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Unions continue gig economy battle
The union movement’s fight against bogus self-employment continues apace. Last month, the GMB general union started another legal challenge against taxi firm Addison Lee, asserting that the drivers are workers and not self-employed.
Liam Wood, solicitor at Leigh Day and Co, explained that as a result of Addison Lee wrongly classifying them as self-employed, “drivers are denied the rights and protections that they were lawfully intended to have, including the right not to have their contracts terminated because they are members of a trade union”.
Maria Ludkin, GMB legal director, said that the union “continues to fight for the right of our members wherever we see exploitation disguised as bogus self-employment”.
Meanwhile, in response to legal action from the IWGB union, The Doctors Laboratory (TDL), a pathology services provider, has admitted its couriers are workers, not independent contractors. However, the IWGB will press on with the claims, hoping that at a November hearing, the employment tribunal will find that the couriers are employees and so entitled to rights additional to those of workers, such as sick pay.
The IWGB is also pursuing claims for unpaid holiday pay on behalf of dozens of members working at TDL.
The weighted scales of economic justice, an interim study released recently by the Unpaid Britain project at Middlesex University, revealed that employers are annually failing to pay around £1.5 billion worth of holiday pay owed to workers.