Uber is a taxi company. That’s the ruling today from the European Court of Justice, the highest court in the European Union, which interprets the union’s laws and ensures their application across all member states.
Uber, of course, has long resisted that label. It presents itself as a digital platform for connecting people, rather than as a taxi service. But a Barcelona taxi association challenged that claim in court in 2014, frustrated that Uber’s revenues had been partly and unfairly bolstered by worse pay and conditions for drivers. And Wednesday’s resounding judgement against Uber, who sought to appeal the Spanish ruling at the ECJ, is a bombshell. Not only does it mean the company faces far stricter regulation across the E.U., it also undercuts the very way Uber has tried to define itself globally. [...]
More broadly, there’s a degree of existential threat in the ECJ decision. Uber has largely attempted to sail above the notion that it is a regular company employing actual humans, enabling it to deny such basic employee necessities as sick and holiday pay. Wednesday’s ruling bursts that bubble. Uber’s app-based hailing system may have been the ground-breaking key to its success, but the suggestion that it is not a transportation company is increasingly hard to sustain.
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