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Uber’s Union agreement in the UK doesn’t mean its battles are over

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The Applam Drivers & Couriers Union (ADCU), made up of original Aslam and Farrar Uber claimants, intends to challenge Uber while it is trying to sue in the National Court. value his business model in London, in a move claiming that it will overturn the Supreme Court’s ruling and allow Uber to avoid a billion-pound tax bill.

It would be hard to believe that if Uber had won the Supreme Court case that agreement would have been made at all, says Matthew Taylor, director general of the Royal Society of the Arts and author of the Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices. “Let’s be happy, but it’s realistic. The work that drivers have done and the unions haven’t done, we wouldn’t get here.”

Part of Uber’s motivation for reaching this deal may be a simple optical account, Taylor says. “Uber is a great company that cares about its reputation and acts in the public eye. There is likely to be increasing pressure on other companies that care about their reputation and have a high profile to get things done. “

For now, the concert economy’s stronghold remains strong against repeated attacks, says Susannah Streeter, a senior analyst and market analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown. He predicts that there will be new capitulations, “not only as a result of public opinion, but also because more institutional investors are paying more attention to environmental social and governance issues, with an increasing focus on workers’ rights.”

But Uber’s deal with GMB could derail many of the changes needed. The ADCU quickly sent out its opposition to contacting the company in a similar way to GMB, citing Uber’s interpretation of employee rights.

“Overall, this is a step in the right direction, but there are major obstacles to the ADCU reaching a similar agreement. Compliance with legal minimums for us should be the starting point for any union agreement with Uber, ”they said in a statement.

They said there were reasons to be “cautious” about the deal. Drivers represented by GMB refer to concerns that they may receive “preferential treatment” if they are expelled from the platform. “We believe that such an organization would be illegal. We will continue to defend our members and hold Uberri accountable for all unfair dismissals and consequent harmful licenses,” they said.

“We communicate with Uber all the time,” Farrar says. “We have never asked for a recognition agreement or a meeting to discuss it, because we will not negotiate with any employer to get legal rights.”

But without government legislation, in addition to the pressure from other companies to change the status of employees, it would be easy to adjust their employment contracts to avoid the same legal challenges that Uber faces, Taylor says. Instead of relying on the courts to do all the work, the government argues that it should do its own employment bill.

In the five years since he wrote his original report on work practices for the government, Taylor says his thinking has changed in terms of employment status classification to now better reflect the reality of the concert economy. Rather than the three statuses of workers, employees and self-employed contractors, there should be only two: employees or self-employed, aligned with other European and US countries.

But the government has yet to implement the recommendations of its original report, which it says is a worrying “lack of need”. That, however, could change soon. “There is a feeling that the courts have done that [Supreme Court ruling] that it is not so dangerous politically, that they can move forward [reform] now and that there will be no delay for entrepreneurs or investors, all they are doing is putting the law into practice.

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