I’d have to side with Uber and I don’t think their lawyers will have a hard time arguing it. Uber doesn’t own, lease or maintain the vehicles. If the argument is that Uber is a transportation company than how can a transportation company operate if they don’t have any vehicles?
They don't own, lease or maintain the vehicles because they're trying to claim that the drivers aren't employees.
It's like saying that the drivers aren't employees because Uber doesn't provide health benefits.
Companies routinely get in trouble for forcing their employees to buy their own equipment. But it still happens all the time because of the power imbalance even when they're employees.
This is one of the many thing which makes all this such an existential threat to Lyft/Uber. Even just when it comes to minimum wage there will be a huge fight because so many drivers make less than that when the equipment is taken into account
The employees have to buy and maintain the vehicles themselves, doesn't really absolve Uber from being a transportation company, after all, they make transportation happen on their platform as their main business effort.
Sellers are neither contractors nor employees for eBay, they're customers, just like those who sell something at Christie's aren't an employee or contractor of Christie's but another type of customer.
There is a crucial difference; ebay Sellers can pick their customers. They can perform the same sale outside ebay. Customers can pick who to buy an item from. Ebay doesn't take a cut of the sale either, they take a charge for displaying the item on their store page, which the vendor also has to advertise and design on their own.
Have you even used eBay? It is against the TOS to solicit or conduct a sale on eBay offline, to bypass eBay, and eBay absolutely takes a 10%+ cut off sales called the Final Value Fee. eBay also enforces how sellers use their platform including using incentives, rules, and feedback scores to show or not show listings or even kick them off. Similarly, Uber riders can reject a driver as can drivers reject a rider for any reason so they choose. Try again.
Atleast where i live, ebay offers the option to complete the sale of a product offline, and you're free to contact the seller and make a different deal on the product whichever way you like. Well, and sellers on ebay can still run their own store and advertise it on the product page (for which they are still fully responsible).
If Uber riders were able to pick the driver they wanted and drivers were able to design their own advertisement page the riders see as well as being able to negotiate with the rider directly without loosing the Uber's platform protection, I would agree.
The relationship between customer-seller is just much different than rider-ridee.
eBay is marketplace where sellers and buyers transact on their own terms - sellers set their own prices and buyers choose from multiple options to purchase things. Uber is not a marketplace - drivers do not set their own prices and riders cannot choose from multiple options when selecting a driver.
If Uber wants to be treated as a marketplace and sidestep this new law, it needs to make significant changes - if drivers are truly independent contractors they should be able to set their own prices at a minimum.
