Uber Loses Right To Classify UK Drivers as Self-Employed (theguardian.com) 143
Uber drivers are not self-employed and should be paid the "national living wage," a UK employment court has ruled in a landmark case which could affect tens of thousands of workers in the gig economy. From a report on the Guardian: The ride-hailing app could now be open to claims from all of its 40,000 drivers in the UK, who are currently not entitled to holiday pay, pensions or other workers' rights. Uber immediately said it would appeal against the ruling. Employment experts said other firms with large self-employed workforces could now face scrutiny of their working practices and the UK's biggest union, Unite, announced it was setting up a new unit to pursue cases of bogus self-employment. The Uber ruling could force a rethink of the gig economy business model, where companies use apps and the internet to match customers with workers. The firms do not employ the workers, but take commission from their earnings, and many have become huge global enterprises.
It makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
They have a lot of control over the drivers. Don't they still have a rule where the Uber app won't work if you have the Lyft app running? You aren't an "independent contractor" when your boss doesn't allow you to accept work from competitors. You are an employee.
they have a lot more control then that. (Score:5, Informative)
they have a lot more control then that.
Like
can't set your own price
limits on what tools (car) you can use.
The rating system.
can't really be Promoting Competitor’s Services (Including Your Own)
limits on acceptance rates / can really see where a ride is going be for committing to it.
and more
Re:they have a lot more control then that. (Score:4, Informative)
And as far as I know, Uber isn't specifying that you must drive only a certain type of car either...
So, you know nothing about their service or the control they have, but you thought you'd share your opinion anyways?
I didn't apply, but when the issue came up before I checked my car and even though it still looks nice their rules would absolutely disallow it. I find it funny because it is so much smoother driving and cleaner than the late-model rental I used.
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I meant that as far as I am aware they don't require specific brands of automobiles. Their restrictions that the car not be marked or be an industrial vehicle are not unreasonable. Someone hiring an independent contractor may have some limits on the types of tools you'll be allowed to use working for them because of safety reasons or to prevent a conflict of interest, but that doesn't automatically make you an. employee
What was wrong with your car that they would not accept it?
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"if an independent contractor wants more money than what the person paying them wants to pay, well... then they don't get the job at all."
Contradicts itself. If the contractor is being payed then he already got the job.
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"An independent contractor is similarly constrained to only accept whatever rates that the people who hire them are willing to pay."
So only the independent contractor and client negotiate price.
"Would-be ride share drivers would technically be entirely free to set their own rates, but that doesn't mean that Uber is willing to pay that amount"
Therefore Uber has a say in price setting, and therefore the driver and the client are not free to negotiate price.
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Obviously... but Uber is actually the driver's client, not the passenger. The passenger is Uber's client.
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" ... Uber is actually the driver's client ... The passenger is Uber's client."
Yes, the court will decide between what you said, or, the passenger is a Uber client and the driver works for Uber.
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"Simply saying how much you will pay for a job does not make the person who accepts that rate an employee"
True. The law weights various criteria to determine if one is an employer, one of them being "saying how much you will pay for a job", and it might be enough in some circumstances or in certain contexts to legally imply you're an employer, but it might not in others or it might be considered somewhere in between, either way the other criteria will also be looked at and an overall decision will be made.
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You aren't an "independent contractor" when your boss doesn't allow you to accept work from competitors.
Actually you most definitely can be. This is not the reason why they're not an independent contractor.
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I am pretty sure that, where this legal action took place, the Police do that (handguns are banned in the UK).
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Really?
Being in a pistol club would be really boring without pistols if you were correct.
http://www.marplerifleandpisto... [marplerifl...lub.org.uk]
The NRA lies you know. It has people like Oliver North, (that guy who sold weapons to Iran and Hezbolla and embezzled a bit on the side) running it.
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Yes, I am sure. [lmgtfy.com] I know because my father used to have a handgun.
You can get an air pistol, or a rifle, but not a handgun.
The name of the club pre-dates the banning of handguns in the UK.
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Air weapons are being tightened up on - a lot. Since it doesn't affect me, I didn't note any great details, but the last time I was in a cop shop they had a locked container chained up outside covered in posters about the amnesty for people to surrender their air weapons before the licensing requirement comes into effect. From which I deduce that in the near future, possessing an unlicensed air weapon will become an offence.
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By the way if you had followed your own condescending link you would have found three classes of pistols legal in the UK.
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OMG, you can own a muzzle loader in the UK, that totally changes things. I am sure that taxi drivers carrying muzzle loaders is a major problem! Incidentally, a taxi driver carrying a muzzle loader while working would almost certainly be illegal anyway. Firearms certificates in the UK are very specific about where the firearm should be stored and used.
Realistically, look at all the statements that "handguns are effectively banned in the UK".
You started the condescending tone, with your implication that I go
Goalpost shift (Score:2)
You kicked off with what looked like a very obvious lie - there is no total ban.
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All those limits however are set by the local regulating body or government, not the individual or a company the individual contracts for...
Good for the UK (Score:4, Insightful)
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You're saying this as if it the definition of the (now confirmed) employees wasn't the subject of a very long legal inquest. If it was as black and white as you say then you should be a lawyer, you could do 30 seconds of work and take home $millions solving those tough questions that people are debating all over the world.
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You're saying this as if it the definition of the (now confirmed) employees wasn't the subject of a very long legal inquest.
Apparently obvious things like this are often the subject of complex legal wrangling. The forms must be obeyed, as they say. One might as well ask why someone standing over a dead body with a bloody knife in their hand should have to stand trial before being incarcerated.
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Apparently obvious ... complex legal....
Yeah whatever else you put in between those two words of a sentence without a "not" in there somewhere is nonsense.
It's either obvious or legally complex.
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Stay tuned for the overturn on appeal then.
Saying anything in the legal system is black and white is the reason why people don't understand that lawyers are a profession.
It was only a question because of the legal (Score:2)
In the states it's only an issue because our Judicial branch overwhelmingly sides with property and the wealthy. Even more so than in the UK. Which is impressive when you think about it.
Uber is a parasite (Score:2, Insightful)
Living off the desperation of laborers, tempting them to give their labor so the wealthy class of owners can profit at their expense.
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Actually the drivers are the owner class; they are the owners of their vehicles, and Uber provides a service to them. The Uber programmers labor to provide this service, fixing bugs at all hours of the night.
Fixed that for you.
Re: Uber is a parasite (Score:1)
The navvies are the owner class, they own the shovels. The Duke merely has his architects provide a service, telling them where to dig... they are the real workers. Yup, complete and utter drivel confirmed.
Re: Uber is a parasite (Score:2)
I suspect commercial ridesharing worsens driving (Score:3)
I await the data to speak to the following issue, but I strongly suspect all commercial rideshare services worsen driving for all drivers by structurally encouraging poor rideshare drivers to work without commercial car insurance. I suspect this choice drives up the cost of car insurance for other drivers operating their vehicles within the terms of their respective policy.
I figure that poor drivers looking to make quick money by being employed by the rideshare service are more likely to attempt commercial
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Calling things by their proper names needs details (Score:2)
Come up with a term that covers all of the commercial services and I'll consider using that term instead. But I don't know of any such name and I won't use a name which is basically advertising for any of them (like calling all portable music players "walkmen" or "ipods", or calling an audio recording online a "podcast"). I understand the value of calling things by their proper names, but your post and a sibling post to yours complain of essentially the same thing while offering no specific language to use
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The fact you are claiming Uber is somehow a ride-sharing company speaks volumes. It's not. It's nothing close to a ride-sharing company.
Not exactly (Score:2)
Re:Wow (Score:4, Insightful)
<Snooty baron voice>
Most assuredly, they should be grateful they're allowed to work at all! Just like those fool peasants demanding an 8-hour workday.
</Snooty baron voice>
Came here for this (Score:2)
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Are you sure its the Uber drivers campaigning against their own jobs? I mean real Uber drivers. It wouldn't be too difficult for some union activists to sign up as drivers and then start whining about 'Muh employee benefits'
You bet your ass they are (Score:5, Insightful)
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But I like being a contractor. Negotiating my own deals with management, setting my own terms and salary. I don't want to work in an industry increasingly dominated by a bunch of whiny bastards who can't do the same for themselves.
If there were two boxes on the Uber application; one that said "Applying as independent contractor", the other that said "Applying as an employee", I'd be OK with that. But the unions fought and died to keep all the jobs to themselves. So this is another industry that they've scr
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You think that Uber allow their "contractors" to negotiate their own salaries? They offer everyone less than minimum wage and say "take it or leave it".
Re:You bet your ass they are (Score:4, Insightful)
They can leave it. If they paid too little, or were too restrictive, drivers would not be using Uber. Apparently enough find it acceptable - or maybe they do negotiate, but people won't/can't talk about it? ...
...If anyone knows differently, please enlighten me?
Some people will take any job so long as it pays, just look at all those small employers hiring migrant workers for a pittance. The whole point of the minimum wage* is that employers are legally obliged to pay at least that. Uber (and others) use the whole self-employed canard solely to abrogate their responsibilities as employers to increase profits at the workers' expense; it should really tell you something when even a Conservative government thinks that stinks and does something about it.
One other thing, no-one negotiates a higher salary for low-paying jobs, even if they aren't applying to someone like Uber. The only workers who are in a position to negotiate their salary are the highly skilled ones who can't simply be replaced by any other schmuck off the street who holds a clean driving license.
*Despite what politicians say, the NLW is not a living wage and I refuse to call it thus; it's barely an increase on the old minimum wage and is only called the "living" wage for political reasons.
That's fine (Score:2)
Re:That's fine (Score:4, Interesting)
They dictate all of your terms
Maybe I'm OK with Uber's terms? Why are all of these other people going to work for them and them bitching? Why aren't they quitting and finding other work?
If enough people quit Uber or just were not available, Uber would have to improve it's contract terms. The market at work. What all of these people are complaining about is that others are willing to accept terms that they are not satisfied with. They got under bid.
Re:That's fine (Score:5, Insightful)
Because we don't want a race to the bottom, we set minimum standards. Working for less is harming other people.
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What some libertarians don't understand is that someone always pays. All uber is doing its externalising the cost. The drivers get benefits, subsidised housing, they can use charities like food banks. If that isn't available, someone has to pay for the extra policing due to their crime, or to cremate turn when they die of exposure one winter.
It's better that an uber costs 50p more and the company doesn't get too be a welfare queen leeching off the state.
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What you don't understand (and I am an ANCAP) is that there are people who do not qualify for meaningful employment at the costs set up by government (minimum wage, lawsuits based on any form of discrimination, harassment, etc.) There are unemployable people out there who will be on welfare if nobody hires them. If a company hires that person and pays him or her something and the person gets more from any other sources (there shouldn't be any welfare, food stamps, etc. but as long as they exist that's a s
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You just perfectly illustrated my point. You want to pay people less than they need to live and have the government pick up the rest of the tab because you think they are only worth that much. Either your business is not viable because it depends on sub-human wages and welfare, or you just want to maximise profit by passing your expenses to other people.
At least socialists are honest about using other people's money for the greater good. You just want to use other people's money to enrich yourself.
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Pure ideology there.
There are two main ways to figure value to employer, and you don't seem to realize the implications. One is that an employee is worth what it would cost to get a satisfactory replacement for him or her. The other is that an employee is worth the value he or she brings to the employer. (The second is way oversimplified as I said it, since the cost of an employee is always greate
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Huh? There's love, and happiness, and health, and all sorts of other things. Ideologies are very tricky things. You can completely believe in your ideology, but it might be (I'd say will be) wrong to some extent. They lead to things like the Holocaust and the deliberate Ukrainian famine that happened somewhat earlier, killing millions of people, because Nazis and Communists were convinced their ideologies were correct, and
Re:That's fine (Score:4, Informative)
That well known socialist Winston Churchill understand the problem well enough: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
"It was formerly supposed that the working of the laws of supply and demand would naturally regulate or eliminate that evil. ... . But where you have what we call sweated trades, you have no organisation, no parity of bargaining, the good employer is undercut by the bad, and the bad employer is undercut by the worst; the worker, whose whole livelihood depends upon the industry, is undersold by the worker who only takes the trade up as a second string, his feebleness and ignorance generally renders the worker an easy prey to the tyranny"
We have employment laws for a reason, and the reason is countries with strong employment laws are far more prosperous and pleasant to live in.
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That is why you are a contractor while they are piecework employees.
As for the last bit, yes yes, we get that a Union bit your sister when you were a kid or similar thing that gave you issues, but please keep it to yourself, it just looks ridiculous.
Re: You bet your ass they are (Score:2)
What industry do you work in? If it's one with a shortage of people with the required skills then it's nothing like Uber's.
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Hear, hear. The title should be "Workers lose right to be contract employees, set own hours and working conditions."
I wonder if the whole employee/contractor thing is a red herring. As near as I can tell, the key to ride/home/tool/bike/whatever-sharing businesses is they don't have to bring capital to the table. Yeah, it would be more expensive to pay benefits to drivers, but that's not the real win. The real win is the drivers bring their own cars so Uber doesn't have to buy them.
Note this is a win all around. Customers win (low prices), the companies win (low capital structure), the drivers/loaners win (incremental income from idle assets). The only one who loses is the competition.
Totally agree on the point that it is individual workers who are losing the right to contract their labor for hire for terms they define.
I wanted to add to your last line which I highlighted. It's not only competitors losing out, possibly even more important and a larger motivation for attacking Uber/Lyft and other systems for independent contracting, is that the government doesn't get that all-important ability to deduct from a paycheck before you see it, nor be able to garnish it, nor track your income pe
Re:You bet your ass they are (Score:4, Insightful)
It's funny how all these "step outside society" fantasies always depend on stealing from someone else - "when society falls apart I've got mine and I've got a lot of guns so I can get yours too".
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The true irony here is that if you act as you suggest you end up being a massive leech on society yourself - exactly what you accuse the government of doing!
It's funny how all these "step outside society" fantasies always depend on stealing from someone else - "when society falls apart I've got mine and I've got a lot of guns so I can get yours too".
WTF are you talking about, "step outside society"? Do construction trades like plumbers who contract a construction job, or a house painter, or a thousand other occupations where a skilled person contracts their labor and skills on terms they negotiate, "step outside society"? There must be millions "outside society". Is it your position then that they should all be forbidden by law from contracting?
Dude, seriously, you really need to take off the Collectivist-colored glasses and take a good look around.
Str
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I don't remember what BlueStrat has written on the issue, and I'm not going to check up, because it's pointless. BlueStrat was talking about one thing, and you started talking about something different you don't like about BlueStrat. That doesn't help anyone. If you read something BlueStrat has written and you take objection to something in it, please post. If you take objection to BlueStrat, hunt down his or her posts and respond to what's in the post. Objecting to things BlueStrat has said in other
Typo corrected (Score:2)
"I've got mine" is not a philosophy. It is a character flaw.
As for the shit you are always going on about with needing guns to overthrow your country - look up Hungary 1956 to see how you would just end up as a small read smear on the ground if you want to do things in such a stupid way. Guns don't win countries. A lot of people working together as well as an army win countries. That lone wolf anarchis
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Your lack of reading comprehension this time is absolutely baffling, I cannot imagine why you wrote what you wrote in response to the comment that you replied to... you make less than 0 sense.
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Hear, hear. The title should be "Workers lose right to be contract employees, set own hours and working conditions."
Why? At the moment, the only thing you get to choose is your hours. You cannot negotiate rates, you cannot negotiate conditions. A contract is something that is negotiated between parties. If you have no power to negotiate terms, it is not a true contract. If you cannot negotiate, you are an employee, not a contractor. This decision only supports the existing status quo, and does not deny any rights to genuine contractors.
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This is the UK and HMR&C (Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs) are very keen on classifying people as employees and collecting the relevant taxes. So, one of four things will happen:
1. Uber will shut down in the UK.
2. Uber will drastically change their contracts with their drivers so that they can qualify as contractors.
3. U
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4. Uber will close all offices in the UK, fire any local staff and pretend that all transactions are international.
As I understand it, Uber's base for UK customers is in the Netherlands.
Re: You bet your ass they are (Score:4, Interesting)
The foundation of our economy is that large numbers of people have enough disposable income to buy lots of things including taxi rides. If everyone is earning fuck all in an insecure job there won't be many Uber drivers (because they won't be able to buy a car) or Uber customers. Our corporate overlords seem desperate to get rid of the very thing that makes them wealthy - their customers. They don't seem to realise that all that dreadful socialism that we've had since WW2 has created millions of new customers for thousands of industries old and new. Getting rid of them just to get the stock price up a bit isn't going to end well.
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Did it occur to you that the laws may be different in the UK and the third alternative (work as an employee) might be the best option?
Your argument can be re-written as: you have no power, so suck up the crumbs were are prepared to drop for you. Well, perhaps the drivers do have more power.
Also, since this wasn't a class action, it doesn't affect anyone except the two drivers who sued. However, all the other drivers can now sue, secure in the knowledge that they will win and that Uber will have to pick up b
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Also, since this wasn't a class action, it doesn't affect anyone except the two drivers who sued. However, all the other drivers can now sue, secure in the knowledge that they will win and that Uber will have to pick up both sides' legal costs.
I didn't think there was any class action status in any of the UK's legal systems...? This judgement is against Uber, and says that their behaviour is illegal. I believe, therefore, that it does affect all employees.
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Correct. There is no concept of Class Action here in UK law. As HP Hal says, this is a ruling against Uber as a whole (although they have immediately appealed, so let's wait and see).
The interesting aspect is what happens to other similar businesses - Deliveroo is a similar large 'gig-economy' company here in Britain, so how will they react?
Re: Wow (Score:2)
Think is while this is a UK ruling it is based on working time directive, and hence has potential to be applicable across the EU. Depends I guess how far Uber choose to appeal this, but EJC is still the top courtfor this assuming it gets that far before brexit kicks in.
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A similar situation happened with Microsoft temp/contract employees a number of years ago. They sued MS because they were essentially "permanent temps". As a result, they're now (if I recall correctly) required to take at least six months off after a maximum of 18 months of employment. So, unfortunately, their situation didn't really improve, as I presume they were hoping to get benefits, etc, as full time employees. Microsoft was obviously using long-term contract employees to avoid paying benefits or
but some worker where not make Minimum wage (Score:2)
but some workers where not even makeing the Minimum wage. With the app work / other misclassified 1099's they have all the control but don't want to pay for car / truck reimbursement, pay for waiting time, pay for on call time, full workers comp / other liability's, taxes, cell phone / other tools reimbursement. return to base time / mileage reimbursement. (after say a long run out of your base area)
piece work pay that can end up being under Minimum wage. Forced to split your piece work pay when they say yo
As I recall that was in the States (Score:3)
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The MS situation would have been to avoid temp workers becoming permanent after 2 years (which happens automatically under UK law).
Minimum wage and holiday pay happen from the start of employment.
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Actually that sounds like it improved a lot! Any temps that are on a mandatory work-somewhere-else schedule are not going to be assigned to important work, they'll only be doing legit temp work. The ones who become important during their work... will be hired on regular. That was the whole point of the action, that was the goal; to force MS to stop abusing the temporary status. The goal wasn't to make temp work awesome, or to lift temp workers up, it was to restore honesty about who is and isn't a temp. I g
2001 Monolith-sized citation needed. (Score:2)
The goal wasn't to make temp work awesome, or to lift temp workers up, it was to restore honesty about who is and isn't a temp.
Then why not adjust the law so that there is no temporary/contractor/contingent/casual classifications, just FTE? Making it bad just because it is "temporary work" makes no sense - it just enables a benefit dodge.
The ones who become important during their work... will be hired on regular
I guarantee important fake-employees became real employees when their time-away approached.
Citation needed on that one - conversion rates aren't high enough and incentives don't work that way.
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uber needs to do the knowledge if they want to sta (Score:2)
uber needs to do the knowledge if they want to stay
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I wish I lived in your simplistic world, where everything worked the way I think it should work. But I don't and neither do you.
Your comment about "THE logic, the legal logic" is ridiculous. Did you not understand that this decision was rendered, not by a jury, but by judges?
Yes, it's possible that one or more appeals may o
Re:UK is the land of law (Score:4, Insightful)
So, what you need to do is to open an Uber account, go to the furthest part of the island, where there is a zero demand for UBER service, preferably during the night and check-in. Leave the car overnight and let the idle car make money, while doing nothing.
If UBER is willing to employ people for whom it has no work, then it needs to rethink its hiring policy. It's UBER's job to find a business model that is profitable under the law; it's not the law's job to accomodate UBER's business model.
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some people have store fronts on eBay (Score:2)
some people have store fronts on eBay and it's like a flea market there the market has a few rules (no where near uber) and changes rent / fees for the space.
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Driving Uber isn't a job. Drivers set their own time. They can wait for profitable (peak) time, or can go where there is more business.
Uber does not expect drivers to be at Uber all the times. A driver can work with Lyft. They can also get business by working as a licensed taxi, also offering a ride by soliciting in person.
Uber is not meant to be employer, but some people chose to make money out of it.
That is not how UK law defines a job. Hence the ruling that Uber is, according to UK law, an employer.
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There are so many arguments and practical hacks against the ruling that it is not even practicable to even list those arguments, and we will not even attempt to do so.
Such as?
We have a number of duck laws here, the ones that say if you look like a duck and quack like a duck then you're a duck. s/duck/employee. You see we've had plenty of large companies over the years try to escape their obligations to employees and the government by calling employees something else. Uber are not the first and they certainl
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There will be appeal process to this. During appeal process finally THE logic, the legal logic, will be used and the ruling of the lower court will be thrown away. It is that simple. Luckily there is a reasonable and predictable legal process.
There is a reasonable and predictable process, and that's why it won't be thrown out
There are so many arguments and practical hacks against the ruling that it is not even practicable to even list those arguments, and we will not even attempt to do so.
In which case, just list one.
However here is one: Under the current interpretation, all you need to do is to register yourself, and the money starts flowing. Reality is that, the law would force employment contract between Uber and the driver, while, clearly, there is no agreement between the the Uber and the driver, and Uber is under no commitment to bring business to the driver when there is none.
So, what you need to do is to open an Uber account, go to the furthest part of the island, where there is a zero demand for UBER service, preferably during the night and check-in. Leave the car overnight and let the idle car make money, while doing nothing.
Nope. UK law allows for zero-hours contracts, and allows pretty short notice for it. All Uber really need to do here is replace check-in with "declare available". Then Uber need to chose whether to give you a shift or not. Once said shift starts, then they have to make sure you get the appropriate pay.
All it will do is that Uber will accelerate driver-less car fleet and those who were petitioning for minimum hourly rate, on behalf of all drivers, will accelerate mass joblessness, as most of the Uber drivers will be obsolete.
That is a matter of a decade.
Exploitative jobs replaced by machines is a bad thing? Having a job that doesn't pay enough to e
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Uber ... don't own the vehicles, maintain the vehicles, fuel the vehicles or have garages for them.
Hmmm. Sounds almost like they're just contracting with an independent car owner and offering a match-making co-ordination app to them for a fee.
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Nice cherry-picking.
Uber sets the prices, sets the commission rate and collects the payment, while also determining the relationship between the driver and the passenger. Note that it's not a fee, it's a commission. Does eBay tell me how much I must sell something for?
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Re: UK is the land of law (Score:4, Informative)
Contractors to work on the terms of the contract, whatever that may be.
Not in the UK. We have laws on the books that say if contractors look too much like employees then for the purposes of the law, they are employees. The specific point is to stop companies like Uber having people who are for all intents and purposes employees (possibly part time) but get to escape all their obligations by playing silly buggers with the name they give their employees.
Re: UK is the land of law (Score:5, Informative)
For anyone who is interested, take a look at the IR35 regulations, which HMRC are cracking down on massively...
http://www.contractorcalculato... [contractor...ator.co.uk]
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/ir... [www.gov.uk]
These are just one of the rules designed to prevent the contractor-not-employee tax avoidance schemes in the UK.
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Match-making, so, something like e-bay, right?
Can I register on Uber and offer my services to twice the average rate (I have a classic car people would probably like to ride in, so they might pay more)? Half the average rate (I really need the money and have an efficient car)?
Can I register on Uber and also other sites? I mean I would be more likely to get a "sale" if I used more sites...
I can offer an item for sale on e-bay for any price I want. People may not buy it for that price, but my ad is still ther
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The difference here is it's cars as the tool and not sewing machines.