> Can I force minimum wage waiting around at 5am in areas with insufficient passengers?
In the EU, legally, yes, as long as Uber's stance is that if you are logged into the app, you are available for work and must accept fares. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_Time_Directive_2003: "The SIMAP judgment defined all time when the worker was required to be present on site as actual working hours, for the purposes of work and rest calculations. The Jaeger judgment confirmed that this was the case even if workers could sleep when their services were not required."
Will Uber actually pay you minimum wage if you try this? No, they will fire you. Or they will implement a special mode in their app saying "thank you for trying to log in, but your services are currently not needed, so we won't let you".
Just because you aren't aware of the many many very detailed rules in this area, that doesn't mean that there are no rules.
In the EU, legally, yes, as long as Uber's stance is that if you are logged into the app, you are available for work and must accept fares. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_Time_Directive_2003: "The SIMAP judgment defined all time when the worker was required to be present on site as actual working hours, for the purposes of work and rest calculations. The Jaeger judgment confirmed that this was the case even if workers could sleep when their services were not required."
Will Uber actually pay you minimum wage if you try this? No, they will fire you. Or they will implement a special mode in their app saying "thank you for trying to log in, but your services are currently not needed, so we won't let you".
Just because you aren't aware of the many many very detailed rules in this area, that doesn't mean that there are no rules.