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Uber Drivers Are Company Employees Not Self-Employed Contractors, Rules British Court (arstechnica.com)
A British court has ruled that Uber drivers have the same employment rights as other full-time employees in the country, which makes them entitled to a wide array of benefits. Ars Technica reports: The ruling (PDF) means that drivers are now entitled to earn the national minimum wage, holiday pay, sick pay, and other benefits, after the San Francisco-based taxi firm lost a case brought against them by two drivers backed by the GMB union. Uber had argued that it was a tech firm rather than a transport one, and that as its drivers were self-employed contractors it was not obliged to provide the kinds of statutory employment rights full-time workers would expect. According to the GMB, the Central London Employment Tribunal's decision will have ramifications in other industries which rely on casualized labor, and that "similar contracts masquerading as bogus self employment will all be reviewed." In the court's ruling, however, the judges insisted that "the notion that Uber in London is a mosaic of 30,000 small businesses linked by a common 'platform' is to our minds faintly ridiculous. Drivers do not and cannot negotiate with passengers... They are offered and accept trips strictly on Uber's terms." The tribunal panel reserved hefty criticism for the firm, claiming that it had used "fictions," "twisted language," and "brand new terminology" to hoodwink drivers and passengers alike. The GMB meanwhile denied that the majority of Uber drivers enjoyed the "flexibility" of their current contracts.
The UK has effectively been this way for a while. The reason is that the total taxes paid with an employer/employee arrangement are greater than a contract arrangement would pay. Thus HM Revenue and Customs has been cracking down on "disguised emplyees" for decades, re-defining their employment arrangements as a traditional employment contract.
HMR&C also crack down on "fake intermediaries", where people set up their own company which employs them (and perhaps their spouse), while that company contracts with the original employer. However, I don't think the tax advantages of this are as great as they used to be.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
I can't speak to British law, but in many jurisdictions there are actually legal definitions of employment to prevent what Uber appears to be doing, namely hiring people but calling them independent contractors to evade labor laws. It isn't like this is the first time that a company has tried a contractor scam to get around minimum wage and other worker protections.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The questions (from Synergistech Communications, which also provides additional information), with the answers in bold based on my understanding of how Uber works:
By my count the Uber-Driver relationship does not pass 4 of the tests and two more are borderline. The key point that makes the relationship tip towards employee is that the driver has no direct price control (they cannot quote a price to perform the service).
*This* is the kind of discussion that should be occurring instead of an all out, scorched-Earth effort to ban services like Uber/Lyft. It's apparent there is a demand on both ends not being met, both passengers and drivers, for an alternative to traditional taxi/ride services. It needs to be addressed but those who profit from the status quo want it ignored and those who try to fill the demand punished.
Nope. We already have minicabs here: those are taxis which have few licensing requirements compared to taxis, but can't be hailed and can't use taxi ranks, etc. No one has banned uber, they fit exactly into the exising regulations just fine. There are and have been minicab setups ranging from individuals with a car up to large companies with a whole fleet and an app long before Uber arrived here.
Except that they're playing silly-buggers with an employment law specifically designed to stop companies playing silly-buggers. They're free to operate here, as long as they stick to the same laws as everyone else. What uber is being "punished" for is not providing for a demand, but doing it without sticking to the laws we have.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
So if they are unable to find a regular job as an employee at government mandated minimum wage then they should not be allowed to earn *anything at all* then? When you're already desperate and starving anything is better than nothing.
Are there no prisons? ... And the Union workhouses... Are they still in operation?"
Why would they be desperate and starving? We have a thing called a social safety net here. If you can't find a job, you can go and sign up for jobseeker's allowance. The thing is we have a societal memory of the Victorian era. In many ways it was exactly like what you seem to want. People were free to sign up to whatever contracts they wanted, no matter how abusive, and people were free to starve. So we tried your way already and decided it wasn't very good.
It's very possible they could make more working a couple of these "abusive" self-employment gigs than they could working a minimum-wage job
Then do so. You're allowed to pay yourself less than the minimum wage, so start a company (or operate as a sole trader) and go nuts. What you can't do is employ other people under those conditions. Neither can you pretend your employees are actually contracting companies in order to escape those rules.
Why do you think you have any right to tell others how to make a living if the activity/product is not illegal?
The activity---of not paying people enough---is illegal. So that's a moot point. Not only that, it's legal for you to be paid less than the minimum wage, but it is illegal for them to do it. Only the employer is committing a crime. On legal matters, one must be precise.
I chose not to be a billionaire because I didn't want to put in the kind of effort, dedication, and in these times, stoop as low as one needs to acquire such a fortune.
Ha, no. Just because you are choosing not to pursue it, doesn't mean you could achieve it if you pursued it. There are more than enough a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinners who have spent a lifetime trying to get that far and have not achieved it.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Back in the 90s, before the minimum wage came in, you would see job adverts like "Security guard, £100/week, 100 hours, bring own dog". When someone took up that job it had two effects. Firstly the government had to keep paying them benefits, because £100/week isn't enough to pay rent or have both food and electricity at the same time, all while feeding the dog. Secondly that person was trapped, 100 hours/week leaving them little time to look for better jobs and if they quit their benefits would stop because they "voluntarily" gave up work.
On top of that, it's blatant exploitation of the individual.
So the government realized that it would be better to set some limits. A minimum wage, a maximum number of hours worked per week. Chances are the company simply paid what was required, since they needed a security guard no matter what. But even if they just replaced that person with a CCTV camera or two, at least the benefits that the government would have had to pay anyway were now enabling the ex-employee to spend time looking for a better job, improving their CV or getting more education and training. Just shoving people into dead-end, subsistence wage jobs was a false economy.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC