Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 15:13:57
on Thu, 28 Sep 2017, David Cantrell remarked:

?15/hr is verging on modern slavery, but the well-heeled punters lap
it up.

Fifteen quid an hour, assuming an 8 hour day and 5 day working week,
puts you well above the national average income.

I bet that national average isn't weighted for full time/part time/gig
workers.

OK, so Uber's
independent contractors then have expenses to pay from that, but even so
to call it "modern slavery" is pretty silly.

Given they are on zero-hours "contracts", work unsocial hours, have no
pensions, holiday or sick pay (the case for those is in the courts right
now) and reduced rights to benefits because of being self-employed.

And the elephant in the room is that it's the gross pay. Knock off 25%
for Uber's commissions, then most estimates for the cost of car rental,
petrol and valeting come in at about £300/week, so for a 60hr week you'd
see something like:

60 x 15 gross = 900
less 25% = 675
less £300 = 375

so that's more like £6.25/hr now, and under minimum wage, plus all the
risks of running your own business.

The FT has an analysis of how much of their time a UberEXEC driver is
actually earning:
https://www.ft.com/content/241d35e8-a463-11e7-b797-b61809486fe2?segmentId=080b04f5-af92-ae6f-0513-095d44fb3577