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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.
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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.
"...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".
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.
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.
That's the future - make everyone a contractor. you're only paid when you work. benefits? You're on your own.
Days off? Sure, you don't get paid - AND someone else takes your (route, hours, work, etc...) and good luck getting it back when you come back from vacation, sick leave, etc ...
Oh, and good luck being compensated for the business risk and expenses that companies are pushing on to the worker - er, I mean "contractor". No business, well you don't work and get paid - but we're still gonna pay you like you were an employee. Oh yeah, and it's up to you to keep up your tools and equipment, insurance and everything.
They try to sell it like you're being an "entrepreneur" and "in business for yourself" and "calling your own shots" but the fact of the matter is that your tax status changed - nothing else.
Uber and Lyft and the gig economy is for suckers. But it's gonna be forced on us because too many stupid people fall for it.
This seems like Uber is an information company connecting two market participants.
They sure take a big cut, just for that. Plus, they set the rate, set their cut, which you cannot negotiate, so the driver half of the 'market' have exactly zero power.
What is the benefit to society as a whole?
Having worker's rights upheld has enormous societal benefits.
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,
I think that it only extends to a musician if the musician band ONLY works for one club owner.
Or the musician works for multiple club owners, but all their contracts are through one booking agent and the booking agent sets the prices/compensation.
I think that most musicians playing multiple clubs, etc will continue to be independent contractors. They aren't really in a grey area, unlike Uber drivers or other similar jobs.
And I am sure there are some musicians who are regular W-2 employees in the US - they aren't the ones playing gigs at multiple clubs, they're working for one employer consistently. (ex. DJ that works at a club every night. Or instrumentalist working for a symphony or possibly even a studio. Those are more in that grey-area, and might be employees)
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
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?
Because human beings are human beings with needs and with rights. If you work 40 hours a week you should be able to keep a roof over your head and support your family, and you shouldn't be living in poverty. If you're a woman then you should be able to reproduce and not be expected to return to work the next day if you don't have enough vacation time accrued. It doesn't matter if you're driving a taxi, flipping burgers or running a $20 million company. If you're running a business and can't afford to pay your workers enough money to get by on, then that business is not sustainable. Find something more lucrative and more profitable to work on.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
If you work 40 hours a week you should be able to keep a roof over your head and support your family, and you shouldn't be living in poverty.
Um, no. No, you shouldn't be able to do that. Some people are really unproductive. All you do by forcing wages higher is make them unemployable (in the long run, if not in the short run). Negative income taxes like the EITC are a very elegant response to this. Perfect? No, but no human system is.
Yes you should. And don't give me this "higher wages hurt the economy" BS. Even as far back as the time of Henry Ford people understood that workers were also consumers. Why you'd want to impoverish the people who drive economic growth is beyond me.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
of having what little they cling to taken away from them?
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That's the problem with many of the commenters on this article. Acting as if everything that is not a 9-5 office job is contracting is somewhat naive.
In the 1990s I was a contractor, which was fine, until I started getting more than 90% of my work from one client upon which I had tax hassles because I was then considered an employee. The people who only work for Uber would not be considered contractors in most of the world.