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Re:Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules by jacquesm on Monday September 13, 2021 @08:08AM (#28510455)
You can be a freelancer just fine, nothing stops you from doing that. But not within the Uber framework because you aren' a freelancer within that framework. So this is pretty specific: the Uber framework does not check enough of the boxes that would allow their pseudo employees to claim they are freelancers, which effectively makes it just another tax dodge, which it always was.
Re:Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules by devcpp on Monday September 13, 2021 @09:37AM (#28511300)
Then fix the tax loopholes by making it about sales or revenue rather than employment.
Re:Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules by jacquesm on Monday September 13, 2021 @09:45AM (#28511401)
No. The 'tax loopholes' are simply shifting the responsibility of paying those taxes from the employer to the employee, which when the company is doing well and the relationship is otherwise balanced is a net neutral. But once the larger picture is taken into account things like health benefits, continuing to be paid when temporarily unemployed (which for a gig worker is several times per hour) and so on become externalized to society when really they should be the problem of the employer.

The current situation allows Uber to play its employees against the state (as they're very transparently trying to do in the referenced article with their remark that their employees (because that what they are) would prefer to be self employed, which is nonsense only when compared with the situation where Uber would not employ them at all. The vast bulk of the employees really would like steady employment.

So the tax dodge should stop but not through fixing the tax loophoes, but simply by recognizing that which is already the fact on the ground: that these people are employees in all but name. Note that this is Europe where - to many American companies' surprise and detriment - it is not only the letter of the law that matters but also the intent of the law, in this case the intent of labor law here is to ensure our social contract continues to function. Hacking your way around that like you can do in the United States - where it is the letter of the law that matters far more than the intent - is going to be met with significant pushback from the courts.

Re:Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules by unyttigfjelltol on Monday September 13, 2021 @08:22AM (#28510549)
Taxi businesses in the U.S. played this cat-and-mouse game for a long time, and generally 'won' the right to offload liabilities to drivers without much pay. Why anyone thought or thinks Uber is 'different' is hard to understand.
Re:Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules by InitialLastName on Monday September 13, 2021 @08:49AM (#28510832)
Was that also the case for taxi businesses in European countries with functional social states? Because, this being a legal ruling in Europe, US precedent doesn't really matter.
Re:Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules by jacquesm on Monday September 13, 2021 @09:46AM (#28511418)
It's the US that is different not Uber, they are treated just like every other company here would be treated.