Legal nature of the link between the drivers and the Uber company: self-employment or employment relationship?

Abstract

Technology has greatly affected the legal area, notably with regard to th new forms of work. Among the applications that require the human work to perform the services offered is Uber, originally used as a system of hitchhiking, but which has now been understood as an enterprise aimed at individual passenger transport, with repercussions in the social and legal fields, mainly regarding the analysis of the nature of the bond established with the conductors. The research aims to determine the most appropriate legal framework applicably to such workers, either self-employed or employed. It was exposed the five fundamental requirements of the employment relationship - physical person, subordination, habituality, onerosity and personality. The lack of consolidated jurisprudence on the matter boosts this article. Among the issues addressed, one has the novel consideration of subordination by control through applications, in the so-called algorithmic mode, by commands or by programming. This kind of disruptive labor technology has as its characteristic the camouflage of the subordination element, in context that evidences control by remote means, resulting from the understanding of teleworking. The alternatives that propose distance the worker from the current legislation deny fundamental social rights linked to the human right to work under favorable conditions, minimum and worthy of subsistence. The respect to the protective normativity and to the primacy of the job demand the configuration of the labor bond between the enterprise and the corresponding conductors. The methodological approach followed the qualitative line, with an exploratory and descriptive aspect.