[lg policy] Uber loses challenge to language policy

[Harold Schiffman]

   - i Newspaper
   - 4 Mar 2017
   -

Uber has lost a High Court challenge over new language-requirement rules
planned for private-hire vehicles. Opponents of the proposed Transport for
London (TfL) package claim it will lead to “indirect racial
discrimination”. Uber London Ltd launched the action. Mr Justice Mitting
said TfL was entitled to require drivers to comply with the language
requirement.

berated Kalanick for “raising the standards and dropping the prices”,
claiming that the company had rendered him “bankrupt”; Kalanick lost his
rag.

“Bulls**t,” he said. “Some people don’t like to take responsibility for
their own s**t. They blame everything in their life on somebody else. Good
luck!” He slammed the door. Kamel rated his passenger one star and passed
the video to Bloomberg. Five stars for Kamel.

So Kalanick is marginally better than Ratner in that he doesn’t think his
product is rubbish, just that the people he employs are – liars and
lily-livered perpetual victims, all of them.

And, once he has slashed fares, meaning that many drivers earn below
minimum wage, he doesn’t mind telling them that, aggressively, to their
face. It’s not his fault – the man who pays the wages, sets the fares,
signs off, ultimately, on all of the company figures – that Kamel has seen
his earnings plummet and lost $97,000 (£79,000). Why should Kalanick take
responsibility for that, when he can, well, blame it on somebody else?

Kalanick has since sent a fulsome apology to all of Uber’s employees and
posted it online. “I must fundamentally change as a leader and grow up,” he
writes. “This is the first time I’ve been willing to admit that I need
leadership help and I intend to get it.”

Only the first time? You would think that the past month in the life of
Uber might have given him pause. First an online campaign saw more than
200,000 people delete their app after the firm was accused of breaking a
strike of taxi drivers who were protesting at Donald Trump’s Muslim ban.

Then Susan Fowler, a former engineer with Uber, published a blog in which
she accused the company of refusing to discipline her manager after he
sexually harassed her. “Upper management told me that he ‘was a high
performer’ and they wouldn’t feel comfortable punishing him for what was
probably just an innocent mistake on his part.”

It turned out that it wasn’t an innocent mistake, nor his first offence.
Fowler listed several further instances of discrimination (including a
bizarre instance where she and the other five women in her team were not
given a leather jacket, but the 120 men were) and points out that when she
joined Uber, the organisation she was part of was over 25 per cent women.
By the time she left, it had dropped to less than 6 per ecnt, she says,
because of “organisational chaos”, and sexism. Uber is now investigating
Fowler, who has had to hire lawyers.

And this week, Amit Singhal, newly hired as Uber’s engineering chief, was
forced to resign after just one month in the job after it emerged he had
failed to disclose a harassment claim from his previous job at Google (he
denies the allegations).

That’s a lot of mis-steps from one company. Not to mention a company that
lost $3bn in 2016. That’s before one scrutinises the day-to-day working
conditions of its drivers – many so stymied by low fares they dare not stop
for toilet breaks, and work 19-hour days just to earn a decent wage.

Kalanick has been quick to action each time – he resigned from the
President’s advisory council, having been criticised for apparently
endorsing Donald Trump’s agenda; he sacked Singhal; and he created a
committee to look into Uber’s culture, which found sexism to be “systemic”.
He also apologised for his cab rant though not, crucially, until after the
footage had emerged in the media. There’s an abusive pattern to it – bad
behaviour followed by apologies, promises to be better, followed by more
bad behaviour.

It’s hard, isn’t it, when the people you want to be the good guys – the
disrupters of big business, the visionaries who want to save us all time
and money – turn out to be the bad guys.

It’s the same with Apple and Amazon and countless other companies who have
changed our lives. Kalanick must take a hefty share of the blame for his
lofty treatment of those who keep his company running every day and night
with little reward.

But as long as we continue to give him our money in exchange for an
unsustainably cheap ride, what possible motivation does he have to reform
himself or his company? Twitter: @AliceVJones

https://www.pressreader.com/


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