GMB’s victory over Uber bosses at the London Employment Tribunal should be a watershed moment for the millions of Britons trapped in bogus self-employment.

The tribunal’s finding — that drivers are entitled to earn the legal minimum wage, receive holiday pay and take regular breaks — might seem a no-brainer.

After all, access to workplace rights guaranteed in British law should be universal.

But the controversial private-hire firm disagreed, on the grounds that Uber drivers were not employees at all.

In its submissions to the tribunal they come across as clients, with the company itself a sort of weird dating agency that helps them link up with potential customers.

This guff was repeated yesterday by Thatcherite think tank the Institute of Economic Affairs, whose director-general Mark Littlewood argued that Uber “is simply a platform that allows drivers and customers to meet and trade.”

In Littlewood’s utopia these empowered entrepreneurs “work for themselves, set their own working hours and decide with whom they will do business,” all through “harnessing the power of the app.

“Forcing regulations such as the minimum wage and the working time directive onto sharing platforms will force them to scale down,” he laments.

Yes, we know the drill. Regulation is simply awful. Employers, workers and customers are all worse off when you start interfering with the freedom of every individual to work every hour God sends (voluntarily, of course) at whatever price they can get.

The reality is rather different.

As GMB points out, Uber “not only pays the drivers but it effectively controls how much passengers are charged and requires drivers to follow particular routes.

“As well as this, it uses a ratings system to assess drivers’ performance.”

Uber is, in fact, an employer and its claim that its workers are their own bosses allows the multibillion-dollar corporation to evade the legal responsibilities the labour movement has wrung from bosses over decades.

Drivers’ complaints are legion: being fined by the firm after complaints they haven’t seen; being suspended or deactivated without recourse to the defences other workers can invoke when facing arbitrary behaviour by management; finding that after costs and fees are deducted they can earn less than the legal minimum wage, forcing them to work longer and longer hours (which risks the safety of their passengers).

As Labour’s shadow digital economy minister Louise Haigh notes, the “choice and flexibility” the likes of Littlewood trumpet are not matched by the reality for many supposedly self-employed workers who find they are “overworked, underpaid and exploited by bosses they never meet.”

That is not simply an issue for the digital economy. It is equally applicable to other sectors, such as construction or higher education.

Indeed, bogus self-employment is a scourge of the modern workplace which spells financial insecurity and super-exploitation for the ever-growing number of its victims.

Today’s ruling does not tackle all the problems caused by Uber’s burgeoning business.

It does not affect the grey area over “plying for hire” or the safety issues raised when what are effectively private vehicles behave like taxis, without being subject to the strict licensing and qualifications regime that taxis are.

The campaigns to protect skilled taxi drivers from being undercut by less qualified and more dangerous alternatives will need to continue.

Uber is also likely to appeal the ruling. But yesterday’s verdict is still worth celebrating.

It lifts the veil on the shadowy world of precarious employment and should spur all of us on to ensure every worker is enabled to access the rights our movement has won.