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Uber loses licence to operate in London, will still operate while appealing

(www.bbc.com)
256 points reubensutton | 16 comments | 25 Nov 19 10:19 UTC | HN request time: 1.914s | source | bottom
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harel ◴[25 Nov 19 14:37 UTC] No.21628429[source]▶
I'm not a fan of companies like Uber or AirBnB who attempt a violent takeover of a market. However, as a consumer who needs to get from A to B, or stay at some random city, I find those services invaluable. The black cabs in London are expensive, never around when you need them, and until recently might have refused card payments (now they just seem unhappy about it). At the very least I was hoping Uber would make that industry wake up and join the modern world, but instead they chose to protest and block roads. With Uber, I always have a car available within minutes and the prices are reasonable. I just hope that the competition will take their place (and driver mass) if they do end up leaving.
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1. crazygringo ◴[25 Nov 19 15:00 UTC] No.21628630[source]▶
> who attempt a violent takeover of a market

What is a "violent" takeover? What would a nonviolent takeover be?

I'm all for new companies providing better services to consumers. If they take over a market, isn't that because the existing market wasn't meeting consumer needs? A new company taking over a market is generally a good thing, the creative force of capitalism itself.

(Provided it's not done by ignoring legitimate standards for safety, environment, externalities, etc.)

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2. BWGB ◴[25 Nov 19 15:05 UTC] No.21628678[source]▶
Agreed. Black cabbies have had it good for such a long time, cash in hand, monopolising the taxi business in London . I got in a cab booked using a taxi version app and the driver complained about paying % fee to the app and only getting paid once a month. Welcome to the rest of the world where people pay taxes and only get paid at the end of every month.
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3. harel ◴[25 Nov 19 15:11 UTC] No.21628743[source]▶
Why do people have the need to take over a market in the first place? There is room in such a big market for many players. Big and small. This obsession with growth is not healthy. I don't care if Uber takes me or Lyft, or Kapten. No brand loyalty here. I do care that SOMEONE takes me safely and at a reasonable price.
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4. folkrav ◴[25 Nov 19 15:13 UTC] No.21628753[source]▶
> Welcome to the rest of the world where people [...] only get paid at the end of every month.

Wait, what? You get paid once a month? Is this a UK thing? Every single job I've had over here (Canada) was either once every two weeks, or two times a month.

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5. jacobush ◴[25 Nov 19 15:28 UTC] No.21628896{3}[source]▶
In Sweden, and I think in most of EU, once a month is the standard. I know of no-one with in Sweden with a full time job which is once a month.
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6. tomatocracy ◴[25 Nov 19 15:38 UTC] No.21629004{4}[source]▶
Same in the UK. Traditionally here the lowest skilled jobs were paid weekly and higher skilled monthly but I think that's rapidly disappearing, if not completely gone, now.
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7. buckminster ◴[25 Nov 19 15:55 UTC] No.21629217{5}[source]▶
Many jobs in construction pay weekly, regardless of skill level. Nobody wants to lose a month's money when the subcontractor goes bust.
8. v64 ◴[25 Nov 19 16:44 UTC] No.21629928{3}[source]▶
Once a month is standard for salaried work in the US.
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9. ghaff ◴[25 Nov 19 16:52 UTC] No.21630028{4}[source]▶
Certainly not standard. I've never encountered anything but every two weeks or twice a month. I have little doubt monthly exists but anecdotally it's not super common.
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10. Barrin92 ◴[25 Nov 19 17:06 UTC] No.21630189[source]▶
>There is room in such a big market for many players. Big and small.

there is no real room for big players which is why Uber's business model is burning investment money and dodging regulations.

Have you ever seen a taxi monopoly? There is no scale effect to this business because adding more drivers and more taxis just drives your costs up linearly, and given the diseases big business suffers from and all the tech overhead of Uber it's probably worse than that.

That's why transportation like trucking or the cab industry is dominated by small business.

11. v64 ◴[25 Nov 19 18:40 UTC] No.21631303{5}[source]▶
That's very surprising to me. In case I wasn't clear, I'm referring specifically to salaried pay and not hourly pay, where more frequent payouts are the norm.

Admittedly, I only have my own anecdotal evidence among my own experiences, friends, and family, but I can't think of anyone I've had the salary conversation with that mentioned getting paid other than monthly and would be curious to see what the actual breakdown is in the US.

Edit: This [1] article states that 59% of the US workforce is hourly, so it's accurate to say that bi-weekly is the most common frequency among all jobs in the US, but I can't find any resources that focus on the breakdown specifically among salaried workers.

[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/most-americans-are-hourly-worke...

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12. ghaff ◴[25 Nov 19 18:55 UTC] No.21631452{6}[source]▶
This BLS breakdown [1] doesn't break down salaried vs. hourly. However, it does say that "A look at the chart reveals that semimonthly is the pay period in which businesses pay the highest average hourly earnings, followed closely by monthly." (And biweekly after that.) Hourly earnings are probably a reasonable proxy for salaried vs. hourly.

So the data suggests that being paid every two weeks is somewhat more common than monthly. (And, for larger businesses, biweekly is overwhelmingly the norm.)

[1] https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-3/how-frequently-do-priv...

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13. v64 ◴[25 Nov 19 19:11 UTC] No.21631603{7}[source]▶
Thanks for the followup, this puts a lot in perspective. The article notes:

> In March 2013, 94.8 percent of private businesses were single-pay-period businesses

meaning that most companies pay all workers on the same schedule. Therefore, if a company has any hourly workers that get paid more frequently than monthly, everyone salaried in the company is going to get put in the same pay schedule as well. All the orgs I've worked at either paid monthly uniformly or were part of that rare 5.2% that had different pay schedules, so I admit that my experience is an outlier here.

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14. ghaff ◴[25 Nov 19 19:28 UTC] No.21631791{8}[source]▶
The other interesting thing about the numbers is that biweekly becomes much more prevalent relative to semimonthly as the businesses get larger.

I assume this is because small businesses (and many employees) prefer a pay schedule that's aligned with their (often monthly ) bills for cash flow reasons. Whereas larger businesses prefer to keep payroll expenses from fluctuating a bit depending upon how many days are in a given month.

15. kjs3 ◴[25 Nov 19 20:24 UTC] No.21632393{4}[source]▶
Nearly 40 years in the US workforce, many, many jobs, not a single one was once a month.
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16. v64 ◴[25 Nov 19 20:34 UTC] No.21632494{5}[source]▶
The other child thread helps to explain where my discrepancy came from. Most companies prefer to have a unified pay schedule, so if there are workers in the company that you'd expect to pay bi-weekly/semimonthly (such as hourly wages), the entire company will be put on that schedule.

My own personal experience has been in the post financial crisis tech industry, and I wonder if tech pays monthly more often compared to others (and if funding plays any role in that).