Cheap taxi rides come at the cost of employment rights and fair pay for drivers
Taxi-hailing app Uber has been taken to the High Court by Transport for London (TfL) to determine whether it is lawful. TfL has also announced a public consultation on better regulating the service, with proposals including English language requirement for drivers and stricter controls on insurance.
Uber says this will damage public interests – but doesn’t care so much about the interests of its drivers. Here are five things you didn’t know about Uber:
1. It asserts that its drivers are ‘partners’, meaning they are not entitled to normal worker’s rights. Uber has contested claims that this is exploitative, claiming that it is allowing its drivers to work as independent contractors in the spirit of entrepreneurship.
Currently an Uber driver does not have rights to holiday pay, or the right to properly challenge a discipline or grievance notice before being dismissed. There have been reports from drivers that they have been dismissed for making complaints about unfair treatment.
2. If a driver’s rating falls below 4.6 or 4.2 (there are varying accounts) they risk being sacked (or ‘deactivated’ to use the Uber euphemism.) There is no way to properly regulate ratings and protect them from the caprice of a customer. If a driver pick up a passenger who wants a conversation and their English isn’t great, or a passenger in a bad mood, or a passenger who wants help moving house, they are risking their job.
3. Uber deducts a fifth of a driver’s income, which is already low. According to the GMB Professional Drivers’ Union, a GMB member who works exclusively for Uber in London was paid £5.03 net per hour for 234 hours driving during the August calendar month. This is £1.47 per hour below the current national minimum wage of £6.50 per hour. For each hour he worked, he paid £2.65 to Uber, equating to 53 per cent of his net pay per hour. GMB has urged all Uber drivers to keep detailed records of the pay they receive.
Many Uber drivers are recent immigrants with poor English which may prevent them from getting other work in the UK, and which means they are not familiar with pay law. Far from offering freedom, the Uber business model exploits people who cannot get better jobs.
4. Uber’s tax arrangements are highly contested. Uber processes its jobs through its Dutch subsidiary, Uber BV, which allows Uber to charge a lower VAT rate. The Dutch VAT rate is Dutch VAT is 0 per cent for entrepreneurs conducting foreign businesses from the Netherlands; in the UK it’s 20 per cent. This allows Uber to offer super-low prices.
5. There are no limits on the number of cars Uber can operate. The company says it currently has more than 15,000 drivers in London, and its chief executive Travis Kalanick has said he expects that to rise to 42,000 in 2016. Not only does this have implications for London’s already terrible air quality – a TfL- commissioned study found that nearly 9,500 people die each year in the capital because of pollution – it means there will be less and less work for drivers who have made Uber their full-time job.
Uber is also ruining the livelihoods of other drivers. Over a two-year period, roughly coinciding with the explosion of Uber in London, the number of minicab companies has fallen by 5 per cent. Uber is so much cheaper than black cabs and private companies that people who have worked their whole lives as drivers no longer have a chance. It is true that other taxi companies need to reconsider their pricing, but the Uber boom happened so quickly that they were caught off guard. Plus, Uber cannot take the moral high ground on affordable taxis when they operate theirs on the backs of unprotected workers.
Ruby Stockham is a staff writer at Left Foot Forward
32 Responses to “5 things you didn’t know about Uber”
Samuel Hooper
I never said they are “such an awesome job”. But the fact that over 100,000 people have signed a petition supporting them, and the fact that they are putting indolent black cab drivers out of business (about time, too) says it all.
Albee Doh
Even a casual reading of your blog reveals that all you’ve done is scan through media gibberish that parrots Uber’s marketing strategy.
Perhaps you should take a crack at actual investigative journalism. I dare ya’.
Or just try the job for 30 or more hours a week, calculate your costs against your earnings, and see if you’re still smiling at the end of the experience.
You haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about on this matter.
BTW, simply because Uber says we’re “partners,” “contractors,” or whatever nonsense label they try to play doesn’t mean that drivers actually are these things. We’re certainly not treated like partners at all.
Next you’ll be talking up the virtues of the unpaid “internship” scams plaguing the nation these days as well.
Way to rock the Orwellian “doublethink” like a champ.
Albee Doh
Tilting at ad hominem nonsense as you do here is only weakening your arguments, which are weak to begin with. All opinions, no substance.
And Uber is the very antithesis of a free market, they are in every way a burgeoning monopoly.
Look into Kalanick’s SCOUR. Look into his devious tactics in attempting to undermine competitors like Lyft. Kalanick does not play by the free market handbook, he is a lira and a con man with a criminal past.
And you are indeed erecting straw men.
Albee Doh
100,000 people, mostly riders NOT drivers, have signed that petition entirely out of ignorance and the lust for a cheap ride at any cost.
You have made it abundantly clear that you condone screwing the work force for the “sake” of the consumer. But you forget one crucial thing: the worker IS a consumer. In fact, the work force represents the largest percentage of the consumer demographic.
And you’re also back-peddling on your initial comment regarding the quality of the job now that I’ve slammed you with facts culled from actual experience.
Also, most of the people taking the job are either stuck with it longer than they had planned because they anticipated better earnings (as per Uber’s bogus claims), can’t go back to jobs they left to work for Uber, quit sooner than anticipated because the reality of terrible pay and high risk made the job impossible to keep, or are now in a bind and struggling for a way out. A shrinking number of people taking this job do so just for extra cash. Most of the people taking the job are doing so out of desperation or a lack of options because they are immigrants with fewer options (which is what cab companies attract as well – surprise, surprise).
Man up and just admit you didn’t know as much about the subject as you thought. That would be more respectable and dignified than simply being stubborn and digging your heels deeper into an untenable and indefensible position.
You do not have the high ground in this battle. Step away and admit defeat with honor or stubbornly stay the course and go right over the falls into oblivion with your doomed ship.
Your choice.
Puddle
OK at first I thought you were just misinformed now I’m realising you’re just a committed idiot.
“black cab drivers hate Uber out of an overriding concern for the welfare of Uber drivers”
Oh dear – you know the author of this article isn’t a cab driver, right?
The cabbies stand in opposition to Uber because their entire business model is based on skirting government regulations and then offering bungs to regulators when they get caught, effectively breaking the law. The black cabbies, unlike Uber want to play fair without a corrupt regulator who actually enforces the rules – how evil of them!
“are terrified that their archaic, closed industry”
The industry that has allowed direct competition to black cabs since the 1960s? You’re really not good at this debating thing, here’s a pro-tip – once you’ve successfully defined terms try to ensure you’ve got your facts straight.
“THAT is why black cab drivers – and their politician cheerleaders”
What politician cheerleaders? Maybe you mean Boris Johnson who initially took the black cabbies side until Rachel Whetstone (Uber UK’s Head of Communication and close friend of David Cameron) paid him a visit and he suddenly did a 180? Some political support, huh?
“it for awhile en route to something else, something more lucrative”
The problem being Samuel, that Uber are killing off a long lived cab service that many life-time Londoners rely on to feed their families. I’ll give you some credit, most right-wingers openly pretend to be against the ‘race to the bottom’ style of capitalism, at least you’re a little more honest about it.
“because you are so much smarter”
In this instance at least…
“know what’s best for the Uber driver”
Never claimed that and the fact Uber has a massively high turnover of drivers (and the strike action being undertaken in LA) proves that even Uber’s drivers know what an awful company it is, no presupposing is required on this one.