Uber Class-Action Case May Hinge On What the Drivers Want

New submitter shanemccarthy writes with a story at Forbes that lays out a non-intuitive factor in the ongoing class-action suit over alleged labor law violations filed in the name of Uber drivers. Namely: how Uber drivers see themselves in relation to the company. While some drivers consider themselves, or would like to be considered, employees, and accrue the conventional benefits of employee status at a large company (and Uber, for all its crowd-sourcing, disintermediating origin story, is large enough to garner a valuation in the billions), a considerable number of the drivers do not want to give up their status as independent contractors. The rules of class action lawsuits, though, mean that if Uber's drivers are classed as employees, those who would like to remain independent won't have that option -- so the company is lining up examples of drivers who would seem by no one's definition to be employees, and who want to keep it that way. See also this earlier story about workplace classification for these drivers and others in non-traditional work arrangements.

Comments

Re:Precedent

[Spazmania]

Typically "when is a contractor an employee?" hinges on three primary factors:

1. Who sets the hours? Company? Employee. Worker? Contractor.

2. Paid by the task? Contractor. Paid by the hour? Employee.

3. EIN on the 1099? Contractor. Social Security Number on the 1099? Employee.

The IRS has a page describing the myriad other factors that are considered, but if answers to the three above all agree with each other, that's generally what you are.

http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/...