Vox Sentences: Should Uber drivers be employees or contractors?

I don't want to work, I just wanna independently contract all day

This taxi driver in Chicago is not a fan of Uber's business model. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

• The California Labor Commission has ruled that Uber drivers are employees, not merely independent contractors.

  [Vox / Timothy B. Lee]

• It specifically ruled that Barbara Berwick, a former Uber driver, was owed $4,152.20 in expense reimbursements, something contractors don't get but employees do.

  [NYT / Mike Isaac and Natasha Singer]

• Employees also get minimum wage protection, overtime payments, and workers' compensation.

  [Ars Technica / Megan Geuss]

• There are class-action lawsuits targeting both Uber and Lyft demanding employee status and benefits.

  [LA Times/ Tracey Lien]

• It's pretty hard to say how much Uber drivers actually earn; Uber's data suggests that New York drivers make $30.35 an hour (more like $23.15 after expenses), but that data isn't exactly from a neutral source.

  [Time / Jacob Davidson]

• Tim Lee: making independent contractors employees won't doom Uber, but it will raise prices for consumers, make employees' hours less flexible, and make it harder for Uber competitors to get going.

  [Vox / Timothy B. Lee]

• Nick Hanauer and David Rolf: ultimately, the way to deal with Uber and other sharing economy players is to expand the social safety net to cover benefits employers used to.

  [Democracy / Nick Hanauer and David Rolf]

• Reihan Salam: "despair over the fact that many American workers aren’t commanding the wages and working conditions we’d want for them in an ideal world doesn’t seem like a sound reason for shutting Uber down, or regulating it out of existence."

  [Slate / Reihan Salam]

• For more, see Tim Lee's comprehensive explainer on Uber and employee vs. contractor status.

  [Vox / Timothy B. Lee]

The invasion will be selfied

• Russia's attempts to deny it's invading Ukraine would be easier to believe if Russian soldiers weren't posting selfies from the front.

  [Vox / Max Fisher]

• An Atlantic Council investigation found "irrefutable evidence of direct Russian military involvement in eastern Ukraine," relying primarily on open source evidence (satellite photos, social media, etc).

  [Atlantic Council / Maksymilian Czuperski, John Herbst, Eliot Higgins, Alina Polyakova, and Damon Wilson]

• Vice's Simon Ostrovsky built on the report by reproducing a Russian soldier's selfies where they were taken — in Ukraine.

  [Vice / Simon Ostrovsky]

Vice

• In other Russia-Ukraine news, the EU has agreed to extend sanctions on Russia by six months.

  [NYT / Andrew Higgins]

• Not up to speed on the Ukraine crisis? This quick, three-minute video will give you the basics on why the conflict broke out.

  [Vox / Amanda Taub and Johnny Harris]

Everything's still awful in Greece

One proposal for handling the debt crisis. (Milos Bicanski/Getty Images)

• Greece's central bank has warned that failure to reach a deal with the country's European creditors would cause an "acute exchange rate crisis" and a "deep recession."

  [NYT / James Kanter]

• Financial Times has a great timeline of crucial date in the Greece crisis; tomorrow's considered the best day for a deal, since eurozone finance ministers have a regular meeting in Luxembourg.

  [Financial Times / Peter Spiegel]

• Even in the worst-case scenario — there's no deal, Greece runs out of money, it can't pay back its loans, it defaults and has to leave the eurozone — other European countries are expected to survive intact.

  [NYT / Peter Eavis]

• There was a time when Greek implosion would have had major, bad international consequences, but it's not really in danger of spreading to Portugal, Ireland, and Spain anymore.

  [Vox / Matt Yglesias]

• Unclear on any of this? Check out Matt Yglesias's explainer of the current iteration of the crisis.

  [Vox / Matt Yglesias]

Misc.

• Is this the untimely end of euchre?

  [The Awl / Jason Boog]

• Rupert Murdoch has demoted Fox News head honcho Roger Ailes.

  [NY Mag / Gabriel Sherman]

• This is the best, clearest explanation I've read of why the analogy between Caitlyn Jenner and Rachel Dolezal fails.

  [Slate / Vanessa Vitiello Urquhart]

• Is the real problem with the honeybees that they're all just too stressed out? That they're … busybees?

  [NY Mag / David Wallace-Wells]

• If you live in DC and you want to walk into a shipping container and Skype with people in Tehran or Havana or Herat, Afghanistan, well, you're in luck.

  [DCist / Rachel Sadon]

Verbatim

• "If a robot observes spousal abuse, should it call the police?"

  [The Atlantic / Ethan Zuckerman]

• "Committing the odd factual error is an occupational hazard in journalism. For Niall Ferguson, the commission of error is more than a hazard. It’s a cherished way of life."

  [NY Mag / Jonathan Chait]

• "One of the oldest descriptions of a pregnancy test comes from ancient Egypt, where women who suspected they were pregnant would urinate on wheat and barley seeds: If the wheat grew, they believed, it meant the woman was having a girl; the barley, a boy; if neither plant sprouted, she wasn’t pregnant at all. "

  [The Atlantic / Cari Romm]

• "West's previous failed proposals include requiring the high school band to perform the tuneless flute songs of the blind idiot god Azathoth and offering art students instruction in the carving of morbid and obscene fetishes from otherworldly media."

  [The Onion]

• "'My personal goal is to be 6 feet tall and have a six-pack stomach, but I don’t think most people would think either Governor Bush or myself have a very viable plan for reaching our targets,' said Gene Sperling, who led the National Economic Council under Presidents Clinton and Obama. He is 5 feet 5 inches tall, and The Times has not reviewed his abs."

  [NYT / Josh Barro]

Song of the day

• Titus Andronicus, "Ecce Homo"

  [YouTube]

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