Overview

The Supreme Court has unanimously concluded that the Uber drivers who brought claims against Uber in 2015 are workers within employment legislation, giving them the range of rights attached to that status, such as the national minimum wage, the right to paid leave and whistleblowing protection.

Facts and Employment Tribunal decision in 2016

As many of you will be aware, Uber is a ride-hailing service which operates through an app downloaded to a user’s smartphone. The app enables a user to request a ride and be picked up from a pre-selected location. 25 Uber drivers brought a case against the company, which reached the Employment Tribunal (ET) in 2016. The drivers sought to be categorised as workers as opposed to self-employed contractors. Uber’s position was that it simply provided a technology platform which facilitated the provision of private hire vehicles to customers. Uber argued that it served as an agent, with the driver and passenger entering into a direct contract for each journey.

The ET concluded that the drivers were workers. In reaching this decision, the ET considered the following factors:

• Uber mandated drivers to accept bookings and drivers who repeatedly cancelled would face sanctions
• Uber imposed conditions
  

Welcome to the next post in our weekly series of hands-on guidance for UK HR professionals. In this series we look at common HR issues that you’ll encounter in the workplace and give you practical guidance on how to deal with them. Over the course of the series we’re covering a variety of topics, such as how to handle grievances, disciplinaries, suspension, performance management and much more besides.

This week we look at how to deal with sickness absence.

Click here to read our sickness absence guidance note.

Welcome to the first in our new weekly series of hands-on guidance for UK HR professionals. In this series we look at common HR issues that you’ll encounter in the workplace and give you practical guidance on how to deal with them. In the forthcoming weeks we will cover a variety of topics, such as how to manage disciplinaries, suspensions, poor performance, sickness absence and much more besides.

In our first edition, we are looking at grievances. The way in which an employer handles a grievance has long term employee relations implications, in addition to potential legal liabilities.

Click here to read our step by step guide to grievances and how to handle them.

Following catastrophic falls in economic output during quarter 2, the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer has, today, made a ground-breaking economic statement setting out the UK government’s second phase of its economic response, which includes a significant effort to “protect, support and retain jobs”.Given that largescale unemployment would be a key factor in creating long term scarring for the economy, a key emphasis has been on reducing the number of unemployed as we emerge from the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (“CJRS”) at the end of October 2020.Set out below are the key points for employers:

• Job Retention Bonus. To incentivise employers to bring furloughed employees back to work, the government will pay employers a bonus of £1,000 per employee on condition that following the end of the CJRS, they remain employed by their employer until at least January 2021, earning a minimum of £520 per month.
• Kickstart Scheme. This scheme will provide new jobs to 16-24 year olds who are on Universal Credit.  The government will pay the national minimum wage of young people employed under this scheme for the first 6 months of their employment, subject to the job being a new one; salary being a national minimum wage
  

There is no change yet, but an expectation that there will soon be a UK lockdown exit plan. By 7 May 2020 we may have a better idea how and when the lockdown will fall away. But no promises are being made.

Along with the possible easing of restrictions, there is also the end of the UK government’s job retention scheme. Furloughing will become a thing of the past. As it stands, the date for that is the end of June, although there are suggestions that, like the lockdown, there will be a gradual rather than cliff edge assignment of furloughing to history.

For some businesses it will mean a focus on managing within the workplace issues such as social distancing, testing and tracing. The direction for these businesses will be a return to a resemblance of normal.

For others, the direction will be acting on the permanent damage to the business or the sector in which it operates, and that means redundancies.

For many it will be a combination of the two.

The UK job retention scheme, as the name suggests, was intended to keep employees in jobs rather than them being made redundant during lockdown. It can hardly