The American company is doing everything it can to get out of the taxi collective agreement, say the unions and employers in the taxi industry. For that reason, Uber previously went to court in Amsterdam. It ruled last fall that Uber drivers are not self-employed but employees. The unions celebrated the ruling as a victory, but Uber appealed the ruling.
In the meantime, Uber had to sit down with the taxi operators and the unions to see how it could introduce the collective labor agreement. The conversations were difficult. At the beginning of this year, Uber announced that it simply does not work. “The vast majority of our drivers do not want to be employed at all,” said director of Northern Europe Maurits Schönfeld. He also finds the rules too complicated and not applicable for a platform company.
To everyone’s surprise, Uber filed summary proceedings against the Dutch state at the end of last month. The Minister of Social Affairs is said to have wrongly declared the collective labor agreement generally binding. As a result, Uber, which in fact claims to be the largest taxi company in the Netherlands, must also comply with the collective labor agreement rules. While, according to the company, the minister has not taken into account the separate position and has not listened to the self-employed drivers who say they do not want to be ‘wage slaves’.
The judge appears not to be sensitive to Uber’s arguments. Not even for the warning that Uber’s drivers will incur major financial damage, while Uber may eventually come out on top. He cannot anticipate that, says the judge. He also believes that the minister has not acted unlawfully by applying the collective labor agreement to all companies in the sector, without having consulted Uber about this.
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