Uber Drivers to Protest at Super Bowl

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Uber Drivers to Protest at Super Bowl

© courtesy of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars

Uber drivers are sick of being kicked around, at least as they see it. While the company’s management gets rich on their shares (which the current valuation collapse of unicorns may have made useless), compensation for drivers in many cities continues to fall. New York is the latest of these, a point with which Uber would take issue.

So, off to the Super Bowl for what might be a huge amount of free publicity based on the press coverage around the event.

Rebecca Smith, a deputy director at the National Employment Law Project, said:

“For too long, Uber has taken advantage of its drivers by labeling them ‘independent contractors,’ which divests the company of its legal responsibilities as an employer. That means workers have no access to basic legal rights such minimum wage, unemployment insurance, overtime pay, employer-provided benefits , workers’ compensation, or collective bargaining. Sunday’s protests show that this business model is unsustainable; it doesn’t work for Uber drivers, and it won’t work for other employees at the growing number of companies that provide ‘on-demand’ services. It’s time Uber rightly label their drivers as what they are: ‘employees.’

Or, are they just freelance employees who can work or not as they please, an argument which could be made convincingly.
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And that question about freelance is at the heart of the issue. Uber cannot count on drivers to work for set hours everyday. It takes the risk of being short drivers, although demand for the jobs may have swamped the market with Uber cars.

Uber drivers have a contest which they may not be able to win.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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