A San Francisco cabbie — generally a well-educated and firm-opinion-holding class of person — has an essay about a subject near and dear to my (non-car-owning) heart: Why is it so damned hard to get a cab in San Francisco?
In fact, no cab company ever tells a driver to pick up anyone. When you phone a cab firm in San Francisco, your call is treated not as an order, not as a binding oral contract, but simply as a request…
So, why don't cab companies ensure that we pick you up on time-or at all? In a nutshell, labor law states that if a cab company actually commands a driver to carry out a specific action, that constitutes an employer-employee relationship. But if a company farms its work out to independent contractors, it can rid itself of costly expenses such as disability and social security taxes. It also means that the contractor drivers can't unionize.
(via CamWorld)
