Taxi Driver Online

and here was me thinking the Uber judgement already applied to Veezu as well

https://www.solicitorsjournal.com/sjarticle/thousands-of-taxi-drivers-urged-to-join-fight-for-fair-pay-against-uber-rival-veezu

Up to 12,500 taxi drivers working for the taxi operator Veezu could be entitled to thousands of pounds in compensation after being denied holiday pay and the National Minimum Wage.

Law firm Leigh Day is currently acting on behalf of drivers working for Veezu, which owns more than a dozen local taxi companies using booking apps with various brand names across England and Wales.

Veezu currently treats its drivers as self-employed contractors, but drivers claim they should be treated as workers and given the appropriate workers’ rights and protection under employment law.

Employment lawyers at Leigh Day argue that the way Veezu operates - including allocating drivers’ jobs, fixing their rates and penalising them for declining jobs – means drivers qualify as workers.

The claim against Veezu is similar to Leigh Day’s ongoing worker status claim against another taxi company, Bolt. Given the similarities in how Bolt and Veezu drivers work, Leigh Day believes there is a strong case that Veezu drivers should be classified as workers and receive compensation for holiday pay and any shortfalls between their pay and the National Minimum Wage.

The legal action follows the success in the Supreme Court for Uber drivers, also represented by Leigh Day, who won a similar claim. The court ruled that drivers working for Uber should be classified as workers and given workers’ rights.

Veezu, which uses a similar business model to Uber, has taken over several local taxi firms in towns and cities across England and Wales, many of which have their own smartphone booking app.

Veezu operates the following local taxi brands across England and Wales:

• Dragon Taxis (Cardiff, Bridgend, Vale of Glamorgan, Cwmbran, Pontypool, Newport)
• V Cars (Bath, Bristol, Swindon, Chippenham)
• SN1 Cars (Swindon)
• Go Carz (Wolverhampton, Telford, Shrewsbury, Oswestry, Walsall, Dudley, Birmingham, Solihull)
• A2B Radio Cars (Birmingham, Solihull, Wolverhampton)
• Amber Cars (Leeds, Bradford, Wakefield, Wetherby)
• City Taxis (Barnsley, Chesterfield, Derby, Dronfield, Rotherham, Sheffield)
• Excel Taxis (Sheffield)
• Britannia Taxis (Knowsley, St Helens, Liverpool, Wigan, Warrington, Widnes, Sefton, Newton Le Willows and Earlestown)
• ABC Taxis (Norwich, Norfolk)
• Panther Taxis (Cambridge)
If the claims against Veezu are successful, the company will only be legally required to compensate those who have brought a claim. Leigh Day is acting under a ‘no win no fee’ agreement, which means drivers do not pay anything unless their claim is successful.

Gabriel Morrison, solicitor in the employment team at Leigh Day, said: “We strongly believe that Veezu drivers should be treated as workers for the company and given the appropriate rights and protection under employment law. As with other similar claims, we are confident that we will ultimately be able to help Veezu drivers achieve workers’ rights. All taxi and delivery companies using this type of business model should be aware that they cannot continue to short-change their hard-working drivers.”
The claim is open to all drivers working for Veezu and its partner taxi companies in the last 10 weeks.

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

I think anyone on Veezu has a very good chance of success via this Leigh Day claim.

Note that there's not a comment from Veezu yet, but anyone want to bet me that the words 'driver partners' won't appear.

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IDFIMH

And as if by magic.

https://www.sthelensstar.co.uk/news/237 ... pensation/

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IDFIMH

Unsurprisingly, there are several articles on this in the local and regional press.

Equally unsurprisingly, the substance is mostly rehash of the stuff above, but obviously focusing on the local Veezu provider rather than from the perspective of Veezu as a group. There are no doubt more than these around, or at least there will be:


Veezu and SN1 Cars taxi drivers set to launch legal action

https://www.swindonadvertiser.co.uk/new ... al-action/

Taxi drivers at two major firms in Swindon are set to take legal action against their firms.


South Yorkshire taxi drivers urged to join legal claim for fair pay against Uber rival Veezu

https://www.thestar.co.uk/business/sout ... zu-4334830

Drivers are currently treated as self-employed and denied holiday pay


Cambridgeshire: Taxi drivers urged to join fight for fair pay

https://www.peterboroughmatters.co.uk/n ... -fair-pay/

Hundreds of taxi drivers in Cambridgeshire working for the taxi operator Veezu could be entitled to thousands in compensation after being denied holiday pay and the National Minimum Wage.

But obviously this is potentially of huge import to the trade, because like the VAT thing it will help demonstrate that the app giants aren't really that different from the mainstream trade, and Veezu is both Uber-esque in terms of size and clout, but kind of bridges the gap between the app-only platforms and the mainstream trade.

Veezu is obviously a bit of a tall poppy, but if it falls then the question should be asked, what's the difference between Veezu and the average provider in the average town or city?


Apart from the rehash, there's this from Veezu in a couple of the pieces:


Never really worked out precisely what the term 'driver partner' was meant to signify.

But wasn't it originally used by Uber in what I saw as a kind of PR trick to make it sound like the drivers were third parties with regard to Uber, and to that extent self-employed? (Rather than the more conventional 'Uber drivers' for example, which makes it sound like the drivers are part of parcel of the operator, and to that extent not self-employed.)

On the other hand, it could be construed as meaning the opposite. Thus that 'driver partners' are an integral part of the business, and to that extent NOT self-employed.

As I've said before, but not entirely sure about, the problem with all this is that action has to be taken by individual drivers and/or groups, because unless the provider decides to play ball and offer worker status, it won't happen, because there's no central authority to impose it on the whole trade.

This is more or less what the legal firm behind the current action is saying, I think:



Which is where, I suspect, all this may differ from the VAT angle. It's HMRC that stands to gain from changing the trade's VAT status, so the impetus for that and compliance will come from HMRC itself. And is thus different from individual drivers and groups taking action against individual firms as regards employment status.

I think the argument over VAT payment legality has been addressed.

It’s just that the VAT people don’t appear to be enforcing it.

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IDFIMH

Sussex, of course these things take time - how long have HMRC been in dispute with Uber about it all?

And how long did we have to wait for the most recent judgement for what should have been a reasonably straightforward decision?

And all the recent stuff happened just before the holiday season, blah, blah.

I don't doubt that there's a lot happening out of public view. I mean, for a start, local authorities may have to look at their operators' conditions of licence, as happened in London after the Uber/Tfl decision.

How long is that likely to take, knowing how local authorities conduct these things?

And, if what I've said previously is correct, then the implications regarding mixed HC/PHV fleets will have to be considered, and also HC-only circuits. And it would seem unlikely that the VAT treatment of the trade in Scotland would be totally different to that in England merely because of minor quirks in the licensing regimes.

Personally, I've been questioning a lot of this stuff since around 1996, so I'm not expecting anything 'fast-moving', and I've grown to be quite patient