LONDON (AP) – Uber grants its British drivers the minimum wage, pensions and holiday pay, following a recent court ruling that they should be classified as workers and entitled to these benefits.
The giant’s announcement he received on Tuesday comes after he lost an appeal last month to the UK Supreme Court after a court battle for years. The court’s decision has broader implications for the country’s concert economy.
Uber said it will extend benefits immediately to its more than 70,000 UK drivers Drivers will earn at least the minimum wage, which currently stands at £ 8.72 ($ 12.12), after accepting a single · travel and expenses, and you will still be able to earn. month.
Drivers will also receive a holiday pay equal to 12% of their income, which is paid every two weeks. And they will be enrolled in a pension plan that both they and the company will pay.
“This is an important day for UK drivers,” Jamie Heywood, Uber’s regional general manager for Northern and Eastern Europe, said in a presentation to the SEC. He noted that drivers will still be able to work flexibly. “Uber is just one part of a larger private procurement industry, so we expect all other operators to join us to improve the quality of work for these important workers who are an essential part of our lives. daily. ”
The drivers who filed the case welcomed the news, but said it was not enough.
Uber “has come to the table with this offer a day late and a short dollar, literally,” James Farrar and Yaseen Aslam of the App Drivers And Couriers Union said in a statement. They said the changes came to a halt under the Supreme Court ruling that the salary should be calculated from the time drivers log in to the application until they close the session. And they said the company cannot decide on its own the cost base to calculate the minimum wage, which should be based on a collective agreement.
Farrar and Aslam had taken their case to a labor court, which found that drivers were not independent contractors, but should be appointed workers, which according to British law means their working conditions are more informal than employees. , but which still have some advantages. Uber lost two rounds of appeals before the Supreme Court decision.
Providing more benefits for its drivers will likely increase costs for San Francisco-based Uber, which was already struggling to make a profit and had previously had regulatory issues in London, where authorities had tried to revoke its license. He said, however, that he did not adjust the profit forecast for the year.
The move in the UK contrasts with the result of a November voting proposal in California, where voters approved an initiative that exempted services based on food delivery and classification applications from their drivers as employees rather than contractors. .
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