Recent UK Uber And Deliveroo Cases

Vanessa Barnett, Consultant Solicitor at Keystone Law, unpicks some of the interesting nuances involved in two recent UK cases concerning the gig economy: firstly the Employment Appeal Tribunal decision involving Uber, and secondly the Central Arbitration Committee judgment in regards to Deliveroo.

If you were distracted by the more headline grabbing stories about bad behaviour and paying off hackers at Uber, you may have missed some interesting nuances afoot on the finer points of how the humans in the gig economy are being categorised and the implications of that for both the humans and those running a gig economy technology platform. In September Uber spent two days in an Employment Appeal Tribunal ('EAT'), running an argument which is not new to any of us: in the spirit of Star Wars, let's just call it the "This is not the taxi company you are lookingfor" argument. The original Employment Tribunal ('ET') case, from which the appeal was triggered, was brought