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Uber drivers are workers not self employed, Supreme Court rules

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Uber drivers are workers not self employed, Supreme Court rules

#101

Post by ctoth »

Hydraulix989 wrote: post #93
ctoth wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's 2021. If I were opening a restaurant in I think the bare minimum I could do would be to register the base domain? Okay, let's assume I don't. I'm still getting people ordering that wouldn't otherwise order? because I didn't have a website? Still just don't see what's wrong here. I don't want to mention that I'm blind in every frickin HN post but I'm blind, and Uber Eats and etc. are great. and there are restaura…

Many restaurant owners are not as technically inclined as you. They might also think just having a social media presence is enough.

This is a response to the first sentence of my comment, which I strongly appreciate. But I don't understand how it fits with the rest of my questions?

I understand your friends think a social media website is enough. This doesn't mean they need to accept having a website created for them. It sucks that they have to opt out of local delivery services, but it also sucks I have to opt out of junk mail. I still don't understand where the evil is here? It's legal for people to create websites that look and feel similar to existing websites. If this is a problem let's fix it! if it's not, let's not focus on restaurants?

Re: Uber drivers are workers not self employed, Supreme Court rules

#102

Post by gjulianm »

ctoth wrote: post #81
roel_v wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel really bad for small restaurant owners. These large delivery companies totally take over their internet marketing too, registering a domain like ' - .com' and when you go to that website, you really have to pay attention to see that this is not the 'official' restaurant website and if you order through there, it's costing the restaurant a lot of money that they wouldn't miss out on if you'd order through their…

It's 2021. If I were opening a restaurant in I think the bare minimum I could do would be to register the base domain? Okay, let's assume I don't. I'm still getting people ordering that wouldn't otherwise order? because I didn't have a website? Still just don't see what's wrong here. I don't want to mention that I'm blind in every frickin HN post but I'm blind, and Uber Eats and etc. are great. and there are restaura…

What's wrong is that Deliveroo is making a profit while exploiting workers, who work for them but don't have worker protections. Other delivery companies do have employees with standard benefits (Just Eat in Spain IIRC) and they provide the same service. It's possible, just less profitable.

Re: Uber drivers are workers not self employed, Supreme Court rules

#103

Post by mytailorisrich »

tchalla wrote: post #79
austhrow743 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20-30% to not have to have a dining area and be in a trendy location sounds pretty good.

Only if, both options exist. Option A - 100% for a dining area at a trendy location Option B - 80% w/o dining area at a trendy location There are many cases where people say it is Option B but Option A doesn't exist.

With on-premises service a restaurant must hire waiting staff and manage the tables (tablecloth, dishes, cutlery, etc).

Preparing food for takeaway actually saves a lot and that's why restaurants that traditionally offer takeaway in addition to on-premises service often offer 10-15% discount for takeway as a matter of course.

Deliveroo is not "robbing" restaurants if they charge 20%...

Re: Uber drivers are workers not self employed, Supreme Court rules

#104

Post by yread »

dexen wrote: post #92
rogual wrote: post #6

The court made very specific arguments: 1. Uber set the fare which meant that they dictated how much drivers could earn 2. Uber set the contract terms and drivers had no say in them 3. Request for rides is constrained by Uber who can penalise drivers if they reject too many rides 4. Uber monitors a driver's service through the star rating and has the capacity to terminate the relationship if after repeated warnings t…

>1. Uber set the fare which meant that they dictated how much drivers could earn 2. Uber set the contract terms and drivers had no say in them 3. Request for rides is constrained by Uber who can penalise drivers if they reject too many rides 4. Uber monitors a driver's service through the star rating and has the capacity to terminate the relationship if after repeated warnings this does not improve I sure hope they'l…

taxi drivers can reject as many rides as they want, no?

Re: Uber drivers are workers not self employed, Supreme Court rules

#105

Post by nraynaud »

lovedswain wrote: post #50
mytailorisrich wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I assume this will cause Deliveroo to either increase fees or reduce service which may inspire more restuarants to hire their own delivery people again. Before Deliveroo (and similar services) restaurants (in UK/Europe since you discuss London) did not offer delivery at all. Handling the whole order (which these days means online/through an app) and delivery in-house is costly and restaurants use Deliveroo because…

> Before Deliveroo (and similar services) restaurants did not offer delivery at all. This is far from universally true, especially Asian takeaways typically hired their own driver, but the practice was also commonplace for many actual restaurants too

And in France I was starting to see a few local delivery companies, they would own the mopeds and hire the drivers for a few restaurants and pizza joints at the town level. I guess all of these are dead now.

Re: Uber drivers are workers not self employed, Supreme Court rules

#106

Post by remus »

ctoth wrote: post #81
roel_v wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel really bad for small restaurant owners. These large delivery companies totally take over their internet marketing too, registering a domain like ' - .com' and when you go to that website, you really have to pay attention to see that this is not the 'official' restaurant website and if you order through there, it's costing the restaurant a lot of money that they wouldn't miss out on if you'd order through their…

It's 2021. If I were opening a restaurant in I think the bare minimum I could do would be to register the base domain? Okay, let's assume I don't. I'm still getting people ordering that wouldn't otherwise order? because I didn't have a website? Still just don't see what's wrong here. I don't want to mention that I'm blind in every frickin HN post but I'm blind, and Uber Eats and etc. are great. and there are restaura…

The problem is that it's misleading for consumers. If you go to bobs-pizza-chicago.com it's reaosnable to assume you're ordering directly from Bob's pizzas, not some middleman who's gonna take a big cut to pass your order on to Bob's and deliver.

Re: Uber drivers are workers not self employed, Supreme Court rules

#107

Post by vidarh »

unishark wrote: post #65
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take away the gig economy part from Uber and it becomes a regular taxi market, an industry that has been around for a hundred years already, with all the checks and balances installed already (from driver and passenger rights to ride fares to maximum amount of drivers allowed to operate in a certain area to avoid oversaturating the market). And in that environment it is not viable. Or, not viable to SF standards, in…

> Take away the gig economy part from Uber and it becomes a regular taxi market, an industry that has been around for a hundred years already, with all the checks and balances installed already (from driver and passenger rights to ride fares to maximum amount of drivers allowed to operate in a certain area to avoid oversaturating the market). Let's not forget that in that world uber drivers are unemployed while taxi…

In that world customers flow back to the many minicab companies and Uber competitors in London, which will need to take on more drivers.

It's not like Uber is the only app like this in London. I have at least four different ones on my app, and Uber is rarely the cheapest as it is.

Re: Uber drivers are workers not self employed, Supreme Court rules

#108

Post by HatchedLake721 »

ricardobayes wrote: post #84
gpmcadam wrote: post #62

Every Uber driver I speak to tells me how they prefer Uber to their previous job of a cabbie for a firm, they get flexibility, set their own hours and choose when to work Now they’re all permanent employees of Uber will they lose this flexibility? If some drivers weren’t happy with the status quo, why not take their skills and work for another firm?

This is probably a politically fuelled ruling. Boris Johnson wants to 'appeal to the masses' by making high-visibility rules like these, which sound good on paper but probably do more harm than good.

What's Boris has to do with this? It's the Supreme Court's decision, not Cabinet's. The same Supreme court who ruled that Boris Johnson broke the law by suspending the parliament.

Re: Uber drivers are workers not self employed, Supreme Court rules

#109

Post by Jochim »

kukx wrote: post #64
habosa wrote: post #10

Really interested to see what this does to Deliveroo. I live in central London on a pretty busy street and it's really wild how many Deliveroo drivers there are. In front of most of the popular takeaway restaurants there are 3-5 drivers waiting at any given time. The increase in delivery and decrease in normal foot traffic during the pandemic has made this really stick out. Deliveroo already totally robs these restau…

"Let's pay them." Ok, with whose money? I am all for good pay for everyone. The problem begins when we detach the pay from the value created by the worker. In many cases worker may become too expensive to hire. So trying to force business to pay more may result in less people having job.

Lots of businesses aren't viable due to the costs of business being greater than the price people would be willing to pay. Pay isn't being detached from the value of the worker, what's being said is that if you're unable to produce enough value from the worker in order to pay them well enough to live then your business isn't viable.

Gig economy companies like Deliveroo are particularly hostile to their labour force. Without fixed wages for employees they're directly incentivised to flood the pool of workers with as many people as possible. The consequence of this is that delivery times are lower, but the compensation available to each employee is greatly reduced compared to traditional delivery models.

Re: Uber drivers are workers not self employed, Supreme Court rules

#110

Post by csunbird »

foepys wrote: post #75
orlp wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This should be straight up illegal and the companies sued to hell for. If I opened a site claiming to be a bank and accepting money on behalf of that bank, and keeping 20% I'd be behind bars for fraud in no time.

Those delivery services employ many lawyers and bet on the fact that a family owned restaurants doesn't have the guts or money to sue. Truly despicable.

Not having access to the justice because of shortage of money should be illegal instead.
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