Lyft and Uber To Cease Operations In Minneapolis After New Minimum Wage Law - Sl...
source link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/03/15/2026229/lyft-and-uber-to-cease-operations-in-minneapolis-after-new-minimum-wage-law
Go to the source link to view the article. You can view the picture content, updated content and better typesetting reading experience. If the link is broken, please click the button below to view the snapshot at that time.
Lyft and Uber To Cease Operations In Minneapolis After New Minimum Wage Law
Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!
binspamdupenotthebestofftopicslownewsdaystalestupid freshfunnyinsightfulinterestingmaybe offtopicflamebaittrollredundantoverrated insightfulinterestinginformativefunnyunderrated descriptive typodupeerror
Check out the new Slashdot job board to browse remote jobs or jobs in your area.
The ordinance mandates rideshare drivers make at least $1.40 per mile and $0.51 per minute within Minneapolis. However, the analysis Frey referred to showed lower numbers -- $0.89 per mile and $0.49 per minute -- to make minimum wage. The mayor is imploring local politicians to come up with a solution before May 1. The rideshare services say that user prices would double if they stayed in the city.
-
›
by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Friday March 15, 2024 @07:41PM (#64318869)
Lyft said in a statement the bill was "deeply flawed" and that the ordinance makes its "operations unsustainable."
Having to pay people tends to do that, especially when you're barely making any money [reuters.com] as it is.
In the second half of 2023, the median earnings for a Lyft driver using their personal vehicle was $30.68, including tips and bonuses per engaged hour. For Uber, it was $33 per hour, in the December quarter.
"Lyft is trying to earn less money from the drivers in order to grow the amount of driver pool that they have and to grow the amount of passengers that they want to drive and Uber is doing the opposite," said Cambiar's Ballantyne. "This is a huge gamble for Lyft because they make very little money as it is."-
Is that $30.68 per hour available for hire, or $30.68 per hour responding and sevicing customers, or $30.68 per hour of actually driving the customer around?
Also, note the proviso "using personal vehicle". In many places most of the drivers I talked to are leasing vehicles -- from the ridshare company. They aren't clearing anything like a thousand a week, mainly its a way to they can gin up some cash in a hurry.
-
-
-
Let me order a shovel to be delivered by Uber, it's getting deep in here.
-
by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 15, 2024 @08:07PM (#64318941)
Minimum wage increases naturally decreases the workforce, increases inflation, and encourages automation.
Expect more kiosks in stores, more robotics, and more robo-taxis.
Expect micro-stores, or mega vending machines, where you go up to a kiosk and order milk, eggs and a pair of socks.
California will lead the way, because of artificial wage inflation. Workers will loose.
Translation: My business model isn't profitable in the absence of slave labour #me #victim.
-
The house slave always helps the overlords hurt the field slaves because they don't understand their station. But they'll definitely think they're the smart one in the room.
-
I think automating jobs that no one wants to do is a big plus for humanity.
-
Nice of you to let us know just how uninformed and out of touch you are. Retail chains are scaling back self checkout and eliminating it in some places [fastcompany.com]. Not small retailers, either; Walmart, Dollar General, ShopRight, Five Below, Target, etc.
Kroger isn't named in the article, but they experimented with a self-checkout only store and have put human cashiers back in place after an overwhelming number of problems and complaints. They're reducing the number of self-checkout lanes in other stores too.
So no.
-
All of the "kiosks" that you describe (which are being eliminated) are using honor system pay terminals. They are being shut down because they loose money to theft (especially in non prosecuted theft places like California).
More appropriate examples of kiosks would be
- restaurant kiosks, like it McDonalds, that most people seem now use instead of the one cashier. McDonalds once had 4 or 5 cashiers.
- Vending/restaurants payment in Japan, since you mentioned it. Pay at the kiosk. get the item or a ticket for
-
-
Fine by me. If I can get what I need from a vending machine that doesn't give me attitude for having the audacity to interrupt their day with my business transaction, bring on the vending machines.
I'm tired of the bullshit from the disaffected "service" workers that have been told their entire (young) careers that they deserve way more and they're getting such a raw deal, so they don't put forth any effort at all and act like I'm a nuisance, when I'm paying their ridiculously high prices to pay their ridic
-
You wouldn't last a single day in those jobs serving entitled assholes like yourself. If markets determine value that would mean high turnover at $15 an hour is still underpaid.
-
-
Annual raises increase inflation, sign yourself up for the no more raises program and show us how it's done.
-
-
Do we exploit cheap labor to give more people a convenience for less? Or do we provide fair wages for work?
(Lol jk the question is rhetorical)
-
-
Which shows that it's a hyper-exploitative, unsustainable business model. Good riddance.
-
Its not exploitative, its just stupid.
If you want to drive your own vehicle into the ground while charging less than taxis for livery services, thats on you. -
So if I can get enough people to decide your labor is hyper-exploitive (whatever the hell that means) we can make it illegal for you to work your job? Lyft is still losing money and Uber is slightly profitable last year for the first time in their history. If you wanted to argue that anyone has been exploited, it's the early investors in the companies who have shoveled a lot of money into that pit.
If no one was making any kind of money from these services, they would have quit a long time ago. The custom
-
-
Sounds like Lyft and Uber are simply bad at business if they can't make a profit. More power to the guy starting his own delivery company in the article you linked.
-
I think both companies are stupid when they could just let the market determine the going rate and skim a flat fee off the top of every transaction for using their service. It basically makes all of the drivers contractors and ensures that supply of drivers will naturally grow to meet increased demand as the rate customers are willing to pay increases. Of course they have all kinds of other ambitions that they plowed no end of money into. I don't own stock in either company and I certainly wouldn't buy any
-
+1. The food delivery services (DoorDash, Uber Eats, etc.) are, IMO, an absolute blight on society. The fees they charge are mostly proportional to the size of the order, even though the actual cost of doing the delivery is entirely fixed per order. So a $38 food order might cost $60 delivered, even though it's maybe a 15-minute round trip, which means they're charging $88 per hour and probably paying the drivers less than a quarter of that. And that's before you factor in all the hidden costs, where th
-
Is the livery charge really that large on these food deliveries (I have never used them?)
I could understand grocery delivery being that much...
A fool and his money...-
It's ridiculous. And they are absolutely right when the per-item price is larger as well. Find some restaurant on GrubHub / Uber Eats / whatever, and then look at the same restaurant's menu on Google to see the markup.
Why anyone would use this shit if they can't expense it to someone else is beyond me.
-
-
-
-
Always funny to hear people make excuses for why people shouldn't be paid. If that's the case, then perhpas the folks at the top should cut their salaries and get rid of stock bonuses and perks. After all, what justification can there be for them to make $13 to $16 million [salary.com] for doing so little?
-
Woah woah woah. We can't have our lords and owners not be inhumanly rich. That would break the well stratified order of things!
-
Lyft is losing money. Recently they're losing less of it. I do t know how long their CEO has been there, but if he's managing to gradually lose less of the investors money, they may be quite happy to pay $12 million dollars for that. I don't own any of their stock, and I doubt you do either. Tell me why you care so much what other people do with their money. I'm enjoying an after work drink. Any problems with that? If not why so if I decided I'd rather through my purchase of stock pay some CEO a fraction of
-
Lyft is losing money.
Lyft is not losing money. They finally eeked out a profit.
I do t know how long their CEO has been there
Their current CEO has been there about a year.
but if he's managing to gradually lose less of the investors money,
All he did was fire some people. Management to be specific.
hey may be quite happy to pay $12 million dollars for that.
Making the decision to fire people is worth $12 million? I can do it for far less and save the company bundles of money.
I don't own any of their stock, an
-
Did they? I did a quick search for Lyft earnings and Google reported a loss for every quarter in 2023. Based on the dates they will have to report earnings for the quarter this month, but they haven't yet. If you think they're profitable you may want to invest. A money pity making a profit does seem like a golden ticket.
There certainly are real leaders, but most of what you see is bullshit. If you have a lot of stock, your salary doesn't matter. I can't speak to whether or not the examples you put forwa
-
-
Not my problem or the fault of the employees.
-
-
-
You mean, the priority is putting a price on their importance to everyone else. Treating everyone the same doesn't work and demanding everyone work, only shows the dishonesty when people do things for free: Like pregnancy, or retire without a self-funded allowance (eg. government pension).
Taxis haven't gone out of business and none of those Uber/Lyft drivers are proclaiming how they bought a second vehicle (or, even a first vehicle) with their wages. A big part of that, is those drivers already have a fi
-
-
Without the constant influx of VC cash, these companies' business models will really only work with autonomous vehicles. They're just biding their time and trying to stay afloat, paying human drivers as little as possible while trying to gain (and hold onto) mindshare until true automated full self driving arrives - at which point they will tell the humans "so long, and thanks for all the fish".
-
They got a lot of cash flow.
So they aint going anywhere. -
In that case maybe these venture capitalist genius princes of the universe should pour there money into something with better profitability prospects than Uber, Lyft and the rest of that ilk until Elon Musk perfects the fully autonomous vehicle technology he promised us back in 2016.
-
I am trying to imagine an autonomous food delivery vehicle, that can survive a hostile environment where people steal deliveries on the regular...
-
And assuming it does arrive, why should the developers and owners of those vehicles hand them over to Uber or Lyft? They can program a car to drive itself, but can't write an app?
-
Not even sure autonomous vehicles will save them. At the moment they are reliant on gullible drivers wearing all the costs while they pay them rates that mean the average driver is working for way below minimum wage in most places. With autonomous vehicles they are taking on all the costs associated with those vehicles and I would expect competition will be much fiercer as managing a fleet of vehicles is much easier than managing people.
-
-
The harsh reality is that it costs Uber and Lyft absolutely nothing to continue offering service in a city versus not doing so. Their costs come entirely from operating expenses for keeping their servers up and running, R&D expenses for software, and paying drivers for mileage and wages. The fees they charge riders cover the cost of mileage and wages, and if nobody is riding, they aren't paying mileage and wages. So the marginal cost for offering service versus not offering service is exactly zero.
What Uber and Lyft are doing by acting this way is sending a message, to intimidate other cities into not passing similar laws, because they want to keep prices low, because some people will choose other modes of transportation if their cost is too high. The last thing they want is for prices to go up to compensate for the higher costs, and for things to end up being business as usual, without a huge drop in ridership, because that will prove that they've been unreasonably underpaying people for years, and will harm their reputation.
On the flip side, by refusing to provide any service, they're instantly cementing their reputation as being the slum lords of taxi service, and at some point (two or three months at most), a disruptive innovator will cover that city, provide better service, and pass on more of the revenue to drivers. It will be successful enough that drivers in other cities will start to join their service, and eventually they'll kick Uber and Lyft to the curb. So in the long run, this is likely to go down in history as an incredibly shortsighted and generally bad business decision, because it creates an easy opening for new competitors to move into the market.
-
You have inspired a phrase that brilliantly describes our current predatory economic paradigm: slum lord capitalism, aka enshittification [wikipedia.org].
-
buy a new word-of-the-day calendar
-
-
Obviously it would cost them more unless they pass all cost on to the consumer. Some consumers will bare the costs, but most won't and so business will decrease. Either company could still theoretically make money, but the volume will go down considerably and they're likely looking at this from the perspective of how much it will cost them to carve out an exemption in their app against what they normally make (not much for Uber and a loss for Lyft) and realizing that the cost of doing business is higher tha
-
> a disruptive innovator will cover that city, provide better service, and pass on more of the revenue to drivers
That seems like a leap in logic. Without competition why would they pass on more of the revenue to drivers?
-
-
Perhaps Uber and Lyft should have put some money away for a rainy day. Instead they spent $200 million on passing favorable legislation. https://www.latimes.com/califo... [latimes.com]
Just think of the positive headlines and worker happiness had they passed that money down. Pay people more money? Nah fuck it let's spend it on commercials and lobbying instead.
-
the government can just start a non-profit rideshare. There's several already from cities that kicked Uber & Lyft out. They pay better and provide the same service.
Recommend
About Joyk
Aggregate valuable and interesting links.
Joyk means Joy of geeK