When will the Financial Times admit the fact that Uber is a ‘Employer’ and that it has ‘Employees’ ?  like every other Capital enterprise, except that the Neo-Liberals at both Uber and FT have manufactured this dull-witted neologism of ‘ride-hailing service’ as cover for the exploration of their ‘Independent Contractors’: this a rationalization for not performing the actual responsibilities of an ‘Employer’: providing access to health insurance,  deducting taxes, Social Security, retirement plan deduction, and providing a safe and comfortable working environment, free of harassment of any kind!

Unions won some of those benefits in the 30’s and 40’s, only to have Reagan and Thatcher begin to dismantle that hard won ‘contract’ ,that has now become part of the Free Market Mythology’s propaganda against the Welfare State, argued as the Nanny State. In America one of the many beneficiaries of that ‘State’ is Paul Ryan, who sprang from the thigh of Ayn Rand. Uber is a taxi company which will now do what ‘Employers’ do, act ‘as if ‘ they have an ethical responsibility toward their ‘Employees’. The next step for Uber employees is to Unionize, in the face of another dull-witted Neo-Liberal neologism the ‘Gig Economy’

Almost Marx

https://www.ft.com/content/a6757c22-5e7a-11e8-ad91-e01af256df68