The ruling is interesting in that it allows drivers to bargain directly with Uber and not just their immediate employers, as is the case with some drivers who do not own their own Uber cars and drive for someone else, or a company.

Drivers in South Africa have faced many challenges, among them constant battles and harassment from meter taxi drivers who do not want them to operate. This has led to Uber drivers stating that they sometimes work under unsafe working conditions and some have further stated, as part of the case presented at the CCMA, that they are subjected to unfair dismissals by being deactivated on the Uber platform without any reasons being given.

Drivers are sometimes deactivated from the system without reasons given. Some have referred unfair dismissals to the CCMA.

“The CCMA, however, was confronted with the problem that these cases couldn’t be heard because Uber insisted that they are not employees, and that they are rather independent contractors, and that they cannot be involved in any dispute in the CCMA. So, what the award has done, is it unpacked the respective parties views on what the relationship is, and it has concluded that the Uber drivers are in fact employees,” said Bradley Conradie, Uber South Africa’s Legal Representative.

This ruling comes almost a year after several hundred Uber drivers in South Africa decided to join the South African Transport and Allied Workers’ Union (SATAWU) as they argue that they felt they were being exploited by ride-hailing platform.

At the time, July 2016, the drivers indicated that they were planning to take Uber South Africa to the labor court. It will also be interesting to follow and observe if Uber drivers in other Afrikan countries will follow the same route and if the laws in the various countries reach the same decision as South Africa’s CCMA has reached.

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Source: Thenextweb

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The New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) has announced plans aimed at forcing all cab companies that take payment via credit card to offer a tipping option.

The move comes in response to a petition signed by 11,000 Uber drivers.

Rival services such as Lyft already offer a tipping option. However, Uber has always resisted such a move.

On its website, Uber said riders are not obliged to tip, but drivers can accept cash if offered.

In a statement, the ride-hailing app said it looked forward to reviewing the TLC’s proposal.

“Uber is always striving to offer the best earning opportunity for drivers and we are constantly working to improve the driver experience.

“That’s why, in New York City, we partnered with the Machinists Union to make sure current and future Uber NYC drivers have a stronger voice and launched a series of new tools and support policies for drivers,” the company said.

The suggested rules would need to go through several layers of approval before they can be enforced, a process expected to take several months.

‘Vitally important’

Uber’s partnership with the Machinists Union, in which a sub-group known as the Independent Drivers Guild (IDG) has been formed, came in response to mounting pressure to allow Uber drivers to unionise.

The group falls short of being a fully-fledged union. Drivers will not be able to use the IDG to negotiate directly on pay or benefits, for example.

The IDG has welcomed the TLC’s move.

“Today’s decision is a vitally important step forward for drivers.

“In-app tipping will mean a raise of hundreds of millions of dollars for New York City drivers each year. Drivers have long been denied access to the kinds of benefits and labor protections many workers take for granted, such as paid sick leave or the minimum wage.

“As a result, New York City’s professional drivers have traditionally depended on gratuities for a substantial portion of their income. Cuts to driver pay across the ride-hail industry has made tipping income more important than ever,” said IDG founder Jim Conigliaro.

The IDG estimates tipping will be worth an extra $300m (£238m) to drivers in the city every year.

If New York City does force Uber to tip it could increase pressure on Uber from drivers in other cities around the world – many of which have concocted inventive ways to encourage tipping, often in vain as many riders do not have cash on hand.

“[Passenger] said he didn’t have cash on hand but offered me a bag of chips which I accepted,” wrote one driver from New Jersey on an Uber drivers forum.

“It’s worth $3, next time I go food shopping I will return the bag of chips for a refund.”

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Source: BBC

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The software, called Greyball, seeks to identify officials around the world trying to catch Uber drivers operating illegally. It then denies them service.

The ride-hailing firm has been using the tool to secure early access to cities where its operations had not yet been authorized.

But having defended the system just a few days ago, it has now done a U-turn.

“We are expressly prohibiting its use to target action by local regulators going forward,” said Uber’s chief security officer Joe Sullivan.

He said the same technology had also been used for many other purposes, including for marketing promotions and deterring Uber riders using the app in violation of the company’s term of service. These are understood to include stopping users aiming to physically harm drivers and targeting competitors looking to disrupt operations.

These uses will not be affected by the ban.

Mr Sullivan said that because of the way the system was configured, it would take some time to ensure the prohibition was fully enforced.

What is Greyball?

Greyball identified regulators posing as ordinary passengers, by collecting data on the location used when ordering a taxi and determining whether this coincided with government offices.

A report by The New York Times found that it also checked credit card information to establish whether the user was linked to an institution or law enforcement authority.

Uber, the report added, even visited phone shops to trace smartphones bought by city officials setting up multiple accounts in an effort to catch the company’s drivers.

Once individuals suspected of attempting to entrap drivers were identified, they would be served a “fake” version of the Uber app, with fictitious cabs on view. If there were they were successful in ordering a real one, they would have their booking cancelled.

Uber has been hit by a series of controversies recently. A video of its chief Travis Kalanick swearing at a driver appeared on social media, and there had also been allegations the company had routinely ignored cases of sexual harassment.

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Source: BBC

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Uber’s current classification of drivers as contractors means the company isn’t responsible for many costs, including Social Security (in the US), health insurance, paid sick days, gas, car maintenance and much more. If all drivers are eventually deemed employees, Uber will have to pay for all of this, as well as manage a workforce of more than one million.

“This is a groundbreaking decision,” Annie Powell, a lawyer for the firm Leigh Day that represented UK Uber drivers, said in a statement. “It will impact not just on the thousands of Uber drivers working in this country, but on all workers in the so-called gig economy whose employers wrongly classify them as self-employed and deny them the rights to which they are entitled.”

Gig economy is a term given to the workforce in which someone is hired, usually through a digital marketplace, to work on demand, for a short-term engagement.

Founded in 2009, Uber offers a mobile app that lets passengers hail a ride from their phone. The company began operations in San Francisco and is now one of the world’s biggest ride-hailing services, operating in more than 450 cities in more than 70 countries.

Uber is also the highest-valued venture-backed company in the world with a valuation of $68 billion. Much of this valuation, however, is based on Uber’s ability to be profitable by running its ride-hailing platform. If the company has to pay for its drivers’ expenses, profits could diminish or costs could be transferred to passengers.

As discussions of driver classification arose over the past couple of years, Uber has always said that it classifies drivers as contractors because that’s what drivers want.

“Tens of thousands of people in London drive with Uber precisely because they want to be self-employed and their own boss,” wrote Jo Bertram, Uber UK’s regional general manager, in an email to CNET. “The overwhelming majority of drivers who use the Uber app want to keep the freedom and flexibility of being able to drive when and where they want.”

In the US, Uber settled two similar lawsuits in April over the classification of drivers. The class action suits were brought in California and Massachusetts and involved roughly 385,000 drivers. Under the settlement agreement, Uber was allowed to continue classifying its drivers as independent contractors but had to pay $100 million to the drivers involved in the suit. The ride-hailing company also agreed to certain concessions, including giving drivers more information when they’re banned from the service, not terminating drivers at will and creating a “Driver Association” to address drivers’ concerns.

The London Central Employment Tribunal on Friday took these decisions a step further. The court said Uber drivers should be classified as employees, earn at least the national minimum wage and get paid vacations. The tribunal will hold another hearing to determine the amount of pay drivers should receive.

Uber said it is appealing the decision.

While this preliminary decision threatens Uber’s business model, it’s currently limited to only two drivers. Uber has more than 40,000 drivers in the UK. Lawyers for the two drivers said they intend to open the case up to those thousands of other drivers.

In the wake of Uber’s worker classification battles, several other on-demand companies have begun to rethink employee classification. The grocery-delivery startup Instacart said in June 2015 that it’s switching hundreds of its personal shoppers from contract workers to part-time employees. House-cleaning startup Homejoy said in July 2015 that it was permanently shutting down after being sued over the classification of its workers. Several similar lawsuits have also popped up against other on-demand companies, including Postmates, Handy, Shyp and Washio.

“The Uber ruling will demystify much rhetoric on the ‘gig economy’ being inherently liberating,” said Guglielmo Meardi, industrial relations professor at Warwick Business School in the UK. “Over recent years self-employment has increased, but often coming with very bad conditions, prompting fears that it was being used to bypass employment legislation.”

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Source: CNET

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