I’ve been working as a contractor for more than 10 years, doing stuff like writing software for banks. All of those points have allied to me for most of my career. If that’s a compelling case for Uber drivers not being contractors, then it’s also a case for independent contracting in general not being legal.
As long as you're being paid minimum wage and the other (limited) employment protections that apply to people with 'worker' status, then it won't matter at all. It's not illegal to have people as dependent contractors, it's illegal not to give them employment rights as a result.
There is a whole separate question around tax status, but that's not implicated by this ruling as it's based on a separate set of caselaw.
Those protections don’t apply to me. I generally don’t have any employment rights at all, and the reasons given in this case for Uber drivers not being contractors would certainly also apply to most of the work I do too.
If I worked in the UK, I would presume this ruling makes my kind of work illegal, and there’s very little difference between this ruling and something like AB 5, which very explicitly make my line of work illegal. Luckily my jurisdiction has very few anti-contractor laws. The only one I run into is some case law around how long and independent contractor can work for before they become a de facto employee. Which is occasionally frustrating, but not on the same level as something like this. But any time I see this sort of thing I do get concerned that my jurisdiction will eventually get around to “saving” me from the working arrangement that has been massively beneficial to me over the past 10 or so years.
