So can Uber force French drivers to work certain hours?
As an American, I have poor understanding of what employment entails in the EU. If the Uber drivers are just hourly employees, what changes for them?
In the USA, you only see real employment benefits if you are a salaried employee. An hourly worker gets paid their wage and that's it (no sick days, retirement, etc).
In France, by law hourly employees get medical insurance, a certain amount of paid sick leave, unemployment insurance and also contribute to a pension plan. These benefits are partially paid for by the worker and partially paid for by the employer. Hourly workers must also be paid at least a minimum net wage (after deductions for benefits), currently 7.82 euros per hour.
Contract workers pay for their benefits themselves. They’re legally required to pay into the national health insurance plan and to make payments into a pension plan, but the rest is optional. There is no required minimum wage.
Whether it’s better to work as an hourly worker or as a contract worker essentially depends on how much you’re making in each case.
In France, there are 3 conditions that make you an employee:
- pay
- work
- subordination
The first two are relatively straightforward: you get paid to do work. They are important in order to distinguish between volunteers and employees. Obviously, Uber drivers are working for money, it matches.
The last part is the most important. It means that the employer has power over the employee, as in: give orders, and punishment if the orders are not followed. If the employer can make decisions unilaterally and at any time, there is subordination, even if there are no fixed work hours and no constant supervision.
It is a very commonly broken law in France, at least in spirit.
Subordination is extremely weird, because one could argue this is also the basis of a customer / supplyer relationship. « Customer is the king » as they say. Once you’ve agreed in a deal, then your customer will give you « orders » ( in compliance with your contract, of course), and make decision to stop the deal if the contract allows him to, and he’s not satisfied.
The difference is that in a normal customer/supplier relationship, both parties decide on the price and what will be delivered beforehand. Then the supplier does his job anyway he wants, and in the end, hopefully, the customer will leave with a product matching what they agreed upon, and the supplier with the money. The customer doesn't stick his nose in the supplier's business or decide how the job has to be done.
Of course, the line can be blurred a bit. You may expect the supplier to follow a certain process, provision for changes, etc... But if you start messing with your supplier's business a little too much, it becomes what is called in french "délit de marchandage", which means you are treating your supplier like an employee, and it is illegal.
In France, contracts are much more constrained than in the US. In some cases, like when you rent a house, the contract you signed means almost nothing: most of what is not already a legal obligation is unenforceable.
I don't know if that's true. Our hourlies get benefits like health insurance, vacation, etc. Maybe not as good as salaried but it's not as clear cut as "hourly pay only."
What does paid time off even look like if you don't have a set schedule, though? Will Uber drivers just get n hours of wage added to their paycheck every month?
Where I live the company has to set aside 12.5% of the salary paid for next years "vacation money". You can chose yourself when to withdraw this money in the following year.
For a full time job you are required to take 25 days (or 5 weeks) off work outside of public holidays which is about 10% of the total working time so you usually have a bit more to spend in this period even if the vacation itself is unpaid :)
I find the idea of legislating how businesses operate based on the idea that people aren't expected to have personal responsibility highly distasteful.
I think the only country in the world where the general citizen have enough self control to manage this sort of stuff is Switzerland.
It might be distasteful to you but it is how people operate in real life and it would be sad if legislators ignored the real world in favour of how they wished the world to be.
I'm not following. You get your regular paychecks while you're on vacation. It's only once you've exceeded your allotted vacation days and go on leave without pay that you don't get paid. This is how things work here in the US too.
I don't think we have requirements about how exactly companies should fund this paid vacation in advance like France does (maybe we should?), but we do very much get paid while on vacation.
You do get paychecks issued regularly every two weeks (or whatever), it's just that the amount per paycheck is variable based on hours worked over the preceding 2 week period. This is common for much more than just Uber drivers (e.g. retail workers), and it still works out. The paid vacation amount is the average amount that employee earns.
That might create a pressure from employers where employees are expected to stay in their seats the whole year. The key is that employees are required to take the time off. That requirement means it's never possible to question it.
That's probably part of the equation too, i.e. that a majority of workers want a full time employment with a schedule so that they can take a few weeks off.
In Ontario (at least pre-Ford) you can get full-time benefits as an hourly worker, as long as you work 40h a week or more (or maybe 35?). It's been awhile though so I'm not super confident on the details here.
Yeah, this is why, like so many other things involving regulation, there should be a gradual proportional phase-out, not a hard line in the sand. So rather than paying two people to do 20 hours each and pay for no benefits, if you did that, you'd be paying for half benefits for each, at which point you may as well just have one person doing 40 hours a week who's fully employed and getting full benefits like you should've been doing all along.
The same is true (at least in my experience) in America. Over 40 hrs/week means the employer has to pay out extra benefits. This is also why employers do not want you to work over 39 hours if you're not salaried.
In the US, over 40 hours simply means 1.5x your regular payrate after the 40th hour, if you're "non exempt", i.e. hourly. Some employers might offer something more.
In America very few of those (except health insurance) are actually mandated by the government. Sadly in the US most employment benefits are only exchanged at the grace of the employer.
They cannot force French drivers to work certain hours (under their current contracts), but this is not relevant to their work status:
> The fact that the driver is not obliged to connect to the platform and that this absence of connection,
irrespective of its duration, does not expose the driver to any penalty, are not taken into consideration
when characterising the relationship of subordination.
> The criteria for self-employment include the possibility of building up one's own clientele, the
freedom to set one's own rates, and the freedom to set the terms and conditions for providing one's
services.
Now that subordination has been established, using the criteria you list, what's stopping Uber from forcing the drivers to work regular shifts? The drivers are legally subordinate to Uber now, after all.
If you’re an employee you benefit healthcare, retirement etc. As I understand it, the basic week of work is 35h. You do do less if part-time. Employers also use "cadre" (white collar) contract for more qualified workers they want to milk more than the legal 35h.
Hourly in US can also get benefits depending on company's discretion and some mandatory laws. For example, state of NJ has a sick day law that was passed in late 2018 where it made mandatory for employers to provide accrued sick leave to any employee (salaried or hourly) as long as they are on W-2.
Legally, wether you’re an employee or independent contractor matters for everything from the Americans With Disabilities Act through Workers Compensation, not to mention, taxes.
Wether the company offers benefits to hourly employees is largely an internal decision.
As an American, I have poor understanding of what employment entails in the EU. If the Uber drivers are just hourly employees, what changes for them?
In the USA, you only see real employment benefits if you are a salaried employee. An hourly worker gets paid their wage and that's it (no sick days, retirement, etc).