The Court of Appeal has refused permission to appeal a finding that Addison Lee’s minicab drivers are workers in Addison Lee Ltd v Lange and others.
Mr Lange, Mr Olszeski, and Mr Morahan worked as drivers for Addison Lee. The company inducted and trained drivers, and provided documents indicating how drivers should do their job. Drivers were given handheld computers to log on for each shift and jobs were allocated to them through it. If a driver did not accept a job, they needed to provide an acceptable reason, or face the possibility of being sanctioned.
The drivers’ contracts with Addison Lee described each of them as an “independent contractor”, rather than a worker or employee.
Mr Lange, Mr Olszeski, and Mr Morahan claimed that they were, in fact, workers and so entitled to national minimum wage and paid holidays.
The Employment Tribunal agreed that the drivers were workers rather than genuinely self-employed contractors. It held that the drivers “when they logged on …were undertaking to perform driving services personally. No other conclusion is possible”. The Tribunal also held that the time when the drivers were logged on to Addison Lee’s system constituted working time.
Addison Lee unsuccessfully appealed to the EAT which upheld the Employment Tribunal’s decision that the drivers were workers. Being logged on to Addison Lee’s platform was working time. Since the drivers were at Addison Lee’s disposal during this time, it did not matter whether they were carrying passengers or not.
Addison Lee sought to appeal again, but the Court of Appeal refused to grant permission to appeal. It found that, following the Supreme Court’s decision in Uber BV and others v Aslam and others (which you can read more about here), Addison’s appeal had no reasonable prospect of success.
In Uber, the Supreme Court confirmed that when assessing worker status, the focus is on the wording of the statute rather than the relevant contractual wording, and any contractual provisions that do not reflect reality should be disregarded.
Here, the Court of Appeal found the Employment Tribunal’s conclusion that drivers were undertaking to perform work personally when they were logged on to Addison Lee’s system was “an unappealable finding of fact”. It also agreed with the Tribunal’s finding as to working time.
