Uber: an investigation reveals the brutal, even illegal, methods of the platform



Dhe thousands of internal Uber documents were sent by an anonymous source to the British daily The Guardian, leading to the opening of a major investigation dubbed the “Uber Files”, on the evening of Sunday July 10. Thus, the Uber platform found itself immersed in its tumultuous past, accused of having “broken the law” and used brutal methods to impose itself despite the reluctance of politicians and taxi companies.

“We have not justified and do not make excuses for behaviors that are inconsistent with our current values ​​as a company,” said Jill Hazelbaker, Uber’s vice president of public affairs, in a statement. an online press release. “We ask the public to judge us on what we have done in the past five years and what we will do in the years to come,” she added.

the Guardian, a British daily, obtained and shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) some 124,000 documents, dated from 2013 to 2017, including emails and messages from Uber executives at the time, as well as as presentations, notes and invoices. Several press organizations (including the washington post, The world and the BBC) published their first articles from these “Uber Files”. They highlight certain practices of Uber during these years of rapid expansion, but also of confrontation, from Paris to Johannesburg.

“The company has broken the law, deceived police and regulators, exploited violence against drivers, and secretly lobbied governments around the world,” he said. Guardian in introduction.

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“Violence guarantees success”, wrote the former CEO

The articles mention in particular messages from Travis Kalanick, then boss of the San Francisco-based company, when executives worried about the risks for the drivers whom Uber encouraged to participate in a demonstration in Paris. “I think it’s worth it,” the co-founder told them. “Violence guarantees success. »

According to GuardianUber has adopted similar tactics in various European countries (Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, etc.), mobilizing drivers and encouraging them to complain to the police when they were victims of attacks, in order to use media coverage to obtain concessions from the authorities.

Accused of having encouraged questionable and brutal managerial practices, against a background of sexism and harassment at work, Travis Kalanick had to give up his role as general manager of the group in June 2017. His spokesperson refuted all the accusations from the newspapers on Sunday. , including that of obstruction of justice.

According to the dailies, Uber had implemented various strategies to thwart the attempts to intervene by the police, including that of the “circuit breaker” (” kill switch ”) which consisted of quickly cutting off access to a group office to the main computer databases, in the event of a search.

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“We are outright outlaws”

the Guardian cites various excerpts from conversations between executives evoking the absence of a legal framework for their activities. “Sometimes we have problems because, well, we are absolutely outlaws,” Uber’s global communications director, Nairi Hourdajian, wrote to her colleagues in 2014, when the existence of the platform was under threat in Thailand and India.

Before becoming synonymous with the reservation of passenger cars with driver (VTC), Uber had to fight to be accepted. The group courted consumers and drivers, and found allies in power, such as Emmanuel Macron, who would have discreetly helped the service when he was Minister of the Economy.

Requested by Agence France-Presse, the company Uber France confirmed the holding of meetings with Emmanuel Macron: meetings which “were under his responsibilities as Minister of the Economy and Digital supervising the VTC sector”. The Élysée indicated to Agence France-Presse that Emmanuel Macron, as Minister of the Economy, was “naturally led to exchange with many companies engaged in the profound change in services that has occurred during the years mentioned, that it was necessary to facilitate by unraveling certain administrative or regulatory locks”.

Uber would also have offered shares of the start-up to political figures in Russia and Germany and paid researchers “hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce studies on the merits of its economic model”, always according to the Guardian.

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The unanimous political class

The boss of the LFI deputies, Mathilde Panot, denounced on Twitter a “looting of the country”, Emmanuel Macron having been both “adviser and minister of François Hollande and lobbyist for a US multinational aimed at deregulating the labor law in the long term ” . “Macron as an unconditional ally of uberization. Minister of the Economy, he worked hand in hand with the private company Uber ”, judged in turn the deputy LFI Clémentine Autain.

“We need to be clear about this case. France cannot be the playground of these large private groups! said Alexis Corbière (LFI), before revealing that he wanted to think about a commission of inquiry with the “friends of Nupes”.

The number one of the PCF, Fabien Roussel, relayed “damning revelations on the active role played by Emmanuel Macron, then minister, to facilitate the development of Uber in France”, “against all our rules, all our social achievements and against workers’ rights. For Ian Brossat, spokesman for the PCF, it is “neither more nor less than a pact which unites businesses, ministers and “researchers” (in reality paid by businesses) to crush our social model, bring down the acquired by the workers and Americanize France”.

At the microphone of France Info, Aurélien Taché, EELV deputy, described these revelations as a “State scandal”.

“It was public knowledge, the Uber Files demonstrate it once again. Despite the permanent “at the same time”, Emmanuel Macron’s career has a consistency, a red thread: to serve private interests, often foreign, before national interests, “said Jordan Bardella, the president of the National Rally. .

For Florian Philippot, Emmanuel Macron must “resign”, because “he betrays France, its companies, the State, justice, the people”. “Uber Files, McKinsey, Alstom… Macron is an agent of American interests! He never did anything other than work against France and against French interests! Criticized from Twitter the president of the Patriots.

“The most important question on the subject of Uber France is whether or not its establishment has been a good thing socially and economically. For the rest, it is difficult to see what is reprehensible (interesting, even) in the article of the World on Emmanuel Macron”, defended Cédric O, who was Secretary of State in charge of Digital during Macron’s first five-year term.






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