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.
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.