Your editorial (21 February) on Amazon workers’ rights and Nesrine Malik’s article (The culture war isn’t harmless rhetoric, it’s having a chilling effect on equality, 22 February) mention new trade unions fighting for the rights of low-paid workers: the App Drivers & Couriers Union, which won the landmark court case against Uber, and the United…
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In 2018, Ali submitted a claim against Uber for unpaid holidays. Originally from Somaliland, he had been driving for Uber since 2016, a couple of years after arriving in the UK. Since then, he hadn’t had a single paid holiday, despite at times working up to 70 hours in a seven-day week. He had taken…
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It is difficult to think of ways in which Friday’s supreme court ruling on the employment status of Uber drivers could have been more emphatic or conclusive than it was. The six justices agreed unanimously to uphold a groundbreaking employment tribunal finding made against the company in 2016. Uber drivers, the court confirmed, are not…
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Rishi Sunak is considering toughening up VAT rules for the Uber drivers and Airbnb landlords central to the rapidly expanding sharing economy as the Treasury considers ways of repairing the damage to the public finances caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. The chancellor has taken the first steps towards increasing the government’s VAT revenues with the…
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Imposing the congestion charge on minicabs entering central London while exempting taxis discriminates against vulnerable drivers and passengers, the court of appeal has been told. Around 94% of minicab drivers are from BAME communities, the court heard on Tuesday, whereas 88% of black cab taxi drivers are white. The £15-a-day charge, which affects around 113,000…
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High Holborn on a bleak winter morning is a portrait of traffic hell. Vehicles grind east to west through an orange maze of construction and utility works. John Lewis and Argos trucks jostle with Thames Water vehicles; at one point, a flood of white vans appears in sequence, as if a fleet controller had ordered…
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