Uber drivers’ decision could impact on dental associate contracts
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- Published: Tuesday, 01 November 2016 07:41
- Written by News Editor
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Uber drivers have won a crucial legal battle in London after a tribunal ruled they are “workers” who are entitled to the minimum wage and holiday pay. The company claimed that they were independent and not employed by any company. The decision, which will be appealed, could have an impact on others such as dental associates who are self-employed.
Judge Anthony Snelson, who led the three-person tribunal panel, was sharply critical of Uber’s claim that its drivers are self-employed. “The notion that Uber in London is a mosaic of 30,000 small businesses linked by a common ‘platform’ is to our minds faintly ridiculous,” he wrote in the ruling. He said any organisation that resorted in “its documentation to fictions, twisted language and even brand new terminology, merits, we think, a degree of scepticism”.
Nigel Mackay from the employment team at law firm Leigh Day, which represented the drivers, said it was a “ground-breaking” decision. He said: “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.”
This comes at a time when the government is cracking down on businesses that cut costs by using self-employed or agency workers to deny them employment rights. Jane Ellison, a Treasury minister, said HM Revenue & Customs was “transforming” its compliance approach with a new team focusing on workers’ employment status. The move is part of a new focus from Theresa May, the prime minister, on workers falling through the cracks of tax and employment law, leaving them with precarious incomes and few rights.
At present HMRC classifies dental associates as self-employed, but this could change as a result of their new review.
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