Uber has appealed a ruling that drivers should be considered permanent employees. File photo. Photo: RNZ / Rebekah Parsons-King
Something needs to be done to address the power imbalance between Uber and its drivers, a lawyer for the Council of Trade Unions has argued in court.
The rideshare company has appealed a 2022 decision, which ruled drivers should be considered permanent employees, with rights like sick leave and collective bargaining.
Uber's lawyers argued on Tuesday that drivers more closely resembled contractors.
The Council of Trade Unions (CTU) and Business New Zealand have also made submissions at the end of the second and final day.
Simon Mitchell from the CTU said discounting drivers from employment rights raised questions about the fairness of the gig economy.
To rule that the gig economy was somehow different to permanent employment, "to apply some different standard", risked taking away the employment rights of thousands of New Zealanders.
He said the gig economy could "enable faceless corporate entities to enter into contracts with large numbers of employees very quickly, and change the nature of how work is done".
"But fundamentally, the work that is being done is no different to the work that has been being done for decades."
"The shambolic nature of those agreements [between drivers and Uber] is a factor," he said.
To understand the rights and obligations for both workers and the company, it was necessary to look at how the job worked in practice, not what was agreed in the contracts.
Although the contracts looked beneficially flexible, were they in practice, Mitchell asked?
"The way that Uber have constructed these relationships creates a relationship that they determine, and they control.
"And they can retain that control by not having the incidence of employment, and the ability of those drivers to organise [ie. to unionise]."
Peter Kiely, the lawyer representing Business New Zealand, suggested a law change was needed - so it was the purview of parliament, not the courts.
"It could be addressed by a legislative amendment to Section 6 [which] already includes, to use a colloquial expression, carve-outs for volunteers, for screen workers - that might be one way to deal with it, but of course, that would be a matter for parliament.
"But that doesn't stop [the judges] highlighting the paradigm that we are now in."
The appeal concluded after lunch on Wednesday, with the judges yet to make a decision.
