Uber lose tribunal claim

Uber is a mobile phone app which allows users to book a minicab.  The company which designed it is also called Uber.  Uber minicab drivers are all self-employed - or at least they were.

Two Uber drivers, supported by the trade union GMB, have recently won an employment tribunal claim whereby they are now deemed to be employees of Uber, and entitled to be paid the minimum wage.  Uber let it be known that they plan to appeal.

Uber has also reported that a large number of their drivers are unhappy with the tribunal ruling, as it undermines their self-employed status.  At the time of writing it is not clear how seriously their claims can be taken.

The minimum wage was created by the National Minimum Wage Act 1998.  I remember reading this act a few years after it was passed into law, and felt at the time that it could be clearer on at least some points.  On the one hand I don't expect governments to get legislation right first time, but on the other hand I think that a little more thought could have gone into the drafting of the act.

I remember many years ago a woman who ran a post office in the north of Scotland took the Post Office to a tribunal in a bid to be paid the minimum wage.  She won her case, and the Post Office announced that it would appeal.  They then abandoned their appeal, and instead defied the ruling, although the woman in question did have her payments increased.  About a year later another subpostmaster from Lancashire took the Post Office to tribunal in a bid to be paid the minimum wage, but was unsuccessful.

So far as I am aware, neither ruling was taken to appeal, and so neither ruling actually creates what is known as a binding precedent - in effect being the law.

Maybe now is the time for a revision of the minimum wage law.  As an absolute minimum, I think it should be a criminal offence for an employer who loses a tribunal claim to defy the ruling.  Either you abide by the ruling or you appeal.