Uber loses appeal in UK employment rights case

If a company sets the charges and there are thousands of people working for them it seems to me to be an employer.

But of course it isn't libertarian for anyone other than the owners of Uber.

Their business model is very controlling of their drivers. A commentator said yesterday that Uber could very easily change its business model to be compliant with the ruling. Yes it could, but it doesn't want to be the taxi dispatcher hired by 40,000 small businessmen in London.

Now this has been lost at the first appeal it is going to play a part on the licensing decision. Part of the "fit and proper" test is financial stability. The London Uber operation is through a dedicated subsidiary. I think TfL will now be saying that to be fit and proper there will need to be a parent company guarantee for the enormous contingent liabilities that the London Uber business will be building up to pay the national minimum wage and holiday pay and also the penalties to HMRC for not doing so.

Austin Texas banned Uber. Within a week, the competition had moved in. It is no bad thing. Anyway - what is wrong with talking / bus / tube? Students have it too good these days.

As for this ruling - it is a good thing. It means that our employment laws can not be circumvented. I am sure most people would agree that the tax dodging practices by most big companies are not right. Well so is the idea of employing people but not paying them minimum wage or giving the sick or holiday pay. They are the basics we have grown to expect in this country and if you work for a company for more than a certain amount of time, you should expect those basic things.

The only slight issue is that they are constrained by the Uber pricing structure - but this is far more flexible self-employment than say an electrician or carpenter who is working as a sub contractor.

I wonder of the HMRC will demand back-payment to the Uber start date for Employer's NI contributions now? They should - and that would be a massive amount.

Uber drivers are in every single sense of the traditional meaning - self-employed. They work their own hours, agree to take clients or not and make their own tax arrangements. The only slight issue is that they are constrained by the Uber pricing structure - but this is far more flexible self-employment than say an electrician or carpenter who is working as a sub contractor.

And this is the issue. I have done contracting. But it is me that has negotiated the terms. Uber drivers have no say in the terms of their self employment. They are entirely at the whim of Uber. Uber could decide to cut the charges their drivers can charge and there is nothing the drivers can do about it. And of course, Uber take a slice at every turn.

By contrast, minicab drivers pay a licensing fee to the council, work on a standardised and agreed fee structure and then everything else is up to them. After costs, everything they take is their own money. There is no middle man taking a slice of every journey or dictating how much profit each journey is worth.

I understand the business model of creating a market place that puts sellers and buyers together, but in any marketplace, where as it is reasonable for the market place provider to ask for a fee, it is not acceptable for them to set the terms of the interactions between buyer and seller. An equivalent example would be a shopping centre dictating the price Next sell their clothes for and then taking a slice of every sale.

there are numerous examples of people who are obviously self-employed who have little or no control over their pay rates. The most obvious is Black Cab drivers - no one in their right mind thinks they are not self-employed - yet they don't set their own rates - they are meter controlled and set (presumably by TfL).

I don't think you can compare black cabs. They have a pricing structure that is set by their governing body or local authority. Each and every fare they take goes into their pocket. There is no middle man taking a cut and there is no entity that could suddenly lower the amount of money they get. It is a model that has worked very well for many many years. I don't have a huge issue with Uber, but as a company I think they have a lot to answer for ethically in the way they practice.

The risk of going down the Uber route is that all manner of regular jobs start to become self employed contract jobs. In turn, companies effectively get a back door to opting out of their responsibilities as employers. In they eyes of the law a contractor is someone who can choose their work and can subcontract out their labour to a third party. Could that be said of an Uber driver? I know it is the case of black cab drivers that often share their cab with a partner.

I think it's the other way around. I personally don't believe anybody thought that Uber drivers were employed until one of them (almost certainly prompted by a firm of employment solicitors) decided to challenge it.

I don't see how it's a question of more jobs going "down the Uber route" in terms of going from employment to self-employment, but rather from obvious self-employment to constructed employment.

There's also this strange notion that Uber is somehow the bad guy in all this. Prior to Uber, many of these people weren't drivers - and those that were opted to become Uber drivers because the terms were better than those they had at minicab firms. Those that weren't drivers chose to become drivers rather than whatever other jobs they had - or as well as. It's exactly the flexibility and choice that makes Uber drivers obviously not employees that they like about it. These are worker-led zero hours contracts. The elephant in the room is that the workers want it. They don't want to be employees on minimum wage being told when and where to work and how long for.

The law does not work around what lay people think their legal rights are, surprisingly.

It's simple - no one thinks that Uber drivers aren't self-employed. It's just that some people see a some kind of social justice angle and want to jump on it.

I don't think the Tribunal give two shits what commenters on TSR or The Guardian website think of Uber, to be fair. I think it based its decision on the law. And the law is fairly simple: if a company has a high degree of control over its operatives, those operatives are employees. The employer can call them whatever it likes; they can think of themselves as whatever they like. But if the company exercises a high degree of control, its employees can enforce their employment rights in a court of law.

In other news, water is wet and Oscar Pistorius has one leg.

They can work when they like, refuse work if they like, drive their own car if they like and work other jobs / organise their own tax affairs. How exactly is this exercising a high degree of control? By this measure, how are Black Cab drivers not also employees? Exactly who could ever be considered to be self-employed?

It's simple - no one thinks that Uber drivers aren't self-employed. It's just that some people see a some kind of social justice angle and want to jump on it.

There's also this strange notion that Uber is somehow the bad guy in all this. Prior to Uber, many of these people weren't drivers - and those that were opted to become Uber drivers because the terms were better than those they had at minicab firms. Those that weren't drivers chose to become drivers rather than whatever other jobs they had - or as well as. It's exactly the flexibility and choice that makes Uber drivers obviously not employees that they like about it. These are worker-led zero hours contracts. The elephant in the room is that the workers want it. They don't want to be employees on minimum wage being told when and where to work and how long for.

There's a big 'Uber' sign on their cars. Their pricing is set by Uber. Uber take a sizeable portion of each fare.

The idea that Uber drivers are self-employed and not working for Uber is, to say the least, bizarre.

Thankfully, the very clever person who wrote the decision addresses this point. Uber's practices are distinguished from the mandatory legal regime, i.e. that which necessarily applies to black cab operators as a minimum standard, for the reasons as follows:

"113. [...] Although ULL, as holder of the relevant PHV operator licence, was required to hold copies of documentation relating to PHV drivers and their vehicles, there was no regulatory requirement for it to carry out the interview and induction process (“onboarding”) it chose to operate. While it was required to obtain and record passenger details, there was no regulation stopping ULL passing these on to the drivers, still less for it to stop drivers providing their contact details to passengers. Uber says these are matters of common sense, arising due to security concerns or for obvious commercial reasons (the concern about solicitation). That might be true but I cannot see that these factors - controls introduced by ULL at its choice - were thereby rendered any the less relevant. Similarly, although ULL - as the PHV operator licence holder - was required to operate a complaints procedure, it was not obliged to resolve those complaints without recourse to the drivers; again that was its choice. Yet further, there was no regulatory requirement for the guaranteed earnings scheme that had previously been in operation for new drivers, nor any obligation to indemnify drivers against fraud, nor to meet cleaning costs. And there was nothing in the regulatory regime that obliged ULL to warn drivers they should accept at least 80% of trip requests to retain their account status (as to which, see further below), to operate a ratings system (deactivating the accounts of those unable to improve poor scores), to log drivers off if they decline three trips in a row or to provide a suggested route for each trip."

Would you believe it, no mention of TSR or Guardian commenters anywhere.