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The idea of SF seizing the infrastructure for a fair price makes me hope we can one day do the same for telecom infrastructure.
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Sep 10, 2019 14:55
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PG&E is in bankruptcy, aren't they? If PG&E doesn't want to make a deal, maybe the judge overseeing their restructuring will? 
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Sep 10, 2019 16:43
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Seriously. I hope they say, "Don't want the deal, huh? Welp, here's $1 billion for the eminent domain seizure. Maybe think twice next time somebody offers."
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Sep 10, 2019 16:46
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 San Fransisco labeled the NRA a domestic terror group and the NRA is suing them over it. Apparently it's over more than just the (accurate!) new label: it's part of a resolution to try to bar or at least heavily discourage the city from working with the NRA or vendors/contractors connected to them.
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Sep 10, 2019 16:52
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Remember when Joe Biden said that the NRA wasn't the enemy during the first debate? Man that sure aged well. I hope more cities follow suit.
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Sep 10, 2019 18:20
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The State Senate passed AB 5 which will force app-based and gig-economy companies to treat workers as employees instead of contractors. It still needs to pass the Assembly and get Gavin-bot 9000's signature, but both are expected to be formalities at this point. Bill would go into effect Jan 1st next year assuming Uber/Lyft/etc don't all band together to file for a preliminary injunction (they will).
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Sep 11, 2019 17:52
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That’s an absolute mess for anyone who enjoyed the free form “no hours, no uniform, no bosses” aspect. II’m so unemployable that I’ve been advised to look into the military just because they don’t throw meat away, and if I had gotten over my discomfort of driving cars I could have done Uber even though I can’t get an interview at places where I see teenagers working. If you can only get a part time day job or just need to convince employers that you’re not the zodiac killer, it’s not a bad arrangement. (It’s exploitative, but that’s most labor at this point.) Should be good for the all day ex cabbies who Uber as their sole self supporting income and people who just want to see less congestion in cities, though.
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Sep 11, 2019 21:18
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uber/lyft is at or below minimum wage once you take your self-employment taxes and your costs into account that legislation isn't going to hold up though, especially once uber et. al. provide statistics on how many of their drivers have second and third jobs, including with their direct competitors (it's a lot of them)
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Sep 11, 2019 21:23
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Leperflesh posted:uber/lyft is at or below minimum wage once you take your self-employment taxes and your costs into account It can be worse than that; sometimes you can actually lose money by becoming a driver. I was looking into it as I've been having trouble finding a job but I'd actually be better off going homeless, putting all my crap in a storage unit, and panhandling.
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Sep 11, 2019 21:29
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Craptacular! posted:That’s an absolute mess for anyone who enjoyed the free form “no hours, no uniform, no bosses” aspect. The test for independent contractor vs employee doesn't revolve around being forced to wear a uniform or have a boss (which from personal experience in independent contracting, I have had - as well as a dress code). It revolves around how much autonomy you have to perform the work assigned to you. "Drive here, pick up this person, drive them there" is no autonomy.
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Sep 11, 2019 21:44
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:The test for independent contractor vs employee doesn't revolve around being forced to wear a uniform or have a boss (which from personal experience in independent contracting, I have had - as well as a dress code). It revolves around how much autonomy you have to perform the work assigned to you. "Drive here, pick up this person, drive them there" is no autonomy. Aside from that Uber has made it very clear that they don't want people driving for competing services. If it was in fact truly independent they'd have absolutely no say in who their drivers could or could not drive for. They've made it clear they want to get into a "we get to have it both ways" kind of scenario.
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Sep 11, 2019 21:47
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:The test for independent contractor vs employee doesn't revolve around being forced to wear a uniform or have a boss (which from personal experience in independent contracting, I have had - as well as a dress code). It revolves around how much autonomy you have to perform the work assigned to you. "Drive here, pick up this person, drive them there" is no autonomy. Uber will argue that drivers opt-in to every ride they accept and are free to not accept rides; that they also often work for Lyft, as well as food delivery companies etc. to fill in hours between optimal Uber/Lyft hours; and that they are free to not work for weeks or months on end while doing something else, all of which are true. Where they are going to fail is trying to argue that drivers aren't a core part of their business. The courts are not going to accept the whole "but we're just a platform/app/self-driving cars developing company" that only just happens to make 100% of its actual revenues from drivers making trips. Where the state is going to have trouble, I suspect, is showing that AB5's new definition of what constitutes an employee vs. a contractor doesn't run afoul of federal law, is enforceable, and doesn't impose some kind of unreasonable or unknowable restriction on trade and commerce. I'm thinking this affects way more than just the newfangled gig economy. Real estate agents? Contract graphics designers? Actors? Big rig truck drivers? I don't really know, but I'm quite sure Uber didn't invent the idea of getting out of paying employment taxes by shifting your workforce wholesale to 1099-based. e. ToxicSlurpee posted:Aside from that Uber has made it very clear that they don't want people driving for competing services. If it was in fact truly independent they'd have absolutely no say in who their drivers could or could not drive for. They've made it clear they want to get into a "we get to have it both ways" kind of scenario.
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Sep 11, 2019 21:50
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https://twitter.com/steelewheelz/status/1171874771325186048
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Sep 11, 2019 21:51
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Leperflesh posted:That may be what they tell their They've done some pretty shady things to screw things up for people trying to drive for both. It wouldn't shock me at all if they were trying to find some legal way to force drivers to sign exclusivity contracts but not treat them like employees.
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Sep 11, 2019 21:55
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Leperflesh posted:Uber will argue that drivers opt-in to every ride they accept and are free to not accept rides; that they also often work for Lyft, as well as food delivery companies etc. to fill in hours between optimal Uber/Lyft hours; and that they are free to not work for weeks or months on end while doing something else, all of which are true. https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-09-11/sweeping-bill-rewriting-california-employment-law-moves-to-gov-newsom quote:But AB 5 is narrower than the court decision in key respects. After months of negotiations, the bill’s author, Assembly member Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego) agreed to exempt a score of occupations from the court’s ABC test, leaving them subject to the earlier standard.
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Sep 11, 2019 21:56
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Yeah the bill has tons of exemptions baked into it, and it sounds like Uber and Lyft's primary desired way to skirt the bill is to get added as an exemption. In the article I originally linked it says Uber has pledged $90M to a 2020 ballot proposition that would declare their drivers as independent contractors, and apparently they're also going to try really hard to lobby for legislation that would get their drivers exempted from employee status next January when the next state senate session starts.
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Sep 11, 2019 21:59
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As long as Uber sets the price of the trip Uber is the employer, IMHO. If they were just a 'platform' then they'd be listing fares, drivers would bid on the fares, and the rider would choose from among the available bids. (i.e. the eBay analogy)
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Sep 11, 2019 22:04
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that guy did a great job sabotaging the RMBS DOJ investigations into banks for the GFC.
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Sep 11, 2019 22:04
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The Glumslinger posted:https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-09-11/sweeping-bill-rewriting-california-employment-law-moves-to-gov-newsom Yeah IANAL but that seems like it opens another avenue of legal protest, which is that the law is more or less tailored to specifically attack a particular industry/handful of companies. How are the state's lawyers going to tell judges with a straight face that Oh, the people in all those other industries? They're "legitimately" independent contractors, even though their employers don't pass the tests we just made up, but Uber and Lyft and Grubhub, they're different. The bald fact of it is that a ton of people have been getting exploited by the giant loophole of the forced independent contractor status, in industries in which those people really don't have the option of being employees instead, and it's kinda bullshit for the state to focus on punishing lyft et. al. while letting the rest get off scott free. I mean totally gently caress Uber especially, it's the worst. But come on, why should travel agents be excluded from receiving employee benefits when they basically all work for a single employer for years, and those employers do nothing but arrange travel using travel agents?
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Sep 11, 2019 22:11
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Well said Leperflesh. You can absolutely think Uber is scum and should be pilloried while also wondering why smaller-scale exploiters are skating by.
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Sep 11, 2019 22:14
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:The test for independent contractor vs employee doesn't revolve around being forced to wear a uniform or have a boss (which from personal experience in independent contracting, I have had - as well as a dress code). It revolves around how much autonomy you have to perform the work assigned to you. "Drive here, pick up this person, drive them there" is no autonomy. Just in my head, I always felt employees have set hours and shifts. That’s kind of how stuff like overtime runs. In my hometown a few years ago, my Uber driver is often a neighbor who sits at home watching TV logged in and waiting for the app to notify him that someone wants to go somewhere. That’s very different from the people idling or driving in circles in San Francisco, but under an employee structure it mostly makes economic sense at the scale of major cities and with a limited number of drivers able to operate in those cities. Never used ride share in SF because public transit takes me everywhere I need to be, but driver availability in Sonoma County only became reliable since the city finally was oversaturated enough that people living out here are finally picking people up here rather than driving to SF every morning before opening the app. (Edit: I kind of wonder if WWE will simply stop going to California in their tours as a result of this bill. It probably kills the indie promoters in the state, wrasslin’ is pretty much radioactive waste to health insurers but dudes dropping each other is a core part of their business. We need single payer to save sweaty men in tights.) Craptacular! fucked around with this message at 23:23 on Sep 11, 2019 |
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Sep 11, 2019 23:12
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Lots of employees work on call, it's not much different in this case.
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Sep 11, 2019 23:55
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Craptacular! posted:Just in my head, I always felt employees have set hours and shifts. Well, you're wrong. Salaried employees are everywhere.
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Sep 12, 2019 00:34
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Cup Runneth Over posted:Well, you're wrong. Salaried employees are everywhere. I’d assume the most likely outcome of this is that drivers are hourlies who aren’t allowed to work over 39 hours. It will probably be restricted even more than that to make sure that people aren’t getting paid over serving low demand areas. The companies will survive, but they’ll just take it out on customers instead of employees and economically it may not work out in lower density suburbs at all due to scale. Craptacular! fucked around with this message at 05:13 on Sep 12, 2019 |
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Sep 12, 2019 05:08
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Leperflesh posted:Yeah IANAL but that seems like it opens another avenue of legal protest, which is that the law is more or less tailored to specifically attack a particular industry/handful of companies. How are the state's lawyers going to tell judges with a straight face that Oh, the people in all those other industries? They're "legitimately" independent contractors, even though their employers don't pass the tests we just made up, but Uber and Lyft and Grubhub, they're different. IIRC they're also trying to capture gig drivers for Amazon, Fedex, UPS too
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Sep 12, 2019 05:47
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It ultimately doesn’t matter because these companies will get a proposition passed that undoes all this. Whereas many companies burn the candle at both ends and scorch employee and customer alike to deliver to shareholders, customers are (for now) aware that they’re getting something out of this bargain and will heed the call to punch downward with their ballot. Customers signing up to be part of an AstroTurf Movement was vital to Uber taking on the taxis and regulators of various states initially. It’s hard to regulate against the interests of customers/voters who saw what the service was like when it operated illegally and now think the laws should be changed to allow it. “Please call these people you’ve never seen in Sacramento” is a harder campaign but given in California that everything the republic does can be undone through direct democracy we will likely not see any real change. Craptacular! fucked around with this message at 06:13 on Sep 12, 2019 |
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Sep 12, 2019 06:09
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Another big deal: https://twitter.com/jennakchandler/status/1171924382899269632 Not a perfect solution but loving anything to ease rents even a little bit feels huge.
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Sep 12, 2019 06:36
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It also removes eviction as a tool unless it can be cited that the tenant has broken the agreement. It’s good. If approved, it’s retroactive to this March, so no jumping rent 30% this year before it goes into effect next year.
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Sep 12, 2019 06:54
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Cool that landlords get their property taxes capped at +2% per year but can raise rent at +5% PLUS inflation
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Sep 12, 2019 07:35
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Sydin posted:Another big deal: Is this effective immediately and if so how do we enforce it as tenants? Like, if I sign a lease agreeing to a 10% increase the day after this goes into effect, is there a protocol? gently caress i need to organize my apartment complex.
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Sep 12, 2019 08:06
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How did the legislature pass the worst band-aid on the housing crisis (removing local control over rent control) after rejecting the good one (removing local control over permitting around transit)?
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Sep 12, 2019 08:33
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Will this work with RV parks where you own the unit but not the land? "Affordable" senior living has been a bitch for my parents with crazy hikes every year.
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Sep 12, 2019 10:36
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Have you seen my apex seals? I seem to have lost them.
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Craptacular! posted:Just in my head, I always felt employees have set hours and shifts. Well in the eyes of the law, that doesn't matter. And in fact when I was a contractor, I had to agree on hours at both the weekly (i.e. I was gonna put 30 hours into this project per week) and the daily (and I was going to be available for these meetings, one at 8:00am and one at 3:00pm) level and I can easily see somebody doing instruction being told "your hours of instruction will be X:00 - Y:00" so your clients can even fix your hours that way. In the eyes of the law, if you have somebody telling you what to do and how to do it or tightly supervising your work (i.e. here's an employee manual, here's our procedures, I'm directly supervising you and drip-feeding out goals every day) you're an employee. If you're being told what to do but not how to do it you're an independent contractor. All of these companies are absolutely telling their employees what to do and the ratings system is a stand-in for a manager. They're employees that work flex schedules, which again is a real thing and why the law in this country doesn't use "fixed hours" to determine who is an employee.
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Sep 12, 2019 17:13
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Does the new rent control law carry over from tenant to tenant, or can your landlord do the thing where they annoy you until you want to move, and then jack up the rent for the next person?
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Sep 12, 2019 17:28
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Looks like it applies to a "a dwelling or unit." Good! Edit: Wait, never mind: "For a new tenancy in which no tenant from the prior tenancy remains in lawful possession of the residential real property, the owner may establish the initial rental rate…" Edit2: lol  quote:(2) In the event that an owner has increased the rent by more than the amount permissible under subdivision (a) between March 15, 2019, and January 1, 2020, both of the following shall apply: CPColin fucked around with this message at 17:42 on Sep 12, 2019 |
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Sep 12, 2019 17:38
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The Glumslinger posted:https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-09-11/sweeping-bill-rewriting-california-employment-law-moves-to-gov-newsom Does this mean that MLMs are hosed under this bill. 
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Sep 12, 2019 17:52
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CPColin posted:Looks like it applies to a "a dwelling or unit." Good! lol so it's loving useless, great.  In other news, remember our old friend Justice Aaron Persky who we recalled? Well apparently he's been coaching women's tennis at a HS in San Jose, because who better to put in a position of power over young female athletes than the guy who let a young male athlete off the hook for rape because "boys will be boys"? Anyway he just got fired from his coaching job. Apparently because of a "desire to spare players from potentially intrusive media attention." I mean, maybe don't hire a rape apologist and put him anywhere near female students in the first place then?
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Sep 12, 2019 18:05
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Sydin posted:lol so it's loving useless, great. I wouldn't say useless. Our complex wanted to raise my rent 12% this year (we pay 2600 for 1b/1b 650 sqft) and we only got a better offer (4%) by making a big stink. This removes a lot of the dread we had about the next predatory lease renewal. Still sucks if you need to move.
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Sep 12, 2019 18:31
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https://twitter.com/berkeleyside/status/1172256087728361487?s=20
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Sep 12, 2019 22:13
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I have an elected official who regularly shits on the homeless in his last 3 newsletters (accusing them of being unsafe, leaving trash everywhere (it's true, because the fields they live in don't have trash cans, idiot), and not wanting services) and I finally called his office to complain. I was heartened when the person who answered the phone told me "we've gotten a lot of calls like yours, Mr. So and So is just frustrated" which I thought was a dodge (and told them so). But at least they were getting some pushback.
Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 22:28 on Sep 12, 2019 |
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Sep 12, 2019 22:26
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