Lyft and Uber threatened to stop doing business in Minneapolis after the city council adopted a new rule Thursday that would set a minimum wage for rideshare drivers.
Lyft and Uber threatened to stop doing business in Minneapolis after the city council adopted a new rule Thursday that would set a minimum wage for rideshare drivers.
That's a weird reaction. Why not just ignore the bill entirely? It's not like a municipality has any viable enforcement mechanism against what amounts to a smartphone app.
It's at least worth pointing out that Uber in particular broke several laws to establish themselves in various markets and never suffered any real punishment.
Government: We believe that you need to pay your workers more because we feel like it's not enough.
Companies: The workers agreed to the pay when they signed on. If you make us pay them more, we cannot afford to pay the workers without raising our rates to levels that people don't want to pay for.
Government: You will pay them more money.
Companies: We can't afford to do that so we will be pulling out of this area and now they will make exactly $0 and now people have fewer transportation options.
Government: We did it, we successfully raised people's earnings to $0! pats self on back for a job well done
Sure they do, they can fine them and if they don't comply they can go to state court to get it enforced. Individuals may be able to flout overdue tolls or traffic tickets or whatever for a while, but it's extremely easy to impose a fine on a public corporation.