Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Uber drivers are workers not self employed, Supreme Court rules

bbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 387 posts

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

#151

Post by csunbird »

FeepingCreature wrote: post #130
csunbird wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not having access to the justice because of shortage of money should be illegal instead.

You can't make a circumstance illegal.

But you can put down legal protections to prevent this circumstance occurring. It is just like not having access to medical care because you are poor. We put protections to prevent this happening, called public health insurance.

For the sister comment: I wonder why companies are not entitled to a public defender, interesting.

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

#152

Post by notahacker »

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…

The company you contracted for wasn't claiming to be a platform that let you hire your services out to other people, was it? If Upwork or a recruitment agency simply assigned you to a client at a rate they chose without telling you what it or the project was until after you had accepted and expected you to accept at least 80% of those projects unless you had previously signalled you were unavailable, they would also face issues.

For your contract to be legal it would have to pass other tests, but for you it was an objectively much stronger position (your agreed a rate you thought your time was worth when you signed the contract, not whatever your client thought they could hire you out to their next customer for)

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

#153

Post by michaelt »

refurb wrote: post #39
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…

Is whether someone “does it all day” a factor in determining if they are a employee versus contractor? Plenty of contractors work all day long.

In some countries, Uber has advanced a narrative that driving for Uber is a side gig, with their drivers fitting driving in around other jobs.

This allows them to argue that, for example, they shouldn't have to pay for health insurance or unemployment or sick pay or vehicle depreciation for someone who only works 4 hours a week.

In the UK Uber hasn't made this argument much, as their drivers all have to be licensed minicab drivers - most of whom have driving as their primary source of income.

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

#154

Post by amelius »

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.

> People are allowed to be objectionable if they want to.

Isn't that what we (should) have judges for?

I mean, if a judge blindly follows the letter of the law, we can replace him/her by a computer.

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

#155

Post by twoslide »

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…

Agree that Deliveroo fees seem high on both ends (customer and restaurant). Wonder if this means they (a) they are inefficient (b) they have large profit margins or (c) it is actually more expensive to run than one might think. If (a) or (b), the conditions for lower priced alternatives seem high.

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

#156

Post by AniseAbyss »

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 remember when Uber was a hype. Stories about people making a lot of money. Didn't last long.

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

#157

Post by nemo44x »

saddlerustle wrote: post #129
kjakm wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oversupply might mean lower prices (or easier to get a ride) but it also means it's almost impossible for any driver to make a living. That leaves you with drivers who can only drive part time/as a second job while old fashioned full-time/one job taxi drivers slowly get driven out of the market. What's good for some consumers isn't always good for society.

Who decides which drivers are allowed to drive and which should get no income at all?

They’ll form a union and distribute work based on seniority so anyone young and ambitious but without union connections is blocked out.

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

#158

Post by chrisseaton »

amelius wrote: post #154
chrisseaton wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> People are allowed to be objectionable if they want to. Isn't that what we (should) have judges for? I mean, if a judge blindly follows the letter of the law, we can replace him/her by a computer.

But you need some kind of infraction or starting point if you want a judge to consider it.

'They're being objectionable' is not a reasonable starting point. 'They're being fraudulent' would be... but they clearly aren't being fraudulent.

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

#159

Post by twoslide »

chrisseaton wrote: post #120
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…

> and if you order through there, it's costing the restaurant a lot of money How does it cost the restaurant any money when they do this? The delivery companies can't unilaterally take a cut of the price, can they. I think you'll find the delivery companies mark up, and get their money that way, in this case where they don't have an agreement with the restaurant. The restaurant gets the price they ask for it.

An owner of a local restaurant told me he pays about 30% revenue to share to Deliveroo, as part of his agreement with them. He also runs his own delivery service, and encourages customers to use that (phoning in) rather than Deliveroo.

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

#160

Post by vidarh »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #135
Jochim wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. S…

> Some platforms allow you to only use them for handling online order taking and payments (Just Eat?)

Deliveroo allows this too, but frankly I'd happily pay a premium to have those restaurants deliver using Deliveroo rather than themselves, as when it's the restaurant themselves you lose visibility of how far along the delivery is in the app. As a result, for restaurants that deliver themselves that will count against them when I consider where I want to order from.

Post reply on HN