Slashdot Mirror
Uber Loses Right To Classify UK Drivers as Self-Employed (theguardian.com)
Uber drivers are not self-employed and should be paid the "national living wage," a UK employment court has ruled in a landmark case which could affect tens of thousands of workers in the gig economy. From a report on the Guardian: The ride-hailing app could now be open to claims from all of its 40,000 drivers in the UK, who are currently not entitled to holiday pay, pensions or other workers' rights. Uber immediately said it would appeal against the ruling. Employment experts said other firms with large self-employed workforces could now face scrutiny of their working practices and the UK's biggest union, Unite, announced it was setting up a new unit to pursue cases of bogus self-employment. The Uber ruling could force a rethink of the gig economy business model, where companies use apps and the internet to match customers with workers. The firms do not employ the workers, but take commission from their earnings, and many have become huge global enterprises.
A similar situation happened with Microsoft temp/contract employees a number of years ago. They sued MS because they were essentially "permanent temps". As a result, they're now (if I recall correctly) required to take at least six months off after a maximum of 18 months of employment. So, unfortunately, their situation didn't really improve, as I presume they were hoping to get benefits, etc, as full time employees. Microsoft was obviously using long-term contract employees to avoid paying benefits or taking responsibility of employment, but now as a result of the lawsuit, all the temp / contract employees seem to be worse off than before.
I'll be curious to see what happens with Uber employees in the UK. My guess is something similar.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
They dictate all of your terms
Maybe I'm OK with Uber's terms? Why are all of these other people going to work for them and them bitching? Why aren't they quitting and finding other work?
If enough people quit Uber or just were not available, Uber would have to improve it's contract terms. The market at work. What all of these people are complaining about is that others are willing to accept terms that they are not satisfied with. They got under bid.
Have gnu, will travel.
Hear, hear. The title should be "Workers lose right to be contract employees, set own hours and working conditions."
I wonder if the whole employee/contractor thing is a red herring. As near as I can tell, the key to ride/home/tool/bike/whatever-sharing businesses is they don't have to bring capital to the table. Yeah, it would be more expensive to pay benefits to drivers, but that's not the real win. The real win is the drivers bring their own cars so Uber doesn't have to buy them.
Note this is a win all around. Customers win (low prices), the companies win (low capital structure), the drivers/loaners win (incremental income from idle assets). The only one who loses is the competition.
Totally agree on the point that it is individual workers who are losing the right to contract their labor for hire for terms they define.
I wanted to add to your last line which I highlighted. It's not only competitors losing out, possibly even more important and a larger motivation for attacking Uber/Lyft and other systems for independent contracting, is that the government doesn't get that all-important ability to deduct from a paycheck before you see it, nor be able to garnish it, nor track your income per pay period.
Possibly even more importantly from the governments' perspective of maintaining control, it prevents people from having to actually calculate and pay taxes owed as it is much easier for the working population to not consciously realize just how much government takes when it comes out of a paycheck before they see it.
I believe that if taxes had to be paid like any other bill rather than being deducted automatically from a paycheck, many more people would be up in arms about high tax rates. Government most definitely doesn't want to possibly be forced to lower taxes. Lower taxes = less cash income to the government and less power and control over individuals and businesses.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
The foundation of our economy is that large numbers of people have enough disposable income to buy lots of things including taxi rides. If everyone is earning fuck all in an insecure job there won't be many Uber drivers (because they won't be able to buy a car) or Uber customers. Our corporate overlords seem desperate to get rid of the very thing that makes them wealthy - their customers. They don't seem to realise that all that dreadful socialism that we've had since WW2 has created millions of new customers for thousands of industries old and new. Getting rid of them just to get the stock price up a bit isn't going to end well.