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Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees

courdecassation.fr

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Re: Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees

#61

Post by munk-a »

spullara wrote: post #46
munk-a wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxi drivers are almost certainly mostly employees. "Contactor" is a kinda arbitrary employee status which has some theoretical usages - but most of the time it's just abused to deny employment benefits from employees.

All of the taxi drivers I knew in SF when I lived there rented their taxi for the night, up front.

That sounds pretty strong as an indicator they were legitimately contractors - but it's always a complex question. Specifics like: would the drivers be punished or penalized for not showing up for work?, is there an employee conduct agreement the dispatch center enforces and how does it enforce that?, how does a driver qualify for eligibility to rent - can anyone with a cab license freely rent or is there an interview beyond that?

Independent contractor status is a really finicky thing to define and, in the end, it's a status that mostly deprives employees of rights in favor of an employer so any "grey" usage of it should be highly suspect.

Re: Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees

#62

Post by munk-a »

chrisseaton wrote: post #56
munk-a wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this reasoning mean that all waiters are independent contractors? They collect cash directly from the customer and reserve a portion of that before passing it on to their employer (the tip) - taxi drivers (who are members of a firm) due end up paying the firm dues for the service of having a pooled call center and possibly maintenance services. I think trying to determine if someone is an employee based on if th…

Waiters can be employees of a restaurant. Who can taxi drivers be an employee of?

The dispatch company - the company which, generally, has their name painted on the side of the taxi.

Re: Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees

#63

Post by rsj_hn »

timdiggerm wrote: post #39
rahimnathwani wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't all of this also apply to taxis? Taxis pick up at taxi ranks or off the street. Taxis have regulations set by an organisation. Taxis (in most places) have rules that say they must take the most efficient route. In most places, taxis aren't allowed to refuse a customer based on destination. Does that mean that a taxi driver is an employee? Of course not.

...aren't taxi drivers employees?

no, most are independent contractors who lease the cab and the medallion from the taxi company. If you have your own medallion, you lease that to the cab company (so you are making money from it even when you are not working, which you can't do 24/7). Cabbies have always been independent contractors with very few exceptions.

The cab company leases the medallions and has some store of medallions it owns. It buys and maintains the cars and runs the dispatching service.

Re: Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees

#64

Post by chrisseaton »

munk-a wrote: post #62
chrisseaton wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waiters can be employees of a restaurant. Who can taxi drivers be an employee of?

The dispatch company - the company which, generally, has their name painted on the side of the taxi.

I don’t think most taxi drivers have a connection to any ‘dispatch company’ they just pick up fares as they drive around.

Re: Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees

#65

Post by tyfon »

dahfizz wrote: post #28
zwieback wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if that's true. Our hourlies get benefits like health insurance, vacation, etc. Maybe not as good as salaried but it's not as clear cut as "hourly pay only."

What does paid time off even look like if you don't have a set schedule, though? Will Uber drivers just get n hours of wage added to their paycheck every month?

Where I live the company has to set aside 12.5% of the salary paid for next years "vacation money". You can chose yourself when to withdraw this money in the following year.

For a full time job you are required to take 25 days (or 5 weeks) off work outside of public holidays which is about 10% of the total working time so you usually have a bit more to spend in this period even if the vacation itself is unpaid :)

Re: Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees

#66

Post by Frenziefrenz »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #35
rickbutton wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? Sounds like they would also be an employee under this ruling.

Whose employee? That of the taxi organisation which regulates them, but doesn't actually pay them? That of each of individual customer, who are the ones who pay them?

Are you arguing from the framework provided by a presumably not Western European legal system?

Re: Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees

#67

Post by on_and_off »

freepor wrote: post #59

All of this is a legal system that has a square hole and a circular hole not knowing what to do with a triangular peg. Governments job is to realize that this is a new category of work and create laws specifically to address it.

why does the government need to bend backwards to allow underpaid jobs ?

Re: Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees

#68

Post by AmericanChopper »

floatingatoll wrote: post #36
rahimnathwani wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't all of this also apply to taxis? Taxis pick up at taxi ranks or off the street. Taxis have regulations set by an organisation. Taxis (in most places) have rules that say they must take the most efficient route. In most places, taxis aren't allowed to refuse a customer based on destination. Does that mean that a taxi driver is an employee? Of course not.

Traditional taxi drivers own their taxi medallions and may transfer those medallions to other drivers, which provides one key aspect of their "independent" contractor state: If the cab company mistreats them, they can take their medallion elsewhere. Uber's model prohibits drivers from subcontracting (transferring) their rides to others, which pierces the veil of 'independent contractor': either a contractor can subco…

> either a contractor can subcontract, or they're not a contractor.

This doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. I often work as a contractor. If I decided one morning to send a friend into a clients office to fulfil my duties, I would not even expect them to be able to gain entry to the building.

Re: Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees

#69

Post by codegeek »

dahfizz wrote: post #14

So can Uber force French drivers to work certain hours? As an American, I have poor understanding of what employment entails in the EU. If the Uber drivers are just hourly employees, what changes for them? In the USA, you only see real employment benefits if you are a salaried employee. An hourly worker gets paid their wage and that's it (no sick days, retirement, etc).

Hourly in US can also get benefits depending on company's discretion and some mandatory laws. For example, state of NJ has a sick day law that was passed in late 2018 where it made mandatory for employers to provide accrued sick leave to any employee (salaried or hourly) as long as they are on W-2.

Re: Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees

#70

Post by munk-a »

chrisseaton wrote: post #51
rtkwe wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's the obvious choice of the dispatch company they work for.

I don’t think all taxi drivers work with a dispatch company. Most just pick people up at the side of the road don’t they?

I think that's a mis-categorization - I do agree that these exist (and a lot of them fall into the "airport taxi" class since that's a reliable place to get business) and a cab operating in such a manner sounds plausible to be an independent contractor. But organizations like Yellow Cab exist and is the way most folks hail a cab, even at hotels - when you ask the concierge to get a cab for you they'll almost certainly call a local company and ask for a cab to be sent over - someone actually needs to be monitoring that phone, and the logistics of each cabbie having a phone in the car is kinda crazy "Oh ernie is currently driving someone, bart might be available I'll call him" so there is a central dispatching center with a few employees that just help make sure that the cabs are well distributed to quickly respond to calls.
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