gig-economy

Gig Economy

Workers or self-employed?
The court made very specific arguments:

Uber set the fare which meant that they dictated how much drivers could earn
Uber set the contract terms and drivers had no say in them '
Request for rides is constrained by Uber who can penalise drivers if they reject too many rides
Uber monitors a driver's service through the star rating and has the capacity to terminate the relationship if after repeated warnings this does not improve

The main difference I see is the imbalance of power. A self-employed can decide who to work with and negotiate almost everything with them. He have my business, the company have theirs, and they discuss to try to reach agreements or not. Uber drivers are not in this position. Uber can dictate everything they want, drivers can only decide to stay or leave.
The issue here is that Uber pretends the driver is contracted by the passenger. In which case the driver should be free to negotiate with the passenger. That Uber exercises control of the relationship is what is indicating that Uber is an employer here. Uber pretends you're working for the customer, not them. That is a key element in their attempt to pretend they're not an employer.
Uber acts as an intermediary party between the contractor and the client (the passenger), so you should compare it to platforms for contract work, such as Upwork, or fiverr, or something like that. The point of Uber is that they're only an intermediate party that puts clients and drivers together. Drivers are not providing a service to Uber. They don't control your rates, they don't stop you from getting jobs if you reject a lot, they don't set any quality minimums for your job, and they don't remove you if someone doesn't give you five stars. In other words, you're not working for these platforms, it's just a marketplace. With Uber, drivers are working for Uber, not for the passengers. However, Uber is pretending to be a marketplace, and it isn't. This sentence just proves that.