Amsterdam court of appeal rejects FNV's claims that all drivers or groups of drivers of Uber are employees. The court ruled that the six drivers who joined Uber in the appeal were self-employed and not employees. Factors involved include: the amount of investment the drivers made (such as for their car), the freedom in choosing when to work, the strategy in accepting or not accepting rides and the associated earnings, and the risk of liability and disability. The court further considered that it is possible that individual Uber drivers do work under an employment contract. In these proceedings, the court was unable to establish that for individual drivers or groups of drivers.
The court earlier ruled that all Uber drivers are employees. On that, Uber appealed. In the appeal, the court of appeal put preliminary questions to the Supreme Court. These related to the meaning of entrepreneurship in the qualification of an employment relationship and the procedure to determine that qualification for a group of employed people. The Supreme Court replied that in its Deliveroo judgment, it did not want to rank the relevant circumstances mentioned therein, that this also applies to entrepreneurship, and that it may occur that the employment relationship of one worker may be qualified differently than with regard to other workers performing the same work. According to the Supreme Court, the court cannot give a general opinion on the qualification if the individual circumstances of the (groups of) workers differ too much for that. To the extent that an opinion can be given for certain (groups of) workers, the court can express this in the decision of the ruling.