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At a time when the entertainment economy is under surveillance around its practices of classifying workers as 1099 independent contractors, Uber has formally settled a six-year affair on this specific topic.
Today, Uber agreed to pay $ 20 million to settle the lawsuit brought by Douglas O'Connor and Thomas Colopy in 2013. This comes after a judge rejected Uber's offer to pay $ 100 million. dollars in 2016.
According to the lawsuit, Uber classified its drivers as contractors to avoid paying them a minimum wage and benefits. Since filing its original complaint, the lawsuit has been granted class action status to represent hundreds of thousands of drivers in California and Massachusetts. This driver victory was short-lived when a court of appeal ruled that Uber's arbitration agreements were valid and enforceable. This decision reduced the number of drivers in the class to about 13,600.
Those eligible for a settlement payment include those who drove for Uber between August 16, 2009 and February 28, 2019 in California or Massachusetts. Nor should they be bound by Uber's arbitration clause.
In addition to the $ 20 million settlement, Uber has agreed to implement a complete written deactivation policy, a formal appeal process for certain deactivation decisions and quality courses for drivers.
"Uber has changed a lot since 2013. We have further improved the driver experience through improvements such as failover in the app, a redesigned driver application and new reward programs like Uber Pro," said an Uber spokesman at TechCrunch. "We are pleased to reach a settlement and we will continue to work tirelessly to improve the quality, safety and dignity of self-employment."
But for Shannon Liss-Riordan, plaintiffs' attorney, this is not the end of the problem. If Liss-Riordan said she was happy to reach a settlement, it's just for a small number of drivers.
"As a result, although we were able to recover the parts and reach this substantial settlement for drivers not covered by arbitration clauses, other drivers should pursue their claims in an individual arbitration". they wanted to recover something from their claims. , "She said in a statement to TechCrunch.
At the same time, it is actively pursuing other proceedings against market economy companies that classify their workers as independent contractors.
"We continue to have cases pending against Amazon, GrubHub, Lyft, DoorDash, Postmates, Handy and many others who exploit their workers through this business model," he said. she said. "Because of the arbitration clauses, we are fighting many battles to defeat arbitration and, at the same time, we are also pursuing mass arbitrations against many of these companies."
The case is O'Connor v. Uber, 13-cv-03826 in US District Court North California (San Francisco).
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