What Uber has done, since it started seven years ago, is to lay a sweet trap for people willing to become taxi drivers, but without the means and qualifications to get a license. Initially Uber advertised itself as a “sharing economy” enterprise, allowing any safe driver to augment his/her income by working a few hours a week providing rides.
Back in 2014, in an interview during the Code Conference, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick claimed that the more drivers there are out there, the more reliable the service, the more trips per hour every driver can do. As pick up times get shorter, he argued, drivers will be going from trip to trip without down time. “When trips per hour go up, then pricing can come down, and they can make the same income,” he said. “When pricing comes down you can bring more riders and drivers into the system.” None of this is a selling point for Uber drivers.
A recent report by British MP Frank Field, chair of the work and pensions committee, found that Uber drivers are “feeling forced to work extremely long hours, sometimes more than 70 a week, just to make a basic living,” and that Uber “treats its drivers as Victorian-style ‘sweated labour’.”
Asked about self-driving cars, Kalanick was clear about the future: “Look, this is the way the world is going. If Uber doesn’t go there, it’s not going to exist either way. ”1
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While US Uber drivers have reported that the hourly net income of a full-time Uber driver is $16/hour on average (after expenses but before taxes), the situation in Europe is quite different. Not only are gas, maintenance, license and taxes higher, but the competition is also more fierce.
Last week, The Guardian published an interview with Abdurzak Hadi, a Uber driver in London, who has had to collect government benefits to make ends meet. “At the beginning the money was really good because fares were higher,” Mr. Hadi said. “But now they have cut them and flooded the market. Sometimes I have to wait well over an hour for a job. It’s taxpayers like you who are funding Uber at the moment because we are not earning enough and having to go to the government to ask for benefits.”
A recent report by British MP Frank Field, chair of the work and pensions committee, found that Uber drivers are “feeling forced to work extremely long hours, sometimes more than 70 a week, just to make a basic living,” and that Uber “treats its drivers as Victorian-style ‘sweated labour’.”
Hadi also told The Guardian that “he has worked for different [taxi] operators in the past, [but] they have been undercut by Uber so are no longer recruiting, and he has nowhere else to go.”2