Uber Loses Gig Workers Rights Challenge in UK Supreme Court (techcrunch.com) 151
Uber has lost a long running employment tribunal challenge in the UK's Supreme Court -- with the court dismissing the ride-hailing giant's appeal and reaffirming earlier rulings that drivers who brought the case are workers, not independent contractors. From a report: The case, which dates back to 2016, has major ramifications for Uber's business model (and other gig economy platforms) in the UK -- and likely regionally, as similar employment rights challenges are ongoing in European courts. European Union lawmakers are also actively eyeing how to improve conditions for gig workers, so policymakers were already feeling pressure to clarify the law around gig work -- today's ruling only increases that.
The court rejected Uber's argument that it merely acted akin to a booking agent for drivers, noting that the company would have no means of performing its contractual obligations to passengers (nor complying with its regulatory obligations as a licensed private hire vehicle operator) -- "without either employees or subcontractors to perform driving services for it." The court also weighed how Uber's business operates in light of UK employment law which provides for a 'worker' status -- a classification which is neither employed nor self-employed -- considering other case law and the detail of the drivers' relationship with Uber in coming to its interpretation of the legislation. Its conclusion is that "the transportation service performed by drivers and offered to passengers through the Uber app is very tightly defined and controlled by Uber."
The court rejected Uber's argument that it merely acted akin to a booking agent for drivers, noting that the company would have no means of performing its contractual obligations to passengers (nor complying with its regulatory obligations as a licensed private hire vehicle operator) -- "without either employees or subcontractors to perform driving services for it." The court also weighed how Uber's business operates in light of UK employment law which provides for a 'worker' status -- a classification which is neither employed nor self-employed -- considering other case law and the detail of the drivers' relationship with Uber in coming to its interpretation of the legislation. Its conclusion is that "the transportation service performed by drivers and offered to passengers through the Uber app is very tightly defined and controlled by Uber."
Getting the popcorn.. (Score:2)
.. and waiting for the inevitable clash between "We should be able to work for whatever we want" and "Workers have rights that the gig economy tires to take away" people...
Re:Getting the popcorn.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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As soon as someone accumulates power, that is a government. The next government structures are probably these global tech companies.
Re:Getting the popcorn.. (Score:4, Insightful)
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This is true, and will always be true, everywhere. Especially if the government provides the education.
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Re:Getting the popcorn.. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's always interesting to note states such as South Carolina claiming to protect the "child" want nothing to do with that child once it's breathing on its own. The woman is told, "You're on your own" or "Should have kept your legs closed".
Funny how that works.
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Republicans also bitch about the cost of those social services and try to limit them whenever they can?
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Pro life until the child is born. Now if the child needs food or medical care its a big old fuck you my taxes aren’t meant for freeloaders. Every one of these laws is later struck down by the higher state courts. Nothing but a waste of time and money.
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Antarctica does just fine!
Try going some place in Antarctica that isn't run very strictly by a government. None of those places are settlements.
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Antarctica does just fine!
Of course it does. It doesn't just have one government. It has 12. 12 governments from 12 countries applying 12 sets of laws locked together by an international treaty deciding on whose law applies where.
If you think Antarctic does just fine you're clearly in support of even more government.
I mean if you want to hold up Antarctica as an example you also need to decide who does fine. The citizens of Antarctica don't exist. So what you're suggesting is your ideal system strips all rights away from Americans a
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Antarctica does have a government (of sorts). It is governed by the Treaty of 1959 thus is controlled collectively by the governments that have signed the treaty.
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Re:Getting the popcorn.. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is going to blow up in unpredictable ways
It's going to benefit society in predictable ways.
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It's going to benefit society in predictable ways.
Neither of your claims have really been substantiated.
What I predict will actually happen is that Uber will change enough about its relationship with drivers in the UK so that they don't qualify as employees under the law. There are probably some downsides and benefits that will come out of that, but heralding it as either detrimental or advantageous is probably going overboard and reading far too much into a single court case.
Re:Getting the popcorn.. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's hard to see how they can do this and preserve their business model. And really Uber isn't doing anything that countless companies haven't tried before; by declaring people as contractors to try to bypass labor law. Most jurisdictions actually have a kind of "lemon test" for what constitutes a contractor and what constitutes an employee, and I've seen a number of employers in my part of the world go through a payroll audit and suddenly find they owe large amounts of money in withholding taxes they didn't forward to taxation authorities.
Peace work has fairly stringent definitions in most jurisdictions, usually surrounding it being highly irregular or seasonal (i.e. fruit pickers). The minute you have a "contractor" working anything that looks the least bit like a regular schedule, you've likely crossed the line and should do the paperwork to officially hire them. If it's a couple of months out of every year, your probably okay, but you have an Uber driver that is working five or six days a week, or where there are other encumbrances on the driver that look like they are an employee, that's usually enough for the labor or taxation authority to deem them employees.
Years ago I was working for an accountant who had a client who was a roofer. The roofer paid his people cash, declared they were contractors and that he wasn't responsible for health and safety, withholding taxes, overtime and the like. He did this for years and years, until one day the taxation authority flagged roofing companies as a group that should have spot audits. He tried to argue that they were contractors, that they showed up, he paid them at the end of the day, and he had a purely contractual relationship with them. The authority had their lemon test, determined that they were working what amounted to shifts, and further those shifts were averaging about 10 hours a day, 50 hours or more a week, and that that constituted an employment relationship. He ended up owing tens of thousands of dollars in payroll taxes he should have been collecting. Of course a number of his "contractors", being paid cash, had never filed it on their income tax, so many of them got nailed pretty hard as well.
The lesson here is if you concoct some sort of business that you imagine has found some magic formula for skirting labor and employment law, you're almost certainly wrong.
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The point is that you can't just force people and companies to behave exactly as you expect. If you could there'd be no crime. If you don't like Uber
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Uber in many jurisdictions (since the UK isn't the only jurisdiction where Uber is facing the likelihood of being deemed an employer) may either have to pull out or become a more conventional cab company. It's hard to say. Honestly, even with Uber as a company renting out a hailing app to drivers, it hasn't made any money yet. The cynic in me says this is just a way for its executives and shareholders to cash in so long as there are people willing to lend it money. Slightly less cynical it may be that Uber
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It is going to hurt society in predictable ways as well.
Forget illegal migrant workers and day labor. This will seriously hurt the poorest among us who struggle on the edge trying to get by or move up from government welfare and disability benefits. These programs have very black and white restrictions and requirements that have to worked around for people to survive and succeed. These people work cash gigs under the table to bridge the gap between what government benefits give and what it actually takes to
Re:Getting the popcorn.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Forget illegal migrant workers and day labor.
These people are already generally employed illegally, and for those who aren't, there will be no change. Day laborers operating legally are already contractors.
This will seriously hurt the poorest among us who struggle on the edge trying to get by or move up from government welfare and disability benefits. [...] These people work cash gigs under the table to bridge the gap between what government benefits give and what it actually takes to scrape by or to start accumulating some sort of income without being punished for whatever productive work they do.
No, it will help them. The needs currently being served by companies hiring gig workers at unsustainable levels of pay will still be there, and companies that have to follow the law will still seek to fill them. But instead of hiring people as gig workers, meaning they can fuck them over royally, they will have to hire them as actual workers with real jobs.
There may be some period of adjustment that will cause some harm in the short term, but it will lead to improvements in the longer term. If you're really worried about harm to those workers, then by all means support additional relief to protect them. But don't celebrate their virtual slavery and call it necessity. It's only necessary if you want to protect profits for those who would abuse them.
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They said "Hey! we have this platform that will coordinate people needing a ride with people willing to give them a ride, for a fee. We will take 2/3rds of the fare because 1) we provide the platform that links the buyer to the seller, 2) we handle all the money transactions for you so you do not have to deal with ordeal of setting up shopping carts, running down a clearing house, registering wi
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The needs being served by these companies (and gig jobs) will still certainly be there. However, if the cost of procuring a resource goes up then this cost will be passed to the end customer.
It is not a given that the customer will continue to pay such a cost; for example, if the cost of home delivery from Amazon increase to £5 but there is a cheaper option to pickup a package from a centralised point such as an Amazon locker, then suddenly a visit to the local supermarket becomes financially attracti
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"No, it will help them. The needs currently being served by companies hiring gig workers at unsustainable levels of pay will still be there, and companies that have to follow the law will still seek to fill them. But instead of hiring people as gig workers, meaning they can fuck them over royally, they will have to hire them as actual workers with real jobs."
That isn't accurate. There isn't enough need to pay higher prices. These companies aren't profitable as is. It will just go back to what it was before
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Will it? Will those jobs just magically disappear? Some may be disadvantaged, but I'd argue that once the rules are established, businesses will adapt, and those that don't will be replaced by businesses run by people whose business plan doesn't amount to "find chumps to work for shit wages".
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It is going to hurt society in predictable ways as well.
Forget illegal migrant workers and day labor. This will seriously hurt the poorest among us who struggle on the edge trying to get by or move up from government welfare and disability benefits. These programs have very black and white restrictions and requirements that have to worked around for people to survive and succeed. These people work cash gigs under the table to bridge the gap between what government benefits give and what it actually takes to scrape by or to start accumulating some sort of income without being punished for whatever productive work they do.
Uber is not a "cash gig under the table". Their drivers are classified as independent contractors and receive a 1099 form to file with their income taxes.
Re:Getting the popcorn.. (Score:5, Insightful)
(This is by the way the same argument why a minimum wage makes sense. Employers which pay less to their workers than the workers need for their own well being are getting a covert subsidy on the price of work because the tax payer pays the difference in public services.)
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Uber isn't supposed to provide a living. It is supposed to be a way to make extra cash.
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Re:Getting the popcorn.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Uber is a reincarnation of the putting-out system [wikipedia.org] of the Early Modern Period, which once was the reason we started to define Worker Rights in the first place.
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Yes, but that is workers using Uber in a way it wasn't intended. That is on them. Uber has never pitched the company in this manner. If people want to work a career in that industry they should get licensed and drive a cab.
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It would be different if instead the drivers were offering rides, an
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I agree, this is a problem. I've seen similar things with Turo for vehicle rental. They punish people for refusing bookings in addition to canceling bookings and they take a number of measures to hinder people in reclaiming costs.
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Wasn't Uber offering to finance vehicles for people so they could drive for Uber full time?
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To some degree, Uber does intend them to use it that way. For example, they had a program where you could get a loan for a car, and Uber would pay the loan if you drove a certain number of rides a month. That number was high enough that it would basically need to be a full-time job.
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Uber is a reincarnation of the putting-out system [wikipedia.org] of the Early Modern Period, which once was the reason we started to define Worker Rights in the first place.
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So now does hiring undocumented migrant workers put you on the hook also?
Hiring undocumented migrant workers is already illegal. Getting sued for not properly considering them as employees vs independent contractors is the least of the employer's problems if they are caught.
Agriculture is a big one. I know a lot of berry and apple farms that literally pay you by the bushel or carton for picking the crops. Are they obligated to provide me benefits now or police how much picking I do for them?
Agricultural workers already are handled very differently by our labor laws than any other type of worker. They are treated differently by minimum wage and overtime laws, and have different rules for who are qualified for other employee benefits. Many of these exemptions are only for smaller farmers who utili
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Just wait for all of the fallout from this.
The fallout will depend on the justification of the verdict. The relevant question in this case was: do the drivers have a contract with the person receiving the service (passenger) in which case they could qualify as contractors, else they are employees. The court found that they have a contract with uber and not with the passenger and are employees of uber. https://www.supremecourt.uk/ca... [supremecourt.uk] As a side note I'm pretty sure hiring undocumented migrant workers is illegal as is.
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As a side note I'm pretty sure hiring undocumented migrant workers is illegal as is.
In America, it's not illegal. Failing to check their I9 documentation is illegal, but that can be (and often is) falsified.
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Wrt UK law that's how it is. The slippery slope has anecdotal victims all the way down.
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Maybe I misunderstand you, but are you suggesting that day-labourers shouldn't be protected by Employment Law, but instead be at the mercy of unscrupulous employers?
Employers are already on the hook for undocumented workers, migrant or not, so no change there.
In all the years that I lived in the UK, the only proverbial shoe-shine boy I saw was myself, during Bob-A-Job week raising money for my Scout troop. I don't think that's even a thing any more.
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gig economy simply means you are paid by the task. Running a site connecting buyer and seller is acting as a service but its still your product being sold. Try taking the internet out of your understanding of the product and you will see its really not that different than any other per task thing out there. Are there really not a bunch of porters that carry luggage to your car when you get off a cruise or a plane in the UK? People working primarily for tips or pre-agreed expenses for doing a specific task a
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Google "IR35". This decision is no surprise.
Also, Uber's arguments are undercut by the fact that:
1. Uber decides how much the service will cost.
2. Uber decides how much the drivers will be paid, independently of item 1.
3. Uber pays the driver.
Uber isn't simply an intermediary.
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Day laborers are essentially gig workers.
I was a day labourer once. I signed a contract for the work and was considered a contractor under the law and given the benefits of such. I'm sure they will be just fine.
So now does hiring undocumented migrant workers put you on the hook also?
Yes. I mean it always has if you ever actually followed the law. Nothing here changes that.
I know a lot of berry and apple farms that literally pay you by the bushel or carton for picking the crops. Are they obligated to provide me benefits now or police how much picking I do for them?
Wait, you think these are undocumented migrant workers? What the hell kind of a corrupt farm are you running. Here those migrant workers are not only documented, they have a visa classification all of their own. And yes, you treat them like workers, o
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I was a day labourer once. I signed a contract for the work and was considered a contractor under the law and given the benefits of such. I'm sure they will be just fine.
You have just described an independent contractor which is what gig workers are. When one signs up with Uber, one signs a contract and are given the benefits of such. Independent contractors have more freedoms than employees but also have less benefits and are responsible for themselves for things like insurance, retirement savings, taxes, etc.
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> So now does hiring undocumented migrant workers put you on the hook also?
In the UK?
Definitely. You have to check worker documentation when you hire someone in the UK.
> What about the proverbial shoe shine boy?
Shoe-shine boy (if working independently) is self employed, and wouldn't be caught by this ruling. Nobody tells him how much to charge for example.
> I know a lot of berry and apple farms that literally pay you by the bushel or carton for picking the crops. Are they obligated to provide me b
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So now does hiring undocumented migrant workers put you on the hook also? What about the proverbial shoe shine boy? It doesnt get much more gig work than that. Agriculture is a big one. I know a lot of berry and apple farms that literally pay you by the bushel or carton for picking the crops. Are they obligated to provide me benefits now or police how much picking I do for them?
Shoe-shine boy? Really, how many of those have you seen around in the past 40 years? That aside, your examples are different from driving for Uber in one very major way. Uber drivers use their own cars on Uber's behalf. This represents a substantial ongoing investment into, and major depreciation of, an expensive personal asset.
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Hiring undocumented workers has always "put you on the hook" since it is technically illegal to do so (well the hiring may not be but paying them under the table is).
A shoeshiner isn't a gig worker (in the way that Uber uses the term). They are independent workers (at least I don't know of any organization that takes a cut of their pay).
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Re:Getting the popcorn.. (Score:5, Interesting)
That clash just ended in court. Now comes the second question. Can Uber even function under rules that courts are forcing them to use, or is its business going to become utterly unviable, forcing them to pull out of UK?
Because the real question is, once you take away Uber's main competitive advantage of "we and our drivers don't have to follow regulations that taxi service providers and taxi drivers have to follow", is the business model even viable?
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Uber's business has never been viable and likely won't be for years. Because its investors aren't interested in viability, they're interested in gaining monopolies wherever Uber operates, at which point they will then start making money by raising fees, which they'll be able to do because they are the only option.
This ruling, and all the others against Uber, are merely setbacks to gaining the monopolies it requires to make its business model viable. So no, it isn't going to pull out of the UK, or indeed any
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My prediction is that in many jurisdictions they will basically become a cab service with a nifty app. As corrupt as taxi licensing has been in many jurisdictions for well over a century, the alternative was seen in ye olden days, when cabbies were free agents, and you ended up with all kinds of abuses of both cabbies and customers. It became pretty clear in many jurisdictions that this was an industry in serious need of regulation. Leaving it up to the cabbies or to cab companies was leading to all kinds o
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Define viable business model (afaik they are operating at a loss).
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forcing them to pull out of UK?
Which would be especially ironic since the UK essentially already had an entire industry that competes with Uber and is nothing like an entrenched taxi industry that Uber was looking to offset. Uber may have been revolutionary in New York where supply is regulated by medallions, but in the UK along official taxis there are literally hundreds of companies and private contractors that already run minicab services.
It's quite telling that not only is Uber not following the law when it comes to attempting to bat
and The Knowledge test? how meny ubers can pass? (Score:2)
and The Knowledge test? how meny ubers can pass that?
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.. and waiting for the inevitable clash between "We should be able to work for whatever we want" and "Workers have rights that the gig economy tires to take away" people...
There are more sides to the argument than that.
You have the companies who want to make as much money as possible without being hamstrung by labor laws. They tend to only look for willing buyers and sellers and not the societal impact of ignoring worker's rights built up over the last century.
You have people desperate enough for work that they don't want worker's rights getting in the way of them putting food on the table. A lack of sufficient safety nets and opportunity for a large portion of the population
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We could work for whatever we want without negative repercussions for society if we had national health and UBI. (For "we" you can assume any group of people, grouped by continent, nation, union, or what have you.) Besides the minimum wage we could also eliminate unemployment insurance, disability payments, general welfare, employer-based health insurance, [p]alimony, food stamps, and probably a whole host of other programs I'm not even thinking of right now. Some nations have the national health; some are
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Besides the minimum wage
Why "besides the minimum wage"? Assuming you've got UBI, why shouldn't you be able to accept $8/hr if that's all you want?
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You just failed reading comprehension.
Good. (Score:5, Informative)
The gig economy is a scam.
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Tried to complain to Uber Eats recently about how they schedule deliveries after my order sat in someone's car for 40 minutes. I could have walked to the restaurant faster than the delivery, literally. Uber Eats has only two options for feedback, problem with restaurant or problem with driver - there is no option for Uber itself got it wrong. Uber Eats is apparently perfect and can do no wrong, in their own eyes.
If your company cannot accept honest and reasonable feedback, and admit when its made an erro
Re:Good. (Score:5, Interesting)
In the specific cases regarding Uber, most of the rulings seem to hinge on the level of control Uber has over the driver / rider transaction. Uber has prioritized user experience over driver autonomy, which appears to be the primary cause of Uber losing most of these lawsuits.
If Uber started allowing drivers to have more control over their rates, choose customers without being penalized by a matchmaking algorithm, and pay the drivers based on the rider's charged rate instead of decoupling it by paying based on miles / minutes spent driving, they would probably win all of these court cases. But Uber prioritizes a good experience for their riders, which Uber apparently believes requiring an employee level of control over their drivers.
I haven't seen anyone going after Care.com like they go after Uber, because Care.com and services like it really do treat the workers as independent entities. The gig economy could function within the boundaries of most country's labor laws without treating gig workers as employees, but the app providers need to relinquish a significant amount of control. The question then is which companies would win out? The companies with employees and a better user experience, or the companies with contractors and lower rates.
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yeah, i tend to agree, uber has really seems to have crossed the line of the 'Gig' idea.
I driver should be able to set their own fees for a route and pick the routes they want to drive. The riders need to be able to request a pickup and a drop off and then choose from various drivers , based on price, car type , maybe reviews. That is a Gig. No one tells anyone how much anyone is paid and when and where anyone needs to work.
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The government actually offers a website where you can check if you are an employee or not, and will stand by the result for tax purposes: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/ch... [www.gov.uk]
It tends to hinge on if your employer controls things like when and where you work. Clearly Uber does.
There are also massive tax implications for Uber here. If they are employees then Uber needs to make contributions on their behalf. It also affects how Uber itself is taxed, since it suddenly gained thousands of employees and all the lega
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This is a disrupting change, getting in the way of entrnched taxi interests and the politicians who love them...for reasons.
All politics is is drumming up surface rationale to justify rent seeking by this or that group, often corporate, to hurt the competition.
I find it odd people against Uber can often recite title and verse of why regulatory capture is bad. It's the exact same issue: politicians and industry folk getting together to limit competition.
and does the 'worker' status mean? (Score:2)
and does the 'worker' status mean?
Re:and does the 'worker' status mean? (Score:4, Funny)
https://developer.mozilla.org/... [mozilla.org]
Re:and does the 'worker' status mean? (Score:5, Informative)
What is a contractor? (Score:3)
I really dislike the gig economy. I think it gives short shrift to workers, and undervalues the work that they do. I realize that in many cases, the consumers benefit in the short term, but I think the taxpayer also ends up shouldering a lot of the burden that should be on the consumer/employer. Uber is massively unprofitable, but there's still some people getting rich off of it, which is insane.
But I'm really trying to figure out what I consider—and what governments and the law *should* consider—as a contractor. Growing up, my Dad had a salaried job, but then eventually worked as a contract programmer. He incorporated his own consulting company and worked short and medium term contracts for various companies. The term and the pay were well defined. There was an explicit contract each time. Sometimes he had no work and he worked for himself. Sometimes he took jobs as an employee because that was a better deal or the only way to get work.
These drivers seem considerably less autonomous. I would wager that most of them haven't read the contract in a meaningful way. Do they even have to sign their name to anything? They're really at the mercy of the company. But do I feel that they're not contractors just because I think the contract is bad? To me they seem like employees because of the control that's being exerted over them, but did my Dad have that much more control? Once he signed the contract, presumably he was subject to a lot of the same fundamental restrictions that employees were, he just got paid more money because he wasn't taking any of the employee benefits.
I suppose a lot of this comes down to me believing that you can't sign away your rights, and you shouldn't be able to sign away a living wage because Uber had the bright idea to claim you're a contractor. (I will say that Uber eliminating surge pricing was the doom of the business model. I know it was unpopular, but it gave drivers a way to make better money when demand was higher; it was a really effective way to balance drivers vs. riders. Disasters notwithstanding, if you're looking for a cab at the same time 10000 other people are, maybe you SHOULD pay more for the privilege if you're willing to.)
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TL;DR, The court said drivers could only be contractors if they had a contract with the person receiving the service (passenger) and they didn't so under UK law the contract with Uber makes them an employee.
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I think what makes you a contractor is the ability to call your own shots. First of all you decided from amongst multiple jobs and multiple prices and then choose one for some specific amount of time.
So I think Uber has really violated the 'line' on that one. If the drivers could bid on requests for rides and were not penalized any way for when they decided to work or not work ( other then not getting paid.) They would be contractors.
I occasionally use a 'handyman' around my house. Just the 1 guy no busin
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I realize that in many cases, the consumers benefit in the short term, but I think the taxpayer also ends up shouldering a lot of the burden that should be on the consumer/employer.
It's corporate welfare. The biggest benefit scroungers, the worse welfare queens, are corporations.
If they don't pay enough for their staff to live on, so that their staff end up having to get benefits from the government in order to afford the basic necessities of life, then that company is forcing the taxpayer to subsidise their wage bill.
Not sure about UK law (Score:3)
Uber is fighting for it's life here, similar to how American private insurance companies will spend any amount of money to prevent single payer healthcare Uber will spend all the money it can get it's hands on to stop labor law enforcement.
And they've got a *lot* of money. Venture capitalists are positively salivating over the prospect of redefining labor law on such a fundamental level. If Uber style work relationships get normalized they will quickly spread to all forms of employment. Imagine being paid by the server fixed or the line of code written (with detailed reviews to stop you from padding your code). It's a return to piece work in the general labor force. A new feudalism...
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Uber isn't alive, it's a legal fiction, so it's not fighting for life.
In fact, it's unprofitable, so it's not even fighting for profit.
What it's fighting for is control of the market, at which point it will raise its prices. And its eventual profitability is predicated upon fleets of self-driving cars, at which point all of its gig workers will not only not be paid what they're getting paid now, they'll be getting paid nothing.
Uber represents a race to the bottom, at the end of which is more unemployment an
Re:Not sure about UK law (Score:5, Informative)
This ruling came from the UK Supreme Court and applies to every part of the country.
That's as high as they (uber) can go. Uber lost in every court.
The UK Judiciary are not political animals like they are in the USA.
Uber lost. Now they have to pay their employees properly, provide a workplace pension, paid sickness and holidays just as if those drivers worked for a major bank or engineering company.
In the US Uber lost in the Judiciary too (Score:2)
A lot of times our legal system will rule that a company is doing something illegal, the company will pay lawmakers to change the law (or in the case of Uber trick voters to do it) and then *blam*, it's legal again. Then the only way to change it is for either the voters to come to their senses (unlikely, since if t
No such thing as gig worker in UK (Score:2)
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Contracts (Score:2)
The court rejected Uber's argument that it merely acted akin to a booking agent for drivers, noting that the company would have no means of performing its contractual obligations to passengers (nor complying with its regulatory obligations as a licensed private hire vehicle operator) -- "without either employees or subcontractors to perform driving services for it."
If Uber didn't have any drivers, they wouldn't offer rides to passengers who request them. Where is the contract there? If no service is offered, neither is a contract for carriage. No money has changed hands. No offer of service was made. What contractual obligation is there?
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Once you order a ride, there is a contract with mutual obligations.
True, but the court is arguing that, without drivers, Uber could not fulfill it's contractual requirements under such orders.
This is confusing as, if no drivers are there to accept a ride, no contract will be in place, so what contractual obligations is Uber not fulfilling? By this logic, if I call a taxi service for a ride and they have no available drivers to take me somewhere, they are breaking some sort of contract as well. According to the court, you don't need an agreement to have a contract?
Re: (Score:2)
except the set the prices. I've also herd they mess with your rating depending on where and when you are willing to work , so that doesn't sound fair either. Ratings should come from good service to customers.
Bad News, Good News for Uber (Score:2)
Bad News: their "employees" will continue to give out their own personal numbers and do rides "off the meter" for their own profit.
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The Good News: they can FIRE anyone caught doing that (and possibly sue them for losses).
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Now, they need to add a license to anyone who wants to do that job, and you can kill off Gypsy Cabs. (Or at least, take a bite out of them).
Such a waste of time. It is not a job. (Score:2)
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..if you do that then you need another job to pay the bills ...
and when you do open the app again Uber will not assign you any work as you have not accepted any recently
They are working for the company, they are employees, they should have rights
If it all comes down to wages... (Score:2)
If they don't get any jobs, it's only because there are too many other people who are willing to accept lower rates, and too many people wanting rides that are too cheap to pay higher rates.
But this is exactly how a gig economy is supposed to work.
The inability to survive in a gig economy at the rates people will pay should not be an indication that the people should actually be employee so they can make a decent living, it is an indication