Speaker: Confessions of an Uber Driver II: How we doing?
615 Responses
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the currant church
Raisin Cain?
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BenWilson, in reply to
This is the model our association is considering. Haven't yet gone a long way down the path of investigating the best options for it, but I see it as the only solution that will really make a difference FOR drivers. The other competing apps are all just different masters looking to clip the ticket on the drivers. That's exactly how it's playing out here.
The hard sell, of course, will be how such a service can really compete with Uber. Even without Uber's commission, it's still well below the taxi market, still a subsistence wage. Essentially, the sell is still that riders have to pay more.
My own approach is mostly to make the facts available, and aim for them to be widely known, to show that the Uber price model is simply exploitative. Since IRD rates the cost of running a car at about 74c/km, to be paid only $1.35/km less 25% Uber cut = $1.08/km means the driver gets about 32c/km. They also get 30c/min. It's hard to work out the real average pay rates from such stats, though. The best I can do (and am doing) is to take a large sample of drivers and their payouts, kms travelled, and hours worked, to get a picture. So far it's coming in somewhere in the range $10-$15/hour.
So if we want them to make, say, a living wage of more like $20/hour, then prices are going to have to roughly double, without demand dropping off. But that will not happen. As the price rises, the demand will drop. How much is hard to predict - we can really only work backwards to what things were like before the prices did, in fact, drop. Which is what we're doing. But there's LOT of work involved. And we still have no knowledge of a very important factor, what the supply is like, how many drivers there actually are and how much they work.
I have no recourse by a massive data collection program. Which is precisely what I'm doing. It's going to take time. A whole lot of time.
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Jeremy Andrew, in reply to
My own approach is mostly to make the facts available, and aim for them to be widely known, to show that the Uber price model is simply exploitative. Since IRD rates the cost of running a car at about 74c/km, to be paid only $1.35/km less 25% Uber cut = $1.08/km means the driver gets about 32c/km. They also get 30c/min. It’s hard to work out the real average pay rates from such stats, though. The best I can do (and am doing) is to take a large sample of drivers and their payouts, kms travelled, and hours worked, to get a picture. So far it’s coming in somewhere in the range $10-$15/hour.So if we want them to make, say, a living wage of more like $20/hour, then prices are going to have to roughly double, without demand dropping off.
Correct me if I'm wrong, and I probably am, but from your numbers above, rates don't need to double, just the portion of the rate that goes to the driver. If only 32c/km of the $1.35/km gets to the driver, then the rates only need to go up by 32c/km to double the drivers actual pay - so $1.67/km.
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BenWilson, in reply to
Yes, it's very hard to generalize. These numerical workings don't shed anywhere near the light that they should.
You're right in that doubling the per km rate only requires doubling what the driver gets, which is why the 20% price drop was met with such outrage. Because it was 20% of the total price to the rider, but it was a much, much higher proportion of the driver's piece.
Throw into the mix that there is also the per minute charge and you'll see that it's even harder to work out. Then the really hard bit, which can't be worked out at all, but can only be collected as statistics, is what that does to demand. Because the driver is not paid per hour, it matters what happens to demand. You could be on a high per km rate, but not getting many rides, and thus on a low hourly rate.
Which is why I'm going back to the actual analysis of trips km and time spent, empty and full. It's the only way to really know.
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Working any of the available apps on there own will not produce the required profit to keep a service operating long term, Uber exists because they keep on lowering the entry requirements thus maintaining a flow of new and very green drivers. The only way to support the low input of the apps is to mix and match it with a higher value sourced work, this is where the more experience operators shine. Uber drivers have only been at the game for a short period in relation to lets say the taxi industry. One has to offset the low against the high. I beleive we all need to work togther as a united front, not as we are doing now.
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You are correct though, since I originally said "without demand dropping off". That is, however, a completely incorrect assumption. Demand would drop off. By how much, no one can predict.
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I think you could say at the moment with all of us out there and looking at the industry as a whole we are over vehicled at the moment. A balance is always needed between high and low demand. This is the only way of ensuring profit for the drivers of those vehicles. Its not all about a cheap ride for the punters and commision for the app operators.
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BenWilson, in reply to
I do think the open source model will be what Uber ultimately is destroyed by. It does have basically no assets except its software and the software is not really that impressive. It's not on the scale of Linux.
As that article says, it's a paper tiger. I think that's why they act the way they do, because they know their days are inherently numbered.
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BenWilson, in reply to
looking at the industry as a whole we are over vehicled at the moment.
Sure. Or you could say that the country is underemployed, which is why people are accepting such shitty wages and conditions.
I don't really see any solution to that side of it, beyond what I'm already doing. So long as people know what they are getting themselves in for, then at least it won't come as any shock to people entering the industry. I don't see how we can hold wages up without the industry of such drivers admitting to basically being employees, and thus subject to their protections. And I expect that the drivers themselves would be the biggest opponents to that. It's the great paradox of the independent contractor, that they will literally beggar themselves for their independence. It's one future of work, and not a bright one.
But I'm not about predicting the future any more, I'm about setting up systems and organizations and information for the present. It's fun and I better get back to it.
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Alfie, in reply to
...a Police operation in the Queenstown area... about 10% of the vehicles did not meet COF conditions and several drivers didn’t hold P endorsements and there where many log book infractions.
Looks like the rot is spreading throughout the industry.
When it comes to Queenstown, the rot has always existed. I know of one major tourism operator who employed two professionals to drive a mini-bus, ferrying tourists to his attraction. After one of the drivers resigned, the business owner decided to use unqualified staff to fill the gap, despite the fact that they didn't have the required P endorsements. His logic was that he was employing those people anyway so why should he pay for professional drivers.
The shit almost hit the fan when one girl drove a van-load of tourists off the road one icy morning. Because the van had no branding, or a COF for that matter, they got away with lying to the Police that she was a private person driving a group of friends.
I suspect future Police operations in QT will show up numerous infringements.
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BenWilson, in reply to
I guess I've got that sort of shit to look forward to.
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Sacha, in reply to
Certainly hope not. Just don't threaten to sue any Amerkins. :)
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BenWilson, in reply to
The directorship of Uber NZ is entirely foreign, and some of them are merkins. There's not one single resident who could be held to account for anything. The closest is an Australian.
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You do have the answer to it all, stop working for them.
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Juha Saarinen notes another wrinkle.
Meanwhile, Uber has eased into deliveries, using the same drivers who move passengers around. There's no reason to think that business expansion will be anything but a success for Uber.
Anyone who can't or doesn't want to open up accounts with courier companies will love Uber deliveries. If I was the boss of a large courier company that I wanted to keep alive over the next year or so, I'd have a quick chat with Uber about co-operation if it isn't too late already.
Probably planning on undercutting by ignoring restrictions on driving hours etc. What could possibly go wrong?
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BenWilson, in reply to
Probably planning on undercutting by ignoring restrictions on driving hours etc. What could possibly go wrong?
Presumably also any kind of standards for a delivery vehicle. Food will be transported unfrozen, heavy objects in vehicles that have no proper safety barriers, and hazardous goods are likely to be transported in vehicles that then take passengers in the same spaces. Maybe even at the same time.
But so far there have been no moves against Uber by the government whatsoever on any compliance issues to NZ law. Not a damned thing. So why wouldn't they? A big part of the disruptive model is not just to disrupt the industry, but to disrupt the entire legal and moral framework of the society in which it's happening. NZ is proving to be a country with no will to resist at all. A scarily large number of people don't just accept this, they actually love it. And certainly that is the government's position.
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Can't remember which libertarian philosopher proposed the free market as a substitute for God and morality. Prophetic. Certainly a corporation like Uber wields God-like powers and people worship it and look to it for the future and salvation. It's much easier than coming up with your own moral code.
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Sacha, in reply to
hazardous goods are likely to be transported in vehicles that then take passengers in the same spaces. Maybe even at the same time.
discount if you hold this bubbling flask of chemicals
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oga,
Saw this today. The real reason Uber is failing in Japan
In particular
corporate non-compliance is different. In fact, there is a common school of thought in the West that if it is cheaper to violate a regulation than it is to obey it, it is not only OK to break that law, but that the CEO has an actual obligation to his shareholders to break that law. Fines are simply a cost of doing business. No corporate exec is going to get fired for saving his company millions of dollars and paying a few thousand in fines.
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goforit, in reply to
That was a good listen, you only have to look at the recent happenings in China as a reinforcement of the topic.
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NZTA and their Minister confirm slow approach that pressures drivers rather than inciters. Gutless.
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http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/opinion-analysis/82784651/johnny-moore-uber-ruinous-for-society-sends-profits-overseas
Johnny Moore in The Press misses the Uber driver's plight, but focuses on the tax avoidance side of things - which is possibly (and sadly)more likely to get a government interested.And this tax avoidance is different from the old taxi driver turning off the meter to get you home for a crisp $20 bill.
No, it's the nastiest and largest of them all. It's the (just) legal end of tax avoidance, which means a company that declared gross revenues of $1,061,018 in New Zealand in 2014, paid income tax of $9,397.
That's less income tax than a good teacher or nurse pays on their income. It's way less; it's less than 1 per cent, and all the profit is going overseas. -
Alfie, in reply to
Johnny Moore in The Press misses the Uber driver’s plight, but focuses on the tax avoidance side of things – which is possibly (and sadly)more likely to get a government interested.
Any multinational avoiding NZ tax is unlikely to upset this particular government. It's just how the world works, for some. Everyone who can afford to be seen at Davos knows that, even those who get taxpayers to pick up their bill.
Uber doesn't give a damn about its drivers with autonomous vehicles being their end game. Those wet robots may be necessary at the moment, but give it a couple of years and the game will change.
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