BENGALURU : In February this year, Uber lost a significant legal battle in the UK when the country’s Supreme Court upheld a previous ruling by the employment tribunal that the 25 drivers who had brought a case against Uber are indeed employees and not contractors. Soon, Uber announced that it would begin treating all its drivers in the UK as workers who are entitled to a minimum wage, holiday pay, and pension.
As if on cue, the European Union recently introduced a draft that aims to make platform companies such as Uber, Instacart, and Amazon classify their gig workforce as ‘employees’ and provide them with additional benefits. The proposal is still a draft and would probably need months of debate and discussion at different levels (the EU parliament and the member states) before implementation.
Nevertheless, this proposal raises several questions. Before we get into those questions, it would be helpful to recall that late last year, platform companies in California had warded off a similar threat and had won a battle that would allow them to continue classifying their workers as contractors as opposed to employees. The battle was over a new law in California, referred to as AB5, which reclassified gig workers as employees. When this law was contested and put to vote, 58% of voters backed a state proposal endorsing the classification of gig workers as contractors.
As per reliable reports, platform companies spent more than $200 million on public relations and communication...
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