Volunteer with App Drivers & Couriers Union

At a glance

Causes

Black, asian and minority ethnic groups
Campaigning
Counselling / advice
Criminal justice
Human rights

Other details

Geographical remit:

National - Britain

Objectives

The ADCU is a registered trade union with the objective to organise and represent all app based transport workers whose work is predominately digitally intermediated. We provide legal assistance, support and education to our members in line with our trade union objectives.

Our trade union currently has thousands of members and is growing fast despite the difficult employment conditions of the current pandemic.

The main concerns for all of our members in London which guides our work are:

Pandemic relief - assisting our members to access current relief available including SEISS and lobbying local borough councils for additional emergency funding. We also work to assist drivers renegotiate contracts to reduce vehicle debt and financing burden during the pandemic.
Worker rights - ADCU President & General Secretary (Farrar & Aslam) are co lead claimants in Aslam v Uber. Uber's final appeal was heard before the Supreme Court in July 2020 with ADCU lawyers representing the union and the co-lead claimants.
Digital rights - the ADCU is partnering with Worker Info Exchange to develop a gig workers data trust and to challenge for digital rights. We believe, for gig workers, digital rights have become the gateway to worker rights since management control and the employment relationship is increasingly concealed in algorithmic & automated management systems. We have launched two separate legal actions against Uber and Ola Cabs for:

o denial of the right of workers to access their data and for their refusal to provide
algorithmic transparency
o unfair & illegal automated decision making relating to dismissals (robo-firings)

Licensing terms & conditions - Uber and competitors are using stricter and more invasive electronic surveillance and enforcement techniques including the use of facial recognition and other identification systems without adequate protections. Regulation requires an operator to report dismissed drivers to TfL where they face increasingly unfair regulatory action including revocation. We handle a growing daily case load in this area & have successfully overturned revocations after proving that Uber's facial recognition system had failed.

All of our Executive Committee are or have recently been private hire drivers or couriers in precarious employment. Our membership reflects the profile of our industry. In London, for instance, 94% of licensed private hire drivers are BAME and 71% are from the most deprived London communities. (according to TfL)

The main beneficiaries will be our current and future members by providing us the needed additional capacity to service our members so that we may continue to grow.

In the wake of Uber's licensing problems in London, Uber faces a tougher regulatory regime and in turn, so do Uber drivers. However, since Uber and other app drivers do not have employment protections from unfair dismissal, they are often simply dumped by Uber on the back of any trivial complaint. Because Uber has an excess labour supply due to its misclassification of workers, it would simply cost Uber too much money to run a proper appeals process. Dismissed drivers are reported to TfL where they face a licensing review
and threat of revocation. The situation is complicated by the rapid introduction of surveillance tools for driver identification based on facial recognition and geo location. Misuse of these tools has led to a significant number of unfair dismissals and revocations and we have successfully challenged many of these. But without additional manpower, many will fall through the cracks.

Activities

Pandemic relief - negotiated rent holiday for drivers of Otto vehicles, the largest trade licensed vehicle leasing company in London
Worker rights - represented the lead claimants in Aslam v Uber at the UK Supreme Court. The most important gig economy case in the UK.
Digital rights - launched landmark litigation against Uber and Ola to tip the algorithmic balance in favour of workers
Licensing - successfully defended many drivers from TfL revocation based on Uber deactivation decision for false allegations of 'fraudulent use' of the app. We identified failure of Uber's facial recognition system & had TfL revocation reversed

Ultimately, we defend our members' license against a revocation decision by hiring a licensing solicitor to represent the driver at the Magistrates Court. However, a caseworker could already reduce our outside legal costs by doing much of the case preparation before handing over to outside solicitors. Currently, a defence costs around £1,800 but we believe we could cost this cost down to about £1,000 by bringing some of the work in house.
Fortunately, we are successful in defending many of these cases so they never progress beyond the TfL review stage. Here are the typical activities we would expect a caseworker to engage:

Attempt to get the driver re-activated by the operator. This is difficult but it is possiblewith creative use of public pressure or the threat of media attention, or we may be able to prove that the decision taken was taken incorrectly.
We lobby the driver's MP and local elected representative to in turn lobby Uber or other app company. In some cases, depending on the political figure this can be very successful. For example, Boris Johnston, as a constituency MP, was successful in getting the dismissal of one of our members reversed.
If the matter goes to TfL, we prepare a detailed submission. This requires some skill as we must challenge TfL to focus only on licensing law and not allow TfL to stray into what is often really an employer performance related dismissal decision. We research the drivers work record and address every point raised by TfL and the employer.
If the matter continues to the Magistrates Court, we must first make a decision on the viability of the case. Our solicitor assesses the case and advises on likelihood of success. If the case is winnable, we carry on.
Since app drivers do not have employment law protection from unfair dismissal we cannot seek remedy in the Employment Tribunal. However, we do analyse the case to determine if the worker had been subject to unfair or discriminatory automated decision making since there may be some remedy available for this under the Data Protection Act. We also seek a data subject access request for the purposes of gathering more evidence for defence of the case.

We know from experience that this process works well. We know that if drivers are not represented or fail to represent themselves then they face a harsh and unfair outcome especially in the licensing appeal phase with Transport for London and the Magistrates Court.
This is because the hurdle for proof for TfL is low as the civil courts require a proof based on a 'balance of probabilities'. Without representation it is simply the word of a low paid, migrant/BAME worker against the institutional opinion of Transport for London in front of a Magistrate who is often not legally trained.

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