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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

#141

Post by scrollaway »

airza wrote: post #12
sktrdie wrote: post #6

Bit out of context but I just came back from US (living in Netherlands). Holy flipping hell that place is full of cars. Literally everywhere. I mean I understand using a car upstate New York where things are further apart and everyone has a huge isolated villa. But do you really need 4 lane roads in freaking manhattan? Seems like regulating "car stuff" in general is always a good thing if you ask me.

There is a great youtube channel called "Not just bikes" which talks about urban planning in the netherlands and how it results in much more livable cities than the US.

My god, you weren’t kidding! I’ve been watching his videos since seeing your comment. His intro video immediately signals the fantastic quality of the channel. So far the guy did get me excited about sidewalks.

https://youtu.be/9OfBpQgLXUc

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#142

Post by bryanlarsen »

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.

Working part time for Uber won't have less freedom than working as a free lancer for Uber.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#143

Post by Ekaros »

Jxl180 wrote: post #83
gargs wrote: post #5

“Drivers don’t want to give up their freedom to choose if, when and where to work.” Drivers might have the freedom to turn off their phones and choose not to work, but they don't have the freedom to choose which routes/destinations. Seems to me that their argument is one-sided and deceptive.

If I hire a contractor to renovate my home to my exact specifications, by your logic they are my employee because they couldn't choose the "route" or "destination?"

If you were to hire contractor from company that was set-up to outsource your work to one of it many sub-contractors which only worked for them and had no deciding power how to do it and for what price, yes they would be employees.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#144

Post by greatpatton »

dagw wrote: post #102
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.

Nothing is stopping you from being an actual freelancer. A large point of this ruling was that people working for Uber aren't actually freelancers, since they're not free to pick their clients or set/negotiate their own prices.

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.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#145

Post by capableweb »

fallingknife wrote: post #137
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.

'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 spend, you should also get money for how hard the work was on your body. Pension and other benefits help with this.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#146

Post by dagw »

chrisseaton wrote: post #71
brnt wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the car proven to be the slowest form of transport in Manhattan anyways? Or at least, not faster than the metro, and not (significantly) faster than a bike? I recall a similar study about London putting the average velocity of a car solidly on-par with the average cycle velocity.

Where is everyone parking? Like you can't just pull up outside a shop on Regent's Street, park your car, pop in to grab something, and then come out again. So who are all these people driving up and down it? I can't imagine the logic of thinking 'I need to go into central London to do something today... I know I'll drive'. Not even just from an environmental standpoint - even without that the stress of navigating Lon…

I need to go into central London to do something today... I know I'll drive

A few years ago I arrived in London at Paddington station and was late for meeting on the other side of the city. I'd been told that taking the Tube could take up to 30 minutes (including changes), so I decided to grab a Taxi. I arrived at my meeting 40 minutes later.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#147

Post by jacquesm »

jb1991 wrote: post #132
AndyMcConachie wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a consultant in The Netherlands and for this purpose I control my own BV. Similar to an LLC in the USA. But I don't drive a taxi, I do computer stuff. If you want to legitimately be independent in NL you can. I have a few friends in the construction industy(plumbers, carpenters, electricians, etc) who are ZZP'ers. There are a few options open to people who legitimately want to be independent in their work, and th…

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 the low end, but most of the high end will be through BV's.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#148

Post by adventured »

Jochim wrote: post #122
belter wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some consequences. If they will be hired as employees it will be first with a temporary contract. Since there is a limitation to renewal of fixed term contracts, after a certain period the employment is seen as an indefinite employment contract rather than a new fixed term agreement. Meaning then they could not be fired something Uber will not want. The limit is 3 years or 3 contract renewals: https://www.t…

> Are some of these drivers not working for other companies also? In that case they really are freelancers/entrepreneurs not employees...I think the decision will be appealed. That's a pretty bad test on it's own. Plenty of people working in restaurants work for multiple companies, they're still employees.

> Plenty of people working in restaurants work for multiple companies, they're still employees.

And do they cook one food order at a restaurant they work for, then 15 minutes later walk across the street and cook for a competing restaurant for 30 minutes, and then immediately walk back across the street and cook a food order for the other restaurant? No, of course that's not normal.

This will ultimately accelerate the ability of the strongest companies to destroy their competition and potential competition. If Uber doesn't bleed to death financially first, that will be Uber due to their global scale.

Uber may not realize it because they're stupid, but this bolsters survival of the strongest in the segment. They can easily kill off competition using this by eating the labor supply. Someone that would have previously worked for multiple companies - trivially flipping between services as it was most ideal for the driver to grab a fare - will no longer be available for multiple companies at the same time. They'll now largely hold a normal job and will not want to work for multiple companies, pulling two shifts per day. Sure, there may be exceptions of drivers that want to pull a weekend job with another service or work two jobs per day, but exceptions is all they'll be. This will narrow the market winners dramatically and quickly.

Monopolize the market, consume the labor supply, raise passenger fees, lean in to killing off the competition. It's super simple.

If I were Uber I'd abuse the stock market for funding to pay artificially high wages to the labor supply (get all the best drivers), and I'd hire more drivers than I absolutely need (deprive the competition), and begin this killing process immediately. I'd go one market to the next, using Uber's market cap as the funding base to monopolize each market. This type of ruling makes labor supply a competitive advantage to whichever company can acquire the most and best drivers. A global ride hailing app will be advantaged over the smaller local/regional competition accordingly.

The next ride hailing app in the market that wants to get started will find no available labor supply to compete with. Welcome to competition stagnation.

And of course then the moronic regulators will come back around, having created a monster, and they'll have to pursue anti-trust (or the equivalent) against the market winner they helped to cause.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#149

Post by yawaworht1978 »

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.

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.

Re: Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules

#150

Post by capableweb »

greatpatton wrote: post #144
dagw wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing is stopping you from being an actual freelancer. A large point of this ruling was that people working for Uber aren't actually freelancers, since they're not free to pick their clients or set/negotiate their own prices.

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 understanding.

What places are you specifically thinking about where taxi drivers are not free to chose their customer?

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