On 16 June ITF general secretary Steve Cotton wrote to Uber’s co-founder and chairman Garrett Camp that these changes offered a timely opportunity to end its “shameless corporate culture”, and offered the ITF’s assistance to do this.
He said: “Uber should abandon its disruptive business model, which undermines or ignores workers’ rights and seeks to sidestep regulations put in place to protect passengers and road users, and to promote safe, sustainable transport systems.
“The ITF is not against the use of 21st century technology that improves our transport systems, however...we will not tolerate the reviving of 19th century employment and working conditions via the so-called gig economy.
“Uber is a transport company and its drivers are employees. These hard-working men and women are entitled to a minimum wage, social security and other employee benefits. They have the birthright to freedom of association and to bargain collectively.”
The same day, ITF unions Unia, SEV and syndicom in Switzerland succeeded in stopping a collaboration between Uber and the Swiss national rail company SBB, which had planned to integrate Uber into its travel planner app. The unions are urging Swiss Post to get its subsidiary Postauto AG to remove Uber from the app it is already running.
ITF inland transport secretary Mac Urata commented that the Swiss victory was the latest successful challenge by trade unions around the world to Uber’s business model and that these successes were inspiring growing confidence that Uber will be forced to change.
On 13 June in the United States, a New York administrative law judge ruled that three Uber drivers and their ‘similarly situated’ colleagues in the city were employees under state labour law. Read more.
