Issues affecting Uber service in specific cities or regions, including city-specific or regional requirements and Uber’s compliance or noncompliance.
El Salvador’s Transportation Vice Minister Nelson Garcia warned Uber that it was operating illegally and must cease doing so. He said Uber drivers could have their cars seized, have their licenses and plates revoked, or be fined.
Details from Associated Press.
The London Employment Appeal Tribunal upheld a London Employment Tribunal finding that its drivers are workers with minimum wage rights.
After a passenger stole cash from a driver’s tip jar, caught in dashcam video, the driver contacted Uber to report the problem. Uber replied to note that the passenger denied the allegation. Uber continued:
If you believe the rider has your cash as captured from your dash cam and is refusing to return it, you may want to initiate a formal investigation via the police.
Facing subsequent media scrutiny, Uber indicated having banned the passenger from further use of Uber.
A Boston couple reported that Uber denied them a ride because they were traveling with a service dog.
The Boston Globe reports that after being denied service, one of the passengers got his hand caught in the window and was dragged about 15 feet, causing road rash and requiring five stitches.
Uber said the driver was removed, and noted that drivers are rqeuired to accommodate service animals.
When Uber’s autonomous cars were driving in San Francisco, they violated state law as to treatment of bike lanes. The Verge explains:
San Francisco Bicycle Coalition … executive director, Brian Weidenmeier … said he twice saw an Uber car in self-driving mode make an “unsafe right-hook-style turn through a bike lane” during a trial of the service on Monday last week. Rather than merging into bike lanes early to make right-hand turns, as per California state law, the Uber vehicle reportedly pulled across the bike lanes at the last second, risking collisions with oncoming cyclists.
Weidenmeier explained further in a post with diagrams and citations to applicable California law.
Uber admitted that its autonomous vehicles have a “problem” with their treatment of bike lanes.
Sayfullo Saipov, who intentionally killed eight people by driving a rented pickup truck on a bicycle path in Manhattan, had been a Uber driver in good standing. He passed an Uber background check in 2017 and made over 1,400 trips for Uber.
A female driver in the UK claimed gender discrimination in that Uber purportedly failed to provide sufficient security to female drivers. She complained that she had to accept a passenger’s request without knowing the destination in advance, and had no option to cancel requests to remote or unsafe destinations. She also complained that Uber would penalize her if she canceled a trip for an aggressive passenger or a passenger raising other safety concerns.
Uber’s attorneys are investigating the possibility of improper payments in Asia, including what Bloomberg calls “suspicious activity” in China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and South Korea.
In one incident in Jakarta, Indonesia, an Uber employee is said to have “decided to dole out multiple, small payments to police in order to continue operating there.” The company’s head of Indonesia approved the expense report — and was later placed on leave and left the company.
In another instance, Uber contributed tens of thousands of dollars to the Malaysian Global Innovation and Creativity Centre, a government-backed entrepreneur hub. Soon thereafter, the Malaysian government passed laws favorable to Uber. Lawyers are assessing whether this was a quid-pro-quo or otherwise improper.
Uber sought information about the drivers and activity of Grab, Uber’s major competitor in Southeast Asia. To do so, Uber’s Surfcam program connected to Grab servers to figure out how many drivers were connected and where they were.
Bloomberg describes legal concerns associated with Surfcam:
Surfcam raised alarms with at least one member of Uber’s legal team, who questioned whether it could be legally operated in Singapore because it may run afoul of Grab’s terms of service or the country’s strict computer-crime laws, a person familiar with the matter said.
Nonetheless, Bloomberg reports that the creator of Surfcam is still working for Uber, having moved from Singapore to Uber’s European headquarters in Amsterdam.
See also the “Hell” program whereby Uber tracked data from Lyft.
In response to a complaint from trade union GMB, the London Employment Tribunal determined that Uber drivers are employees.
Remarking “the lady doth protest too much, methinks” at Uber’s numerous contractual provisions insisting that drivers are not employees, the LET simultaneously looked at Uber’s various “unguarded moments” in which the company used terminology most consistent with employment status. Ultimately the LET said it is “unreal” to deny the “practical reality” that Uber provides transportation services, and in that context the LET found that the drivers must be employees.
The LET rejected as “ridiculous” the suggestion that Uber is “a mosaic of 30,000 small businesses linked by a common ‘platform.'” The LET rejected Uber’s claim of only providing driver with “leads.” For one, drivers have no opportunity to negotiate or bargain with passengers. The LET also examined the interaction between drivers and passengers, including when drivers learn the route and how payment occurs. The LET said all these factors indicate an employment relationship.
In a 13-item list, LET gathered factors indicating that drivers are employees, including those detailed above as well as Uber’s practice of interviewing and recruiting drivers, instructing drivers in various respects, setting routes, collecting ratings and imposing penalties, handling complaints, and having the power to amend the contract provisions of the relationship.
Informed by the finding that drivers are employees, the LET went on to analyze their rights as employees and Uber’s violations of those rights.