In an advice memo, the National Labor Relations Board says Uber drivers are independent contractors, not employees; a federal judge ruled similarly last year
Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge :
Context & Ripple Effects
Uber has spent years fighting classification on two fronts, and both just tilted its way. In 2015, judges rejected Uber and Lyft's bid to have drivers deemed contractors outright, insisting juries must decide, and Uber answered by moving against the drivers' class action. The picture then split: California's labor department found one former driver was an employee, while a district court ruled Uber's limousine drivers were contractors because Uber does not control them.
Today's National Labor Relations Board advice memo extends a recent pattern inside the agency itself — months after the GOP-majority board's SuperShuttle decision favored contractor status for van drivers, its general counsel now applies the same logic to Uber. Combined with last year's federal court ruling on Uber limousine drivers and the earlier Grubhub delivery-driver ruling, the memo signals that federal labor law is converging on contractor status for gig workers.
First-order effects
- Under the memo's reasoning, Uber drivers cannot pursue collective-bargaining or other National Labor Relations Act protections reserved for employees, removing one legal avenue from the driver organizing push.
- Uber gains a federal enforcement posture aligned with its own litigation position, reinforcing the district court's contractor finding that plaintiffs had planned to appeal.
Second-order effects
- Rival platforms like Grubhub and Lyft can cite the same board reasoning in their own classification defenses, raising the cost of the employee-status theory that California's labor department endorsed back in 2015.
- Driver-side advocates lose momentum in federal forums and are pushed toward state agencies and ballot measures, where California's pro-employee finding shows outcomes can still diverge.
Third-order effects
- If the board's SuperShuttle-to-Uber line holds, gig-work disputes migrate structurally from NLRB proceedings to state legislatures and courts, leaving a patchwork where the same driver is an employee in one state and a contractor in another.
- Platform business models that depend on contractor fleets gain durable federal cover, entrenching the classification question as the defining regulatory fight of the gig economy.
The trend: Federal labor authorities are consolidating around independent-contractor status for gig workers, shifting the real battleground over driver classification to the states.