Taxi Driver Online

Got to give the fella 10 out of 10 for effort. I suspect Uber regret pi**ing him off all those years ago.

UK driver taking Uber to employment tribunal again following Supreme Court decision



A former Uber driver who took the ride-hailing app all the way to the Supreme Court has announced that he is planning to sue again, The Standard can exclusively reveal.

James Farrar, who achieved a landmark Supreme Court ruling in February 2021 declaring that Uber drivers must be treated as workers, rather than self-employed, is heading to an employment tribunal in late June.

Mr Farrar, who turned up to Uber’s press conference on Thursday in central London to protest for better rights, claims he has refused to accept a settlement and sign a non-disclosure agreement following the Supreme Court decision.

He wants a judgment to be logged that dictates exactly how Uber is allowed to define and calculate a minimum wage for its drivers.

However Uber disagrees. “We’ll see in this employment tribunal what a judge thinks. We believe what we’ve done is totally appropriate, complying with the law and fair, basically,” Uber’s general manager for the UK, Andrew Brem, told The Standard.

This comes as Uber announced a raft of sustainability changes on Thursday morning, including live programming for drivers so they can integrate their trip planning and show them how much battery they have left. The new feature will help them plan rides better and not show them rides they might not be able to complete.

“There are 100,000 Uber drivers still being cheated out of their full statutory rights by Uber and private settlements prevent the courts ever reaching a proper determination,” Mr Farrar, general secretary of the App Drivers & Couriers Union (ADCU), told The Standard.

“I feel like I would have wasted my time and failed our campaign if I did not push on to a final court judgment that could be used to protect all Uber drivers in future.”

Mr Farrar and another former Uber driver Yaseen Aslam took Uber to employment tribunal in 2016, arguing that they worked for Uber, and won. However Uber appealed against the employment tribunal decision and kept appealing until the case ended up in the Supreme Court — Britain’s highest court, which has the final say on legal matters.

In his judgment, Lord Leggatt said that the Supreme Court unanimously dismissed Uber’s appeal that it was an intermediary party and stated that drivers should be considered to be working not only when driving a passenger, but whenever logged in to the app.

Uber states that all UK drivers always earn at least the National Living Wage, which is currently £10.42. If drivers’ earnings, after vehicle expenses and other charges like congestion charges in London, are lower than the National Living Wage, Uber promises to top up their earnings.

The ride-hailing app also pays drivers holiday pay every week, which is calculated by taking their earnings, multiplied by 12.07 per cent.

However, Mr Farrar says that Uber’s concept of a “minimum wage” falls short because it only pays for the journey from the moment the Uber driver picks up a passenger, until the moment the passenger gets out of the car.

“Uber has unilaterally decided not to pay drivers for waiting time and has failed to adjust their own minimum wage calculations to account for inflation and the significant extra costs in shifting to electric vehicles,” he said.

Uber disputes Mr Farrar’s views on how driver minimum wage should be calculated.

“What if they’re logged into three other apps at the same time? Would you get three National Living Wages from three different people? I don’t think that makes any sense to me,” stressed Mr Brem.

“Of course, I’m licensed in London, I can drive in London. That’s a free choice. When I’m not on a trip, I could be doing something else. I could be driving on the Bolt platform. I could be writing an article for the Evening Standard and getting paid a couple of hundred quid for it.

“It doesn’t make sense to me that I would be getting three sets of payments during that period when I’m not actually driving on a trip for Uber.”

He added, “I don’t even have to be in the car to put the app on and go online. I could be having a coffee with my mates and have the app on online — and I could be sitting there rejecting every trip.”

However, he did agree that flexible working is the future.

“I do think platform work or independent work is something that is here to stay. People are choosing to do it. People are choosing to have the flexibility, 100% flexibility that it gives.”

Following the Supreme Court ruling, three law firms handled the settlement process on a “no win, no fee” agreement basis. These firms are Leigh Day, Keller Postman, and Dallas McMillan, according to Mr Farrar.

Many drivers represented by these three law firms have now settled their claims. Because he is unwilling to settle his case, Mr Farrar has parted ways with Dallas McMillan and intends to now represent himself in the employment tribunal, which is set for June 26.

“Uber unilaterally decided that driver costs should be assessed at 45p per mile back in 2021. We've never accepted 45p as a true reflection of driver costs,” said Mr Farrar.

“Fares in London have been around £1.40 per mile. We say they should be £2.50 per mile. Realistically, we are looking at costs of £1 to £1.50 per mile.”

From January 1, all private-hire vehicles licensed for the first time must now be “zero-emission-capable”, meaning either electric vehicles or plug-in hybrids. Mr Farrar says that this regulation and rising costs of electricity are forcing drivers to work “longer and longer hours”.

ADCU also has an issue with Uber’s new artificial intelligence-backed dynamic-pricing algorithms, which force consumers to pay higher prices during particularly busy periods.

However, not all Uber drivers agree with Mr Farrar’s position.

“This attitude grinds my gears. Some drivers are entitled. It sounds like they want all the benefits of flexible working and guaranteed earnings for a whole shift, too,” Uber driver Eniola Robbin, who was attending the event this morning, told The Standard.

“This means that they could sit around and be paid, even while they are not actually driving. That’s simply not realistic.”

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IDFIMH

Once you take Uber to court the case will be never ending their company philosophy is to bend the law as much as possible until you give up trying to stop them

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lack of modern legislation is the iceberg sinking the titanic of the transport sector

Don't think that fella will ever give up.

I think the difficulty has always been how does one assess the waiting time minimum wage for those drivers on multi apps.

I think it is doable but it's all a bit messy.

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IDFIMH

Interesting article from a HR perspective.

What the latest Uber case could mean for gig workers’ pay

https://www.personneltoday.com/hr/james ... case-2023/

Uber is facing yet another challenge in the employment tribunal in the ongoing saga about pay and conditions. Hannah Ford explains what the latest case entails.

One of the claimants in the original employment rights case against Uber is back in the courts again – this time challenging how it calculates drivers’ pay.

The case raises interesting questions for gig economy employers, such as whether a driver should be considered “working” when logged into multiple ride-hailing apps simultaneously and who they are working for.

It also draws attention to the challenges employers face in correctly calculating holiday pay for those with irregular hours, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s judgment in Harpur v Brazel.

The case shows that, unless statutory rights are calculated and applied lawfully by employers, workers can still be denied valuable employment protections.

Why is Uber back before the tribunal?

James Farrer, general secretary of the App Drivers and Couriers Union, was one of the original claimants in the Supreme Court case against Uber, but has reportedly declined offers of settlement from Uber following the judgment.

He seeks a public declaration from an employment tribunal that sets out how Uber should define working time for the purposes of calculating entitlement to NMW and paid holiday.

Back in 2021, the Supreme Court confirmed in a landmark case that Uber drivers were workers within the meaning of UK employment legislation. This entitles Uber’s drivers to valuable employment rights, including the right to receive the national minimum wage (NMW) and the right to paid annual leave.

The Supreme Court was unanimous in its finding that Uber drivers are to be treated as “working” from the moment they log into the Uber app within the territory in which they are licensed to operate and ready and willing to accept trips.

Uber has always maintained that it is unsustainable to pay their drivers for simply being logged into the app, especially given they have a right to reject work and can simultaneously be logged into and available to work for other ride-hailing apps.

Despite the Supreme Court’s judgment, Uber reportedly continues to pay its drivers only from the time they pick up a passenger until that passenger gets out of the vehicle, according to Farrar’s case. It also reportedly calculates and pay holiday pay on a weekly basis, by multiplying earnings by 12.07%.

When is a driver working?

There are similar methods of calculating working time for NMW and holiday entitlement purposes. Under NMW legislation, a worker who is not doing actual work is to be treated as working if they are available for work, and required to be available, at or near their workplace. Under the Working Time Regulations 1998, working time is defined as any period during which the worker is working, at their employer’s disposal, and carrying out their duties.

The critical question in this case is whether a driver can be treated as working for Uber under both these tests when also logged into another ride-hailing app and, arguably, meeting the relevant test for working for that app too.

Uber’s position is that a driver cannot reasonably be said to be working for and at the disposal of Uber if they are logged onto another app provided by a competitor operating a similar service.

Can a driver work for different employers simultaneously?

When the original claim was brought in 2016, no evidence was put before the tribunal of the existence of other ride-hailing apps operating in competition with Uber. The Supreme Court, therefore, declined to consider this issue in the abstract. We expect, however, that Uber will present evidence of competitors’ market share and statistics showing the likelihood of an Uber driver being simultaneously logged into other ride-hailing apps.

The tribunal will be required to consider whether it is possible to be treated as working simultaneously for more than one employer. If the ruling goes in the worker’s favour, the tribunal will also need to determine how NMW and holiday entitlement should be calculated in such circumstances, to avoid a windfall for the drivers which could potentially put many ride-hailing apps out of business.

How should holiday pay be calculated for gig economy workers?

The case also raises the interesting question about how employers should be calculating holiday pay in the wake of the landmark Supreme Court judgment in Harpur v Brazel, which effectively ruled that applying a multiplier of 12.07% was an unlawful method of calculating holiday pay.

However, the government has subsequently opened a consultation about whether to reinstate the 12.07% multiplier, recognising that “rolling up” holiday pay in this manner is widely used in the gig economy as a simple way to calculate holiday pay for workers on irregular hours. The consultation closes on 7 July 2023, so it is unlikely there will be a substantive change in this area before the employment tribunal judgment is published.

It will be interesting to see how Farrar’s latest case plays out, and what impact it might have on workers’ rights in the gig economy.

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IDFIMH

what this country needs is a redefinition of self employment with a definition which gets around the abuse of the status.

BUT as long as businesses like Uber are stuffing money into party funds that'll never happen until one day the penny drops and the politicians realise that there's an extra billion quid in tax revenues to use as electoral bribes to the voting public or to improve NHS funding

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lack of modern legislation is the iceberg sinking the titanic of the transport sector

I think the courts are doing their best, but you are right, the government needs to act.

But maybe the biggest problem isn't iffy firms, but apathetic workers.

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IDFIMH

Obviously there is a degree of apathy, but you could burst a gut trying to do something about it to no avail.

I mean, officialdom, government and local authorities will just ignore anyone who raises the issue.

So in effect the only avenue is via the courts, and that's not something to be done lightly.

In the average firm with a few dozen cars, for example, very unlikely you'd be able to get enough drivers together to take it on, even assuming you don't want to get on the wrong side of the proprietor, who allegedly has links to organised crime, say

Which is probably why the vast majority of the impetus has come from the unions, and they're taking on the bigger firms rather than the minnows.

(And the traditional unions are obviously up to their neck in the kind of arrangement highlighted in the Bournemouth case, therefore...)

The recent case is obviously an outlier in that regard, and the driver self-evidently a maverick.

The Uber/Sefton VAT case is an interesting one, though. Obviously it's about a slightly different issue, but it may end up highlighting to officialdom that Uber's economic model isn't as different to the conventional trade as they think, which may in turn draw attention to the employment status issue.