Uber’s CEO Thinks What’s Good for Uber Is Good for the World
But that’s bullshit.
In I Am the C.E.O. of Uber. Gig Workers Deserve Better., Uber CEO Dana Khosrowski makes his argument for a third way between full-time employment and being an unprotected gig worker. Reading between the lines, however, is a massive head fake, since Uber’s economics is based on externalizing the costs of Uber’s operations onto drivers and society:
Our current employment system is outdated and unfair. It forces every worker to choose between being an employee with more benefits but less flexibility, or an independent contractor with more flexibility but almost no safety net. Uber is ready, right now, to pay more to give drivers new benefits and protections. But America needs to change the status quo to protect all workers, not just one type of work.
Why not just treat drivers as employees? Some of our critics argue that doing so would make drivers’ problems vanish overnight. It may seem like a reasonable assumption, but it’s one that I think ignores a stark reality: Uber would only have full-time jobs for a small fraction of our current drivers and only be able to operate in many fewer cities than today. Rides would be more expensive, which would significantly reduce the number of rides people could take and, in turn, the number of drivers needed to provide…
