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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

#231

Post by ivanbakel »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #184
jessesoo wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This question has been bothering me for a very long time now, does a food delivery platform really require the 20-30% fee to operate? If so, what justifies it? Or is it because of the spike in demand due to the pandemic so they can get away with it?

Food delivery is labor intensive. 20-30% is probably unreasonably high for a big order, but if you're only ordering a couple of dishes that percentage probably makes sense.

This. Every "expensive" service can largely be traced back to the sheer cost of having someone on their feet all the time to perform it. 20% of my typical takeaway order price would require one complete delivery every ~30 mins to earn a living wage in my city - that sounds pretty reasonable.

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

#232

Post by ricardobayes »

HatchedLake721 wrote: post #108
ricardobayes wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is probably a politically fuelled ruling. Boris Johnson wants to 'appeal to the masses' by making high-visibility rules like these, which sound good on paper but probably do more harm than good.

What's Boris has to do with this? It's the Supreme Court's decision, not Cabinet's. The same Supreme court who ruled that Boris Johnson broke the law by suspending the parliament.

I would argue judicial independence would only exist in a scenario if the judge is not human, but a rule-based bot.

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

#233

Post by refurb »

gjulianm wrote: post #146
refurb wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the client Uber or the rider? In my corporate job I work with contractors who do full time for us for months at a time. They were paid by a placement agency, but we are the client.

If the contractors who do full time work are paid by a placement agency to be a full-time employee, that's possibly fraud... In the case of Uber, it's very clear that the contractors work for Uber, as it's Uber the one that sets the conditions of the job.

Meh... this was a big multinational so I doubt they are committing fraud.

They were paid by the placement agency and the contractor was responsible for all self-employment taxes.

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

#234

Post by alistairSH »

chrisseaton wrote: post #191
varjag wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could be eye opening to create an applestore-sf.com and try selling apple laptops there.

Or macrumors.com for a website about Macintosh computers! They'd surely shut that down since it uses a registered trademark! Oh no wait...

Except macrumors is obviously a news/gossip site and makes no effort to pass themselves off as an actual Apple-operated website.

apple-sf.com (and the various food delivery sites being discussed) pass themselves off as the restaurant. It's not clear to a casual user that the order is being processed by a 3rd party.

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

#236

Post by baq »

emteycz wrote: post #67
namdnay wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An Uber driver has no opportunity to negotiate the rate with the customer. If in the app you said "I want to go to the airport" and then each driver interested replied with a quote, that would be rate negotiation.

You're negotiating with Uber, not with customers. Uber says take it or leave it, and you can work with another company if it has better terms/rate.

only being able to accept or refuse is hardly negotiation - and if you refuse enough times, they kick you, so you can't really refuse.

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

#237

Post by sillysaurusx »

michaelt wrote: post #219
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?

> Every Uber driver I speak to tells me how they prefer Uber to their previous job Of course they do - they're not going to get many five-star reviews if passengers leave the car feeling bad or complicit in exploitation.

What's a rating have to do with them complaining about the job? If someone gives them a low rating because of their thoughts on how they work, that person is a jerk.

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

#238

Post by fallingknife »

cameronh90 wrote: post #143
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK, IR35 legislation (introduction delayed because of covid) would probably designated you as a 'disguised’ employee - ie contracting only to get the tax benefits of working via an intermediary company (less tax, paying yourself as dividends etc). https://www.hiscox.co.uk/business-blog/what-is-ir35-and-what...

Nothing I can see in his comment would exclude him from contracting outside of IR35. There's a questionnaire you can do here: https://www.tax.service.gov.uk/check-employment-status-for-t... It seems more likely to come down to setting your own hours, can you pay other people to do work for you, can you have other clients, are you using your own equipment, etc.

> setting your own hours, can you pay other people to do work for you, can you have other clients, are you using your own equipment

This sounds much more like what I would think the definition of contractor is, except for maybe you can subcontract the work. That would be something I would think could go either way in a contract.

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

#239

Post by chmod775 »

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…

> If this company could do all of these things, which I think are pretty standard, why can't Uber?

What are you trying to say? Did you take the company to court?

Because Uber "could" as well, until a court said they don't.

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

#240

Post by fallingknife »

vidarh wrote: post #63
fallingknife wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Variable pricing based on demand is definitely an unusual feature of Uber's contract, but it would also be nearly unheard of in a full time employee's pay structure. So I don't see how it could be used as a determining factor that defines this contract as an employee/employer relationship.

The issue here is that Uber pretends the driver is contracted by the passenger. In which case the driver should be free to negotiate with the passenger. That Uber exercises control of the relationship is what is indicating that Uber is an employer here.

I agree that Uber is full of shit on this point. The driver is contracted with Uber.
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