Roland Perry wrote:
In message
-sept
ember.org, at 07:48:48 on Thu, 18 Aug 2016, Recliner
remarked:
If there is a valid criticism of Uber, it's that it treats its
drivers as employees, but pays them as if they're self-employed. So
it doesn't provide employee benefits, but expects them to follow the
sort of rules that employees.

The "following rules for employees" is one of the acid tests in the
UK for whether you are actually an employee or not, irrespective of
what your contract says.

I don't believe that it treats its drivers like employees.

Perhaps recliner can expand on what "expects them to..." involves.

http://fortune.com/2015/06/19/it-won...ike-employees/

That's a long list of things where Uber *doesn't* treat its drivers as
employees (such as providing them with cars, various employment benefits
and so on).

Obviously what I meant was that Uber doesn't provide the benefits expected
by employees, but still expects its drivers to behave like employees, in
terms of being constantly available. One example of this is its use of
timeouts:

From:
https://consumerist.com/2016/07/28/u...-get-timeouts/

Quote:

Drivers also say it isn’t always clear exactly when and why they’re put in
timeout. Uber didn’t offer details about timeouts, but its policy says if
drivers have a low ride acceptance rate they may be temporarily logged out
of the app:

“If you are consistently not accepting trip requests, we will notify you
that your ability to remain online may be at risk,” the policy reads. “”If
your acceptance rate does not improve, you may temporarily be logged out of
the app for a limited period of time.”

Critics of Uber’s stance that drivers are independent contractors point to
the practice of timeouts as further evidence that the company actually
treats drivers like employees.

“True independent contractors have the freedom to decide when they want to
work and what kind of work they want to do,” Benjamin Sachs, a Harvard Law
School professor told CNNMoney. “By giving drivers timeouts, Uber is
exercising the kind of control over its workforce that employers exercise
over employees.”

More examples in
http://therideshareguy.com/how-to-ta...e-rate-policy/