A passenger gets out of the car at 9.10. The next one gets in at 9.40. Whose half-hour was that? For a driver trying to work out whether a shift pays the minimum wage, those thirty minutes can matter as much as either fare.
That was one of the questions behind Uber BV v Aslam. The drivers chose when to switch on the app. Uber argued that they ran independent businesses. In 2021, the UK Supreme Court upheld the finding that the drivers who brought the case were workers under the arrangements the tribunal examined.
Who could change the deal?
Think of the last time you hired someone who ran their own business. Could they quote a different price? Agree their own terms? Keep you as a customer for the next job? Uber set the fares and terms. It used ratings to manage performance and constrained drivers’ ability to build relationships with passengers. Choosing the start of a shift left the drivers with little say over what happened once it began.
For these claimants, working time included periods when the app was on, they were in their authorised territory and they were ready and willing to accept trips. That finding matters for waiting time. It does not turn every minute anyone spends signed into an app into paid work. Using other apps at the same time, for example, can raise different factual questions.
What does one shift actually look like?
Pick a recent shift you remember. Write down when you logged on, when a job appeared, whether you could turn it down and what happened between jobs. Next to each entry, note who made the decision. Keep your own pay statement and the terms that applied that week. Leave passengers’ names and addresses out of your notes.
The distinction matters because worker status can bring paid annual leave and minimum-wage protection, while some other rights require employee status. A useful first question for an adviser is which right you are trying to use. The next is how the job actually worked on the day.
Read the Supreme Court judgment in Uber BV v Aslam [2021] UKSC 5.
If your contract calls you self-employed and your working day tells a different story, bring one shift record and one pay statement to an individual consultation.
Hear the Supreme Court give its decision
UK Supreme Court · Judgment hand-down · 19 February 2021
Listen for the distinction between choosing when to log on and controlling a fare after the app is on. Lord Leggatt’s explanation connects those two decisions to the drivers’ working time.
Watch the judgment on the UK Supreme Court’s YouTube channel
