Uber’s Employees: Employees or Independent Contractors?

Yesterday, we blogged here about important considerations regarding whether an employee will be seen as an employee or a contractor.

In O’Connor v. Uber Technologies, U.S. District Judge Edward Chen just ruled that Uber’s drivers may  pursue their arguments that they were employees in the form of a class-action suit. One of the reasons was that Uber admitted that they treated a large amount of its drivers “the same.”

Of course, millions of dollars may be at stake in this context.  Profit margins are much higher for companies such as Uber, Lyft, Airbnb and other so-called “on demand” or “sharing economy” companies. That is because the companies do not have to pay contractors for health insurance benefits, work-related expenses, certain taxes, and the like.  But seen from the driver/employee’s point of view, getting such benefits if they are truly employees is equally important in a country such as the United States where great disparities exist between the wealthy (such as the owners of these start-up companies) and the not-so-wealthy, everyday workers.

Plaintiffs are represented by renowned employee-side attorney Shannon “Sledgehammer” Liss-Riordan who represented and won a major suit by skycaps against American Airlines some years ago, so sparks undoubtedly will fly in the substantive hearings on this issue.