March 28, 2018
That was not a typo. The Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission intervened on Uber’s side in a case involving a regulation passed by Seattle’s city council which would allow Uber drivers to negotiate collectively. The issue is that Uber insists its drivers are independent contractors, not employees. This means that they don’t have the rights guaranteed by employees under the National Labor Relations Act to bargain collectively with their employer.
Seattle’s city council sought to work around this problem by effectively acting as an intermediary between Uber and its “independent contractors” in the city. The city argued that as a municipal government, it would be exempt from the anti-trust laws that prevent businesses from coordinating prices.
The position of the Trump administration is very interesting in this case because it is arguing that Seattle is in fact illegally coordinating prices among independent contractors. Uber quite explicitly coordinates the prices charged by its “independent contractors,” not just setting overall fee schedules, but adjusting fares by the minute in response to changes in collective demand.
This seems like a yet another instance where the government has felt it necessary to intervene in the market to defend the rich. As we all know, the rich can’t be expected to survive in a free market without help from the government.
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