Gig Economy

Organised labour's next target after grocery and warehouse workers is the gig economy, and Uber's driver base is the biggest single pool to organise given the scale of its US and UK operations. Uber has spent a decade and hundreds of millions of pounds in legal fees defending the classification line between contractor and employee, and every successful unionisation push elsewhere in the gig sector chips away at the precedent Uber relies on. The UK's own gig worker rulings, following the 2021 Supreme Court decision granting minimum wage and holiday pay to Uber drivers, already narrowed that gap here more than in most US states. Any renewed union push forces Uber to choose between fighting a multi-jurisdiction legal war or renegotiating driver economics that currently keep its margins thin but positive.