Written: January 28, 2017
Uber has two major stakeholders – its passengers and its drivers. Its customers pay the bills, and it arguably treats them pretty well, but its drivers and their cars are the infrastructure of the service, and it has arguably treated them far less well.
The major complaint against Uber from its drivers is that it refuses to treat them as employees, worthy of benefits and other protections. Instead, Uber treats even full-time Uber drivers as contractors, requiring them to buy their own insurance, offering no guarantees of income, and providing no meaningful benefits as most employers would. This obviously serves Uber well – it has much lower costs and far fewer assets on its books than it would if drivers were employees and their cars belonged to an Uber fleet. Uber effectively operates as a pure digital layer on top of physical infrastructure it doesn’t own.
But the complaints go beyond employment status – drivers have complained that Uber reduces fares constantly, squeezing their incomes until they either have to work longer hours or give up. Surge pricing and other features are intended to make up for the shortfall in some cases, but can’t be relied upon. Some drivers have taken to sleeping in their cars at nights between shifts in order to reduce their travel time and costs so they can make ends meet. The Uber Pool service has reduced fares even further for shared rides, and this has been another source of complaints from drivers.
In some ways, Uber’s relationship with its drivers is similar to Amazon’s with its warehouse workers (see related narrative): both companies offer employment to those who might not otherwise be able to find it, but do so under conditions that many of them find intolerable, often imposing significant physical costs in the process. Both companies argue that they provide net benefits to local economies through both the employment opportunities they offer and the services they provide, but not all employees agree with that rosy perspective.