Uber loses lawsuit to avoid collective labor agreement

Tech company Uber, known for the taxi app of the same name, must continue to adhere to the collective labor agreement for taxi transport. In a lawsuit that Uber filed against the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment, the court in The Hague ruled that the current collective labor agreement is not against the rule. According to the judge, the Minister can assess to whom a collective labor agreement applies, and no legal errors were made.

The Ministry can declare a labor agreement generally binding for an entire sector, but only if a minimum percentage of employees in a sector are employed by companies involved in drafting the agreement. According to Uber, drivers working on its platform were not included in the negotiations. So the collective labor agreement is not representative enough, the company argued. But the court ruled that the Ministry did not make mistakes in the collective agreement.

The lawsuit against the Ministry was Uber's attempt to get out of the collective agreement via a different route. There has been a lot of fuss around Uber’s fight to avoid the collective labor agreement for some time. In a previous lawsuit brought by trade union FNV, the court ruled that Uber must hire drivers and pay them according to the labor agreement for taxi transport. The company is vehemently against this because it entails a lot of extra costs.