CBC News – Uber Eats & the Death of Employment Law

That is the death of employment law,” Lior Samfiru, partner at Samfiru Tumarkin LLP, told CBC’s Marketplace when discussing the fact the Uber drivers must fly 6,000 km to the Netherlands to fight for their employment rights.

The Toronto labour lawyer is representing plaintiff David Heller in the Ontario class action lawsuit against Uber, arguing it is unrealistic to expect workers to travel 6,000 kilometres to pursue legal action.

“If employers can require people to fly to a foreign jurisdiction and engage in a costly arbitration, then every employer would do that. And your rights, my rights would cease to exist.”

“It’s a big deal. It’s minimum wage, vacation, severance — all of these things,” he said. “Do we care about that? Do we want people to have those rights? … I think we do as a society.”

The class action lawsuit seeks to identify Uber drivers in Ontario as employees of Uber, rather than being misclassified as independent contractors.