This could get interesting. I am guessing drivers wouldn’t be affected by the judgement, but I will need to read the judgement in full, I believe it certainly should have an affect on the “Owner Driver couriers” with parcel companies.
Someone needs to investigate agencies that use Limited and Umbrella companies.
Similar circumstances to Uber…
The verdict was pretty clear. Uber has control so the drivers are employees. Uber is going to appeal, IF they lose that one this will have huge consequences for the whole gig economy.
It’s only after the appeal as that would be in the high court that it will have wider implications for drivers and certain couriers ie yodel Hermes ups fed ex etc
Yes it would affect dirvers too but not yet. A final verdict could be that they go the the European court if the Loose the appeal. And that could take a couple of years
My bad. I thought it was a High Court ruling.
The story has a long way to go yet.
SEDriver:
My bad. I thought it was a High Court ruling.The story has a long way to go yet.
Yep, another example of the law being an arse! 
They will drag this out for as long as possible and all the other interested parties will be applying pressure and greasing palms… 
It won’t be just money changing hands to make the implications of this go away, it will be shares, consultancy posts and well paid non executive directorships.
cav551:
It won’t be just money changing hands to make the implications of this go away, it will be shares, consultancy posts and well paid non executive directorships.
and plenty of ■■■■ ■■■! 
WITH lube. 
signed BEN DOVER. 
Does this mean uber will now supply the car and fuel?
Don’t understand it myself, private hire driving has always been a self employed job. If Uber do end up having to pay holiday pay etc, surely they will just increase the percentage they take from the drivers when they are working?
I think they are just drivers without holiday pay, I am not a taxi driver but I think they may well put employed taxi drivers at a disadvantage
Good, level playing field best for everyone.
I was listening to this on BBC today, great result for the workers and sod UBER, they think because they are California based they are exempt from British labour laws. This is the way to teach them how people deserve to be paid. 
fuse:
I think they are just drivers without holiday pay, I am not a taxi driver but I think they may well put employed taxi drivers at a disadvantage
There aren’t any emloyed private hire drivers the job has always been a self employed job with drivers hiring or leasing cars from the companies which is,where the next day parcel companies got the model from
Let me put another way I was contacted by and agency this week for short term work until Xmas. £13 ph £14 weekends. And and whole £1 per hour bonus paid as a severance at the end ie Xmas eve. And apparently that was big money. 98% of haulage logistics companies won’t get anywhere near £15 per hour. And for ni paye they don’t come into the equation
Most agency lorry drivers I meet nowadays aren’t ‘self employed’ but are running ‘private limited companies’, where they pay themselves a proper wage, claim their ‘Lorry Drivers’ Subsistence expenses, get 28 days paid holiday, can claim statutory sick pay, family tax credits and working tax credits (on their earnings) and are allowed many other H.M.R.C and government benefits if they wish to claim them.
Most taxi drivers are self employed ‘sole traders’ and are liable to to pay personal tax on everything they earn (minus expenses). Harry Monk is right, they will simply reduce the amount paid to drivers, possibly employ them, put them on zero hours contracts and pay them ‘pro-rata’ holiday pay etc.
After changing the local Taxi licencing rules, Britain is now totally saturated with Taxi drivers. I’ve noticed lots of ex-taxi drivers with HGV licences are now coming back into lorry driving. I’ve re-trained a few of them and started them on myself because they are good, reliable workers.
Pat Hasler:
I was listening to this on BBC today, great result for the workers and sod UBER, they think because they are California based they are exempt from British labour laws. This is the way to teach them how people deserve to be paid.
Have to be careful with unions they have good and bad points.
Arthur Scargill started with a small house and a big union and managed to achieve the reverse.
After hearing other uber driversinterveiwed it sounds like they aren’t happy about the ruling
alix776:
After hearing other uber driversinterveiwed it sounds like they aren’t happy about the ruling
This country essentially runs on a service industry economy now.
Managers expect to be paid handsomely to “organize” work for third parties, such as drivers.
Meanwhile, those drivers or any other kind of worker - have to be paid as little as possible to create that profit for the higher manager organizers of the work.
A culture exists that if “that work is not provided to you by such managers - you won’t have any work at all sonny, so you should be happy with your begging bowl and minimum wage”
It’s about time austerity reached those who finally realize that someone who orders another to do a job they cannot do themselves - should actually be paid a whole lot less.
There’s no political interest among management classes though (who are a strong voting block in the south of England) to change anything any time soon.
Meanwhile, further north - I do believe that a trained worker is worth more than a young manager, and the local pay differentials reflect this.
UBER could make it work perfectly well as a “Self-employed, you go to this job on order” by the drivers paying in some kind of subscription to a central organizer to provide them with their “fares”.
This is nothing new.
“Computer Cab” style cabbying have already been doing it for years.
They also do the wages though, and therefore are obviously employing all their drivers in a similar way to an employment agency.
The fiddle is trying to qualify those drivers for all the tax breaks that a self-employed person gets - to cover up the fact that the core wages are so low.
To make it work properly then, the hirer calls into a central office, who puts out on a bulletin board straight away “I want to get from x to y” and drivers available to do this run tender the fare that they would do it for on this occasion only. Thus, there is no “hourly rate” and the profit margins would be better due to proper supply-and-demand price discovery mechanisms.
Going to the airport? - You won’t be getting that 50 mile drive for £20 then - especially if it’s in the middle of the night, weekend, bank holiday etc.
Then there’s “getting a ride to somewhere in side the congestion zone” or running up any other kind of “Toll” tab. The regular driver will be getting a discount, but the hirer would expect to pay a premium for a short trip from say, Bluewater Shopping to Lakeside Thurrock at lunch time for instance.
Want a ride across the other side of the town you actually live in? - There’s hundreds of local drivers ready to do that for you, so you’ll probably get it for under £10.
The driver would therefore get access to the more lucrative fares (airport shuttles) by making themselves available at times when other drivers cannot or will not do it. rather than just trying to undercut the other guy on price, and end up running at a loss because of the constant “under-cutting” involved.
The on-line market is likely to be “massaged” by rival driver groups in any case.
At the end of the day though - the customer wants to press a few keys, get a prompt turnup to do the run, and then be charged a fair price for that convenience. “Cheapest” price comes secondary IF the service is good and reliable enough. Drivers who build up a core of “regular punters” - will be those ones who go on to make a real success of their brand of “Professional Driving”.
If the core rates were high enough - there would no longer be any argument about “Who’s bloody self employed and who’s not” - since the driver would be coining it in enough to be paying taxes on that self-employment, and the taxman would not be constantly feeling that “There’s a tax fiddle endemic to the Self-Employed that somehow are only earning minimum wages!”
There is supposed to be a separate minimum wage that applies to the self employed - but it’s not official, and it’s not enforced.
If you had a minimum wage for self-employment that was around double the national minimum wage, the effect would be a LOT of firms suddenly deciding to “take on their staff full time as quickly as possible”.
That would be those earning below that differential higher rate then.
It’s about time that HMRC charged a flat rate of tax with no allowances - so that when you get offered £5ph with benefit top-ups you can say "■■■■■■■■ to that - the taxman still wants 20% of ALL of it/. I want £13ph with NO benefit top-ups before I’ll even consider taking the business.
With no tax-free allowances and benefits - wages would rise sharply then, especially for the self-employed. 