Employment v Self-employment

Uber regards its taxi drivers as running their own self-employed businesses and so doesn’t provide them with any employment rights. This was challenged by several drivers who sought to argue before the employment tribunal that they were really “workers” and not self-employed. The employment tribunal, Employment Appeal Tribunal and Court of Appeal all ruled in their favour, so Uber appealed to the Supreme Court, which has now agreed with the lower courts. This means Uber drivers are now entitled to a range of basic employment rights that come with worker status, including paid annual leave and the national minimum wage.

Bigger picture

What is of wider interest here to any employers that engage purportedly self-employed contractors is that in reaching its decision the Supreme Court emphasised that the determination of worker status under employment legislation is a question of statutory interpretation, not one of contractual interpretation, and therefore it’s wrong to treat the written contractual terms as a starting point. If a business uses self-employed contractors, the written contract they’ve put in place to describe them as such isn’t going to count for much if employment status is challenged. What will actually matter is the true nature of the relationship between the business and the individual regardless of the wording of the contract. The greater the control the business exercises over working arrangements and the more the individual is dependent on it, the stronger the case will be for classifying them as a worker.