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Uber Drivers Deemed To Be Employees By Swiss Insurance Provider (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous shares a TechCrunch article: Uber has suffered another setback to its operational model in Europe after a Swiss insurance agency ruled that Uber drivers are employees, not freelance contractors as the company claims -- meaning it must pay social security contributions. This follows a similar ruling by a UK employment tribunal in October which found that the two Uber drivers bringing the claim were employed as workers by Uber, rather than being freelance contractors. Swiss broadcaster SRF says the Suva agency made its decision on the status of Uber drivers in the market on account of their inability to set price or payment type, and because they are threatened with consequences from Uber if they do not fulfill its requirements. The Suva described its decision on the classification as a "clear conclusion." The public sector insurer is involved in determining whether workers are freelance or not as a provider of compulsory on-the-job accident insurance which is required for certain high risk professions.
we're all freelance contractors. You were born alone, you'll die alone, and the only one who really cares about you is you.
If someone agrees to drive for Uber as an independent contractor, then Uber is that person's client. If an independent contractor agrees to work for a client who isn't willing to negotiate their pay rate, then that's on that person, that doesn't mean they are suddenly not an independent contractor just because they don't have any ability to control their rate of pay. Further, the passengers are not the driver's clients, they are Uber's, so any negotiation with the passengers over price or how the passengers pay for the trips is none of the driver's business.
There may certainly be other reasons to consider Uber drivers as employees and not contractors, but I am baffled as to why these same points keep getting brought up over and over again or why they form some kind of basis for a decision every single time like they are somehow actually relevant.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
If they are employees, certainly Uber can demand that they work specific hours or not be employees anymore?
I've never heard of "employees" who can work or not work at their own whim just by signing into or out of an app.
But I wonder if you meant "piece work". Shift work still requires employees to work a set schedule, but which may be a night shift, etc. Indeed, it's why I asked if Uber can start requiring their drivers to work scheduled shifts.
Everything is negotiable, or I'm just not interested. If someone says 'not negotiable' you 'negotiate' by walking away and working for someone that cares if the person they hire is competent. If you're at all good (and the job requires someone good), they change tunes real quick. If not, you didn't want to work for Infosys (or EDS aka HP shitslingers) in the first place.
I _wish_ the true bottom feeders would put their cheapness right in the job listings. Would save a lot of time. As it is, you just 'shitlist' the bad ones.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
He has insurance to cover himself.
I live in a state that requires it, and was hit by someone who didn't have it anyway.
You live in more of a fantasy world than he does. Besides, requiring someone to get insurance before putting someone else, unasked, at risk is small potatoes on the libertarian scale compared to the rest of what government does.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
And if there are too many parameters set on how you do your work, you may very well be an employee. Uber is just the latest and perhaps largest example of how companies try to evade payroll taxes and labor laws by claiming they're in a contractor relationship with their workers, but they're hardly the first. In general terms, contract work is supposed to give you pretty wide latitude in how the job gets done. Contracts can set up due dates, and to some extent even milestone dates, can set up remuneration schedules, and most certainly include quality assurance requirements, but when you start making those contractual requirements so narrow that the contractor's schedule and duties start to look a lot more like employment, then a line has been crossed. It can be fuzzy, and I've certainly read of cases that have gone to court where the courts have leaned one or the other based on the balance of facts, but talk to any employment lawyer and they will tell you that if you want the status of a contract to hold if a court case or government investigation ensues, the fewer stipulations on how the work is actually conducted, the less likely the relationship is to be seen as an employment relationship.
I've done plenty of contract work in my time, and my contracts have always amounted to "Will deliver product on such-and-such a date", along with a schedule of the exact user requirements. If I have month to do the job, and I don't start it until four days before it's due, then that's my business, and my problem, and if I fail, then the contract language is usually there to spank me very badly indeed. I wouldn't sign a contract to do a job that required me to work on it specific hours, save perhaps where the necessities of testing and implementation required I do the work after hours.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
All of them ... except one- and a lot of the third world countries too. In some ways - America has managed to not learn anything for 200 years and keep repeating mistakes everybody else has stopped making after seeing the results one too many times. And a significant chunk of the population wants to undo even the lesons they did learn.
I suppose it's easy to think OSHA is just bothersome regulation which should be scrapped if you can't even remember the great New York City garment factory fire - and how well over a hundred people were, by any reasonable definition of the word, brutally murdered by their greedy bosses.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Your freedom ends where mine begins.
You need a fucking drivers license because I drive on the same roads and I have thus got a RIGHT to demand nobody gets to do so who hasn't proven at least a minimum level of competency. You don't want freedom. You want the right to kill people. You want to take MY freedoms AWAY.
I'm less certain about car insurance - but I can see the logic. If you bang my car to hell then I have a right to be compensated. If you can't afford to do so I'm just screwed ? If you have insurance however, I can be assured of being compensated for the misfortune brought upon me by your fuckups. So I can see a compelling argument that I have a right to demand you not drive on public roads without insurance.
That's not a "nanny state" - that's a state that ensure your freedom is not allowed to intrude on mine. That's MORE freedom for EVERYBODY. WE're all MORE free because drivers licenses exist. We're all MORE free if its illegal to fire a gun in an urban area.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Libertarianism: the mental illness that makes you think a traffic signal is an unconscionable intrusion on liberty.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
So if I flip burgers at MacDonalds for 8 hours a day and then go wait tables at Marcos Pizzeria for 4 hours every night and earn some extra cash dancing at the local stripclub on a saturday night... I'm not an employee of any of those three business because I work for all three ?
The stripclub could argue I'm a casual worker - maybe even have an arrangement where I pay THEM for my slot on the pole and work for tips (I don't think this is done anywhere since I don't think tips are THAT good)... but the two restaurants are definitely BOTH employing me.
No, that's not a criteria - it can be a conseration when the actual criteria are fuzzy - but it's not a criteria. You don't become less of an employee if you work two jobs.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *