Hundreds of Addison Lee drivers win worker status case

Published: 8 January 2025 | Personnel Today

Around 700 drivers brought their claims to a hearing that ran in October and November 2024, arguing that they are workers rather than self-employed contractors, and therefore entitled to rights such as holiday pay and the national minimum wage.

This followed a ruling in 2017 that three Addison Lee drivers were workers and an appeal against this in 2021 that was dismissed.

In 2021, a landmark Supreme Court decision ruled that Uber drivers were workers in a similar claim, and subsequently the three drivers from Addison Lee reached an out-of-court settlement.

The latest tribunal has ruled that all passenger drivers, courier drivers and executive drivers are working for the company during the times they are logged onto its app or mobile device.

Owner drivers are working from the time they have accepted work to the time that work ends, it added.

The claims for holiday pay and any underpayment of the national minimum wage can go back more than two years.

Employment Judge EJ Hyams was critical of the conduct of Addison Lee’s witnesses, remarking that Bill Kelly, operations director and Patrick Gallagher, a board-level director and chief operating officer, acted improperly in falsifying an email that was a key part of the firm’s evidence.

The ruling also found that the company had “paid lip service only” to making changes to worker entitlements since the 2017 judgment, and so the workers’ status did not really change.

For example, a driver agreement stipulated that drivers would be free to reject a job, but in practice, this was frowned upon, with emails presented as evidence suggesting a “three-strike rule be replaced by a one-strike rule” for turning down jobs.

The judgment added: “While the respondent said in the driver agreement that drivers were free to reject a job, that added nothing material because drivers were always free to reject a job. The issue was the sanctions that would, or might, be applied.”

Liana Wood, employment solicitor at Leigh Day, which represented the drivers, said the decision was of “huge importance” to those who brought the case.

She said they had “been fighting for many years to be recognised as workers and to be paid properly for the work they do. We now urge Addison Lee to pay their drivers the compensation they are owed.”