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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.
Dishonest employers fooling employees into thinking they're contractors has actually long been a mainstay of the technical industry. Seriously. If you think you're a contractor and are rejecting my assertion here but you still have to report to an office at a specific time determined by your employer, you're a sucker.
How the hell is working FOR Uber entrepreneurship. Can you Grow your Business?
Can you Also deal with competing Companies?
Deal Direct with Customers? Other them other services?
No You work for Uber.
No, what I believe they are saying is that if you work for a company, that collects the money, gives you your jobs, set standards for drivers, etc., then you are an employee of that company.
You can buy a car, advertise all over the place, have the correct insurance, and you are a one person company. It has been going on for a long time, its called "Car Service".
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
It's entrepreneurship because you get to decide when, where, and how much you work.
That is the definition of flexible work hours. The definition of entrepreneur is someone who establishes a business.
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!
Nice straw man. What they're saying is that if a company is benefiting from workers as if they are employees....then they're employees and should be treated as such by the company. Not prey on people desperate to make next months rent, so they spend their free time driving for Uber....even if gas and maintenance costs push their annual earnings well below minimum wage.
Nobody chooses to be a low paid serf, you Randian nutjob, any more than you've "chosen" not to be a billionaire.
On its face, Uber is an end-run around laws restricting taxi companies (it may not have started that way, but it definitely is now). Uber's whole scheme is analogous to patenting something that's already been done before by adding the phrase "on the internet". They're using weasel words to do things they're not supposed to be able to do by law.
Whether you think the law is fair or not is a different issue.
Because I feel that the laws there are too restrictive, I'd normally not really care. But then they get petulant. Did you know that Austin doesn't have Uber service? Austin wants all ridesharing services to fingerprint their drivers (which I believe the taxi companies are already required to do). The voters voted, and the law passed. Uber's response?
They took their ball and went home.
I use Uber fairly regularly. I love the service. I think it was needed, and for that reason I give them a pass on the medallion laws or whatever; the taxi companies needed a kick in the ass, and many of those laws probably exist due to corruption. But I [i]do not[/i] think it's unreasonable to comply with requests from municipalities that go to the safety of passengers -- or, for that matter, mandates to treat their employees fairly.
And when they're so petulant that they'll pull out of a municipality instead of complying with the laws there, well... That just makes it clear that those whiners think they're special snowflakes, and have no qualms about punishing their customers in an attempt to obtain the special treatment they think they deserve.
-- sigs cause cancer.
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).
No, not everyone "enjoys and uses" these services particularly because that lower rate you refer to comes at the cost of a profound dishonesty, as the legal case points out. Another aspect of this dishonest accounting, I suspect, is in the form of car insurance as I've pointed out in another recent post. Low prices at the cost of exploitation is no bargain, it's hiding the real cost of providing the good or service.
Digital Citizen
*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.
In the UK, companies are required to provide certain things to employees, part time or not. The issue here is the organisation is supposed to be employing these people as employees and not "self employed contractors", likely brought about with the similarity to how these are like zero-hour contracts.
Just like someone employed under a zero-hour contract, however that doesn't mean the company is not responsible for them as an employee still.
And they can take the organisation to court if they don't believe it's following proper employment practices.
Small companies don't really make their employees declare that they're self employed contractors.
"Kickbacks" are illegal for politicans in the UK thanks to the Bribery act. If you have evidence of this, I would suggest you publish it so the British government and public can address it.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
And nothing of value was lost...
In fact something of value would be gained, the principle that you can't circumvent laws on hours, holiday pay, maternity pay, redundancy pay simply by saying that someone is a self-employed contractor. It doesn't matter whether Uber stay or go