The Uber Economy: a race to the bottom?
A discussion with NVM’s Jon Liss
The ride sharing service Uber has been in the news a lot recently, and most of the attention has been negative. On one hand, many riders are very satisfied with the service, that is when they’re not being charged surge prices. But the drivers are less happy. That’s because Uber, and other ride sharing services, put all of the risk on the driver – a contractor, they say – and extract most of the profits. Is this the wave of the future? Are we looking at a sharing economy in other industries?
I spoke with cab driver turned labor advocate Jon Liss about this. He wrote a piece in The Nation magazine about his experiences as a driver and about how the strong arm tactics of Uber make a lie of its free market evangelism. And Liss gives some lessons we can take away from Uber that have meaning for labor in the U.S. in general. Listen Now
