[It’s gonna be an ugly, ugly future for a lot of people right up until the moment we provide a solid guaranteed income. -egg]
Some gig-economy workers and unions are bringing this question to court. They argue that these companies’ algorithms exert so much control over workers that they are really employees in the eyes of the law and thus owed hourly minimum wages, sick pay, holiday pay and the like. This is the kernel of the argument the law firm Leigh Day made on behalf of the GMB union against Uber, which was heard in a London employment tribunal earlier this summer. James Farrar, an Uber driver who was one of the claimants in that case, submitted a long witness statement detailing all the ways in which he said the algorithm controlled him. He was subject to 10-minute log-offs for cancelling too many rides (a process Uber says it has now updated), which presented him with a choice between “a 10-minute sin-bin when I cannot work or earn, and carrying out a trip which is uneconomical or risky for me”. If he worked for himself and Uber’s only function was to connect him with passengers, he argued, he would be able to do “just the journeys I want to do and that I judge are safe”. Uber’s defence was simple: drivers can’t be deemed employees because they have no obligation at all to log on to the app.