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Uber Appeals Against Ruling that Its UK Drivers Are Workers (theguardian.com)
Uber has launched an appeal against a landmark employment tribunal ruling that its minicab drivers should be classed as workers with access to the minimum wage, sick pay and paid holidays. From a report on The Guardian: The taxi-app company filed papers with the appeal tribunal on Tuesday in an attempt to overturn the October judgment that, if it stands, could affect tens of thousands of workers in the gig economy. The move came as several dozen Uber drivers picketed City Hall on Wednesday holding placards demanding Transport for London, which licences Uber as a private hire operator in the capital, "end sweated labour now." It also mounted a protest at the City of London offices of Salesforce, a US computing company that is a major Uber client. Two Uber drivers, James Farrar and Yaseen Aslam, took Uber to court on behalf of a group 19 others who argued that they were employed by the San Francisco-based company, rather than working for themselves. Uber's business model has been based on treating drivers who log on to its app as self-employed contractors and taking a cut of their fares, which Uber dictates.
In other news, brat has tantrum.
Film at 11.
Specific working conditions define whether a worker is an employee or is a contractor, and the laws governing such are generally pretty straightforward. How Uber thinks it should be exempt from these rules doesn't make any sense.
Of course they're operating an unlicensed taxi service in violation of passenger livery laws too, so I guess following the law is not something they're especially good at.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I don't fancy Uber's chances here at all. Disguised employment is a big deal for the government in the UK, including for tax reasons. Even if Uber wins the appeal, it's not unlikely that full legislation would follow to close whatever loophole it relied on.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Gig economy is a social equivalent of dumping toxic waste into a river. Any company that operates like this deserves what they get.
I wouldn't say they are workers because they can turn the app off at any time and go home, they can work as many or as few hours as they want, and they can work at whatever time they want. Furthermore, they can take long holidays or even go for years without doing any driving, and then just start again when they want.
Real workers don't have that flexibility, and are bound to working a set number of hours at set times on set days. They are given a set number of holidays which they can take only at times that their employers find agreeable, and they can't just pack the job up for a year and then return.
Clearly, Uber driver is not a job and the drivers are not workers.
"Gig economy" is just the corporate way of saying "we're doing away with the whole 'job' concept, you plebs." Of course Uber doesn't see its drivers as workers. It sees them as cattle.
If it was a car service, it would have workers.
Since it doesn't have workers, it's a pretzel.
And thus it can be eaten and tossed into the compost.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Now I can move to London, drive for Uber one day a year, and get all the holidays paid! Sweet deal!
"...who argued that they were employed..."
That's easy: "You're fired. Anyone else think they are an employee?"
The only thing that would make it better is if all the taxi drivers in London had to dress like Bruce Willis in "The 5th Element".
What are they? Capitalists?
I have such mixed feelings about this issue. On the one hand, worker rights are crucial essential. I don't want any business to be able to operate as a loophole to get around them. On the other, this is a new business model that is still developing, and it's wrong to just shut it down. Uber and its competitors have really revolutionized transportation. Before, I *never* would have taken a taxi in a first world country, as they have always been obscenely expensive. Now I can actually get around when public transportation fails me or is inconvenient.
The burst pricing model is actually quite brilliant, but I do think that Uber dictating the price drivers can charge does really push the argument in the drivers' favour, though. If it were literally just a SAAS app that independent contractors used to find customers, they would have complete control to set their own prices, etc. Maybe this is a change that needs to happen. I'm not sure. What I do know is, we can't deny people the opportunity to work part-time, or however they want, simply because it would require the company to provide them with expensive benefits. That doesn't make sense.
Perhaps a new model of benefits needs to be created for this type of employment. If you argue that a traditional worker should be entitled to 4 weeks of paid holiday per year, then that's 1 hour of holiday per hour worked, right? So, once a person reaches, say, 96 hours (of actual drive time with a customer, on the clock), they would be eligible to receive a bonus of 8 hours (times the minimum wage, I guess?) on their next pay cheque. I'm just brainstorming, and this idea is sounding worse the more I write, so I'll stop. I just think some other kind of ideology needs to be developed.
If Uber is simply a matchmaker, then drivers should be able to:
1) use any car they want
2) drive as little/much they want
3) take/reject any fare they want
Aren't there any FBI/NSA surveillance stories to vent our collective spleen over? What about a nice Russian hacking conspiracy story? Hey, Slashdot hasn't had a good the-new-Star Wars-sucks story in awhile, so how about one those? It would be nice tie-in with the new movie coming out. Seriously, let's stop with the Uber stories for the rest of the day.
My first reaction to this was, "You knew the job was dangerous when you took it." Sort of like people moving into houses next to an airport, then complaining about the noise from aircraft taking off and landing.
Don't know what the final ruling might be on this, but it seems like if being an Uber driver is a job in the normal sense, then it would lose most of the flexibility that makes it attractive to people who do it at their convenience. I'm wondering what sort of benefits part-time workers in the UK are entitled to.
http://www.reuters.com/article... *yawn*
We'll make great pets
Taxi companies take on the burden of vetting, licensing, requiring education on street locations, and the like for their workers.
To avoid flooding the market, they ensure that only a limited number of drivers are able to be licensed.
They buy expensive insurance and work with law enforcement.
Uber is succeeding not because it is disruptive, but because is new and therefore has not been battered by misfortunes over time into adopting a similar model.
It is cheap because it passes all of these costs onto you, and onto its insurance companies, who have not yet figured out the full scope of the risk involved, mainly because they will make a tidy profit selling what should be expensive insurance cheaply because Uber is expanding.
Those who have any brains at Uber intend to build up the business and sell out because they know their fortune cannot last.
Alternative Right.
Uber drivers set their own hours and supply their own equipment. They have a high degree of autonomy in how they do their job such as which areas they want to work in.
Uber supplies an app that connects people who want to go from A to B with drivers who are willing to do the driving. It also makes it much easier for both driver and customer to vet each other and agree on a price.
This seems like Uber is an information company connecting two market participants. I would love to see this model expanded to house cleaning, yard work and baby sitting. In all these cases the customer doesn't want to work with a large company, I want to select and vet an individual baby sitter or driver but I don't want a long term relationship with this vendor so I therefore need to be able to enter into this contract as smoothly and efficiently as possible.
So why should Uber drivers be considered Uber employees? What is the benefit to society as a whole? If there were 10 different ride/taxi apps and the drivers could use all of them would it make them employees of all the apps?
When "for the privilege" of entering a taxi/cab, we are paying 4 euros as a fixed TAX, it is not difficult for uber to be cheaper for shorter rides...
I mean, if you sit down with a company and say "I would like to work for you" and they say "OK we'll pay you $X for Y-work-done, but you get no benefits, etc" nobody's FORCING you to take that job, are they?
If you don't like it, decline the job and look elsewhere.
If you're desperate for work, then perhaps you HAVE to accept a shitty deal to get a job? Or, you should improve yourself and your skills to make yourself a more attractive candidate for a better position?
I don't really understand why there's this presumption that every job MUST be the perfect life-affirming career with 20 weeks child-leave, infinite sick days, and a complete package of benefits?
-Styopa
Just create an open source free downloadable app that lets drivers and riders hook up with no central business at all. Have a rating system that allows riders to rate the drivers. Allow the rider and driver to negotiate their own rates. And run it heavily encrypted and/or connected through TOR to prevent snooping.
"The first rule of Ride-Share Club is; Don't talk about Ride-Share Club!" Cut out the ability for anyone, like the government, to know who you deal with or if or how much money changed hands in the process.
One side-effect of this cracking-down on working by 'gig' by the various governments, is how it may affect your average gigging musician/band playing the local bar/club. If local bars/clubs have to treat bands/musicians as employees, you'll see an end to live music in all but the largest venues and you'll only see major artists.
That will be "the day the music died".
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
If Uber wanted independent consultants, then Uber should not meddle with the preferences of hours, no restrictions on floor or ceiling of hours, time of day etc. And let those consultants set rates, take 100% of the tips etc.
If Uber wants to get into business of those consultants, then Uber would have to accept them as employees.
For once I agree with companies. State-secured paternalist schemes for employees and all the administrative overload that comes with them will be gradually relinquished and it is a good thing. Work and skills can be sold on the market on a task basis just like any other good. Overprotecting workers too often makes them work just as much not to be fired (even less so for officials), while those who sell their services will aim at excellence in order to raise their rates and dictate their conditions.
We covered this in college in our Manufacturing Management course. The law in the UK has a lot of grey areas concerning what constitutes and employer/employee relationship, and it's not as simple as who's cutting the paycheque. Who do you report to? Who's controlling the method of work? Who determines your hours? There's a multitude of factors that have to be taken into consideration and weighed up collectively on a case-by-case basis. The word "reasonable" shows up a lot in these laws, and that's wide open to interpretation. The precedent that this sets is going to be interesting.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
haha
you couldn't get around for cheap. They'd raise their prices to reduce demand. Uber wants more rides because they're not concerned with vehicle maintenance (those costs are 100% the driver). So they can focus on Maximizing raw dollar throughput and ignore the costs to the driver. This is how/why Uber ends up being less than minimum wage in all but a few ultra high demand markets.
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here. Too tired to retype it.
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of having what little they cling to taken away from them?
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Given that contract classification abuse (if not outright fraud) is something well known across the world, Uber can't PR themselves out of this one.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Not traditional? It's just very old fashioned piece-work such as was common in the West a century ago and the third world now.
You just haven't noticed because it's taxi trips and not shirts.
Just try clinging to your girlfriend if you have doubts.
How can they not be workers for Uber? They can't get ride-share jobs off the platform and all the money comes from the platform. They can't be contractors because they could contract with anyone if they were.
Only boring people are ever bored.
Then instead, I create another franchised company that's a wholly owned subsidiary. I create one of these franchises for every 10 contractors.
I contract with each of those franchise companies to contract with drivers.
Let's say one of these is "subcontracting company #47".
If any of the drivers in subcontracting company #47 claims to be an employee, then subcontracting company #47 goes out of business. As part of the franchise agreement, all assets are forfeited to the company that grants the franchises, so there are no company assets to try to take away as restitution for the drivers.
No one is fired, and it's legal under UK employment law to terminate them as part of the company going out of business.
Now the "employee" has 9 pissed off contractors who just lost their livelihood over them claiming to be an employee.
You do the math.
See previous answer.
I create a new contracting company that applies peer pressure and automatically self destructs any time someone claims to be its employee. The company going out of business exempts it from the UK employee termination laws, and there are now 9 contractors to the one "employee" who are incredibly pissed at the one "employee" for costing them their livelihood as contractors.
If UK changes their laws to account for this, you simply restructure the business again and again until they get tired, or the 9-on-1 beat-downs take care of everyone who would claim to be an employee getting involved in doing do in the future.
Then I don't fire you.
Instead, I have a holding company that owns many contracting companies, each with 10 subcontractors.
One of the subcontractors claims "employee!", and that contracting company goes out of business. I make new contracting companies, as needed: they're cheap.
Meanwhile, the person who claimed "employee!" and nine other people are out of a contracting gig, without any having been "wrongfully terminated for being a whistleblower".
What are nine angry people going to do to that one "employee"? Not my problem...