Uber drivers may now be entitled to the protection of the working time & national minimum wage legislation, but not all gig economy workers will be able to establish claims for worker status, says Charles Pigott
- The Supreme Court has affirmed the employment tribunal’s decision that a group of Uber drivers had the status of non-employee workers.
- In doing so it has signalled a new approach to assessing employment status.
A small group of London-based Uber drivers started proceedings in the employment tribunal in 2015. Two of them, Mr Aslam and Mr Farrer, were selected as test claimants for a preliminary ruling. This was to establish whether they had worker status for the purposes of claims for the national minimum wage and for holiday pay under the Working Time Regulations 1998, SI 1998/1833.
The two main respondents were Uber BV, a Dutch company which owns the rights to the Uber app, and Uber London Limited, its UK subsidiary, which holds the licence to operate private hire vehicles in London. The name ‘Uber’ is used in the rest of this article to
