Uber Drivers Are Company Employees Not Self-Employed Contractors, Rules British Court (arstechnica.com) 230
A British court has ruled that Uber drivers have the same employment rights as other full-time employees in the country, which makes them entitled to a wide array of benefits. Ars Technica reports: The ruling (PDF) means that drivers are now entitled to earn the national minimum wage, holiday pay, sick pay, and other benefits, after the San Francisco-based taxi firm lost a case brought against them by two drivers backed by the GMB union. Uber had argued that it was a tech firm rather than a transport one, and that as its drivers were self-employed contractors it was not obliged to provide the kinds of statutory employment rights full-time workers would expect. According to the GMB, the Central London Employment Tribunal's decision will have ramifications in other industries which rely on casualized labor, and that "similar contracts masquerading as bogus self employment will all be reviewed." In the court's ruling, however, the judges insisted that "the notion that Uber in London is a mosaic of 30,000 small businesses linked by a common 'platform' is to our minds faintly ridiculous. Drivers do not and cannot negotiate with passengers... They are offered and accept trips strictly on Uber's terms." The tribunal panel reserved hefty criticism for the firm, claiming that it had used "fictions," "twisted language," and "brand new terminology" to hoodwink drivers and passengers alike. The GMB meanwhile denied that the majority of Uber drivers enjoyed the "flexibility" of their current contracts.
Ita about time! (Score:2)
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It's easier to fine one company for operating an illegal taxi system than it is, going against individual drivers.
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It's easier to fine one company for operating an illegal taxi system than it is, going against individual drivers.
It's easier to fine one company doing organized crime for organizing crime. Hope they apply the full weight of the law. Would be funny to see those assholes rot in jail for decades.
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Re: Ita about time! (Score:5, Insightful)
And nothing of value was lost...
In fact something of value would be gained, the principle that you can't circumvent laws on hours, holiday pay, maternity pay, redundancy pay simply by saying that someone is a self-employed contractor. It doesn't matter whether Uber stay or go
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It's not just benefits for the drivers either. As employees Uber has to make sure they take the legally required number of breaks during their shifts, don't do more than the legal maximum hours per week (do you really want to be driven around by someone doing 80 hours a week?) and are provided with safety equipment they need.
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Given that a Tesla can't tell the difference between a white lorry and white cloud, I'd like to see what the next release does with an unlit cyclist wearing black in central London at 10pm on a wet November night.
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You think 10 years? Ahahahaha. Wait, let me laugh harder, AHAHAHAHAHAH!
You do know that the Tesla 3, a fully self driving car, arrives in a year or two, right?
When it comes to self-driving cars, there's a whole lot besides technology to sort out.
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For those not familiar with the UK context, I'd point out that an Employment Tribunal is a first-line body. I would eat my hat if this decision isn't appealed and the higher courts do have a long track record of overturning Employment Tribunal decisions.
Don't assume this one is settled.
Not just Uber. (Score:5, Insightful)
Dishonest employers fooling employees into thinking they're contractors has actually long been a mainstay of the technical industry. Seriously. If you think you're a contractor and are rejecting my assertion here but you still have to report to an office at a specific time determined by your employer, you're a sucker.
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Re:Not just Uber. (Score:4, Insightful)
They're obviously not when their ignorance allows their employer to get away with egregious tax fraud at their own collective expense.
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Some people are scared of the general will. *shrugs*
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Ignorant? No. If they were ignorant - nobody would bring this case.
Desperate ? Yes.
And when you get people to sign a bad deal out of desperation - that's not a free market, that's the very definition of exploitation, and indeed the government SHOULD prevent that.
Do you know why ? Because if they don't prevent it for the desperate, then very soon every employer is doing it -and nobody else has a choice anymore. The market has a tendency to settle on the cheapest option - and if exploitation is allowed, then
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Re:Not just Uber. (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, 'er', yeah that's 100% correct. Just like we expect government to protect us from crap doctors or crap lawyers or crap teachers or crap dentists or crap pilots (I have the right to evaluate my own pilot, I don't need some stinking licence to tell me whether or not they can fly a plane properly https://www.google.com.au/sear... [google.com.au], same goes for licences plane mechanics, who needs them, I assume you rate them 0 out of 10 just before you hit the ground ;DDD).
Yes the government should go after employers who put their employees lives at risk, who do not pay them, who abuse their employees and that includes custodial sentences, fines and putting them out of business permanently.
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Then they can lobby to get the laws changed. But until then they have no more right to ignore statute than does Uber.
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It's a question of game theory. It doesn't matter too much if one person does it: the corporation offloads some of its taxes onto the employee and avoids things like pension and sick leave obligations, but that may be fine for the individual. That corporation now has a competitive advantage though: they're paying less for staffing because they're cutting corners. Now they are in a position to fire staff and hire them back as contractors and their competitors have to follow suit to remain competitive. Su
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The kind of libertarianism shown above has no moral problem with indentured servitude, debt slavery, share-cropping or any other form of slavery-by-another-name - because that kind of slavery is apparently freedom to them...
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Yeah, let's have the government protect us from the the free-market and pre-decide that people aren't smart enough to evaluate opportunities presented by evil businesses.
The problem is that the cost is being externalized onto the government and certain other industries. I knew a guy who, in 1999, went to our boss and told him that he couldn't afford to live off his present salary and that he would quit if he didn't get a raise. He was a full-time employee with full benefits. The boss, who was part owner of the company, tricked him into becoming a contractor at a very small raise (about 30%) while stripping him, his wife, and newborn baby of healthcare. So what happens w
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Dishonest employers fooling employees into thinking they're contractors has actually long been a mainstay of the technical industry. Seriously. If you think you're a contractor and are rejecting my assertion here but you still have to report to an office at a specific time determined by your employer, you're a sucker.
For set time periods (defined in N months ahead of time), the contractor model makes sense for both employer and employee. What you're describing, I hope, is the open ended kind of "contractor".
In the 90s it was a good deal (Score:3)
When the outsourcing and H-1B abuse started it changed. The employers where no longer splitting the savings from the benefits, they pocketed them all. The H-1Bs worked 60-80 hour work weeks pushing wages down since companies could cut their IT staff by 50-75% thanks to the increased productivity. Wages were
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Is it humanly possible to work 80 hours a week and be 2x as productive as someone working 40 hours a week?
I'd say it's more like those companies just let the quality decline but didn't care as long as they had someone on hand to cover issues as their arose.
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What They're Actually Saying... (Score:3, Insightful)
What they're actually saying is that UK citizens are not free to enter into individual contracts for labor or service, they may only be employees of a business/corporation. Apparently the leaders in the UK must not believe UK citizens are intelligent enough to avoid signing themselves into slavery or something.
Strat
Re: What They're Actually Saying... (Score:2)
Re:What They're Actually Saying... (Score:4, Insightful)
You can buy a car, advertise all over the place, have the correct insurance, and you are a one person company. It has been going on for a long time, its called "Car Service".
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No, what I believe they are saying is that if you work for a company, that collects the money, gives you your jobs, set standards for drivers, etc., then you are an employee of that company.
You can buy a car, advertise all over the place, have the correct insurance, and you are a one person company. It has been going on for a long time, its called "Car Service".
Congratulations! We may not agree but you are, so far, the only one who has put forth a reasoned and logical argument rather than unreasoned, knee-jerk reactions and childlike insults.
So for you it depends on how much of the infrastructure (electronic payment transfers, ride requests, etc) that Uber/Lyft provides drivers?
If so, how much is too much and how much is too little?
*This* is the kind of discussion that should be occurring instead of an all out, scorched-Earth effort to ban services like Uber/Lyft.
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Interesting question. "Car Service" is,at least in the US, have always been one of those business that are not defined as Taxi's. Car Service, have been 1 to many employee's. They are regulated by the limousine side of the Taxi and Limousine as a single payment ( including taxes and tolls ) per destination. But payment is made to the driver, after the trip, and those companies must pay drivers a salary, not a percentage of a fare. If the company has more than 50 employees ( including office, personnel,
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Interesting question. "Car Service" is,at least in the US, have always been one of those business that are not defined as Taxi's. Car Service, have been 1 to many employee's. They are regulated by the limousine side of the Taxi and Limousine as a single payment ( including taxes and tolls ) per destination. But payment is made to the driver, after the trip, and those companies must pay drivers a salary, not a percentage of a fare. If the company has more than 50 employees ( including office, personnel, mechanics, drivers, etc.) then they have to also provide healthcare
In nearly every place in the US where taxi and car services operate under regulations, car services are forbidden from picking up street-side passengers (being hailed), and as Uber/Lyft are both "ride-hailing apps" that sort of leaves us back at square one with the government preventing the demand by passengers for a better and more modern alternative to the 19th century taxi company/employed-driver model that currently does not meet demands and expectations from passengers in multiple ways but who are left
Re:What They're Actually Saying... (Score:5, Informative)
*This* is the kind of discussion that should be occurring instead of an all out, scorched-Earth effort to ban services like Uber/Lyft. It's apparent there is a demand on both ends not being met, both passengers and drivers, for an alternative to traditional taxi/ride services. It needs to be addressed but those who profit from the status quo want it ignored and those who try to fill the demand punished.
Nope. We already have minicabs here: those are taxis which have few licensing requirements compared to taxis, but can't be hailed and can't use taxi ranks, etc. No one has banned uber, they fit exactly into the exising regulations just fine. There are and have been minicab setups ranging from individuals with a car up to large companies with a whole fleet and an app long before Uber arrived here.
Except that they're playing silly-buggers with an employment law specifically designed to stop companies playing silly-buggers. They're free to operate here, as long as they stick to the same laws as everyone else. What uber is being "punished" for is not providing for a demand, but doing it without sticking to the laws we have.
Re:What They're Actually Saying... (Score:4, Informative)
The UK has effectively been this way for a while. The reason is that the total taxes paid with an employer/employee arrangement are greater than a contract arrangement would pay. Thus HM Revenue and Customs has been cracking down on "disguised emplyees" for decades, re-defining their employment arrangements as a traditional employment contract.
HMR&C also crack down on "fake intermediaries", where people set up their own company which employs them (and perhaps their spouse), while that company contracts with the original employer. However, I don't think the tax advantages of this are as great as they used to be.
Good luck fucking that chicken (Score:4, Interesting)
Nice straw man. What they're saying is that if a company is benefiting from workers as if they are employees....then they're employees and should be treated as such by the company. Not prey on people desperate to make next months rent, so they spend their free time driving for Uber....even if gas and maintenance costs push their annual earnings well below minimum wage.
Nobody chooses to be a low paid serf, you Randian nutjob, any more than you've "chosen" not to be a billionaire.
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Not prey on people desperate to make next months rent, so they spend their free time driving for Uber....even if gas and maintenance costs push their annual earnings well below minimum wage.
So if they are unable to find a regular job as an employee at government mandated minimum wage then they should not be allowed to earn *anything at all* then? When you're already desperate and starving anything is better than nothing. It's very possible they could make more working a couple of these "abusive" self-employment gigs than they could working a minimum-wage job. Why do you think you have any right to tell others how to make a living if the activity/product is not illegal?
Nobody chooses to be a low paid serf, you Randian nutjob, any more than you've "chosen" not to be a billionaire.
I disagree, when we're ta
Re:Good luck fucking that chicken (Score:4, Insightful)
I chose not to be a billionaire because I didn't want to put in the kind of effort, dedication, and in these times, stoop as low as one needs to acquire such a fortune.
Bwhahahaha. That's incredibly cute.
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Bwhahahaha. That's incredibly cute.
Hey cute AND accurate, just like me! What's not to love, eh? ;)
Strat
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No, cute and moronic.
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No, cute and moronic.
...And we hear from Cap'n Ad-Hom who has nothing at all constructive or factual to add but simply couldn't resist demonstrating his teenage level of maturity for the world to witness in all it's glory!
Thanks Cap'n!
Strat
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No, cute and moronic.
...And we hear from Cap'n Ad-Hom who has nothing at all constructive or factual to add but simply couldn't resist demonstrating his teenage level of maturity for the world to witness in all it's glory!
Thanks Cap'n!
Strat
What's there to say to someone who thinks making a billion dollars is just something produced by force of will?
Re:Good luck fucking that chicken (Score:5, Informative)
So if they are unable to find a regular job as an employee at government mandated minimum wage then they should not be allowed to earn *anything at all* then? When you're already desperate and starving anything is better than nothing.
Are there no prisons? ... And the Union workhouses... Are they still in operation?"
Why would they be desperate and starving? We have a thing called a social safety net here. If you can't find a job, you can go and sign up for jobseeker's allowance. The thing is we have a societal memory of the Victorian era. In many ways it was exactly like what you seem to want. People were free to sign up to whatever contracts they wanted, no matter how abusive, and people were free to starve. So we tried your way already and decided it wasn't very good.
It's very possible they could make more working a couple of these "abusive" self-employment gigs than they could working a minimum-wage job
Then do so. You're allowed to pay yourself less than the minimum wage, so start a company (or operate as a sole trader) and go nuts. What you can't do is employ other people under those conditions. Neither can you pretend your employees are actually contracting companies in order to escape those rules.
Why do you think you have any right to tell others how to make a living if the activity/product is not illegal?
The activity---of not paying people enough---is illegal. So that's a moot point. Not only that, it's legal for you to be paid less than the minimum wage, but it is illegal for them to do it. Only the employer is committing a crime. On legal matters, one must be precise.
I chose not to be a billionaire because I didn't want to put in the kind of effort, dedication, and in these times, stoop as low as one needs to acquire such a fortune.
Ha, no. Just because you are choosing not to pursue it, doesn't mean you could achieve it if you pursued it. There are more than enough a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinners who have spent a lifetime trying to get that far and have not achieved it.
Re:Good luck fucking that chicken (Score:4, Informative)
Back in the 90s, before the minimum wage came in, you would see job adverts like "Security guard, £100/week, 100 hours, bring own dog". When someone took up that job it had two effects. Firstly the government had to keep paying them benefits, because £100/week isn't enough to pay rent or have both food and electricity at the same time, all while feeding the dog. Secondly that person was trapped, 100 hours/week leaving them little time to look for better jobs and if they quit their benefits would stop because they "voluntarily" gave up work.
On top of that, it's blatant exploitation of the individual.
So the government realized that it would be better to set some limits. A minimum wage, a maximum number of hours worked per week. Chances are the company simply paid what was required, since they needed a security guard no matter what. But even if they just replaced that person with a CCTV camera or two, at least the benefits that the government would have had to pay anyway were now enabling the ex-employee to spend time looking for a better job, improving their CV or getting more education and training. Just shoving people into dead-end, subsistence wage jobs was a false economy.
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Interestingly though, my view on things changes if there was a basic income scheme. I think in that case, one could argue for scrapping the minimum wage.
The difference being, I think, that there's none of the problem getting trapped because you can't quit. And there's also no desperation where people have to take awful, low paid jobs just to quit.
I'm sort of in two minds. On the one hand it may enable companies to sponge off the tax payers (like they don't already!) by offering sub living wage jobs and havi
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No they're not. They're saying that you can act like a full time employer without abiding by the laws and rules and presumably taxes associated with full time employment. Uber drivers aren't free to do as they wish such as setting their own prices, which are controlled by Uber.
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No what they are saying is that UK actually understand how contract law works, and slavery is still illegal. You can not sell yourself into slavery no matter what you sign.
the cable co's have been doing this for years with (Score:2)
the cable co's have been doing this for years with all of the subcontracted workers that are controlled way to much to be Self-Employed Contractors,
Be careful what you ask for... (Score:2)
There's the old saying: "Be careful what you ask for, because you might get it". The Uber drivers who want to be classified as employees may think that they are suddenly going to have all the benefits of employees with none of the disadvantages. They may be rather unhappy, when they suddenly discover that they:
- must meet productivity targets
- cannot work for the competition
- must work particular hours
- must service particular areas
- generally are told exactly what/when/how they must do their work
Drivers wi
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You do realise some of the practises mentioned there are also illegal under UK employment law, right?
The only one that could be illegal would be "Drivers will be ranked by productivity, with the least productive being fired". Obviously in ranking someone must be bottom, but providing that the lowest are performing adequately then it could be unfair dismissal.
There would be limits on some of the others, for example on driving hours and "how they must do their work" couldn't include any instructions contravening law (i.e. no rules like "must speed, must use a mobile device while driving"), but I don't think
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Um, no? AFAIK, nothing I mentioned would be illegal.
Within the parts of Europe I am familiar with, the UK has the worst protection for workers, because of "temps". I know of companies where - aside from the top managers - everyone is a "temp", i.e., an employee with no benefits whatsoever. It's frankly a stupid way to run a business, since it means that employee turnover is high, and employee loyalty essentially zero.
Subjectively, this seems to tie into the UK class consciousness: the managers don't want em
Uber is going down (Score:3)
It's bleeding cash so look to them to become more desperate as time goes on. Their model does not work. See Bloomberg: https://www.bloomberg.com/news... [bloomberg.com]
Re:Expected ruling from institutionalized employee (Score:5, Insightful)
How the hell is working FOR Uber entrepreneurship. Can you Grow your Business?
Can you Also deal with competing Companies?
Deal Direct with Customers? Other them other services?
No You work for Uber.
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Can you Also deal with competing Companies?
Many drivers drive for both Uber and Lyft. They have both apps on their phone, and go to whichever gives them a fare first.
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How the hell is working FOR Uber entrepreneurship.
[...]
Can you Also deal with competing Companies?
Yes. I know some people who've worked for Uber, Lyft, Postmates, TaskRabbit, and Caviar, all at the same time.
They go online on all the apps. Then they accept requests from the highest bidder. So if Uber is surging, they shut off all their other apps. Or vice versa, if Lyft is having special boost, they shut off the Uber app. Or if TaskRabbit needs a phone repair near where they're located, they'll go do that instead because it usually pays better than Uber (assuming it's not too far).
Deal Direct with Customers?
For that, you'd need y
Re:Expected ruling from institutionalized employee (Score:5, Insightful)
It's entrepreneurship because you get to decide when, where, and how much you work.
That is the definition of flexible work hours. The definition of entrepreneur is someone who establishes a business.
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Re:Expected ruling from institutionalized employee (Score:5, Informative)
I can't speak to British law, but in many jurisdictions there are actually legal definitions of employment to prevent what Uber appears to be doing, namely hiring people but calling them independent contractors to evade labor laws. It isn't like this is the first time that a company has tried a contractor scam to get around minimum wage and other worker protections.
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It's certainly the case over here too: it's called IR35, or at least that's the segment of it which has potentially applied to me when I've been contracting.
On the off chance you're interested: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/ir... [www.gov.uk]
It turns out that the part of the civil service responsible for putting legal information online is really really REALLY top notch. First thought when encountering it is "who are you and what have you done with my government??". I expect they'll be cut soon.
The IRS Test (Score:5, Informative)
The questions (from Synergistech Communications [synergistech.com], which also provides additional information), with the answers in bold based on my understanding of how Uber works:
By my count the Uber-Driver relationship does not pass 4 of the tests and two more are borderline. The key point that makes the relationship tip towards employee is that the driver has no direct price control (they cannot quote a price to perform the service).
Re:The IRS Test (Score:5, Insightful)
Actaully, Uber drivers can't negotiate the price with passengers because the passengers aren't actually the driver's clients, Uber is, and the passengers are Uber's customers, not the drivers, so driver has absolutely no authority to negotiate a different rate of pay with them. The driver can either accept the rate that Uber said they will pay... or not. Accepting what a client said they would pay does not make the contractor who agreed to work for that amount an employee.
There may be other reasons to consider Uber drivers employee's, but how the drivers are paid is definitely not one of them. If that, as you say, is really the tipping point, then Uber drivers would definitely be independent contractors.
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As a contractor I quote to the client the price that I charge (keeping in mind market rates for CCIEs) and it is the customer that determines whether to accept or to counter-offer. The ability to counter-offer is important, as it indicates the negotiation part of the contract is indeed between the two parties.
In Uber's case, the real contract is between the customer and Uber, and the limited options of the Uber driver indicate that the relationship between Uber and the driver more or less works on Uber's te
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False, I've been a contractor and have quoted prices - and negotiated them. It gets particularly nice when you are offering a service nobody else can provide (or cannot provide on the same level - like customizations to a program you originally wrote, nobody else could do it better than the person who knows the code inside and out).
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What you're describing would be a person seeking a ride posting to Uber's app a message saying 'I want to travel from Point A to Point B, ride to take no more than X amount of time, no stopovers, and I'm willing to pay Y amount', which individual drivers would then be free to accept or not accept.
What the system would look like with 'independent contractors' would be that a person looking for a ride would log into Uber's app, and would be presented with a list of available drivers, and what those drivers we
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If you aren't making a profit on the deal it makes you either an idiot or a slave.
If you are, then you're still an entrepenuer - provided it's a one-time deal for a one-time job. If it's a long-term open-ended contract - then yes, you are an employee.
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Actaully, Uber drivers can't negotiate the price with passengers because the passengers aren't actually the driver's clients, Uber is, and the passengers are Uber's customers, not the drivers, so driver has absolutely no authority to negotiate a different rate of pay with them. The driver can either accept the rate that Uber said they will pay... or not. Accepting what a client said they would pay does not make the contractor who agreed to work for that amount an employee.
I wonder if a tweak to Uber's business model might fix that... and also mitigate the "surge pricing" complaints.
Rather than Uber setting the prices, why not allow the drivers to? Let drivers set their own rates, and have the app show the rider the list of available drivers and how much each would charge to transport the rider (estimated), along with the estimated time of arrival? A market would quickly develop with drivers competing against one another for riders. Surge pricing would still happen, but it
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Yes, Uber could; however, doing so right now will reduce their revenue. Remember that Uber is taking a portion of the service charged to the clients (passengers)? If they follow what you are explaining, even though they could avoid the employer-employee relationship, it could hit their revenue quite hard. Business people (or corporations) do not like to lose their earning and will try to drag it out as long as they can...
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Just as long as the fixed-price and other rates still have tolls and airport fees done in the same way as now.
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I understand you have to accept a certain amount of work or you'll be struck off their Uber's list. You have less than full control over the hours of work.
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In the UK there isn't a hard set of criteria to test against. It's the judgement of a court based on the principals set out in the law, which is better because companies can't find loopholes so easily just by breaking one of the tests on a technicality.
In this case Uber clearly controls its drivers to a large extent, sets standards for them, evaluates their performance, sets pricing etc. In the UK about the closest thing is a zero hour contract, which is a contract of employment that does not guarantee to a
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The answer is no. You cannot hire someone to drive for you. In what way would an assistant provide any help to you when all you do is open a mobile app and wait for someone to request a ride from you that you must give personally? Any assistant you hired would be tangential to your relationship with Uber in that they might mana
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If it's a real business, you can provide that service to more than one company.
I'm pretty sure both lyft and uber prohibit people from driving for both.
Even then, you're missing the key definition of entrepeneurship: establishing a business for proft. Uber drivers do not get to keep the profits, those go to Uber, they get a cut - which makes them employees, not owners.
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How the hell is working FOR Uber entrepreneurship.
Can you Grow your Business?
Can you Also deal with competing Companies?
Deal Direct with Customers? Offer them other services?
No You work for Uber.
You are making a false assumption.
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That is NOT the definition of entrepeneurship, hell it's not even the primary benefit - which is 'keeping the profits'.
If you don't get to keep the profits - you are an employee not an entrepeneur. It is really that simple.
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It's entrepreneurship because you get to decide when, where, and how much you work.
Do you have a newsletter? Your ideas are intriguing....
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Re:Why is everyone against Uber? (Score:5, Interesting)
On its face, Uber is an end-run around laws restricting taxi companies (it may not have started that way, but it definitely is now). Uber's whole scheme is analogous to patenting something that's already been done before by adding the phrase "on the internet". They're using weasel words to do things they're not supposed to be able to do by law.
Whether you think the law is fair or not is a different issue.
Because I feel that the laws there are too restrictive, I'd normally not really care. But then they get petulant. Did you know that Austin doesn't have Uber service? Austin wants all ridesharing services to fingerprint their drivers (which I believe the taxi companies are already required to do). The voters voted, and the law passed. Uber's response?
They took their ball and went home.
I use Uber fairly regularly. I love the service. I think it was needed, and for that reason I give them a pass on the medallion laws or whatever; the taxi companies needed a kick in the ass, and many of those laws probably exist due to corruption. But I [i]do not[/i] think it's unreasonable to comply with requests from municipalities that go to the safety of passengers -- or, for that matter, mandates to treat their employees fairly.
And when they're so petulant that they'll pull out of a municipality instead of complying with the laws there, well... That just makes it clear that those whiners think they're special snowflakes, and have no qualms about punishing their customers in an attempt to obtain the special treatment they think they deserve.
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I actually think they're to be commended for pulling out of a market rather than compromising their principles.
Mandatory fingerprinting just for being employed in a particular industry sounds horrifically intrusive. Kudos to Uber for sacrificing the potential profit of the Austin region in order to protect the privacy of their drivers. They're not punishing their customers - if their customers want Uber services, then their customers can not vote for bullshit, abusive laws.
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I actually think they're to be commended for pulling out of a market rather than compromising their principles.
Mandatory fingerprinting just for being employed in a particular industry sounds horrifically intrusive. Kudos to Uber for sacrificing the potential profit of the Austin region in order to protect the privacy of their drivers. They're not punishing their customers - if their customers want Uber services, then their customers can not vote for bullshit, abusive laws.
Well, obviously the people living in Austin believe that it is reasonable to make sure that people who run a livery service have been vetted for certain types of criminal behavior. I don't personally blame them. What are you going to suggest now, that it's unreasonable to fingerprint elementary school teachers and daycare workers to make sure they aren't convicted pedophiles? That it's perfectly okay for a CPA to have a long history of embezzlement? I don't think you're going to get much sympathy from 9
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Uber is a parasite sucking blood from customers and the surroundings, it has no principles, no dogma, and you're just the convenient food.
Compared to paying twice as much money to ride in a dirty taxi? Here's my arm, suck away.
Any number of Uber drivers I've spoken with feel the same way about driving an Uber vs a taxi, too.
What kind of parasite makes all of its "victims" better off? That sounds like a symbiote, not a parasite.
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And when they're so petulant that they'll pull out of a municipality instead of complying with the laws there, well... That just makes it clear that those whiners think they're special snowflakes, and have no qualms about punishing their customers in an attempt to obtain the special treatment they think they deserve.
I think Uber has been disingenuous and is asking for "special treatment" in various ways too, but I think this characterization is a little off.
It's probably not Uber saying "we're special snowflakes and we're going to take our toys and go home rather than playing by your rules" and more like Uber's lawyers saying, "Well, if you give in to this demand in X city, then cities Y and Z are probably going to expect you to give into their new systems too."
Whereas by actually pulling out of a municipality, the
Re:Why is everyone against Uber? (Score:4, Interesting)
No, not everyone "enjoys and uses" these services particularly because that lower rate you refer to comes at the cost of a profound dishonesty, as the legal case points out. Another aspect of this dishonest accounting, I suspect, is in the form of car insurance as I've pointed out in another recent post. Low prices at the cost of exploitation is no bargain, it's hiding the real cost of providing the good or service.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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I mean really, what is the deal? Do they not provide a service that everyone enjoys and uses and a much lower rate with better service than the local taxi service that doesn't even have an app?
No, they don't. They provide exactly the same service as the minicabs* which have been operating here for as long as I've been alive - most have also had apps for many, many years. From my experience the pricing is pretty much on a par as well (ignoring the fact that Uber keeps running specials/free rides for new customers).
*minicabs are similar to taxis but they cannot be hailed on the street and they can't use taxi ranks. Which is probably why they have generally been early adopters of apps. Just because
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The Americas have a long history of grandiose idealists forming communities. Few of them ever lasted. Even the Mormons guaranteed Congress they would pursue polygamists to get Utah admitted as a state.
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This has obviously nothing to do with employee rights but is a hatchet job by GMB to get rid of Uber. This will harm the drivers, it will harm the customers, only one who will gain are the unions. Shame on you UK for protecting the particular interests of certain pressure groups against your citizens.
Yeah, it's that evil taxi-company-trade-union-muslim-marxist-lizard-people conspiracy again.
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They use computers so they are a tech firm. Right? ;)
But anyway as a aside, you have touched upon the two categories of software I have; software as a product vs. software as an enablement. Uber produces software but only to enable their business model, they are a taxi service not a software company.
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Can they set their own rates? Negotiate the terms of the contract? Negotiate fares? Can the driver define how th work will be done? Etc. There are a number of areas where it is more of an employee/employer relationship.