Who cares if it is gonna be Uber, Lyft or whoever.
I agree that something will fill in, but I also don't think it'll be the savior the drivers think it will be.
Because if it was the savior they thought it would be, it would have been implemented already.
@TristanThomasYT That's not true. Businesses take a lot of capital to start, primarily from investments. You can't recruit investors based on uncertainty. Uber and Lyft need to fully depart the market before alternatives can get started, because investors are not just going to throw their money against a duopoly that still exists.
Investors probably wouldn't throw their money in that market with what MULDA is asking for either.
@@FutureRideshareMillionaire Why wouldn't they? If there's a market to be filled, there is money to be made. Demand for rideshare isn't going to disappear just because Lyft and Uber isn't there to do it or because prices are high, and newer smaller businesses can way more readily operate at a loss than a large corporation can. Investors in these kinds of businesses expect to lose up front for the possibility of future gain, that's how investing works.
Either way, it's inane and disrespectful to throw people who are doing a helluva lot more than you are to earn better working conditions for drivers under the bus. Whether you agree or disagree with them, something needs to happen and they have accomplished something worth celebrating through what was probably years and thousands of hours of dedicated, thankless work. MULDA isn't the one making the decisions as to what goes in these ordinances, the city council is. If you're going to scorn anyone for these decisions it should be them. Of course, you shouldn't scorn them either, because they are objectively doing what's right for drivers.
I'd like to note that just because someone isn't a shill doesn't mean they can't be a stooge. Lack of solidarity like this is exactly what corporations like Uber and Lyft count on to divide labor and maintain bad working conditions that benefit them at the cost of you. Whether you agree with the specifics of what MULDA or the city council are fighting for or not, you should support them anyway, not preen about how their efforts are destructive or in vain from the top of a high horse that's easy to ride when you don't have skin directly in the game the way they do. Efforts like this take massive amounts of work, organizing, protests... they've invested their lives into this and you expect them to fight for a damn compromise position that just leaves the door open for future abuse, based on vague suppositions from obscured data and biased anecdotes.
Like, I don't get how you can't see that corporations only act out of their own self-interest. If the position we have is one that Uber and Lyft agree with, we aren't pushing hard enough. Uber and Lyft don't give a flying fig about drivers, they care about their bottom line and they can see the writing on the wall. Every part of their behavior is not an attempt to be reasonable or meet in the middle, it's an attempt to obfuscate and control the growing damage. In just the past few years, two states have adopted policies in an attempt to help drivers. Lyft and Uber's stand in Minneapolis is nothing but an attempt to staunch the bleeding, control the narrative, and ensure that other localities don't have an aggressive model like the one Minneapolis is trying to pass to base their own legislation on.
All Lyft and Uber are trying to do is minimize, they could easily run their business profitably in a way that makes sure drivers are taken care of. They don't want to, because it means they can't grow as aggressively or profit as much. All you're doing by pretending they have any reasonable commentary on this issue or that the people fighting for driver rights are being extreme is playing yet another one of their mindgames. Only instead of on an app that only affects you, on the stage of public opinion where everyone's livelihoods and rights are at stake.
Lyft and Uber being held accountable for their greed is good for everyone. The idea that any of us should agree with the veto is farcical, these kinds of bills need to spread so that these rideshare companies get the fear of legislation put into them. The more legislative pressure they're under and the more afraid they are that these policies will spread to more cities and more states, the more they'll take the initiative to get out ahead of legislation and treat drivers better.
Moreover, these protections are in and of themselves important. Seeing as most people do this as a side-gig, almost none of them actually do their research. There are way too many drivers on the road destroying their vehicles for a pittance doing an important and risky job, while not knowing the costs associated with their actions or how to maximize their earnings. Being able to make a living shouldn't be hidden behind a layer of artifice and manipulative mind-games, and generous passengers who care enough to tip shouldn't have to subsidize the cheapskates who don't in order for drivers to make a decent wage.
I want to point out to anyone who reads this comment to remember that it was written before the video went live.
@@FutureRideshareMillionaire Yeah definitely important!
MN can declare Rideshare a utility, and provide drivers a state commercial insurance at reasonable cost that you can buy by day, week, month, or year. This creates a legion of cash drivers and real competition for Uber & Lyft. The miracle of competition will LOWER rider cost & RAISE driver pay AND expand the market & services. The Uber Lyft monopoly is the problem and the ability of independent contractors to set the price.
@@damianweiss217 That would be awesome. The problem is that's not part of the conversation, Minneapolis is just following Washington's lead in this regard. Somewhere needs to take the initiative first.
The Mayor makes $146k /year......do you think that's fair? Most Mayors in America make $8k to 60k.
Where is the study for his pay!?
Uber/Lyft are making bank in Minneapolis, they will go nowhere.
Ups pays $45/hour! And Ups pays for the vehicle,maintenance, insurance, gas, benefits, 401k, pto, sick-time.
How can you say $1.40/hour is too much?
I say it's too much because it's going to decrease the overall earnings of drivers in that market.
Do you think that it won't even though similar measures have been made in other cities that lowered drivers overall income?
Private rides is another avenue for higher driver pay.
Currently, Commercial Insurance cost is biggest barrier to legal cash rides. And Uber and Lyft are suspected of inflating insurance cost to justify high prices and low pay and hide profits from both riders and drivers.
To stop this, the Governor MN can declare Rideshare a public utility, and provide drivers a state commercial insurance at reasonable cost, (20% markup-not 300% Uber may be charging), that you can buy by day, week, month, or year, similar to car rental insurance.
This helps the transition for new commercial insurance drivers with few private cash clients. It also helps part time commercial drivers or those that want to work a couple days a week or those who don’t have the stamina to work 12 hours a day.
The state commercial insurance idea brings commercial insurance transparency and creates a legion of cash drivers and real competition for Uber & Lyft.
State commercial insurance allows the miracle of competition to LOWER rider cost & RAISE driver pay AND expand the market & services.
The Uber Lyft monopoly is the problem and the ability of independent contractors to set the price and solicit their own clients.
The government must regulate to create competition for services, like Rideshare; not monopolies.
Tristan also consider many full time Uber Lyft drivers may be on various types of government assistance because Ubering doesn’t pay the rent or food or medical bills. Now we have a situation where Uber and Lyft are getting g subsidized by the government through social assistance payments to their drivers.
Companies like Walmart went so far as to tell their employees how to apply for government assistance, Walmart later raised pay.
Also Tristan, do not assume everyone has the same work or driving stamina as you and other hard hustlers. Stamina varies wildly.
I know because I use to train OTR tractor trailer drivers for MS Carriers/Swift/Knight transportation. I observed some drivers get tired after 2 hours of driving while others could do 10 hours of driving easily.
Some Rideshare drivers may need the upper range of stamina because they are not getting your per hour results so have to work much longer or be on government assistance.
@@FutureRideshareMillionaire You should really stop just assuming this is the case. Your only evidence that this will happen is highly unreliable and obfuscated information from a completely different market with an astronomically higher cost of living. And that's important, Minneapolis has a cost of living 1% lower than the national average, which is extremely impressive for such a large metropolitan area. Seattle, for comparison, is at +50% the national average. Taken together, this means that average Minneapolis residents can spend a greater portion of their income on things like food delivery and rideshare. Even if the data from Seattle was good and trustworthy, which it isn't, it wouldn't matter because you can't just take that data and say that the same thing will happen in Minneapolis. There are completely different factors at play here.
Tristen, I need your advice I was dissctivated from Lyft when I have had ratings of 4.8 ending in 5 rating. I took screenshots of their feedback weekly email stating nice work etc etc yet every now and then I would get an email saying I was flagged poor passengerexperience . It really is too much to text !!!! But I’ll keep going , so poor
passenger experience for safety , cancellation etc .
It makes no sense
and then the last straw from Lyft I received an email stating I was getting 3 stars yet all my ratings were higher than 4.8 and they would not even let me appeal. When I tried to speak to customer service they were so rude and just disactsvated me should I write the ceo ??? This happened 2 weeks ago and I’ve been simmering and really want to get at them and gat back in I’m pist I was making good money any advise can we talk
Honestly without a dash cam it's going to be difficult :(
Seattle also have inflation balance too
The market only bears what the market will bear.
Many drivers in NY lost their ability to be apart of that market.
As a New York driver, I can confirm that did not happen. Demand and pay have both been basically unaffected.
Facts
@@nikidelvalleonly if you have one of those 70k Medallions
@@bossbrent I don't know anything about "medallions", I live and work in Buffalo.
@@nikidelvalle I think the OP meant NYC proper where there exists a ceiling
Your logic is sound and I appreciate your thoughtful opinion. That said you are not in the twin cities area, nor have you worked full time or part time ride share in Mpls / St. Paul. You miss the boat on a certain level of context. You’re smart, but not smart enough to overcome actual experience in twin cities market. Uber & Lyft are going to pursue their self interests at the expense of the local drivers. They had plenty of time to come to the table and be reasonable. They chose other ways to deal with the independent contractor drivers. This is not a fair game that is being played by both parties. MULDA has no choice but to play ball with these billion dollar corporations: Uber & Lyft. They worked the political system and have made their case. I don’t care what you think about how unreasonable the Driver community is being, or being to eager to push things through the political process. MULDA is playing the only cards they can. They have every right to put their foot in the gas and push through political steps as fast as they can. If the shoes was on the other foot then U&L would be doing the same thing. In the end MULDA is playing the game that was created by billion dollar companies who are not transparent and have proven to be disengenuis. In the end if you want to come to Minneapolis and start driving here I might be more willing to take your opinion more seriously.
No way 😂
You stated that they can be paid actors but in fact that tittle applies to you honestly,
These scammers are not going to leave , they make a lot of money charging customers $100 while paying the drivers$19 ,who do all the work and put gas in the car , have car repair and car depreciation , we have a lot of operation cost that this is not sustainable anymore ,while the apps keep 60% 80% of the fare , honestly drivers feel like we are just working to put gas in the tank and continue driving the next day , you would say why you don’t get another job ? Well there is a psychological component here , I put it this way , Uber and Lyft did what drug dealers do , go around and give drug for free and get people hooked and then they can do whatever they want , we are ll addicted to the apps , you as a rider are not willing to go back to the traditional way of moving in taxis and give up true apps , we drivers like quick cash every day doing ride share and it’s not like a drivers will get a job tomorrow and we have families to feed , so the apps are not going to leave the gold mine cause that’s what it is a gold mine, they are making millions of the back of drivers and over charging passengers
Nobody is addicted to making .30 to .60 per mile atp it's straight stupidity 😂😂😂 that person def needs to find another job but out of laziness/idiocy they won't.
The only time I'm paid by lyft is through the driving app 🕺
How your stupidity saved my day by making me lmao
They said same thing in Chicago seatle by and never left…anytime there is a pay rate then drivers win let Uber leave all it is a app anyone can start it up if there’s a void let’s stop acting like this Uber app is revolutionary it can be replicated over nite if a company gets customers
Uber and Lyft aren't going anywhere, the context of what happened in Austin is completely different. The Austin situation wasn't about pay, it was about fingerprint-based background checks. They would have to completely restructure the way their business was run for a single specific region, it was untenable. You really should've disclosed this in the video, because it's an incredibly important piece of context when talking about Uber and Lyft's threat to leave the state. Of course, even if they did, this would be objectively good not just for Minneapolis and Minnesota but for drivers everywhere. Uber and Lyft essentially have a rideshare duopoly, this would allow more competition into the market that could build a foothold with rideshare drivers in Minneapolis and spread out. Right now it would take a decade of losses and billions of dollars of investment to break into this market and that's not good for passengers or drivers, it's only good for Uber and Lyft.
Your active vs online time example was SUPER exaggerated, you'd have to be in the worst market of all time to only be active for 5 out of 10 hours. But you should immediately question any policy Uber and Lyft say they agree with, the reason Uber and Lyft support minimum earnings guarantees per active hour instead of per mile/minute rates is because it allows them to keep the apps manipulative. As a driver in New York who only takes rides at certain per mile rates, there's a lot of room to give rides with dreadful per mile rates even under an earnings guarantee. Highway rides put on the most miles - and therefore the most wear - while getting passengers to their destinations quickly. Anyone who believes that a corporation like Uber and Lyft has their interests in mind or that they're being "reasonable" is just being silly. Your overall take on this section is, to be honest, pretty bad. You are basically advocating for incrementalism, but if these industries are going to be sustainable than they need to make a large meaningful change.
To note, being impatient and trying to rush into something that isn't what drivers need is just allowing Uber and Lyft to shift the goalposts a little bit at a time so they can keep conditions as bad as they possibly can for drivers and passengers. More importantly, it kills future legislative efforts. What you don't seem to understand is that when it comes to regulation and organized legislative efforts like this, you only get one shot. People are only driven to act when they feel they have no other choice, if the city passes some middle of the road ordinance that's all they're ever going to get because it's enough to satisfy some of the movement and therefore take pressure off of the politicians to do something about it, and then the overall movement for that change settles for what they got and effectively unilaterally disarms. This is why incrementalism doesn't work. Even if you do consider this legislation extreme - which it isn't - what you should realize is that this legislation NEEDS to be extreme, because if it ends up going too far it can always be dialed back later and likely will be later. But if we started at the extreme position, when we dial back we arrive at the reasonable position. This is how negotiation works. Moderation in politics is a trap, anyone who considers them a moderate on any issue is really just a conservative because they start bargaining from the place they want and then ultimately through compromise end up closer to what their opponent wants. The goal is to compromise back to what you actually wanted in the first place, and that means you need to start in a more extreme place than your actual goal.
And that's the thing, your advocacy of caution is actually advocacy of failure. Politics can't really be data-driven or reasonable because it's conducted by people, and people are driven by emotion not numbers on a spreadsheet. When people get used to something, it's harder to regress. So you always need to make everything extreme and make everything go too far, but that's just because it's all a ploy. If you are extreme, the reasonable position ends up being the compromise everyone eventually settles on. I don't think you're like an Uber and Lyft shill or anything, I think you are intelligent to the point that you have forgotten that the world and the people who run it are imperfect and so change needs to be approached imperfectly. By thinking that everything can be done the "right" way, you are only playing into the hands of people who want it done the wrong way. Uber and Lyft want the "reasonable compromise", because they don't want to experience the pressure of policies that are actually respectful of drivers and passengers. More importantly, they don't want to have to make big changes outside of Minneapolis to prevent themselves from getting legislated in those areas too. Compromising here is compromising even more aggressively everywhere else, because if you actually want to avoid government intervention then Uber and Lyft need to be pressured to do it on their own.
And for that reason, this veto is an act that drivers should absolutely NOT agree with. This is how corporations always win against unions, using their platform to convince the people organizing against them of the validity of misinformation. This mayor should spend more time listening to the city council and drivers, and less time listening to lobbyists.
Two people coming to a city council meeting claiming they're struggling is meaningless, the drivers who are doing well probably aren't at city council meetings, they're out making money. Why don't you show off some of their commentary? Because there are plenty of Seattle drivers who say that the city is the best place in the country to be a gig worker, I've read multiple news articles with interviews saying such. Also, of course a lot of these people talk about immigration, most people who work in the gig economy ARE immigrants because the barrier to entry is lower. The two issues are intrinsically linked.
As for those charts, even if they weren't from Uber's obviously biased data they STILL shouldn't be trusted. You don't calculate driver earnings based on raw online earnings per hour data, you calculate them based on their earnings after expenses. Even if Uber's data is right and earnings per online hour went down, there's a chance that they actually went up after accounting for expenses. And this is the thing, every time Uber and Lyft reveal data, they always do it in a way that's meant to manipulate the people seeing it. Either that Medium article is bought and paid for or they allowed themselves to buy into Uber and Lyft's BS.
By the way in talking about New York, you critically failed to note that these policies were implemented outside of the New York City market as well. As a Buffalo driver, I can confirm my earnings and demand have been minimally affected whatsoever by the policy changes. If anything, pay in particular has marginally increased as - as long as you pay attention to rates - you can intentionally take orders with very long projected durations that have low per hour pay to artificially increase the pay of the ride. For example, the other day I got a Lyft ride going 7 miles for 8 bucks, but it was going to take 40 minutes. My app said this ride was paying 16 dollars an hour. Because of the earnings guarantee, I took this ride, since after the adjustment it would increase the pay of the ride by almost 10 dollars. But this kind of order is a rarity, and I do still wish this policy was more aggressive. Since it scales based on inflation, perhaps we can say it already will be at some point, as it is however it did not go far enough if the goal was to increase the pay of the common driver because my acceptance rate is still in the crater to make as much as I do. Unfortunately, since this law exists, there will likely not be any further organized movement on driver rights in New York.
PS: I will say I am in favor of artificial caps on driver supply. Honestly I think people should have to pass a business literacy test to be on Uber and Lyft, the idea that people are driving these dreadfully expensive vehicles and running them into ground for a pittance is just the worst.
TLDR: I stand by my previous comment. This veto is exactly what Uber and Lyft wants so they can keep the city deliberating instead of doing anything to curtail their practices, and more importantly so they don't allow yet another city to pass an ordinance that will likely lead to an adjoining state law that will likely lead to other cities and states following suit. The mayor needs to get out of the way and let Uber and Lyft suffer the consequences of their own actions, for the betterment of drivers not just in Minneapolis but across the country. And we should all be thanking Seattle and the state of Washington as a whole for finally starting a legislative movement that is long overdue.
This is an excellent comment. (That doesn't mean I agree with everything).
I'm too busy driving to give this comment the deserved response, so I'll respond during Monday's livestream.
I appreciate the level of effort you put into this.
@TristanThomasYT No problem, sorry if I come off too intense in places! I can be overly passionate about this kind of thing, but it's because I consider other rideshare drivers my coworkers and as a very politically aware person I want to use that part of my skillset to educate everyone so that we can present a more united front. Every legislative victory drivers have won over the last couple of years was achieved through collective action, we need to try and find our lockstep on these kinds of issues so we can be more powerful advocates for change.
If a driver drives or online 72 hours and make under $500 that the driver fault
Right now? I agree!
But if a law makes that happen more often, then the law isn't working as expected.
That's a stupid comment. The drivers doesn't control the price.
@@lifeofrichard Actually, yeah, they do. Not directly, but drivers influence prices with their presence. Why do you think Uber and Lyft's primary business strategy is to saturate the market with drivers? Because more drivers means shorter pickups and faster rides, meaning lower prices, less demand, and therefore lower pay. Even on an individual level, it's not just the algorithm that makes the pricing decisions, our behavior makes pricing decisions. Every time a new driver rejects an order on any gig app, the payout goes up and it's presented to the next person. If enough people reject it, eventually it ends up on Trip Radar, trying to get it in front of enough eyeballs that someone will take it already.
So yeah, what the OP said is 100% correct. Your actions control your pay. Take crap orders, position poorly, work at bad times... all of that means you get paid less. Just because you worked 72 hours doesn't mean you worked the right 72 hours in the right way.
Bro you shout your moth you don’t what you talking about The mayor and governer both work Uber and Lyft
Hey!
I like to try and keep conversations moving constructively.
With that said, do you think that increasing the floor wage won't have any negative effect? Or do you think the potential negatives are justifiable? (It's okay if you think it's justifiable)
I'm more interested in understandong perspective. What's your perspective!?
You are not fit to be a business analyst or be in business itself. your mindset is still that of an employee and have no real knowledge of how a business works . or risk to reward.
what is Uber and Lyft - A broker app to get drivers leads, that's it. No risk involved. Any Marketing company can do that. Drivers coming together or existing cab companies can make it happen.
A driver has huge investment and risk.
I think you are paid by this companies, or you just do this to raise UA-cam pay