There seems to be an assumption of full-time drivers implicit in your message. Uber drivers may only be driving a couple of hours a month. What does rest mean when someone can stop working at any time?

The positive I see in the so-called gig economy is far more flexibility in employing underutilised labour. If government increases the transaction costs of employing underutilised labour, then it will probably stop employing underutilised labour. It could easily be a net negative.

If there's an efficient way of working it out - i.e. keeping the transaction costs low - I'm not against regulating Uber as an employer. But it is a different form of working, and it's the kind of working that connected communication technology is best positioned to enable. It would be best if we didn't crush it under an assumption of regular employment.

It's really not a different form of working, we've had irregular gig-like work for a long time. That's rather why the "worker" status exists as distinct from "employee". Just because you throw in an app or tech doesn't make it any different.

> What does rest mean when someone can stop working at any time?

It means that once you've been working for a given period of time you get a short period of (paid) time-off. A few lines of code in the scheduler to not assign work for 15 minutes to people in this position, and a corresponding credit in the billing system, would do.

The point applies more generally. I had a zero-hours contract with my university to teach very irregular hours on some IT training courses. I was entitled to holiday pay like every other worker. It accrued at a rate of something like one hour for every ten hours I worked, and was added to my pay.

This form of working isn't in any way new; piecework, home working, day labour and similar things have existed for as long as employment law has, and there are low friction solutions already in place to make meal breaks, holidays and minimum wage calculations work. The tribunal judges here specifically ruled on when Uber drivers are working (in licensed area with app switched on) so everything else is pretty straightforward from an implementation point of view.

> The positive I see in the so-called gig economy is far more flexibility in employing underutilised labour.

That flexibility is nothing more than shifting risk from the employer, who is most able to handle it, to the employee, who is least able to handle it.

I'm not sure I understand how it's supposed to work. Say, somebody drives for Uber 2 hours per month. So, Uber must pay them whatever is minimal per-hour pay in UK, even if they had no rides but just were available for 2 hours? Then, they also have to pay them for holidays? How many hours? That doesn't sound like sane business model - pay for a whole workday on holiday to somebody that otherwise worked couple of hours per month.

> Then, they also have to pay them for holidays? How many hours?

Simple, it's scaled for how long you work. 2 hours per.month would mean they also have to pay you for 2 hours 53 minutes per year of holiday.

Really, uber are not the only company that hires people for irregular work. This stuff has all been worked out a long time ago.

> That doesn't sound like sane business model -

It's just paying people to work for you, hardly a crazy business model.

> 2 hours per.month would mean they also have to pay you for 2 hours 53 minutes per year of holiday.

But the money is paid for driving people around, not for being there. So where 53 minutes come from?

> It's just paying people to work for you, hardly a crazy business model.

Nope, it's paying people to work for you and also paying money just because. If somebody works for you for 2 hours and you have to pay for 2 hours and 53 minutes that's not paying for work.

> So, Uber must pay them whatever is minimal per-hour pay in UK, even if they had no rides but just were available for 2 hours?

Yup. The tribunal judge ruled that, as having drivers waiting around with the app turned on was an essential part of Uber's operations, their workers were doing work for Uber while waiting and in a position to take calls.

This is analogous to call centres: the operator can't just tell its workers that they're 'not at work' and not pay them when they're logged in and waiting for inbound calls.

Of course, mostly this matters for minimum wage calculations. As long as Uber have sent the driver a handful of trips in these two hours they'll have to pay no extra.

Call centers explicitly pay for being there. That's their job description - being there and being ready to answer calls. That's the whole purpose of call centers - so that you have a phone that you can be sure there's a person waiting on it for your call. That's not what Uber is doing.

It's like I would call an electrician and he'd charge me for a month of work because he sat there for a month being available for my call, it's not his fault I called only now! Would you hire such an electrician? To me it sounds insane.

> As long as Uber have sent the driver a handful of trips in these two hours they'll have to pay no extra.

This makes even less sense. If "being available" has monetary value, as you claim, why this monetary value does not have to be paid regardless of additional monetary value of driving around? If, as you claim, being on call is a separate payable service, it should be charged in the same whatever happened after.

It sounds like this argument is not genuine and is just dragged in to arrive at predetermined conclusion about minimum wage, but as soon as this is not a concern, this argument is discarded completely.