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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

#131

Post by mrisoli »

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…

It's very unfortunate that restaurant websites are often so terrible that sometimes they don't even include a proper PDF to check the menu, I can imagine it really makes it impossible for people with special needs to get the info they want or to order, I myself almost always only go to restaurant websites as a last resort because they tend to be awful unless they belong to some big chain.

There are of course some site builders restaurant owners can use to improve this, but since, as others have said, they are not always tech savvy they probably don't know, best thing to improve accessibility I can think of is that local commerce boards create some sort of recommendation or guidelines on how to setup a business website following best practices with a list of easy to use builders for such.

What sucks about the domain squatting is that those large corps will have much better SEO capabilities, so even if someone owns register bobs-pizza-chicago.com and make sure it works they could just make chicago-bobs-pizza.com or some variant and beat them in SEO and steal their traffic, even if they were required to provide some banner saying "this is a doordash website" most people wouldn't care and order anyway.

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

#132

Post by saddlerustle »

herbstein wrote: post #86
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?

> Now they’re all permanent employees of Uber will they lose this flexibility? Nothing in employment law mandates an inflexible work schedule. You can have perfect flexibility while being an employee.

No, lots of jurisdictions have predictive scheduling laws for employees.

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

#133

Post by josefx »

Kaze404 wrote: post #77
lovedswain wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

I'm not in the US but delivery apps are mainstream here as well, and pretty much every restaurant had their own delivery people (we call them motoboys here). Weird to learn that it's not the case everywhere.

I would be careful with the "learn" bit. I think almost every HN topic involving an internet based service ends up with claims that X didn't exist before X.com made it possible.

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

#134

Post by tobr »

ctoth wrote: post #101
Hydraulix989 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 und…

Why would a response have to address everything in a comment, especially when it goes rambling like that?

EDIT: Note, the comment I’m replying to grew by about 300% after I posted this.

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

#135

Post by mytailorisrich »

Jochim wrote: post #124
mytailorisrich wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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%...

Many of the restaurants on Deliveroo were/are already exclusively takeaways though. I think that in many cases these services have the whiff of rentier capitalism. A third party has inserted themselves into a situation where you previously dealt directly with the restaurant with the intent of extracting value by making both sides dependent on them. The other factor here is the absurd losses these players are chasing.…

> Many of the restaurants on Deliveroo were/are already exclusively takeaways though.

That's not my impression, but the pandemic has had a radical effect.

> I wonder if there's a way of providing the benefits of these services without handing control over to that middleman.

There is but again this has a cost and if you're an independent restaurant it may make more sense to outsource all of this by using a platform. Some platforms allow you to only use them for handling online order taking and payments (Just Eat?) if you think handling delivery in-house makes sense (but I think it often does not).

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

#136

Post by AmericanChopper »

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.

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

#137

Post by saddlerustle »

roel_v wrote: post #40
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…

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…

Deliveroo and Uber Eats don't do that.

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

#138

Post by jtsiskin »

lordnacho wrote: post #25

I don't know anything about how the law works, but it seems to accord with the reality of how people tend to think of jobs. Have you ever met an Uber driver who didn't give the impression that this was what he did all the time? I haven't, though I imagine not everyone is full time. It's quite a way from the idea that anyone with a car can give someone else a ride. For instance, I've never met a driver who happened to…

If 30% of people work “full time” (8 hours day, 5 days a week) and the other 70% work on average 5 hours a week, that’s a ~77% chance you get a “full time” driver.

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

#139

Post by sdoering »

csunbird wrote: post #110
foepys wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Replying to sister comment.

In Germany, if you can't afford a lawyer you are entitled to the government paying legal aid in civil cases [1]. As you are - I just realize - in many countries.

Problem is, that a restaurant owner isn't entitled to that so that even if you are a small company (self employed restaurant owner) you are toast. You could hope to have a legal insurance covering stuff like that, but not sure, if that would be the case for most insurances.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_aid#Germany

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

#140

Post by ricardobayes »

gjulianm wrote: post #83
ricardobayes wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So following that chain of thought freelancers through Upwork and Fiverr need to be qualified as workers too? That would be absurd and probably hurt the self-employed more than it helps.

Not at all. They don't control your rates, they don't stop you from getting jobs if you reject a lot, they don't set any quality minimums for your job, and they don't remove you if someone doesn't give you five stars. In other words, you're not working for these platforms, it's just a marketplace. With Uber, drivers are working for Uber, not for the passengers. However, Uber is pretending to be a marketplace, and it…

Got it, thanks.
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