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Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

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Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#201

Post by volkl48 »

chrisseaton wrote: post #100
FartyMcFarter wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't understand who would want to drive in Manhattan. I think the idea is that people will drive if their tolerance level for slowness is satisfied. So the amount of traffic will always be high enough to look acceptable for some people, unacceptable for others. As for parking, in London there are definitely parking lots scattered around the city - can't speak for New York though. > Like where are they coming fro…

> Probably going between their homes and family / friends / shops / entertainment venues / restaurants. But in cities these places don't have parking outside. So where are they parking?

There's in excess of 100,000 public off-street parking spaces in Manhattan below 60th St (as of 2009 - Manhattan Core Parking Study). Plus street parking.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#202

Post by bserge »

mellavora wrote: post #197
bserge wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see the advantage of a lot of unpaid drivers, but they also aren't morons. Most Uber drivers say they make good money (all that I've met, too), which imo means better than a minimum wage job like warehousing or w/e. They wouldn't do the job if it meant idling without pay. They couldn't, as it would just burn money.

And how many of the uber drivers who said they were making good money were good at math? People think lots of things to convince themselves that they are doing ok, when a more objective look says 'maybe not'. I recall one uber ride I had in Kentucky, driver was a retired accountant. He said he figured he was earning about $2/hr after costs. He said he liked it because it got him out of the house and gave him somethin…

Don't need math when you can't pay for fuel.

The people not making enough quit, as I said.

There seems to be this weird thinking that gig workers are all exploited.

Meanwhile many Deliveroo workers make 2000+/mo in the UK and immigrants in factories get wages withheld for PPE and "damage to equipment" in Germany. Not even speaking about the farm workers.

I don't even care about all this, I was wondering if Uber can make it work legally.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#203

Post by Broken_Hippo »

whiddershins wrote: post #196
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.

Ugh, the unique selling point of working Uber is the flexibility and autonomy. Every driver I talk to says that’s what they love about working it. What is it in us that can’t let people have what they value, just because it is different than what we value?

They can still offer flexibility. No one was really, really autonomous, autonomous, though.

Are the drivers you talk to actually friends of yours? Are they driving to make a living? Are they stuck driving due to poor child care choices? Are they on the clock and hesitant to dismiss the company they work for?

Have you asked them if they'd rather the company process the taxes? Do they have difficulty doing so? Have any of them found themselves in a hole because of the 'contractor' system?

I'll add that this isn't like a normal contract job: Uber needs drivers. Without drivers, they wouldn't have a business. And they need them constantly - not in the way that a firm needs temporary help to upgrade things.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#204

Post by CaptainZapp »

yawaworht1978 wrote: post #149
hungryforcodes wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

> sure that's a bit outdated in the time of online maps

As a passenger I feel it's a significant qualitative difference if I have a driver who knows his way around town compared to one who obviously and fixatedly relies on the GPS.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#205

Post by devcpp »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #90
hungryforcodes wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Then you're not going to do it for the money that uber pays. As a ZZP you're meant to provide for your own pension, sick leave, disability insurance. No way what Uber pays is going to cover that. This is why they're doing it of course, to avoid having to provide those things. But those are statutory rights in the Netherlands. And for good reason, otherwise if someone becomes disabled it ends up on the state's plate.…

Why aren't these payments taken from the employee then? In my country retirement and social security appear right in my paycheck. Why isn't it the same for freelancers (when they declare taxes)? If their wage is too low as you claim, this isn't something that will change when they become employees, so this solves nothing. If this is about a minimum wage, then the real solution is forcing freelancers to work a minimum of monthly hours, which treats the root problem.

This assumes the meaning of freelancers is being able to join and leave an employer when you want, and not being able to fix your own prices and refuse gigs like others are saying. I think you should be able to open a freelance provider with restrictions, as Uber is doing. I see no reason to outlaw that.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#206

Post by chongli »

t0mas88 wrote: post #92
ihalip wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No way taxes are 66% of the gross salary.

That's not just taxes, he/she is including pension, healthcare etc. on top of not just employee but also employer taxes.

Since the pension is mandatory it’s essentially a tax to pay for a government provided pension. Same goes for everything else.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#207

Post by kazen44 »

belter wrote: post #153
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.

Correct. With a BV in the Netherlands, you get immediately the fiscal Calvinism of the Dutch tax office at play. Despite the fact that: - You work for yourself so you get 100% of the risk - You have no benefits - If you are sick you get no pay, unless you make a very expensive work sickness/income insurance the Dutch tax office, judges that they do not want you to be in a "too advantageous fiscal position" ...( Not m…

the reason they use this salary is for tax purposes. otherwise doing tax fraud would be easy with a BV. by simply not paying yourself a wage and living of the BV instead.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#208

Post by umvi »

shimonabi wrote: post #97

Great to see that over 100 years of labour laws won by the workers' movements can't be innovated away in SOME countries.

But does every single way to make money have to provide a living wage with full health benefits, etc.? Seems like you limit types of innovation that could otherwise happen. For example, say you create some kind of trash cleanup/recycling incentive app that pays out some small amount for trash/recyclables picked up and turned in. Soon: everyone is outraged that some poor person can't make a living wage picking up recyclables and they try to force you to hire all users of your app as full time employees with full health benefits, etc. That doesn't seem right.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#209

Post by kmlx »

tgv wrote: post #191
refurb wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a bizarre mentality. “I don’t care if this is what you want, you cant have it”

Give me your money. Now why don't you? You're protecting your own interests. The state has to protect everyone's interests; and there's always an international aspect, at least in the EU. That goes beyond than what short-sighted and possibly "primed" employees might think they want.

> The state has to protect everyone's interests

i don't think this is correct. the state only protects their own interests. do these align with the general populace? sometimes they do, other times they don't.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#210

Post by CaptainZapp »

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…

In Switzerland and Germany there's a difference between an AG (Aktiengesellschaft) and a GmbH (Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung).

Both have more or less the same tax and structural advantage (like limited liability, a far easier time to get acknowledged by social security, etc)

The main difference is capital requirements and more formality for the AG. For example: The law requires yearly external audits for an AG, while that's not necessarily the case for a GmbH.

Does Holland also make such a difference, or is BV the only such corporate form?

Note: Differences listed apply for Switzerland. It could be different in Germany.

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