Uber drivers win employee rights case

Re:Uber drivers win employee rights case by smsm42 on Friday October 28, 2016 @08:23PM (#12821876)

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.

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Re:Uber drivers win employee rights case by IanCal on Saturday October 29, 2016 @04:18AM (#12823138)

> 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.

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Re:Uber drivers win employee rights case by smsm42 on Saturday October 29, 2016 @09:06PM (#12827485)

> 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.

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Re:Uber drivers win employee rights case by pmyteh on Saturday October 29, 2016 @05:08AM (#12823234)

> 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.

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Re:Uber drivers win employee rights case by smsm42 on Saturday October 29, 2016 @09:11PM (#12827507)

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.

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