Uber has signed a historic deal recognising the GMB. What next?

There is still work to be done, by the government in particular, for those who toil in the gig economy but the GMB’s recognition is welcome, writes James Moore

Unions welcome? Uber has agreed to recognise the GMB (PA)

Historic is an overused word in the media, but I think it’s appropriate for Uber’s agreement to recognise the GMB.

It is the first time the ride-hailing app has recognised a union of any kind in any territory and the deal brings with it important benefits to both the GMB and its longstanding corps of Uber driver members.

The agreement means the union will officially be able organise among the workforce, which, as the Supreme Court has ruled, can no longer be considered as a collection of self-employed contractors as was previously the case.

Digital companies with diffuse workforces can present a challenge for unions. This makes it a lot easier for the GMB to contact and canvass potential members and hold meetings with those already in the fold.

The GMB will also be able to negotiate on the behalf of drivers in disputes; for example, if they get kicked off the app. Whether fairly or not, the company has garnered something of a reputation for doing that a little too freely.

It will be able to negotiate over issues of health and safety. Pay? It remains to be seen whether Uber will agree to collectively bargain rates. But there is at least now a forum through which this issue can be raised.

There remains an outstanding issue with the, erm, historic supreme court judgement that classified Uber drivers as workers eligible for the minimum wage, sick pay, holiday pay etc.

As things stand, Uber will pay them from the time a ride is digitally hailed, which includes the time taken to reach a client, but not while they have the app open and are cruising the streets looking for rides.

I’m told clarification is being sought. This should be cleared up quickly, and I understand that it’s on the union’s to do list.

As a whole, the deal could yet serve as a model for other companies in the digital space.

Will it? That remains to be seen. It’s worth remembering that Uber had to be dragged through a swamp of bad publicity and negative court rulings to get to this point.

While other tech companies will surely watch developments carefully, no one is expecting, say, Amazon to immediately drop the disgraceful anti-union tactics of the type witnessed in Alabama, where fulfilment centre workers ultimately lost a recognition ballot.

It also doesn’t and shouldn’t absolve the government of its responsibility to other workers in the gig economy. Things are improving for Uber drives. Many of their peers continue to toil under the yoke of poverty pay, exploitative terms and conditions and the cynical exploitation of gaps in UK labour law.

Addressing these issues, and practices such as the enforcement of zero-hours contracts, remains on the back burner. A promised employment bill has yet to appear. The Taylor Review into modern working practices has been subject to slow strangulation in the long grass of Whitehall, even  though it wasn’t exactly filled with fire-breathing radicalism in the first place.

In other words, there’s a lot of work that still needs to be done. But I doubt that you’ll find anyone in the GMB arguing with that and this deal could still play an important role in facilitating positive change.

For a start, it proves that unions aren’t the scary monsters under the bed their critics like to portray them as. Letting them in isn’t a step down the road to the destruction of a business, and it could in fact deliver benefits.

Not least among those is that Uber today looks somewhat less like one of the baddies of big tech than it used to. That it may also have caused a certain amount of discomfort among its Silicon Valley peers, which still spend good money hiring anti-union spooks, is just a bonus.