UBER IS A TRADITIONAL employer recruiting employees. Or Uber is a non-employer facilitating the work of independent contractors. Or Uber is a technology company supplying an app to small businesses.
It depends on which lawsuit you read. The company, valued at over $62 billion, changes its description of what it does depending on what best allows it to avoid regulatory scrutiny.
In a series of cases over the past year, Uber has denied that the roughly 400,000 people who work as Uber drivers — and are paid by Uber for those services — are employees of the company. The company took that position in numerous class-action lawsuits in California, Massachusetts, and Florida.
The California Labor Commission ruled last June that an Uber driver is an employee, however, and therefore entitled to benefits under labor law like reimbursement for expenses and overtime pay. The class actions in California and Massachusetts settled for $100 million, with the company agreeing to policy changes around deactivating drivers and recognizing a “Driver’s Association” to bring complaints of drivers to the company’s management.
But a separate spate of lawsuits, the most recent released this week, accuse Uber of violating the Telephone Consumer Protection Act by text-messaging advertisements without “prior express written consent.” The text messages say things like “You’re invited to drive Uber. No schedule. No boss. Sign up now and get a $500 bonus.”...
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