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Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

nltimes.nl

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Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#171

Post by fallingknife »

capableweb wrote: post #145
fallingknife wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Employment' is abused by the government to provide social benefits that it doesn't want to pay for. A job should trade work for cash and no more.

Everyone is abusing everything. We've seen time and time again companies abusing employees with hard work, long schedules, unsafe environments and skimping on safety, which is why we have laws for safe working environments now. Sometimes work is physically hard, and the effect of that type of work usually doesn't show until you've done it for a longer time. So not only should you get money for the time and effort you…

That's not so much an effect of years of hard work as it is that as you get older your capacity for hard work declines. Also we already have government pensions. So why should a company have to provide them? The economic effect of this is that workers have to wait years for some of their pay instead of getting it right now.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#172

Post by crote »

yawaworht1978 wrote: post #19
kfk wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Uber might be right here. EU labor laws protect a few but over a certain salary they are not very appealing. In Italy paying a net salary of 2,000 euros will cost the company 6000+. Things included like pension are not worth their cost, a private pension is better and cheaper, same for health services. It’s unfortunate but it’s true.

I have paid the ridiculous charge from Rome's airport to the city, it's interesting how many measures airports like Rome, Madrid, Barcelona have to take to keep Uber out as good as possible. I still agree with the Dutch court. First, EU has a goal to somewhat harmonize some laws and taxes. Europe should not simply allow any company to come along and undermine everything. If Europe let's this happen, the consequence i…

A bit off-topic, but why would you take a taxi for that trip? A train to the city leaves evert 15 minutes and costs you only €14. By car it's a 30km ride!

This is true for basically every single European city. Public transport is of such high quality that taking a taxi simply doesn't make sense.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#173

Post by fallingfrog »

dahfizz wrote: post #135
stuaxo wrote: post #3

Interesting wording of this headline, you would almost think Uber were fighting for the rights of their drivers if you read it out of context.

The headline I see is " Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules". I don't see how you can read that any other way than the Dutch court is forcing Uber to employ its drivers.

This comment was moved from a dupe that was worded differently

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#174

Post by cinntaile »

isodev wrote: post #162
yawaworht1978 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck with that, if you pay for all the mandated services, you will run a deficit. Yes people laugh off drivers as a no skill job, but it's a craft. Shift work, passenger safety and so forth, they need to pass a test, sure that's a bit outdated in the time of online maps. But I can not simply open a dentistry just because I feel so due to lifestyle choices.

Indeed, here in Belgium there are extensive requirements for taxi drivers in terms of certification, education and vehicle maintenance. That's one of the reasons Uber never really succeeded here - even as a "freelance driver", you still need to be qualified and that takes time and effort.

It's probably because it makes it difficult to dodge taxes when Uber registers all the transactions ;)

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#175

Post by macksd »

capableweb wrote: post #150
greatpatton wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the same rules applied to all taxi drivers before Uber. In a lot of place taxi driver were forbidden to not accept customer hailing them, and the price is controlled almost everywhere. The logic would be that all taxi drivers have to been employed.

> In a lot of place taxi driver were forbidden to not accept customer hailing them I've hang out with my fair share of taxi drivers around the world (mainly Europe and South America) but never once heard of them being forbidden of not accepting customers, and heard plenty of stories when someone really fucked up tried to hail them but they declined. It doesn't mean it's not forbidden, but hard to reconcile my underst…

In New York, the taxis with "medallions" are required to take you to places within the metro area. I'm not sure at what point that requirement sets in, whether it's hailing, or once you're in the cab, etc. but it's well-known that you can report them for refusing to take you somewhere.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#176

Post by belter »

jacquesm wrote: post #147
jb1991 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to point out, that a BV and an LLC are very different, in that anyone can have an LLC in the USA but the tax reporting requirements and overhead for a BV in NL are quite high and don't make much sense to anyone with an income less then.. well, quite high, by most standards. I know a lot of freelance software engineers in the netherlands, but none have a BV.

I know a lot of freelance software engineers in the Netherlands and quite a few of them do. BV starts to make sense from about 100K turnover because you gain some tax advantages, it also makes working for larger entities easier and it allows you to charge a higher rate and to be in an easier position to work with subcontractors. It all depends on what you want, there are plenty of ZZP'ers in software development on t…

What is the difference between those freelance software engineers and the Uber drivers if they are freelancing for one company only?

As far as I know, and I am happy to be corrected by somebody more knowledgeable, the famous Dutch ZZP'ers are tolerated. There is in the Dutch Law not a clarification of their legal and tax position:

https://onl.nl/zzp-manifest/

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#177

Post by InitialLastName »

unyttigfjelltol wrote: post #134
jacquesm wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can be a freelancer just fine, nothing stops you from doing that. But not within the Uber framework because you aren' a freelancer within that framework. So this is pretty specific: the Uber framework does not check enough of the boxes that would allow their pseudo employees to claim they are freelancers, which effectively makes it just another tax dodge, which it always was.

Taxi businesses in the U.S. played this cat-and-mouse game for a long time, and generally 'won' the right to offload liabilities to drivers without much pay. Why anyone thought or thinks Uber is 'different' is hard to understand.

Was that also the case for taxi businesses in European countries with functional social states? Because, this being a legal ruling in Europe, US precedent doesn't really matter.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#178

Post by djhworld »

capableweb wrote: post #150
greatpatton wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the same rules applied to all taxi drivers before Uber. In a lot of place taxi driver were forbidden to not accept customer hailing them, and the price is controlled almost everywhere. The logic would be that all taxi drivers have to been employed.

> In a lot of place taxi driver were forbidden to not accept customer hailing them I've hang out with my fair share of taxi drivers around the world (mainly Europe and South America) but never once heard of them being forbidden of not accepting customers, and heard plenty of stories when someone really fucked up tried to hail them but they declined. It doesn't mean it's not forbidden, but hard to reconcile my underst…

It depends, there's a lot of local and national regulations in different countries.

For example in my part of the UK, only designated taxis can pick up ride hailers on the street, sort of like black cabs in London.

Private firms who use their own fleet of cars can only offer pre-booked services, e.g. pre booked airport runs.

Uber and co. shook this up a bit by offering a grey area, where the taxi ride isn't exactly hailed on the street (instead through the app) and is sort of "pre-booked" when you request it as the driver has to accept the job.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#179

Post by brnt »

hungryforcodes wrote: post #69
jacquesm wrote: post #27

Rightly so. The 'gig economy' is abused by quite a few companies to create employment like situations without the required trappings (social security payments, employee protection, hourly minimums and so on). This was long overdue, let's hope it has precedent effect for other companies that abuse the ZZP construct.

But what if I legitimacy want to be a freelancer? Lifestyle reasons, freedom, whatever. I should have a choice.

If you're a freelancer, a client could not be enforcing the demand that you don't work for other similar employers, nor demand that you take every single gig that they ask you to do.

Uber wants it both ways, and correctly, the courts have stopped them from doing so.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#180

Post by capableweb »

djhworld wrote: post #178
capableweb wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In a lot of place taxi driver were forbidden to not accept customer hailing them I've hang out with my fair share of taxi drivers around the world (mainly Europe and South America) but never once heard of them being forbidden of not accepting customers, and heard plenty of stories when someone really fucked up tried to hail them but they declined. It doesn't mean it's not forbidden, but hard to reconcile my underst…

It depends, there's a lot of local and national regulations in different countries. For example in my part of the UK, only designated taxis can pick up ride hailers on the street, sort of like black cabs in London. Private firms who use their own fleet of cars can only offer pre-booked services, e.g. pre booked airport runs. Uber and co. shook this up a bit by offering a grey area, where the taxi ride isn't exactly h…

> For example in my part of the UK, only designated taxis can pick up ride hailers on the street, sort of like black cabs in London.

Yeah, that makes sense, that's the only thing I've seen around the world as well. But can these designated taxis reject customers at will? That was my question.

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