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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>
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
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.
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
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 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.