Points well made, Alice.
Most certainly I am not standing up for the cab companies. Back when
I was a much younger feller, just a Whippersnapper, cab companies had
fleets of cabs and they had service garages where they maintained
their equipment. But even then the drivers were over worked and under
paid. Why is it that the place bosses see as the only place to cut
costs is with the employees wages? When we check it out, we find that
the labor cost is usually only a small percentage of total expenses.
Again, when I was a boy, labor costs were a larger portion of most
production costs. Still, they were not the largest expense by a long
shot. But over the years production equipment became more efficient.
Manual labor became a smaller and smaller cost. But the bosses did
not share in the profit gained by the more modern methods. In fact,
today's production worker is paid far less than his counterpart of
50 years ago.
When my sisters and I were growing up, dad earned enough money to keep
the family solvent. Mother stayed home until we were older. Then she
went to work long enough to earn the down payment on a home.
The working class neighborhood I grew up in consisted of families
where fathers worked and mothers cared for the children and the home.
Fishermen, mill workers, factory workers, truck drivers, etc. Common
laborers. Earning a living for their families. Very little debt in
these neighborhoods, outside of the house payment and maybe a car
payment. Credit was not easily available, in part because it was not
needed.
But those were the days when working men and women knew the value of
being organized. Strong labor unions forced bosses to hold down their
greed and share with the folks who were producing their wealth. Uber,
regardless of whether they are an improvement over Cab Companies, or
not, and regardless as to whether the drivers sing high praises to the
opportunity of tailoring their hours to their own needs, Uber is
piling up profits that represent the labor of the drivers. But this
is my personal problem with Capitalism. The idea that you have the
right to have other people work for you and give you part of their
labor for simply giving the the opportunity to give you some of their
labor. This notion that just because I open a plant called, Jarvis
Manufacturing, that I have a right to force you to work for me at near
poverty wages in order for me to live in luxury, is a hold over from
the Dark Ages. As long as some of us live in mansions with households
full of servants while the majority of us live hand to mouth, there
will be those among us who will grab all they can, regardless of where
that leaves others. The system is corrupt. So I can't find a way to
support Uber or the Cab Companies. If the owners really cared for
their clients or their employees, they would be insuring that either
their rates were lower or their workers lived at the same level as
they.
Carl Jarvis
On 7/17/15, Alice Dampman Humel <alicedh@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I know I’m in the minority here, but I still think there is another way of
looking at this. I’ve used Uber quite a bit, and only once did the bastard
driver see the dog and pull away, leaving me and my 91 year old mother
standing on the street. I had told my mother what kind and color car to
expect, and she saw such a car pull up, slow down, then speed off.
I complained to Uber, the driver was reprimanded, suspended, fired, not sure
exactly what, and I was given a refund for the trip.
Do ou have any idea how many times I’ve been refused by standard cabs? Too
numerous to count.
Now, I see all this flap over Uber and the rest as an attempt by the taxi
industry to eliminate competition. IMO, it is the taxi industry that is
trying every which way but loose to convince everybody of every political
and socio-economic persuasion that Uber and the rest are evil, and only the
taxi industry should prevail. Why do you think there is even any question as
to whether or not Uber can operate at the airports? Of course, they already
can drop off passengers who take Uber to the airport, but they are frozen
out from picking up arrivals by the taxi industry. And again, how many times
has a taxi driver refused to take me and the dog? Theoretically, such
drivers are supposed to be pulled out of the queue and sent to the end of
the line of waiting taxis, but that almost never happens.
Aware of how many like-minded people on many other issues see this one
differently from me, I ask every Uber driver how long they’ve been driving
for Uber and how they like it. They all say they love it. Usually the same
story: they can make their own hours, they can drive at 2 AM if they like
and sleep all day. They are like all free-lancers and self-employed and
“independent" contractors or consultants: they get no benefits, they have to
pay their own contributions to medical insurance, Social Security, etc. .
So I don’t know who is right or if there’s a little right on both sides.
But it certainly is true that Uber and Lyft and the others will force the
taxi industry to clean up its own house if the taxi industry does not
succeed in squelching the competition.
Just like cabs, some will be able to accommodate wheel chairs, some not.
So we’ll see where this all ends, and if the critics that see Uber as an
exploitative big business end up being right, I”ll be the first to concede
my error. For me, the jury is still out.
Alice
On Jul 17, 2015, at 11:53 AM, Carl Jarvis <carjar82@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
HI Joe,
Thanks for an early chuckle on a warm but windy day here on the Great
Olympic Peninsula.
Trade Secret, is it? Poor Uber. Surely they must know that their so
called Trade Secret is the age old, worn out exploitation of hard
working men and women. Contract Labor is the favorite method of our
Out-of-control Corporate Capitalism to suck up some more of our hard
earned money.
What a win/win deal for the boss!
All risk, all expenses, and all responsibility is placed squarely on
the backs of those doing all the labor. I've heard the Uber ads
proclaiming that if you have a car, you can make a thousand dollars a
week. How many out of work, desperate people will jump at such an
offer? Back when I was young it was the door to door vacuum cleaner
companies and other companies such as encyclopedias and magazines,
sweet talking unemployed, desperate people into the false hope of
earning a living. But as long as Labor Unions continued to be strong
and support their members, such slimy methods of exploitation were
kept to a minimum. Today's world has been swamped by the "Right to
Work", mentality. Unions have become labeled as Evil. "Pull yourself
up by your own boot straps. Rags to riches. The Self-made
man/woman". Meanwhile Corporate Barons such as the upstart Uber, roam
the land like giant predators. Why do we keep buying into the belief
that we need some bloated corporate head in order to have a job?
Can't the Uber approach work as well if it were owned and operated by
the drivers and those support workers?
We need to begin working together. Forget the bad name socialism has
been given by Corporate Capitalism, United Workers means a dignified
living. It's time we kicked the drones out of the bee hive. Or
cleared the Foxes out of our Hen Houses.
Carl Jarvis
On 7/17/15, joe harcz Comcast <joeharcz@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Judge Says Uber Should Be Fined and Suspended for Failure to Turn Over
Rideshare Data
Posted By
Jeremy Lybarger
on Thu, Jul 16, 2015 at 9:24 AM
JOONAS TIKKANEN/FLICKR
List of 1 items
• Joonas Tikkanen/Flickr
list end
Yesterday was a tough one for Uber. The California Public Utilities
Commission
ruled
that the rideshare giant should be fined $7.3 million and suspended from
operating in California for failure to demonstrate compliance with the
American
with Disabilities Act, as well as failure to release data indicating how
well the company serves diverse neighborhoods.
According to CPUC judge Karen V. Clopton, Uber has never turned over
information pertaining to its “efforts to date for accommodating
visually
impaired,
persons with service animals, and persons requiring a wheelchair
accessible
vehicle.” When CPUC requested data about passengers with disabilities,
“no
actual data was provided” by Uber, according to the ruling.
Nor did the company provide data about which zip codes it serves or its
driver safety numbers. This isn’t surprising given Uber’s
general secrecy
about how it operates — a reticence the company claims is a trade
secret.
The CPUC doesn't buy that. “A trade secret claim cannot be used as a
shield
to
deny access to the very regulatory agency that has ordered the
information’s
creation and compilation," the ruling reads.
According to the
Los Angeles Times,
the CPUC’s ruling won’t go into effect for 30 days, and Uber will have a
chance to appeal. A $7.3 million fine is less than one percent of the
$5.9
billion
in venture capital that Uber has raised.
In related news, officials at LAX will determine today whether rideshare
companies will be allowed to
operate at the airport.
If approved, L.A. would become the largest city in America to grant such
permission.
Source:
http://www.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2015/07/16/judge-says-uber-should-be-fined-and-suspended-for-failure-to-turn-over-rideshare-data
