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Uber Contract 'Gibberish', Says MP Investigating Gig Economy (theguardian.com)

Posted by msmash on from the calling-one-out dept.

A committee of MPs has lambasted Uber's contracts with drivers as "gibberish" and "almost unintelligible" as the company attempts to ensure its drivers remain self-employed. From a report: Frank Field, chair of the work and pensions select committee that is carrying out an investigation into the so-called gig economy, said: "Quite frankly the Uber contract is gibberish. They are well aware that many, if not most, of their drivers speak English as a second language -- they recently lost a court case trying to escape Transport for London's new English testing rules for private hire drivers -- yet their contract is almost unintelligible." [...] Publishing full details of Uber's contract terms, along with those for the takeaway courier firm Deliveroo and Amazon, Field said all three used some kind of "egregious clause" which attempted to prevent people challenging their "self-employed" designation, although neither Uber's nor Amazon's contract went as far as Deliveroo's, in the committee's view.

6 of 90 comments (clear)

  1. When will they learn? by viperidaenz · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Law overrides contracts, less the law specifically states it can be contracted out of.

    Perhaps there should be penalties for putting in clauses that contradict law. The companies put them in to scare people in to not exercising their legal rights, knowing they're not enforceable.

    I wonder if it would be covered under existing "obtaining by deception" or "loss by deception" laws...

    1. Re:When will they learn? by rtb61 · · Score: 2

      There is a contract law that covers this situation. Basically if a contract is bad enough, they grab it, rip in into a thousand tiny pieces and bin it, figuratively speaking. Then the court works through proper remuneration for the service provided, generally speaking this will go against those who produced the contract. Similarly ambiguous or contradictory contact conditions are always meant to go against those who produced the contract, their contract, their responsibility for failure. However US courts are quite corrupt and anything can happen and unfortunately taking to the high court will mean loss against a major corporation no matter how fanciful the interpretation has to be by the high court (even to the point of adding whole clauses that do not exist, laughably corrupt) ie the constitution only applies to the actions of the federal government and major corporations are allowed to do what ever they want, now that's stupidly corrupt because that is on display to the rest of the world.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
  2. The Jig Is Up On The "Gig" Economy by sexconker · · Score: 2

    The jig is up on the "gig" economy. I can't wait for it to completely collapse. I hope the short-term rental economy goes next.

    1. Re:The Jig Is Up On The "Gig" Economy by barc0001 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      > The 'gig economy' is here as the last attempt of the free market to address the collapsing actual economy

      Dude, not even close. The 'gig' economy is a new generation of hucksters trying to figure out how to pay people even less to perform services on their behalf without having to bow to things like "regulation" and "laws", or have "employees" who do the actual service delivery to their "customers". The last two are in quotes because the Gig Economy actors pretend they are only facilitating a transaction between two external parties - 'Really !!! We have no skin in the game, we're just taking a modest commission hooking up these two people who want to exchange money for a service! We have no employees, there's no regulation that applies to us!'

    2. Re:The Jig Is Up On The "Gig" Economy by Narcocide · · Score: 2

      Everything about your chain of logic here is sound except the last step; you fail basic conceptualization of the situation if you don't realize that manufacturing jobs only left for foreign shores because of removal of regulations that restricted off-shoring such work. Frankly this is such a fundamentally inaccurate view of reality that, considering the relative coherency of the rest of your argument, I'm left with only the conclusion that you're either a paid shill or just an remorselessly evil asshat. Mind you, I could still be wrong. There's no reason these two states of being have to be mutually exclusive.

  3. Re:I have an idea by Cederic · · Score: 2

    Or gleefully sign away, knowing that under the law it's unenforceable.

    Given that contracts are often discussed at great length in court cases by trained legal professionals I think it's reasonable to suggest that nobody can understand a contract, and so you're effectively saying that nobody should ever sign one.

    I'm fairly sure I don't correctly interpret multiple legal terms in contracts that I sign. I avoid having to pay thousands of pounds to lawyers every time I sign up for a new TV, telephone, power or other service by relying on the basic 'common sense' aspect of common law. It works, you should try it.