LONDON (AP) – Uber is giving its UK drivers minimum wages, pensions and holiday pay, following a recent court ruling stating that they should be classified as employees and entitled to such benefits.
The announcement of the giant ride comes Tuesday after it lost an appeal to the UK’s Supreme Court last month after years of lawsuit. The court’s decision has broader implications for the country’s gig economy.
Uber said it will immediately extend the benefits to its more than 70,000 drivers in the UK. Lake.
Drivers also receive a holiday pay equal to about 12% of their income, which is paid every two weeks. And they will be enrolled in a retirement plan that both they and the company will pay for.
“This is an important day for drivers in the UK,” Jamie Heywood, Uber’s regional general manager for Northern and Eastern Europe, said in a filing with the SEC.He notes that drivers can still work flexibly. “Uber is just part of a larger private rental industry, so we hope all other operators will join us to improve the quality of work for these important employees, who are an essential part of our daily lives.”
The drivers who filed the case welcomed the news, but said it was not enough.
Uber is “literally a day late and a dollar short of this offer,” James Farrar and Yaseen Aslam of the App Drivers And Couriers Union said in a statement. They said the changes ended with the Supreme Court ruling that pay should be calculated from when drivers log in to the app until they log out. And they said the company cannot set the cost basis for calculating the minimum wage itself, which should be based on a collective agreement.
Farrar and Aslam had taken their case to an employment court, which found that drivers are not independent contractors, but designated workers, which, under UK law, means that their terms of employment are more casual than employees, but still come with some benefits. Uber lost two appeals for the Supreme Court decision.
Providing more benefits to its drivers is likely to increase costs for San Francisco-based Uber, which was already struggling to make a profit and previously had regulatory issues in London where authorities had tried to revoke its license. However, it said it did not adjust its earnings forecast for the year.
The move in the UK contrasts with the outcome of a November ballot proposal in California, where voters approved an initiative exempting app-based rides and food delivery services from classifying their drivers as employees rather than contractors.
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