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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.
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.
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).
*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.
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