Uber says it finally made an annual profit after 15 years, but who paid the price to get it there?
The company fired 6,700 workers, hiked fares for customers, and squeezed drivers even harder. Now the stock is up and investors will get a $7 billion share buyback. It turns your stomach.
MASSIVELY pissed at #Amazon for ads in my husband's TV-watching on #AmazonPrime! I buy almost EVERYTHING there...yet they want to nickel and dime me for $2.99/mo extra to avoid ads.
Let's see how they like me cancelling my monthly #delivery on $400/mo worth of cleaning products, pet products, and cooking products! I'm an #Uber driver by-day and it's nothing for me to stop by #Target instead!
#Uber "drivers are entitled to information about the existence of automated decision making used in the management decision to dismiss them ... The Court of Appeal also found that the human review of the robo-firing decisions was nothing more than a symbolic act."
Ostensibly to help reduce stock dilution caused by stock awards to core staff (including the CEO), once again (as I've pointed out before), it shows that Uber's #business model is nothing to do with investment in #innovation & everything to do with #wagetheft & expoiting #workers.
Uber doesn't need any tech innovation or new kit, so investment not required; just keeps sh*ting on the drivers to make a profit!
As #Uber considers a share buy-back, its worth noting that when Boards resort to buying back their own shares, its usually because they can see no (ready) investments that would pay a better return.
In Uber's case this merely re-emphasises this is a firm whose main mechanism for making money is the exploitation of #gigeconomy workers; they don't need to invest any more to carry on doing that, so a share buy-back makes perfect sense, as it allows profiteering execs to cash-out!
“Uber’s margins fattened as competitors fell by the wayside and the company ground down costs.”
Those “costs” are driver wages. Uber’s shifted billions from drivers to corporate coffers and that will now fund a big share buyback and potentially a dividend.
My latest video for @show is about Trickle-Down EV economics.
Can we please stop pretending that #Uber and #lyft and other #RideSharing platforms are AFFORDABLE?
They're not. They're equitable. They're not universally available. You can't BUY an Uber with cash. You can't get an UberPass.
You can't jump on an Uber for the same price at 12 am as you can at 6pm.
Ride Share is not equitable. It's another way for wealthier citizens to get around, and in its most dire form, a tax on our more vunlerable citizens who don't have a car, whose bus just failed to turn up, and who need to get to work or they'll be fired.
Pennsylvania court refuses to enforce Uber's browsewrap arbitration provision because (get this!) it strips users of their right to a jury trial without adequate notice. I love it!
Après des années de long travail, je salue cette victoire syndicale, fortement soutenue par mes anciens collègues de personaldata.io : #Uber condamné à 10M € d’amende aux Pays-Bas pour manquement à la protection des données en France. Brahim est un des tous premiers guerriers à avoir choisi de lutter contre Uber en France. Bravo camarade.
Précision des enjeux et conséquences via @podehaye : « Ça permettra de faire deux choses plus facilement: class action aux NL depuis n'importe quel pays européen; récupérer ses données pertinentes dans la lutte autour du droit du travail de chaque pays par chaque chauffeur individuel en 30 jours. Ça mutualise la lutte sur le droit du travail au niveau européen et ça permet une initiative individuelle de concertation (plutôt que de passer par syndicats) » #Uber 🎩🫶🏻
"the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it" (#JKGabraith)
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
You'll be unsurprised to learn that the latest #gigeconomy legal action concerns Parcelforce drivers classified as #selfemployed who regard themselves as #PostOffice#workers & whose employment conditions are tightly constrained.
Similar constraints (about the shape of the working day) led to the successful case against #Uber & now IWGB are taking ParcleForce to court in a similar action.
J'ai été parmi les 67 personnes auditionnées dans le cadre de l’enquête parlementaire sur les #UberFiles. Le rapport final conclut qu'alors qu’Uber était dans l’illégalité, la plateforme a trouvé des alliés au plus haut niveau de l’État. Emmanuel Macron et son cabinet ont eu avec Uber "une relation opaque, mais privilégiée."