As I referred to in my earlier article ‘Employment Rights in the Uber model canvass’, the Employment Court in the United Kingdom was recently asked to rule on the status of Uber drivers.
Its ruling was published on Friday last week, with the court deciding that Uber drivers are ‘workers’ within the UK employment system. Consequently Uber drivers will now qualify for a number of employment rights including the national minimum wage, accrued holiday pay and superannuation.
The UK court was satisfied that there existed between the drivers and Uber, a contract requiring the drivers to undertake the work personally and that this arrangement was not one where the drivers were merely providing services to Uber as their client.
This decision is of particular interest all businesses which operate with the Uber services on demand model as it opens the door for other challenges in other jurisdictions from their contractors.
Although the decision itself has no direct impact in Australia, it is a reasonable assumption that challenges will follow and consequently the Australian employment courts may be required to consider this issue.
I have embedded the link to the original article below for those who missed it.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/employment-rights-uber-model-canvas-david-wilkinson?trk=pulse_spock-articles