The Uberpocalypse

dktreesea

My take on this ruling is that, if a driver chooses to make their vehicle available, i.e. accepts an uber job, then uber have to give them sufficient work over that hour to ensure they make a profit of at least the NMW, and if not, top up their money.


I don't see how this is workable. The uber driver owns their car, usually their biggest expense, be it depreciation if they own it outright or leasing/finance costs if not, besides petrol/diesel. They can choose whether they own a £15k car or a £30k car. They choose the insurance company. They choose where to buy their petrol/diesel and where they get their car repaired. Uber has no control over any of these things.


If they could produce a model whereby they determine the hourly cost of a car, i.e. the cost they would "support", let's say £22 a hour, then I could foresee a model whereby Uber had to guarantee their workers a minimum of £29.20 an hour for each hour they work.


But even then, say someone wants to go 4 miles in London. They go onto the Uber app and Uber give them a price, say £10. The journey is through heavy traffic and takes an hour to get to the destination. Does the court ruling now mean that Uber has to guarantee the driver £29.20 for that hour and accept a loss of £19.20? That's what it sounds like. It's removing the business risk from the taxi driver completely.

Thrugelmir

michaels wrote: »

I don't really get this. If you can choose your own hours and work for other people at the same time, in what way are you an employee?

Can you work for other people at the same time. Where does the work come from. Only registered taxis are allowed to pick up without prior booking. Hire cars have to be prebooked.

Given UBER 20% of the fare. Seems an eminently sensible ruling. As that's an enormous cut.

Cornucopia

dktreesea wrote: »

My take on this ruling is that, if a driver chooses to make their vehicle available, i.e. accepts an uber job, then uber have to give them sufficient work over that hour to ensure they make a profit of at least the NMW, and if not, top up their money.


I don't see how this is workable. The uber driver owns their car, usually their biggest expense, be it depreciation if they own it outright or leasing/finance costs if not, besides petrol/diesel. They can choose whether they own a £15k car or a £30k car. They choose the insurance company. They choose where to buy their petrol/diesel and where they get their car repaired. Uber has no control over any of these things.


If they could produce a model whereby they determine the hourly cost of a car, i.e. the cost they would "support", let's say £22 a hour, then I could foresee a model whereby Uber had to guarantee their workers a minimum of £29.20 an hour for each hour they work.

HMRC have a set of standard mileage rates for the purposes of employee expenses & taxation, and the most obvious thing for Uber to do would be to use those. That's what every other employer in the UK does when its staff use their own cars for their work. The advantage of that would be that it is both simple and an encouragement for the employee to have a cheaper/more economical car.

... It's removing the business risk from the taxi driver completely.

Why should they have business risk if they are deemed to be employees?

Cornucopia

michaels wrote: »

Of course the more expensive you make it to have human drivers, the sooner uber will replace them with self driving cars. Wouldn't that be a 'win' for uber contractors?

Can't we have Johnny Cab?

kabayiri

They are disguised employees, not contractors.

They don't take on the risk element. The Uber driver does not have a right to substitute someone else in their place.

Double glazing firms had to take on fitters as employees. So where's the difference?

dktreesea

Cornucopia wrote: »

HMRC have a set of standard mileage rates for the purposes of employee expenses & taxation, and the most obvious thing for Uber to do would be to use those. That's what every other employer in the UK does when its staff use their own cars for their work. The advantage of that would be that it is both simple and an encouragement for the employee to have a cheaper/more economical car.


Why should they have business risk if they are deemed to be employees?

To me, an employee model for a taxi would be I own the vehicle and the vehicle's taxi licence. You get a driver's taxi licence, without which I wouldn't employ you. Then I employ you to drive my cab for £7.20 an hour for 8 hours. I pay for the diesel, maintain the cab, pay the radio operator to pass you the rides and you give me the takings at the end of the night. Or better still, I use Uber's model, collect the payment from the customer directly and you don't handle the cash at all. That eliminates customers not paying at the end of the ride.


Even if you use your own vehicle which has a taxi licence, and I pay you a further 45p a mile over and above the £7.20 an hour, I only want to employ you if there's work to do. So if you accept what I think is a 20 minute ride but it takes you an hour, or rather you take an hour to travel the distance to pick up the customer and deliver them to their destination, maybe because you are 40 minutes away from the customer but accepted the ride, does that mean I still have to pay you for a full hour?

Cornucopia

I'm sure it's not rocket science to come up with a fair model for applying an hourly minimum wage to something that is more like piece-work.

I imagine it being based on hours worked over a number of days.

The fixed profit schemes for car mileage require the employee to pay for fuel - they are not generous, and the rates have not changed in a long while.

dktreesea

Cornucopia wrote: »

I'm sure it's not rocket science to come up with a fair model for applying an hourly minimum wage to something that is more like piece-work.

I imagine it being based on hours worked over a number of days.

The fixed profit schemes for car mileage require the employee to pay for fuel - they are not generous, and the rates have not changed in a long while.

Yes, based on hours worked. So the question with uber is if a driver clocks on and is available to work but uber don't have any jobs for him to do, does uber have to pay him £7.20 an hour to be available, albeit idle?

Cornucopia

dktreesea wrote: »

Yes, based on hours worked. So the question with uber is if a driver clocks on and is available to work but uber don't have any jobs for him to do, does uber have to pay him £7.20 an hour to be available, albeit idle?

ISTR that the powers that be have agreed minimum average pay in certain other areas. Uber is not the first company to have to deal with this issue (they probably just think they are).

daveyjp

dktreesea wrote: »

Yes, based on hours worked. So the question with uber is if a driver clocks on and is available to work but uber don't have any jobs for him to do, does uber have to pay him £7.20 an hour to be available, albeit idle?

Thousands of people are employed on hourly rates for just being available.