Uber passengers
reported over 3,000 sexual assaults last year, report says
The
rideshare company released its first-ever safety report in the wake of a House
committee calling for improved policy
Kari Paul
in San Francisco and agencies
Fri 6 Dec
2019 00.51 GMTLast modified on Fri 6 Dec 2019 02.38 GMT
A safety
report revealed Uber passengers reported more than 3,000 sexual assaults in
2018.
More than
3,000 Uber passengers reported sexual assaults in 2018, the ride-sharing
company revealed in its first-ever safety report on Friday. Nine passengers
were murdered and 58 riders were killed in crashes last year, the report said.
These
incidents, which include 229 rapes, represent just a fraction of the more than
1.3bn rides Uber facilitated in the US in the past year, but they come at a
time when the company is increasingly under scrutiny for worker and rider
safety conditions.
“The numbers are jarring and hard to digest,”
Tony West, Uber’s chief legal officer, told the New York Times. “What it says
is that Uber is a reflection of the society it serves.”
In 2017,
the company counted 2,936 reported sexual assaults during 1bn US trips. Uber
bases its numbers on reports from riders and drivers, meaning the actual
numbers could be much higher. Sexual assaults commonly go unreported.
The
ride-hailing company noted that drivers and riders were both attacked, and that
some assaults occurred between riders.
“I suspect
many people will be surprised at how rare these incidents are; others will
understandably think they’re still too common,” Uber’s CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi,
tweeted about the report. “Some people will appreciate how much we’ve done on
safety; others will say we have more work to do. They will all be right.”
At an
October hearing, a House committee called on Uber and its rideshare competitor
Lyft to improve safety measures. The companies have been criticized over
background check processes and responses to sexual assaults during rides.
More than
20 unnamed passengers are suing Lyft over alleged sexual assault by drivers in
a lawsuit filed this week, and in another lawsuit, Lyft customer Alison Turkos
is suing the Uber rival on 11 counts, including vicarious liability for assault
with a deadly weapon, sexual assault, sexual battery and breach of contract,
after her driver allegedly kidnapped her, drove her across state lines, and
raped her.
The report
from Uber focused solely on rides in the US and not the 65 other countries
where Uber operates, including India, where a driver was sued in 2017 for
allegedly raping a passenger.
Uber began
examining the issue of sexual assault in late 2017 and has worked with
organizations such as the National Sexual Violence Resource Center to improve
its reporting process for sexual violence and other safety issues. It has
tripled the size of its safety team to 300 employees since 2017, according to
the New York Times, and is set to launch a hotline in partnership with the
not-for-profit organization Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (Rainn).
The company
voluntarily released the figures, which underscore the problem of sexual
violence that exists across all industries, said Erin Robinson, Rainn’s press
secretary.
“This is an
issue that affects every institution in America, and understanding the problem
is an important step in the effort to solve it,” she said. “We look forward to
working with Uber to further its goal of ensuring safe and respectful ride
share experiences for every rider and driver.”
Uber
Uber’s new
loan program could trap drivers in cycles of crushing debt
Veena Dubal
The company
is developing financial services that could force drivers to keep working long
past their breaking point
Thu 5 Dec
2019 11.00 GMTLast modified on Thu 5 Dec 2019 17.05 GMT
‘Since the company went public in May, its
stock has dropped precipitously. Meanwhile, it continues to hemorrhage money,
losing more than $5.2bn in just the second quarter of this year.’
Under the
guise of giving its drivers more access to the banking and financial system,
Uber has quietly been developing a loan program that may have the potential to
trap drivers in cycles of debt, making them easier for the company to exploit.
In early
September, a number of Uber drivers in the US received a notification through
their Uber app informing them that the company was developing an “exciting new
financial product” to help them “in a time of need”. “If Uber provided access
to affordable loans,” an accompanying questionnaire asked, “how likely are you
to take advantage of this product?”
What Uber
was testing with drivers appears to be a payday loan program in which the
company will offer drivers short-term credit of up to $500 or more. Drivers
would presumably repay these debts by, well, driving for Uber. The program,
versions of which have already been rolled out in India, Brazil and Peru, has
not yet been launched in the US, and Uber has declined to discuss its details
in the press. But the loans are clearly part of a broader push the company is
making, through its new Uber Money subsidiary, into giving drivers access to
financial products such as bank accounts and credit cards.
Access,
however, tends to come at a price. We don’t yet know anything about the terms
of Uber’s loans. But given the company’s business model, the extreme financial
pressures it is facing, and its history of exploiting workers, we should fear
the possibility that its loan program will create a cruel new form of digital
peonage. Peonage, which was used as a replacement for outright slavery in the
post-civil-war American south, is a system of economic exploitation in which
workers are compelled to work to pay off debts to their employers. Uber’s
update to this system may be delivered via smartphone, but as the California
state assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez recently tweeted, it could still be
“f*cking feudalism”.
Preyed upon
by Uber in the past
Aslam, a
full-time Uber driver, is one of the workers who received Uber’s notification
about the loan program. His initial response was relief: as a new refugee to
the US, he has had trouble securing loans, and to support his family of five,
he frequently needs more money than he can make driving 60 hours a week. A
small loan obtained effortlessly through his Uber app could help him make ends
meet without the shame of having to ask family and friends.
The more he
thought about it, though, the more Aslam was troubled by the loan offer. He had
been preyed upon by Uber’s financial products in the past: after buying a car
through Uber’s vehicle financing program, he had watched with mounting anxiety
as Uber’s inscrutable black box algorithms whittled away at his effective
hourly wage, making it almost impossible to repay his auto loan. And he wasn’t
alone. Just last year, Uber was fined $20m by the Federal Trade Commission for
misleading drivers about its vehicle financing programs. Like Aslam, most
drivers earned significantly less than the company promised, and many received
higher interest rates on their car loans and leases than they should have.
The program also has the potential to drag
drivers into a new, highly predatory financial system
The only
reason Aslam is still driving for Uber, despite low earnings, long hours and
high stress, is because he owes money on his vehicle. Each week, Aslam’s car
payment is automatically deducted by Uber from his income. Sometimes late at
night, when he’s desperate to stop working, he calculates how much of his
income will be left after accounting for this deduction – and then forces
himself to keep driving.
Uber Money
claims it is driven by a “mission of giving people access to the type of
financial services they were excluded from”, and indeed, this payday loan
program, alongside their debit and credit cards, are targeted at those, like
Aslam, who are most economically disenfranchised. But rather than extend wealth
and opportunity, access to payday loans and credit cards often represents what
sociologists have called predatory inclusion – bringing historically
marginalized groups into the economic system in ways that recreate and entrench
existing inequalities.
While it’s
true that Uber’s loan service will be offered to people otherwise shut out of
the banking system, depending on how it is structured, the program also has the
potential to drag drivers into a new, highly predatory financial system.
Although we don’t yet know what interest rates the company will charge, Uber’s
business model gives it the incentive, and the means, to use the loans to trap
drivers in debt and keep them behind the wheel.
Maintaining
coercive control
How would a
potentially predatory system fit into Uber’s larger goals? Since the company
went public in May, its stock has dropped precipitously. Meanwhile, it
continues to hemorrhage money, losing more than $5.2bn in just the second
quarter of this year. In order to increase its value and eventually turn a
profit, the company has to push drivers to make the company more money by
working longer and for less. It would almost certainly be easier to force
drivers to do this if they owed a debt to Uber. Such digital peonage could be
made much more exploitative by the company’s use of data to determine ride
prices and driver earnings. For example Uber could reduce the per-ride earnings
of indebted drivers so that they have to drive even more hours to pay back what
they owe.
Perversely,
a program that forces people to work more hours for fewer dollars could also
help Uber retain drivers – something that the company has struggled to do but
that is crucial to its long-term profitability. If the company designs their
financial offerings so that drivers must continue to work for Uber in order to
pay off their Uber debts or to maintain access to their Uber bank accounts, the
company could lock workers in. If the only way you can have a bank account is
to drive for Uber, then you might just continue to drive for the company even
if you want to stop.
Finally, in
California and a growing number of other states, a new legal test has redefined
who is a legal employee and therefore entitled to basic benefits like the
minimum wage and overtime protections. The more Uber diversifies its earnings
away from transportation services alone – the more it is “an operating system
for your life” and not a taxi company with an app – the more likely its workers
will be considered independent contractors, who aren’t owed any such benefits.
At the same
time, though, Uber’s payday loans could help the company maintain coercive
control over its supposedly independent workforce. With data on how much
drivers must earn to survive, Uber can personalize interest, calibrate exactly
how long a driver must work to pay that interest, and push him to – and perhaps
past – his limits. In continuing its foray into the financial services market,
Uber may have proven once again that its main claim – that it provides freedom
to drivers like Aslam – is also its biggest lie.
OPINIÃO
Aquilo que é teu
é meu, ou a “treta” da assim chamada economia de partilha
As cidades
europeias têm o direito e o dever natural de serem mestras dos seus destinos e
senhoras da sua gestão.
António Sérgio
Rosa de Carvalho
28 de Junho de
2019, 18:35
https://www.publico.pt/2019/06/28/local/opiniao/treta-assim-chamada-economia-partilha-1877934
No período em que
as novas regras do Alojamento Local estão em discussão pública, faz todo o
sentido referir que no passado dia 20/6 foi noticiado que dez cidades europeias
fizeram um forte apelo à UE de ajuda e apoio ao seu urgente esforço de impor
exigentes regras, forte fiscalização e pesadas sanções à Airbnb e outras
plataformas de aluguer turístico, classificadas como Alojamento Local.
Isto, em reacção
a um parecer jurídico não vinculativo emitido em Abril por um advogado ligado
ao Tribunal Europeu, em que este, reagindo a uma queixa francesa, definia a
Airbnb como uma plataforma digital intermediária de informação e não uma
tradicional agência Imobiliária.
Ora, este
confronto revela de imediato a perversidade enganadora da zona intermediária
onde a Airbnb conscientemente funciona e opera, onde esta se define meramente
como um serviço de informações, cobrando por eles 30% dos lucros e
desresponsabilizando-se permanentemente dos nocivos e erosivos efeitos da sua
actividade nas cidades e na destruição dos equilíbrios de direitos e deveres da
habitação para os habitantes locais.
De resto, a
primeira parte do título deste texto não fui que a inventei, mas constitui o
título de um livro, reconhecido internacionalmente: “What’s Yours Is Mine:
Against the Sharing Economy”, da autoria de Tom Slee, onde este denuncia que
por detrás da máscara burlesca da partilha se escondem multinacionais
apologistas da mais selvagem postura da ‘free entreprise’ dirigidas apenas ao
lucro e utilizando a farsa da economia colaboracionista e comunitária,
precisamente, para destruir comunidades inteiras, o respectivo tecido social
das mesmas e transformar, conjuntamente com o turismo de massas tornado
possível com o ‘low cost flying’, cidades ancestrais em parques de diversões
monofuncionais e em meras e áridas plataformas híbridas, esvaziadas dos seus
habitantes locais, e ‘sugadas’ da sua autenticidade e identidade.
Assim, este apelo
dos autarcas destas dez cidades reflecte o clamor dos seus habitantes e do
consciente e assumido sentido de missão dos seus eleitos representantes, ou
seja, as cidades europeias têm o direito e o dever natural de serem mestras dos
seus destinos e senhoras da sua gestão. Neste sentido, elas movimentam-se em
direcção ao retorno do princípio europeu da Unidade em Diversidade, e reagem
fortemente à ‘sopa’ indistinta e ao ‘caldo’ globalizador.
Lisboa e o Porto
não se encontram entre os signatários. Apesar da urgente e insustentável
situação do acesso à habitação nestas cidades.
João Miguel
Tavares marcou as comemorações do Dia de Portugal (sim, apesar de tudo, e em
profunda crise existencial de valores e demografia, Portugal ainda existe! )
com um apelo directo: “Dêem-nos alguma coisa em que acreditar”.
Este apelo já
teve uma resposta de Sebastião Ferreira de Almeida: “Não nos querem nas
cidades.” “Já houve tempos em que nos mandaram emigrar porque não havia
emprego, hoje obrigam-nos a deixar as cidades porque não temos rendimento para
as habitar.”
Historiador de
Arquitectura
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