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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.
They have a lot of control over the drivers. Don't they still have a rule where the Uber app won't work if you have the Lyft app running? You aren't an "independent contractor" when your boss doesn't allow you to accept work from competitors. You are an employee.
<Snooty baron voice>
Most assuredly, they should be grateful they're allowed to work at all! Just like those fool peasants demanding an 8-hour workday.
</Snooty baron voice>
Did it occur to you that the laws may be different in the UK and the third alternative (work as an employee) might be the best option?
Your argument can be re-written as: you have no power, so suck up the crumbs were are prepared to drop for you. Well, perhaps the drivers do have more power.
Also, since this wasn't a class action, it doesn't affect anyone except the two drivers who sued. However, all the other drivers can now sue, secure in the knowledge that they will win and that Uber will have to pick up both sides' legal costs.
Perhaps, also, this is bad for the economy as a whole as the current situation leads to Uber not paying the taxes that would otherwise have to be paid. In other words it is just another example of socializing the costs while privatizing the profits.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
they've been employees since day 1. They can't set their own prices or solicit tips. That alone makes them employees even before we start talking about the amount of control Uber exerts.
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they're campaigning for real jobs, with real job protections. People died for minimum wage and the 40 hour work week, ya know? Don't underestimate the working class. They're not as dumb as folks like think. Down on their luck, yeah. But not dumb.
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they have a lot more control then that.
Like
can't set your own price
limits on what tools (car) you can use.
The rating system.
can't really be Promoting Competitor’s Services (Including Your Own)
limits on acceptance rates / can really see where a ride is going be for committing to it.
and more
Living off the desperation of laborers, tempting them to give their labor so the wealthy class of owners can profit at their expense.
which has much weaker employee protections than the UK. Not that the UK is doing great. Ever since Reagan/Thatcher their working class has been getting picked apart.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
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.
I await the data to speak to the following issue, but I strongly suspect all commercial rideshare services worsen driving for all drivers by structurally encouraging poor rideshare drivers to work without commercial car insurance. I suspect this choice drives up the cost of car insurance for other drivers operating their vehicles within the terms of their respective policy.
I figure that poor drivers looking to make quick money by being employed by the rideshare service are more likely to attempt commercial ridesharing without car insurance.
When the uninsured (or improperly insured, there's no distinguishable difference here) have an accident, the other driver is likely to be an insured driver operating their vehicle within the terms of their insurance. If the rideshare driver is at fault and they don't have commercial car insurance, their insurance agent hears about the accident and says the insurer won't cover any damage to either vehicle, the attempted claim is a breach of contract, and whatever insurance they had is now canceled. In order to be made whole, the insured driver has to have thought ahead to this situation and previously bought "uninsured driver" insurance. This additional policy increases the cost of any car insurance.
Sure, uninsured driver insurance existed well before rideshare services. But I suspect organized, commercialized rideshare services increase the odds that one will need uninsured driver insurance because people have a tough time holding the rideshare service liable for accidents their employees (inappropriately called "independent contractors") cause.
Digital Citizen
So, what you need to do is to open an Uber account, go to the furthest part of the island, where there is a zero demand for UBER service, preferably during the night and check-in. Leave the car overnight and let the idle car make money, while doing nothing.
If UBER is willing to employ people for whom it has no work, then it needs to rethink its hiring policy. It's UBER's job to find a business model that is profitable under the law; it's not the law's job to accomodate UBER's business model.
Because we don't want a race to the bottom, we set minimum standards. Working for less is harming other people.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
There are so many arguments and practical hacks against the ruling that it is not even practicable to even list those arguments, and we will not even attempt to do so.
Such as?
We have a number of duck laws here, the ones that say if you look like a duck and quack like a duck then you're a duck. s/duck/employee. You see we've had plenty of large companies over the years try to escape their obligations to employees and the government by calling employees something else. Uber are not the first and they certainly won't be the last.
All it will do is that Uber will accelerate driver-less car fleet and those who were petitioning for minimum hourly rate, on behalf of all drivers, will accelerate mass joblessness, as most of the Uber drivers will be obsolete.
Seems unlikely. If driverless cars are coming, they are coming no matter what. Treating people like scum to hold off the inevitable for a year or two is not a worthwhile tradeoff.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Contractors to work on the terms of the contract, whatever that may be.
Not in the UK. We have laws on the books that say if contractors look too much like employees then for the purposes of the law, they are employees. The specific point is to stop companies like Uber having people who are for all intents and purposes employees (possibly part time) but get to escape all their obligations by playing silly buggers with the name they give their employees.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
For anyone who is interested, take a look at the IR35 regulations, which HMRC are cracking down on massively...
http://www.contractorcalculato...
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/ir...
These are just one of the rules designed to prevent the contractor-not-employee tax avoidance schemes in the UK.
That well known socialist Winston Churchill understand the problem well enough: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"It was formerly supposed that the working of the laws of supply and demand would naturally regulate or eliminate that evil. ... . But where you have what we call sweated trades, you have no organisation, no parity of bargaining, the good employer is undercut by the bad, and the bad employer is undercut by the worst; the worker, whose whole livelihood depends upon the industry, is undersold by the worker who only takes the trade up as a second string, his feebleness and ignorance generally renders the worker an easy prey to the tyranny"
We have employment laws for a reason, and the reason is countries with strong employment laws are far more prosperous and pleasant to live in.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
What some libertarians don't understand is that someone always pays. All uber is doing its externalising the cost. The drivers get benefits, subsidised housing, they can use charities like food banks. If that isn't available, someone has to pay for the extra policing due to their crime, or to cremate turn when they die of exposure one winter.
It's better that an uber costs 50p more and the company doesn't get too be a welfare queen leeching off the state.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
What you don't understand (and I am an ANCAP) is that there are people who do not qualify for meaningful employment at the costs set up by government (minimum wage, lawsuits based on any form of discrimination, harassment, etc.) There are unemployable people out there who will be on welfare if nobody hires them. If a company hires that person and pays him or her something and the person gets more from any other sources (there shouldn't be any welfare, food stamps, etc. but as long as they exist that's a source that can be taken advantage of).
Minimum wage is simply minimum ability. By increasing minimum wage all that the society will get will be this: people with fewer marketable skills and traits will be left behind and the jobs will be reallocated to people with more marketable skills, but clearly there will be fewer jobs.
I run a company, ask me why if you want, I will explain. I make money by selling my services to my clients, we are building the services I sell at my company and I have to be able to afford this development. The people I hire get paid from the money that the clients pay me. I can afford certain number of people, I have multiple offices, I outsource. If I had to pay more per hour than I am paying already, I would cut the workforce and for that hire rate I would only get people who qualify to be paid that much.
I hire people off the street, some don't know how to develop, don't have experience, are recent graduates, some never went to a university of a college, they build the skills in my company. If I am forced to pay a higher rate, I would have fewer people, but the people I have would all be at a higher starting level, thus leaving lower starting level people behind.
Do you understand my points at all, even close? Government can only make some people unemployable with their rules, they cannot make me hire people that are not worth the money.
You can't handle the truth.