A ruling, if upheld through appellate judicial scrutiny can change the structure of modern-day technology driven enterprises. On 3rd June, 2015 the California labour commissioner’s office held that a driver for the ride-hailing service Uber should be classified as an employee, not an independent contractor.
The ruling ordered Uber to reimburse Barbara Ann Berwick $4,152.20 in expenses and other costs for the roughly eight weeks she worked as an Uber driver last year. While Uber has long positioned itself as merely an app that connects drivers and passengers - with no control over the hours its drivers work - the labour office cited many instances in which it said Uber acted more like an employer.
For the uninitiated this is what UBER does;
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Uber provides a service whereby individuals in need of vehicular transportation can log in to the Uber software application on their smartphone, request a ride, be paired via the Uber application with an available driver, be picked up by the available driver, and ultimately be driven to their final destination.
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Uber receives a credit card payment from the rider at the end of the ride, a significant portion of which it then remits to the driver who transported the passenger.....
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