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The taxi service Uber accepts the judgment of the Cantonal Court of Vaud. An important judgment.
Are Uber drivers employees or not? Or to put it another way: does Uber as an employer have to comply with labor laws? This issue has been bothering various courts in Switzerland for years; there are several pending procedures. Now, for the first time, there is also a final judgment that is expressed on this question.
Verdict: Uber makes drivers dependent on themselves
The verdict is from April 2020. In it, the Vaud Cantonal Court ruled on a former driver of the Uberpop service, which has now been discontinued. The Lausanne man had sued Uber because the company had blocked his access to the app for no reason. As a result, from one day to the next he was unemployed without any insurance.
This is a great milestone.
The judges of the Cantonal Court of Vaud justified their decision by stating that Uber, due to the structure of its platform, makes the driver dependent on Uber in operational, personal and financial terms and that, therefore, the driver should be considered an employee of the platform. The verdict is now final: Uber will not go ahead. The company confirmed to the SRF consumer magazine “Espresso” the corresponding information from the Unia union.
Unia sees the cantons as an obligation
The Unia union considers it a “milestone” that Uber does not advance with this ruling. The company recognizes that Uber drivers are employees. Now the cantons have a duty, says Roman Künzler, head of transport and logistics at Unia: “Now they must qualify Uber as employers and place them under the labor law.”
The ruling has no direct impact on our current activities in Switzerland.
Uber contradicts a request from SRF’s consumer magazine “Espresso”: this ruling “has no direct impact on our current activities in Switzerland.” Therefore, it cannot be “neither generalized nor applied to other drivers”.
Labor law expert hardly sees any significant effect
Roger Rudolph, Professor of Labor Law at the University of Zurich, says that it is certainly an important judgment: “But I would not speak of a milestone, because the judgment only applies between these two parties. It is still open how it will behave in other cases. “Media: It cannot be said that with this sentence all Uber drivers are considered employees.
The cantons want to analyze the situation
The cantons in which Uber operates are hesitant to respond to an initial request. From Basel it is said that “they will make the competent authorities verify the initial situation and then decide if and if so what should be done or adjusted.” Lucerne announced that it takes note of Unia’s demand: “Since this ruling mainly affects the canton of Vaud, we must first analyze whether it will affect the canton of Lucerne and, if so, which ones.”
And Zug writes that they are following the jurisprudence with interest. At the Cantonal Council of Zug, a measure is currently pending on Uber’s food delivery service Uber Eats; The problem of “false self-employment” is also at stake here. Therefore, they want to wait for the government’s response.
