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A senior Addison Lee executive has admitted falsifying an email that is a key part of the London private hire taxi group’s evidence in an employment tribunal case over whether its drivers should be classed as workers.
About 700 Addison Lee drivers have taken the company to court, arguing they are workers with rights such as holiday pay and the national minimum wage, and not self-employed contractors.
The hearing, which began on Tuesday at Watford Employment Court, comes as gig economy firms come under increasing pressure to improve workers’ rights.
Addison Lee Classifies Her Drivers as Independent Contractors and Self-Employed Despite 2021 UK Supreme Court ruling The drivers of that Uber transportation application were workers.
Part of the company’s case in court was based on an instruction given under new management in 2020 that drivers should have the flexibility to choose their own hours and not be penalized for refusing to work.
This flexibility in choosing when to work is central to Addison Lee’s belief that its drivers are self-employed.
His written evidence included an email purportedly from Patrick Gallagher, operations director at Addison Lee, dated July 8, 2020. It read: “It is imperative that in the future the Operations team does not apply any bans or suspensions to. . . couriers or car drivers [if they refuse a job offered to them].”
But in new written evidence revealed in court Tuesday, Gallagher and Bill Kelly, Addison Lee’s chief operating officer, said the email was forged by Kelly four years later.
The two executives said that in September of this year, Gallagher recalled sending an email about protecting workers’ rights to set their own workloads in 2020, and had asked Kelly to find it.
When he couldn’t find it in his inbox, Kelly said he made up the Sept. 12 email by modifying an old email chain from 2020 to include the words in Gallagher’s name, before sending it to Gallagher.
Gallagher said he didn’t know the email was fake and then sent it to Addison Lee’s lawyers to use as evidence in court.
Kelly said he did not know why he had falsified the email and was “mortified” but did not intend to present it as part of evidence in court.
Law firm Leigh Day, which represents the drivers, argued that a large part of Addison Lee’s case should be struck out because of the email and questioned how the rest of the evidence could be trusted. The judge did not rule on the matter Tuesday.
In a statement, Addison Lee said the email was “an isolated error.”
“As soon as we discovered the issue, we took immediate steps to address the situation and notify the other parties in the court proceedings,” he said.
Addison Lee added that it remained true that staff were instructed not to punish drivers for turning down jobs from 2020 onwards, and this was added to contracts in 2021.
The case continues a 2017 labor court ruling that three Addison Lee drivers were workers. The decision was upheld the following year, and in 2021, the company was denied permission to challenge the ruling before the Court of Appeal, which cited that year’s landmark Supreme Court decision on Uber.
Addison Lee continues to argue that the 2017 employment tribunal ruling does not apply to its approximately 700 other drivers, leading to the employment tribunal claim on behalf of the drivers.
Last week, Singapore-listed transportation conglomerate ComfortDelGro agreed a deal to buy Addison Lee which values the business at £269m.
Addison Lee said it already offered benefits to its drivers, including holiday pay, a guaranteed London living wage for those working in the capital and access to an “industry-leading pension scheme”.
“This is part of our commitment to ensuring we meet the changing needs of the drivers who work for us while protecting the self-employed status of drivers, many of whom consistently tell us they prefer the freedom and flexibility of working on their own terms, when, where and how often they consider it appropriate.
The labor court continues.
Additional reporting by Yasemin Craggs Mersinoglu in London