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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

#341

Post by pmyteh »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #136
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…

I’ve been working as a contractor for more than 10 years, doing stuff like writing software for banks. All of those points have allied to me for most of my career. If that’s a compelling case for Uber drivers not being contractors, then it’s also a case for independent contracting in general not being legal.

As long as you're being paid minimum wage and the other (limited) employment protections that apply to people with 'worker' status, then it won't matter at all. It's not illegal to have people as dependent contractors, it's illegal not to give them employment rights as a result.

There is a whole separate question around tax status, but that's not implicated by this ruling as it's based on a separate set of caselaw.

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

#342

Post by devoutsalsa »

socksy wrote: post #333
devoutsalsa wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just described a ghost kitchen, a restaurant without a store front. Honestly, I don’t like delivered food that much. It’s usually cold, often gets screwed up (e.g. regular Pepsi instead of Diet Pepsi), and maybe low quality in general. I’m already hesitant to order with Deliveroo most of the time anyway, and if prices go up, I might just finally learn to cook.

Deliveroo pulled out of Germany when it was decided that their drivers weren't self employed. In their absence, we were left with a terrible service called Lieferando ("deliver-ando"), which were not more expensive, but have an unimpressive app, with little incentive to keep you updated on a timescale or deliver things in a very timely manner (leading to colder, soggier food). However, in the last year or so, that's…

I hope they can keep making it work!

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

#343

Post by vidarh »

gruez wrote: post #286
vidarh wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We pay either way. The question is whether we pay to subsidise businesses that otherwise would not be viable by compensating through the welfare system, or whether we make them actually compete on equal terms with companies that pay well enough for their workers to earn a living wage.

>or whether we make them actually compete on equal terms with companies that pay well enough for their workers to earn a living wage. Is this what's actually happening here? Are there delivery/cab companies paying a fair wage that's being out-competed by uber? To my knowledge delivery/cab companies don't pay a fair wage in general.

Depends very much on the company. In London there's a huge variety of private hire operators ranging from ones that are almost certainly worse than Uber - but also much smaller - to ones that do have well paid fully employed drivers.

The reason the smaller ones haven't faced more attention is that these actions usually require the person who wants employment status themselves to raise the issue and be prepared to take their employer to tribunal or court.

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

#344

Post by vidarh »

unishark wrote: post #317
vidarh wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So minicab companies pay more and charge less than uber? How does that work economically? And wouldn't everyone just switch to the mincab companies, both drivers and passengers, if that's the case?

Varies very much by company. Many of them are small operators covering much smaller areas than Uber. Many of them will intentionally keep far fewer drivers available to keep their drivers busier. I'm sure there are plenty who are much worse than Uber too, and there's plenty of room to get rid of more of these operators.

Uber has captured market share by being visible, and covering the whole city so you don't need to care which companies cover where you are. There are a few others that covers all of London and aim for the same over-supply of drivers, and most of them are not cheaper.

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

#345

Post by FireBeyond »

orlp wrote: post #48
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…

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.

100% agreed.

Look (listen?) for the cagey answers:

"Is this Restaurant X?"

"I can help you place an order!"

"But is this Restaurant X?"

"I can take your X order when ready!"

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

#346

Post by FireBeyond »

chrisseaton wrote: post #145
whelming_wave wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The objectionable behavior is that they represent themselves as being restaurant X, or at least present themselves in such a way that finding out that they aren’t actually restaurant X but a reseller is difficult. edit: This got way more discussion than I anticipated. I think that even if there was a massive banner on the top of the site that told you GenericDeliveryCo was operating this website as a front for the re…

Ok but see how we've slipped down from full-on 'fraudulent' to just 'objectionable'? People are allowed to be objectionable if they want to.

In many environments, fraud contains a definition of "dishonestly obtain financial advantage by deception".

Your example is flawed. It's not a crime or fraud to resell a product.

It is still fraud, not merely objectionable, to resell a product while in every way possible acting as if you are not a reseller but the original producer.

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

#347

Post by ssivark »

fallingknife wrote: post #22
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…

This doesn't make sense to me. I did some contract work a couple years ago and: 1. The company set the hourly rate which meant they dictated how much I could earn 2. The company set the contract terms 3. The company told me what features to build and could penalize me if I decided not to build some 4. The company could evaluate my performance any way they wanted and terminate the contract at any time for no cause If…

Your argument assumes that Uber is hiring contractors and customers interact with Uber... If that were the case, Uber would have to take responsibility for the full transaction towards both drivers and riders (Eg guaranteed payment vs time, rather than possibility of rides). Uber is instead trying to represent itself as a marketplace matching drivers & riders, with riders hiring divers as contractors. And Uber doesn’t allow drivers to negotiate terms with riders, which breaks that thesis.

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

#348

Post by FireBeyond »

chrisseaton wrote: post #180
jychang wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trademark law, mostly. If I open an Apple Store, I'm gonna get a lot of lawsuits headed my way in no time. You can't just use another company's logo and name without their permission.

> You can't just use another company's logo and name without their permission. I'm afraid I think you're mistaken. You're allowed to use someone's trademark to factually describe the product you're selling. You don't need the owner's permission to do that. If you're selling an actual Apple laptop, you can use the trademarks 'Apple' and the Apple logo to describe it. If you're selling an actual Bob's Burger, you can u…

Think about chargers.

Somewhere in the product description, advertising, is the word "FOR".

Lightning cable FOR Apple iPhone.

Belking trying to sell the same cable as "Apple iPhone Lightning cable" would be problematic. Leaving aside licensing issues.

The proof is in the pudding. Go to one of the websites they register for a restaurant, and see just how many references to "We are not the restaurant, but we are reselling and delivering their food". Hint: rather few.

Call the number on the website. "Hello, I can take your order for [restaurant name]!"

"Is this [restaurant]?"

"I can take your order!"

Because all of the above isn't defensible. They're not just (re) selling the restaurant's food, they are implying that they -are- the restaurant.

Behavior here becomes important. Deception and context. Why in these cases if Deliveroo/Uber/etc were comfortable with their process would they not say "This is Uber Eats, and we can take orders for [restaurant]"? This again comes back to one of those definitions of fraud, "dishonestly obtaining financial advantage (your cut of the order, inflated pricing, etc) by deception (explicitly stating or repeatedly implying that you are the restaurant)".

and other vague hand-waving answer designed to imply that you are talking to the restaurant and avoiding the answer, "No this is a call center for a delivery service".

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

#349

Post by FireBeyond »

ivanbakel wrote: post #225
throw_away892 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A customer won't order through 3rd party app if the restaurant doesn't partner to sell through them. Same case for internet marketing. What you should feel bad about are the excessive commission fees charged by those delivery apps.

This is untrue. A few months ago there was an article on the front page about a restaurant serving pizza that had been auto-listed by, IIRC, Deliveroo - which had put a menu online with marked-up prices and was allowing users to place orders. The restaurant owner even discovered that, because of some inconsistency between his prices and the third-party ones, he could cause the delivering company to pay him by simply…

I had visions of doing fancy CSS too, to render an accurate menu to your website viewers, but that would be deceptive to Uber's scrapers to mess with their menu.

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

#350

Post by ChrisKingWebDev »

cloudfifty wrote: post #323
rorykoehler wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to unburden ourselves of having so many laws. Especially laws that are to fix inherent flaws of our economic system design. Better to change the systems design. Labour laws are only necessary because most people are in dire financial straits if they aren’t working. Give people the power to turn down employment without risking ruin and the whole power dynamic that makes these labour laws necessary goes away.

If what you are referring to is a proper UBI that covers all necessities I would agree with you. But that would indeed change the power dynamic radically in favour of workers so I'm not sure how that would be passed without more or less a revolution.

Revolution it is then!
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