Taxi Driver Online

Just really catching up with this, but I'm guessing this opinion piece represents a fair summary of it all.

Note that the source Novara Media is quite hard left, but the piece could really be written from any left leaning perspective.

Plenty of links in the piece on the Novara website, so if anyone wants any sources then possibly better to read it on there, because I can't be bothered putting in all the links here

And, as per usual, not really a whole lot different to what the mainstream trade gets up to, only on a national and indeed global scale, but can't be bothered going into all that either.

(Style pedants will note the US-style headline in which most of the words are capitalised, which is unusual in the UK context. And looks a bit daft if you ask me )


The ‘Uber Leaks’ Were No Surprise to Long Suffering Private Hire Drivers

https://novaramedia.com/2022/07/14/the- ... e-drivers/

"For years, Uber have shown their true colours."

by Polly Smythe
14 July 2022

Back in 2015, only three years after Uber had launched in London, Uber driver Hassan Haji began hearing rumours. He’d heard black cab drivers talking about the chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne, being in bed with Uber. Others joked about prime minister David Cameron putting pressure on then-mayor of London Boris Johnson on Uber’s behalf. Somehow, taxi and private hire drivers suspected, the ride-hailing business was up to something.

So, it was no surprise to Haji when, last Sunday, the leaked documents of Uber’s former chief lobbyist for Europe Mark MacGann confirmed the company had internally admitted what he and his colleagues had long suspected: “We’re just [edited by admin] illegal”, in the words of one Uber executive.

The documents, leaked to the Guardian, show how Uber entered new markets where they fell outside of the legal framework, then once demand was established, lobbied to have the laws changed. With a mantra of “it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission”, Uber systematically created “regulatory and legal [edited by admin]” in new markets, secured undisclosed meetings with public officials, and “weaponised” drivers by exploiting attacks against them to “keep controversy burning.” And so they didn’t get caught, Uber installed a “kill switch”, where if the police raided their offices, they could hide data.

For Alex Marshall, president of the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB) which organises private hire drivers, this is old news. “We didn’t need 124,000 documents to tell us Uber are crooks. My union see it every day in the lives of the drivers who have to live the reality of what Uber have done.”

As tech writer Ali Griswold points out, Uber were happy to pretty openly do all sorts of shady stuff in their early years – like citing on their blog that the median annual income of a driver for UberX in New York City was $90,766, then being unable to find a single example of a driver earning that much, and later paying $20m to the Federal Trade Commission over charges it misled prospective drivers with exaggerated earning claims and claims about financing. Uber ran the “SLOG” program, Griswold reminds us, dedicated to sabotaging competitor Lyft, and a senior Uber executive mooted hiring researchers to find dirt on journalists who criticised the company in the press.

What the leaks reveal instead is that executives were under no illusions that their way of operating was “other than legal”, as staff put it in internal emails.

Uber’s senior vice-president of public affairs, Jill Hazelbaker, says Uber is now a “different company”, one that “will not make excuses for past behaviour that is clearly not in line with [its] present values”.

For Marshall, however, “there can be no ‘the past is the past’.” The exit of co-founder and former CEO Travis Kalanick in 2017 isn’t the neat bookend current executives so desperately want it to be.

This is because Uber have never really been held accountable for the immense suffering that their business model has created. For Nader Awaad, who chairs the United Private Hire Drivers (UPHD) branch of the IWGB, drivers pay the price for Uber’s activities daily. “They’re breaking our rights in every direction: reducing the fares during an increase in the cost of fuel and living, deactivating drivers without due process, and failing to ensure the basic health and safety of drivers.”

Despite a Supreme Court ruling last year that found Uber drivers are workers entitled to a guaranteed minimum wage as soon as they log into the app, drivers are still having to endure unpaid waiting time between jobs. To add insult to injury, following the ruling, Awwad notes they promptly reduced the pay rate per mile for drivers. “They gave a bit with the right hand, then took a lot more with their left.”

What’s more, other companies were taking note of Uber’s strategies. One leak showed how Uber make targeted payments to academics and think tanks to create a positive image, including a €100k consultancy fee for French economics professor Augustin Landier to produce a report that would be “actionable for direct PR to prove Uber’s positive economic role”. A close relationship between academics and the gig economy is not unique to Uber: Marshall points to a recent Deliveroo-sponsored Social Market Foundation report on the “needs and experiences of those doing gig work” which found – surprise surprise – that “riders are as happy as other members of the workforce.”

All told, the spinning wheels of Uber’s PR machine have done their job. While drivers’ pay and conditions have steadily decreased – prompting drivers to hold a 24-hour national strike last month ­­– the toxicity of Uber’s “pirate” image has gradually been shed. Its once famously fractious relationship with TFL over licensing has given way to one where current chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi can banter with TFL’s Twitter over enjoying the Elizabeth line. In February 2020, MacGann reached out to TFL, who were facing an appeal from Uber after they refused to grant them a licence in London. Increasingly concerned over drivers’ mistreatment, MacGann emailed the mayor’s office offering to share information in a “private and non-sensationalist manner, given my intimate knowledge of the company.” He never received a reply.

Uber’s corporate purification was achieved in part by its deal with the GMB union. While much fanfare was made over the deal being the first struck between a trade union and ride-hailing app, the agreement signed away collective bargaining over pay. For Awaad, this was a farce. “When you can’t discuss pay, what is there to discuss? The weather?”

The GMB’s only response to the leaks so far has been a tweet saying “the media love old news.” Only days before the leaks were made public, the GMB were the subject of a glossy advertorial in the New Statesman in “association” with Uber, titled: “Unions are helping improve conditions for drivers like me”. The piece ended with driver Ali Haydor calling Uber “the best company I have worked [with]”.

Haji, who is now an IWGB member and the member engagement officer for UPHD, is sceptical that the leaks will change things for drivers. “For years Uber have shown their true colours, and nobody has come forward to make Uber abide by the law,” he says.

“As the dust starts to settle,” Marshall notes, “it’s the unions operating on a shoestring budget who will continue organising and taking action.”

Polly Smythe is Novara Media’s labour movement correspondent.

This is the 'glossy advertorial' referred to above and in the left leaning New Statesman magazine. Which is a bit like the more local advertorial stuff that's often in the local press when firms are trying to recruit drivers.

Difference here is obviously that it's Uber rather than Budget Cars in Anytown, and also because it's part of a love-in between the GMB and Uber

Anyway, it seems to have disappeared from the New Statesman's website, but found it in the Google cache. (Not sure if it was in the paper version of the New Statesmen magazine, but the term 'glossy advertorial' suggests it did appear on paper.)

Photo is a bit big, but have included it here to convey the 'advertorial' feel of it all


“Unions are helping improve conditions for drivers like me”

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/ ... clnk&gl=uk

Ali Haydor, driver with Uber and GMB Union activist, on organising in the gig economy.


Image: New Statesman

Ali Haydor has been driving a private hire vehicle, picking up passengers around the cities and towns of England’s south coast, for almost two decades. “I actually started in 2003 in Brighton, where I used to live,” he says, “before I moved to Southampton.”

Two years ago, having worked for various minicab firms, Haydor began driving with the Uber app. “I’d heard a lot of positive stuff about the company, but also a lot of negative,” he admits, “but I thought I’d just try it out.”

The 40-year-old is a representative of the GMB trade union, one of the largest member organisations in the country, representing more than half a million workers across nearly every industrial sector. Last year, the union announced a ground-breaking recognition deal with Uber. The recognition agreement covers around 80,000 drivers.

The union has negotiated improved terms and conditions, and has a forum to voice drivers’ concerns with Uber’s leadership team on a regular basis.

“I’ve always been a firm believer in trade unions,” Haydor is keen to point out. In various jobs, from working in offices to his private hire cabs, he has been a union member since the age of 16. “I believe in the union’s collective approach and togetherness. It improves the conditions of drivers like myself, working on platforms, helping us make sure we have decent jobs that give us a good quality of life.

Since its launch in the UK in 2012, the ride-sharing app has attracted its share of critics. Some had concerns over the treatment of drivers, who (like those in the taxi trade) were classed as self-employed – as was typical in the taxi trade – and therefore ineligible for some of the benefits enjoyed by employees. The growth of the app came to symbolise what was known as the emerging “gig economy”, with people increasingly working autonomously and flexibly, often for themselves, or using mobile-based platforms to get short-term, un-unionised and ad hoc work.But Uber’s recognition agreement with GMB is a landmark in contemporary labour relations. Trade unions, historically concentrated in traditional industries and the public sector, had previously found it difficult to adapt to the new economy. “I think they realised that this is an area that they need to be in,” Haydor says of the union, “and that they need to be in there with a hands-on approach.”

GMB estimates there are currently 200,000 drivers working with other ride-hailing apps in the UK without the protections to which they’re entitled. Drivers tend to work in isolation, Haydor explains, which is why to date there wasn’t “much drive in terms of union recognition in our industry”. But that’s all changing now: “Since the recognition, a lot of drivers out there are not only joining the GMB, but they also realise that there is help available if they join.”

Since March 2021, all Uber drivers in the UK are treated as workers giving them access to holiday pay, a pension plan and a guarantee to earn at least the National Living Wage. It was two months later, that Uber and GMB signed the first trade union recognition agreement in the gig economy.

Haydor is clearly enthused by the terms reached between Uber and workers’ representatives from his union. “Along with those, drivers are also still able to choose the hours they want to work and the days they want to work, and also they get to choose the jobs they want to do. Now that is a proper agreement. It’s giving work-life balance, and full flexibility at the same time as good wages. Now you tell me what other workers’ contracts in the UK provide that flexibility at the same time as all the other benefits? There are none that I know of,” says Haydor.

Indeed, Uber is the only major app-based operator in the UK to now treat its drivers as workers as opposed to self-employed, and the company is driving up standards across the industry. In addition to the flexibility and social protections Haydor lists, Uber also provides a range of benefits for drivers on the app. Drivers have access to a “new parent” payment upon the birth of a child, and they can access free Open University courses, as can their families. They also have access to language classes, subsidised gym memberships, and cheaper financing deals to switch to an electric vehicle. Eligibility criteria may apply.

The gap between public perceptions of the company’s treatment of drivers and drivers’ actual perceptions persists, however. Last year, research by Public First found that almost two-thirds of Uber drivers had a favourable opinion of how the company treats them, while only 20 per cent of the public thought the same.

“The working relationship between the company and the union is excellent,” Haydor says, adding that this is partly because there is a mutual interest. He believes the company is listening to concerns that the union is raising, and by extension, giving its time to the drivers. “And that’s important. Because you don’t always expect a company that has previously had a certain set-up to change something that had been working for them,” he adds.

After 20 years in the taxi and private hire business, and his whole adult life in trade unionism, Haydor is more content with his working life than ever. It might seem incongruous that a lifelong labour organiser would speak so positively about their place of work, but Uber is, he says, on balance, “the best company I have worked [with]”.

And, of course, while advertorial like that above is normally about firms trying to recruit drivers (Uber in this case), another big difference here is that it's partly about the GMB trying to recruit members.

Same old bullocks either way, though