Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees

Re:Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees by m11a on Wednesday March 04, 2020 @03:43PM (#22487851)

See, this is key. If Uber has to class them as employees, it should also be able to deny them from working on other platforms. It should also be able to set working hours. And deny drivers the ability to refuse rides if they wish to keep their job. It could provide a daily salary and not let drivers decide or see fares.

Because this is what employment typically entails.

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Re:Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees by reaperducer on Wednesday March 04, 2020 @03:48PM (#22487903)

If Uber has to class them as employees, it should also be able to deny them from working on other platforms.

Why? In America, there are tens of millions of people who work more than one job. They're still employees; just employees of more than one company.

Fred's Plastic Fork Factory can't tell me I can't moonlight at Alice's Diesel Cafe and Firing Range.

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Re:Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees by intopieces on Wednesday March 04, 2020 @05:55PM (#22489049)

Anti-Moonlighting clauses are perfectly legal, though not without controversy:

https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/legal-and-compliance/...

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Re:Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees by sigstoat on Wednesday March 04, 2020 @03:59PM (#22488025)

> In America, there are tens of millions of people who work more than one job.

not simultaneously, or even interleaved in 30 minute increments.

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Re:Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees by bluntfang on Wednesday March 04, 2020 @04:24PM (#22488301)

As someone who has the ability to work 2 tech jobs if I wanted to, I could context switch every minute if I wanted to due to the technology allowing me to do so. Why should other people be unable to do this if the tech is there to support it?

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Re:Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees by thenewnewguy on Wednesday March 04, 2020 @07:03PM (#22489576)

Yes, but this is due to the fact that most jobs require your physical presence, Uber does not.

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Re:Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees by jppope on Wednesday March 04, 2020 @11:05PM (#22490866)

which is actually an argument that they are not employees.

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Re:Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees by nosianu on Thursday March 05, 2020 @03:20AM (#22491858)

No it is not and never was. Sales people - going back a very long time and include fully traveling ones - are not employees? How about traveling service technicians, not infrequently located all over the country, far from any company office? Home office - not uncommonly full time even, e.g. the company I work for does not even have an office but people employed all over this and other countries - are not employees? Please don't arbitrarily redefine "employment" to make your point.

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Re:Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees by easytiger on Thursday March 05, 2020 @04:57AM (#22492303)

You are the one who has been entirely disingenuous... the previous post made a very good point which you have not contradicted.

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Re:Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees by lawtalkinghuman on Thursday March 05, 2020 @08:31AM (#22493338)

TIL: on-call doctors are not employees.

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Re:Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees by mattw815 on Wednesday March 04, 2020 @03:52PM (#22487951)

Fred's Plastic Fork Factory can tell you that you can't moonlight and can fire you if you do.

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Re:Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees by incadenza on Wednesday March 04, 2020 @03:54PM (#22487972)

Such a clause is pretty common in employment contracts.

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Re:Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees by davengh on Wednesday March 04, 2020 @06:00PM (#22489095)

I've seen these precluding secondary employment with competitive entities, but it seems there'd be little competition between Fred's and Alice's businesses (based on name alone).

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Re:Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees by manquer on Wednesday March 04, 2020 @07:37PM (#22489798)

there is competition between uber and lyft though, you can driver for both at the same time

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Re:Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees by smcphile on Wednesday March 04, 2020 @04:09PM (#22488149)

In France, an employer can set working hours and working conditions, as long as both comply with the law. There are restrictions for safety and health reasons for example.

However, if the work is part time, employees can’t be restricted from working at another part time job, unless that job is for a direct competitor of the employer, in which case the restriction is sometimes allowed. (The idea being there could be a conflict of interest or loyalty.)

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Re:Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees by manquer on Wednesday March 04, 2020 @07:39PM (#22489809)

Uber can now restrict drivers from driving on other platforms ? This will impact both the consumers and drivers for the worse.

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Re:Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees by smcphile on Thursday March 05, 2020 @04:57AM (#22492304)

I don’t know if Uber would be permitted to do that, I just know that in some cases it’s allowed. The term used is “concurrence déloyale” or “unfair competition”. In practice, if there was a dispute, the courts would decide if a part-time employee driving for another platform constitutes an act of “concurrence déloyale”.

In any case, I read in Le Monde this morning that this recent decision by France’s highest court may mean that Uber will just stop doing business in France (although it’s too soon to know for sure).

Here’s the link to the article in Le Monde for those who read French:

https://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2020/03/05/pour-la-c...

Edit: Punctuation. Also, the article is behind a paywall. Sorry about that, I didn’t notice, as I have a subscription.

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Re:Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees by abduhl on Wednesday March 04, 2020 @04:14PM (#22488210)

Great, let Uber do all that. Set working hours, deny them from working on other platforms, deny them from being able to refuse rides.

And let the free market compete for drivers by allowing other "gig-economy" companies to not have any of those restraints and seeing which company attracts drivers and which one dies.

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Re:Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees by nabnob on Wednesday March 04, 2020 @05:03PM (#22488646)

Uber does penalize drivers for rejecting too many rides.

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Re:Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees by cambalache on Wednesday March 04, 2020 @05:16PM (#22488746)

Are they going to pay more, cover health insurance due to this exclusivity clause?

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Re:Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees by foobar1962 on Wednesday March 04, 2020 @04:17PM (#22488237)

> pick their own "clientele": Uber, Lyft, Postmates, Door Dash, etc...

They aren't clients, they are the "platforms". The clients are the people paying, not the people collecting.

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Re:Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees by danboarder on Wednesday March 04, 2020 @07:48PM (#22489858)

Except they are the clients paying the driver. Uber, Lyft, etc pay the driver, so they are the client as they are the ones paying. The rider pays Uber directly, not the driver, so from the driver's perspective the gig companies like Lyft, Door Dash, or Uber are the clients they can choose to work with at any given time.

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Re:Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees by Jommi on Wednesday March 04, 2020 @06:54PM (#22489496)

How are they different?

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Re:Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees by nabnob on Wednesday March 04, 2020 @05:02PM (#22488637)

Uber does not let you pick your clients. Drivers get a request for a trip that they can either accept or deny, and they also penalize drivers for rejecting too many trip requests.

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Re:Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees by manquer on Wednesday March 04, 2020 @07:44PM (#22489832)

pretty much it is the same in consulting or any other freelancing industry, the customer always picks given the parameters ( availability, price, skill, experience etc) are acceptable. You can only choose to accept or deny as freelancer. It is always a demand driven, not supply driven.

You can choose to drive for other platforms today, you can directly engage customers ( uber drivers in my country occasionally ask you to cancel and pay directly) all of this would be illegal if they are employees.

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Re:Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees by WalterBright on Wednesday March 04, 2020 @03:46PM (#22487892)

Since Uber drivers are using their own equipment (cars), that also means they are not employees.

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Re:Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees by reaperducer on Wednesday March 04, 2020 @03:49PM (#22487921)

Since Uber drivers are using their own equipment (cars), that also means they are not employees.

This is not true. There are plenty of professions where employees bring some or all of their own equipment.

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Re:Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees by WalterBright on Wednesday March 04, 2020 @04:51PM (#22488539)

It is just one of the criteria. There are several.

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Re:Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees by weego on Thursday March 05, 2020 @04:01AM (#22492047)

And none of the other criteria fit, so it's a moot point

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Re:Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees by ElFitz on Wednesday March 04, 2020 @04:15PM (#22488214)

True. I'm a developer, and I only once got a company provided computer. And one (1) testing device (mobile dev).

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Re:Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees by 8note on Wednesday March 04, 2020 @08:33PM (#22490104)

do you bring your own servers too?

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Re:Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees by ElFitz on Thursday March 05, 2020 @02:47AM (#22491710)

No, lucky me. Either I'm doing mobile and don't care wether it's an actual server behind those APIs or a hamster going crazy in it's wheel. Or I'm doing backend, in which case I only do serverless.

One colleague of mine did end up using his own server to run daily data processing and numbers crunching jobs for work though. It also served the internal analytics web UI. Apparently went on for years.

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Re:Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees by punk-coder on Wednesday March 04, 2020 @03:49PM (#22487922)

Is this different than if I worked as an employee at a pizza restaurant as a delivery driver and I use my own personal car for making the deliveries?

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Re:Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees by sixstringtheory on Wednesday March 04, 2020 @04:53PM (#22488565)

I have in fact delivered pizzas as a W2 employee, and had to use my own car. While I didn't ask if they'd provide a car for me, because I've never heard of such an arrangement, I highly doubt the answer would've been yes.

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Re:Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees by Jommi on Wednesday March 04, 2020 @06:55PM (#22489500)

You should be compensated for that. Sounds illegal, at least in Europe.

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Re:Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees by mac01021 on Thursday March 05, 2020 @07:21AM (#22492932)

I've done the same job. They pay the employee per mile, an amount that is intended to cover fuel and maintenance for a typical car. The rate they pay is presented to you before you accept the position at the company and if it is not agreeable to you then you don't have to take the job.

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Re:Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees by sixstringtheory on Thursday March 05, 2020 @08:51PM (#22500366)

As mac01021 said, they do pay a commission, but you aren't going to get that job or the commission unless you already have a car.

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Re:Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees by mac01021 on Thursday March 05, 2020 @07:32AM (#22492989)

I've worked as a W2 employee delivering pizzas in my own car.

I was definitely an "employee", if anyone is.

Crucially, this meant that I had to work the hours specified by my boss and make whatever deliveries he specified during that time period, else risk being fired.

In my opinion this was a very sensible arrangement. It was a good job and paid my college tuition. And pizza demand varies widely from time to time. It would be silly for the company to maintain a fleet of cars large enough for peak demand and then leave them in storage most of the time.

I've also worked as a software engineer, on salary, with a contract forbidding concurrent employment elsewhere, but done all the work on my own computer.

In light of the above, I don't think ownership of equipment is necessarily a meaningful consideration.

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