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Uber drivers accused of 32 rapes and sex attacks in London over the past year
In January, Uber driver Aliriza Kurt from Finsbury Park was jailed for 18 months after picking up a young woman in his vehicle and touching her while asking, “are you comfortable with this?” before she managed to escape.
Uber is treating its drivers as sweated labour, says report
Drivers at the taxi-hailing app company reported feeling forced to work extremely long hours, sometimes more than 70 a week, just to make a basic living, said Frank Field, the Labour MP and chair of the work and pensions committee.
Field received testimony from 83 drivers who said they often took home significantly less than the “national living wage” after paying their running costs. The report says they described conditions that matched the Victorian definition of sweated labour: “when earnings were barely sufficient to sustain existence, hours of labour were such as to make lives of workers periods of ceaseless toil; and conditions were injurious to the health of workers and dangerous to the public”.
Although Uber classifies its drivers as self-employed, which puts them outside minimum wage legislation, Field said that in reality they had almost no independence – Uber dictates their working patterns once they have logged on, has raised its commission while cutting the rates they can charge, and imposes lockouts from its system if drivers turn down too many jobs. This, combined with the cost of the vehicles needed to meet Uber’s requirements, is creating “chronically low pay” and insecurity, the report says.
Field said he had produced the report, Sweated Labour, Uber and the “Gig” Economy, because he was concerned that the bottom was falling out of the labour market. It follows his highly critical examination of working practices at the courier company Hermes. |
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Author: Jezza99
26-11-2019 01:40:38