Following on from recent cases involving “Gig” based organisations such as Uber another case moves towards legal action on the back of their employee’s rights.
Similar to Uber, this is based on drivers but this time the taxi firm is Addison Lee; they are being challenged over their driver’s entitlement to workers’ rights. Which, through the key writes and acts, could entitle them to holiday pay and the national minimum wage as a minimum.
Again, in a similar vein to other cases the argument is that the drivers should be classified as “workers” rather than self-employed and as such, depending on the amount of work they do and their relationship to Addison Lee, could be due the entitlements described.
The action is being brought by the GMB trade union on behalf of the drivers who are being represented by law firm Leigh Day who are basing the case on three specific drivers: the hearing began on the 4th of July at the Central London employment tribunal.
It is being claimed Addison Lee is mitigating its responsibilities through false or weak self-employment rules currently in place and that drivers who work for Addison Lee are entitled to the same basic rights and benefits as workers in other industries.
An employment lawyer at Leigh Day confirmed: “Addison Lee currently denies that its drivers are entitled to the most basic of workers’ rights. They argue that drivers do not work for Addison Lee but instead work for themselves and are self-employed. On behalf of our clients we will claim that Addison Lee is wrongly classifying its drivers as self-employed with the result that drivers are denied the rights and protections that they lawfully intended them to have, including the right to not have their contracts terminated because they are members of a trade union.”
Again, like Uber, Addison Lee exerts significant control over its drivers in order to provide a highly trained and vetted driving service to the public which creates the argument that their control is substantial and therefore they cannot be perceived as self-employed.
There are thousands of drivers working for Addison Lee in England and Wales and there is a growing number of cases within this area of the economy, more are expected to be presented.
